Chapter Twenty
At the doctor’s yet again. This time Dr. Adamson, the general practitioner I first saw.
“How did you come to the conclusion that I was intersex so quick? Every year of my life I have gone for an annual checkup. No one has ever said anything besides delayed puberty.” The doctor sat on a stool in front of his computer, and Conrad and I sat side by side. I knew I couldn’t do it without him, any of it—the doctors’ visits, handling the news. He was my rock.
“We have an endocrinologist on staff here, and recently she gave a presentation on developmental endocrinology. And here she is now. Dr. Matthews is going to sit down and discuss things with you.” He stood and waved the endocrinologist over to his stool.
“Hello, Mason. Nice to meet you.” she held out her hand and smiled at me.
“Hi,” I said, shaking her hand with my visibly trembling one.
“She’ll take it from here,” Dr. Adamson said.
“Thank you,” Dr. Matthews said as Dr. Adamson left. She then focused her eyes on me. “After we talk, we’ll do an exam if that’s all right with you.”
“I’ve already had a couple of those. He even gave me one.” I pointed over my shoulder to the door that Dr. Adamson left out of.
“If you’ll let me, I’d like to examine you myself. It will help me a lot with your diagnosis.”
“Diagnosis?” I asked, gulping. Conrad reached over and squeezed my knee.
“To determine which exact intersex condition you may have.” She offered a friendly smile that reached her gray-blue eyes and showed her bright white teeth.
“Does it really matter? Up until the day before yesterday, everything was just fine.”
“Not quite. You came in for a reason,” she said with a slight nod.
“Diagnosis makes it sound like I have some illness. Are you all not telling me something?”
“With certain intersex conditions, other disorders come along with them. If not now, down the line.”
“Like what other disorders?” It all made me want to curl into a ball and never come out. There was so much more new stuff every minute of the day it seemed.
“Diabetes, high blood pressure to name a couple. My main concern is your health and the health of your baby. We’ll check if you have any adrenal problems. If you have Congenital Adrenal Disorder, you may not make enough cortisol, and we’ll come across problems when you deliver your baby.”
“Why?” I asked, rubbing the back of my neck, suddenly feeling very hot.
“Those with low cortisol levels don’t fare well in trauma or extreme stress. We’ll have to take some blood tests, run a chromosome test, and a couple others to come to a full diagnosis,” Dr. Matthews said so calmly like it was all no big deal.
“Why a chromosome test?” I didn’t like the sound of that.
“So we can find our if you have XX or XY chromosomes or a chromosomal disorder.”
“You mean female or male?”
“Yes, or a combination,” she said. Well, that was just great.
“So, you all doing this means that you guys think I might not have male chromosomes.”
“Correct.”
Conrad took my hand in his. I crushed his in response. What I needed was a stress ball.
“That would mean … no. Wait. Would that mean I’m actually a girl?”
“Genetically, yes. We’re just talking chromosomes in that regard. But really, you’re an intersex person with male and female characteristics.”
“Do we have to do the chromosome test? Can’t I just not know?” Maybe life would be better if I went on pretending I didn’t ever hear anything she told me.
“It would be very helpful if you took it, but we can’t make you do anything.”
I blew out a long breath.
“But we’ll get to the tests. First, I’d like to talk about your ultrasound and what you’ve been through so far.”
“Okay.”
“As you now know, you have fully functioning female reproductive organs. No testes, but you do have a prostate, and your vesicular glands are partially formed. Tell me about your ejaculate.” My life had turned into a series of embarrassing questions.
“Um, like what about it?” I glanced from her to Conrad and back to her, my cheeks and ears burning.
“Do you produce ejaculate?”
“Yeah, but not a lot.”
“That makes sense. More than likely, when you ejaculate, it only contains fluid from the prostate since your seminal vesicles are not fully formed and a low sperm count since you only have one ovotestis. And Dr. Adamson also made a note regarding your penis.”
“It keeps coming back to that.”
