I survived, so now what? What will I feel when the swelling goes down and I see my real face? Can I fight the anesthetic siren song, the surgeries that promise death and rebirth, a new untarnished life? Maybe, I think now, fucked up on painkillers and tripping down these hotel halls, past door after door of possible outcomes, I’ve been trying to return to a woman I can never be. I think of that first procedure, before Jake drove me home and answered my phone, before my mother and all that mess, I woke for a moment in a recovery room, swam up to the sound of my own name. Only a nurse was there with me, calling me. She looked at me a long time, checking something—the light behind my eyes, my movement, my pain. She asked me how I felt and the answer was: safer than I’d ever felt before. I felt awash in optimism, joy, pride in my own survival and a certain clarity about how loved I could be, if I allowed it. How from such certainty, such allowance and love, I would speak, sell, grow. Fight, if I had to. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was just the drugs, warming me, swaying me. But I’ve never forgotten that certainty, never stopped trying to return to it, always promising myself that when I get there, I’ll find my voice, and use it.

I arrive at a door, powder-blue. The DO NOT DISTURB button is lit up and I stare for a moment at the barrier, imagine rushing in on the man behind it, relentless with my scalpel. With my scalpel, I will teach him what it means to be a woman. I lift a fist, knock softly and feel the blood slosh inside the drains toggled to my head.

I pound. From inside the room, childish cries pick up, high-pitched and pleading.

And then a deeper voice. “Enough,” it yells. I return my hands to my pockets, grip the knife, roll my shoulders back. I feel the man behind the closed door. The lock click-clicks and the chain makes a noise like chimes. Now is the moment. I finger the blade as Henry opens up. “Lone Star?” he says. I jump across the threshold.

20.

When I woke alone at the Blaze Ranch, it was in a room I had never seen before. The couch I’d been sleeping on was cold leather. A muted TV flashed on the wall in front of me. I sat up too fast, saw black, then blue. Red returned me to the room and I caught my breath, looked for the door and saw it was closed. I heard myself exhale and leaned back. It didn’t feel safe, but I couldn’t help it, I shut my eyes.