“He noted that it is under average in size.”
I slumped back in my chair. “Oh, dear God. Yes, I have a small penis.” Before the end of the week, it was possible that whole world would become informed on my penis size.
“Depending on your condition, it might not actually be a penis.”
“Then what the heck is it?” I asked. It never looked like anything but a penis to me.
“It could be a virilized clitoris.”
“This just keeps getting worse and worse.”
“We don’t know if that’s the case yet. Ready for your exam?”
“I suppose.” I wanted to get it over with so I could get out of there.
“All right. If you change into your gown for me, that’d be wonderful.”
A few minutes after I changed into what couldn’t even be considered a gown, just a paper top that opened in the front and a giant blanket like napkin to cover the rest of me, Dr. Matthews knocked on the door and came back in, a nurse following her. I sat up on the table, and Dr. Matthews looked at my chart on the computer screen and kept glancing over at me.
She pulled on some gloves and started at my neck. “You’re Adam’s apple is quite small, which is to be expected since you display low levels of testosterone, and now, I’m going to slip open the top of your gown for a moment.”
I nodded and shut my eyes, taking in a deep breath and slowly letting it out.
“Doing okay?” she asked. I nodded again, and she continued. “Small breasts that could still be developing. No chest hair. Slight build. Now lay back and put your feet flat on the table, knees pointing to the sky.”
I lay back and looked up at Conrad who stood next to me.
“All right, and there’ll be some touching. Your penis and scrotum are on the small side. And your penis is fully functioning, correct?” she asked as she felt my balls.
“Yes.”
“Good. Good.” Dr. Matthews tapped my knee. “Pull back your legs for me.” Then she lubed up her finger. “Some more touching. My finger will be entering your anus. You never felt that opening before?”
“Maybe. I just thought that’s how it felt in there. I don’t stick my fingers up there a lot.”
“More than likely, tissue covered it before to protect your cervix and uterus from your rectum. And when you engaged in intercourse, it stretched the tissue to the sides. Have you engaged in a lot of anal sexual activity with others?”
“Uh, no, just the one person.”
Dr. Matthews smiled at Conrad. “I want to talk to you today about your condition and giving birth in the future.”
“Oh no, what else is there? Do I have no actual male hormones? An extra uterus? What do you mean by giving birth in the future?” How much worse could it get?
Dr. Matthews laughed. “No, but it is regarding your anatomy.”
“Okay.”
“Pull back your legs again for me.”
I pulled them back, and I held one and Conrad held the other.
“I’m going to touch you for a moment again,” Dr. Matthews said as the nurse stood off to the side.
“All right.”
“Now, right here,” she said, touching behind my scrotum. “This is where your vagina would’ve formed.”
“But my body decided on other things?”
“Almost. You have this thin line here.” She ran her finger back and stopped about halfway between my balls and my hole.
“Why?”
“I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but it’s a bit raised on both sides of it.”
“Really?” I asked, knowing I had probably felt it but never paid it much attention.
“Yes. Your labia started to form.”
“Oh God.” I rolled my head to the side and stared at the wall.
“There’s nothing wrong with that and nothing to be ashamed of.”
My stomach started to quiver. “I somehow know where you’re going with this.”
“In the future, if you want to deliver naturally, one way would be to open up your vagina and move over your vaginal canal. Close up your rectum wall.”
“And I’d have an actual vagina?” I asked. It all sounded so preposterous.
“Well, you already have the internal part of one. You would then have the vulva to go with it, and you’d be able to deliver your baby vaginally.”
“Wouldn’t it like burst or something?” Moving around things inside me didn’t sound like the best idea.
“No. Giving birth might be a bit harder, more painful, but we’d make sure you were ready. Make sure your vagina is strong and stretched.”
“But I’d have an actual vagina.” Holy crap. I’d have a vagina. I was pretty sure I didn’t want one of those.
“Yes. This is just something to think about for the future.”
“Hold up a sec, so if we moved things, I’d have to have vaginal sex in order to get pregnant.” I bit my lip and realized what I said. I was somehow concerned about getting pregnant in the future. What was wrong with me?
“That’d be one way. That’ll be all,” Dr. Matthews then said to the nurse. “There’s another way to deliver naturally and a whole lot of new information to go with it. I just had to examine you to make sure my assumptions were correct.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Grab my hand and sit up. There is the non-traditional way and doesn’t apply to the general population.”
I pulled in my eyebrows and pressed my lips together and stared at her good and hard. “Now you’re scaring me.”
“You could deliver anally.”
“What the holy hell?” I’m sure people could hear me from blocks away.
Dr. Matthews smiled. “Yes, if you choose that way, when you give birth it will basically go how any other pregnant person delivers. The baby will travel down the birth canal, and instead of being pushed out of a vagina, the baby will be pushed out of your anus.”
“That just sounds horrible and painful and might rip me in half.” A shiver ran down my spine thinking about it.
“Giving birth does come with many unpleasant feelings, but you won’t get ripped in half. We studied your ultrasound, and you seem to have thicker rectal tissue than most.”
“Really?” I asked because that was another of the five million things I never expected to hear in my life.
She clasped her hands together and smiled. “Yes, you were built for this.”
“Are you messing with me?” I looked around the exam room. Maybe cameras were hidden in a corner somewhere.
“I would never.”
“So, will it be like … that just seems wrong.”
“Your baby will spend hardly any time in your rectum, just that short distance to your opening.”
“But still. How will it get out such a small opening?” I asked, wincing, thinking of the pain.
“The anus is quite elastic.”
“It sounds kind of terrifying and improbable.”
“It’s not, and it wouldn’t be terrifying. We’ll make it as nice of an experience as we can for you.” An experience from some kind of freaky horror or sci-fi movie.
“How can you sound so sure about the whole delivery? Has this been done before?” I asked.
Conrad crossed his arms, and he too stared at Dr. Matthews with me.
“Not in a conventional hospital.”
“Is it some sort of illegal procedure? Is it high risk or something that a normal hospital won’t do?” I imagined some dirty warehouse on the outskirts of town and a whole bunch of secrecy surrounding it. Maybe she really planned to harvest my organs or something.
“Mason, you have a rare condition, and very few people with what I suspect might be your intersex condition can have children. But your case is even a bit different from the ones in the books. We have a name we call people with your condition.”
“What’s that?”
“Omegas.”
“What?” I asked, cocking my head to the side.
“Regular medical science would say you’re the only one, but that’s because they don’t know about the others.”
“What are you talking about?” Yet again, I was so confused.
“There are more people like you.” She leaned back on the counter and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Where are they all at then?”
“Most of them live quiet lives. Many live in packs. Most around here live in Pine Wood Falls.”
“Okay, I think we’ve got to go,” I said, going to push myself off the exam table.
“Tell me, Mason. Did you have this incredible urge to have sex?” she asked, her eyes meeting mine.
“I’m nineteen, so yeah,” I said, shrugging, trying not to think about mine and Conrad’s sexathon.
“It might’ve started days, even weeks before. Cuddling, foreplay, and then it kept building. Did you present yourself to your mate? On all four, arching your back, anus in the air.”
“Why are you talking about our sex life like this? Are you mocking us?” The things she said sounded like statements and questions a doctor shouldn’t say or ask their patients.
“No, no, oh God no,” she said. “When an omega goes into heat, they desperately want to have sex, this insatiable need for it. And when they mate, they’ll well, it’s intense when the two come together. The alpha male can’t pull out until his knot goes down. They stayed locked together. Could be a half an hour, even hours when you’re so young.”
“Woah. Woah. You’re making it sound weird, but why couldn’t Conrad pull out?” Now I needed to hear her crazy talk because all of a sudden, it sounded like it started to make sense.
“It’s called knotting. When an omega has found their alpha and has gone into heat, the alpha will plant their seed so they can possibly impregnate the omega. The alpha’s glans swells, so they can’t pull out, ensuring that his ejaculate stays deep in the omega, making a greater chance of impregnation. Conrad, how did you feel through the whole heat?” Dr. Matthews asked.
Conrad scrubbed his palm over his face. “It was like I couldn’t control myself. I had to have him.”
“The pheromones you release in reaction to Mason being in heat, makes you want to rut.”
Conrad pulled back his head and raised an eyebrow. “Rut?”
“It’s always hard wording this, but you take him and mate with him, and go until you’re done. Until you knot and release. You have such a strong urge to have sex, you’re going to command it from him.”
Conrad’s mouth fell open, and his eyes bugged out of his head. “Jesus, am I a rapist?”
“Not at all,” Dr. Matthews said in a calm tone. “He was receptive. You always have to have the omega’s permission. Sometimes, they’re at the mercy of their hormones, but if their body wants you, it will take you, and therefore they’re receptive.”
“What if they weren’t?”
“They wouldn’t be presenting to you. I know this is confusing. Alpha/omega relationships are.”
“Why do you keep saying alpha/omega. Is that the medical term for whatever we have? And why do you say heat?” I asked.
“I want you to come down to the Pine Wood Falls Health and Education Center. I think it would help clarify a lot of things. But the main thing to know is that you were fated to be together. Perhaps you didn’t know it when you first met, but you were drawn to each other.”
“How do our lives keep getting more and more bizarre? How come we’ve never heard of this?” I put my hand on my chest, starting to feel lightheaded.
“Mason?” Conrad asked, his palm on my back.
I took quick breaths and winced because my chest began to ache.
“Are you okay?” Dr. Matthews asked.
I shook my head.
“In through your nose, out through your mouth,” she said.
I shook my head again. It couldn’t be done. Everything was too much all of a sudden.
“In through your nose and out through your mouth. You can do it.”
Conrad rubbed my back, and I took in a deeper breath.
“There you go. Focus on the breathing. In and out,” Dr. Matthews said in a soothing tone.
I took a deep breath in and let it out.
“Meet me at Pine Wood Falls tomorrow. Noon. Okay?” Dr. Matthews asked after I took a few more breaths. She handed Conrad a business card.
“I guess,” Conrad said.
“Will you be all right if a nurse took your blood now?” Dr. Matthews asked me as I began to calm down.
Conrad squeezed my shoulder.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Hey,” Conrad said when we got back in the car.
I stared out the window. He patted my knee and drove out of the parking lot.
“Conrad,” I said, tears welling in my eyes.
“I’m here, okay. We’ll get through this.”
“What the hell? I’m an omega. Always my destiny.”
“Mason, she could be feeding us total bullshit.”
“She knew about how you couldn’t pull out. Oh my God, I fricking offered myself up and pretty much screamed take me now, plant your seed. And you did. It was like I was some kind of animal, and she knew. God, she knew about it all.”
“I’m sorry about all of this.”
“Stop, Conrad. This is happening to both of us. You and your magical penis.”
Conrad started laughing.
Once we got back to our room, I crashed. I was emotionally drained. My life was no longer recognizable.
I blinked my eyes open to the sun shining through the blinds and Conrad squatted down next to my bed.
“Hey, I was just about to wake you and see if you wanted to go find out what Dr. Matthews was talking about.” He pushed my hair back off my forehead.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“Maybe you need another day off,” Conrad said, cupping my face in his hand.
“What’s the point of even going? Just to be told I can birth a kid out my ass. I mean Jesus, doesn’t that sound awful?”
“It’s probably like vaginal birth.”
“People who have vaginas were built to birth.”
“So were you, just in a different way.”
“Can I just sleep to avoid it all?” I rolled away from him and put my arm over my head.
“We should probably get a hold on this all.” He rolled me back over, locking his eyes on me.
“Fine, but Jesus, I have to pee.”