But next morning the operation was still held up. Ousterhout still needed the examining psychiatrist in Chicago to yield. That would make two psychiatrists, enough to calm the hospital's lawyers, frightened by his sister's letters on Harvard stationery. Again it was up to this man who seemed so ignorant and frightened about gender crossing. All morning Ousterhout worked on him. It was an expensive employment for a surgeon, negotiating on the phone for a plain statement. Eventually the psychiatrist did yield, as he had yielded to the lawyer's expensive pressure in Chicago, and the fax came to California. This time Ousterhout did not tell Dee what he had said.
The operation started six hours late--another, separate surgery would have to be scheduled because of the lost time that day, making it three days of operations--face, breasts, and tummy tuck--instead of two, with three distinct setups, the first morning wasted. The additional bill mounted toward $25,000: legal costs, extra travel, extra days of surgery.
Let it go, said Dee to herself. The surgery was going to happen.
When she woke up: Am I crazy? No, just covered in bandages. Her friends Richard and Susan visited, Richard reporting that "she looks like road kill." Ken and Alan, editors on a book project that Dee was supposed to be working on, visited, and Alan's wife, Gail, brought a meal with dishes and all. The following day Esther came and took her home to El Cerrito across the bay, and Dee waited in the empty house for the craziness to come.
The next operation was all right. And the next, the third. The order of operations was unclear to Dee afterward, since some were combined: nose job, bones under the eyebrows ground down, hairline moved forward, jaw pointed, lip scar fixed, eyebrows lifted, breasts augmented, tummy tucked. Her recovery was quick, though she looked puffed and bruised for a while each time. You can't have your face taken off and put back on three times without looking odd for a while. More than the wounds, she was worried about the repeated general anesthetic, because some people have reactions to it months afterward. But it didn't happen. None of the surgery then or later hurt; the pain in recovery was masked by drugs. The recovery was inconvenient and embarrassing, because you needed to nurse yourself and you looked a mess. But not painful.
Between surgeries she stayed home at Esther and her friend Marty's and went to church a lot. The First Baptist Church of Berkeley--American, not Southern, Baptist--said on its coffee mugs, "FBCB--Not your typical Baptists!" Theologically, Baptist churches of any sort are libertarian, though your typical Baptist doesn't act as though he believes it. Every Sunday for the six weeks she stayed with Esther, she would go to the music-filled service and listen to Esther's elegant sermons and for the first time experience a church-centered life. The congregation was "welcoming and affirming," which meant it had a varied membership. A gender crosser with a face horribly bruised seemed not to give them pause. At the coffee hour after the service Dee would move among the ladies of the church watching her manners and observing theirs, welcomed and affirmed.
Vocal Discord
The damned voice. Dee called the office of the speech surgeon in San Francisco to check on the voice operation she had scheduled there for early December.
"Oh," said the secretary, "That's been canceled."
"Canceled? What do you mean?"
"The doctor decided not to do it."
"Why didn't you tell me? Did he say why?"
"I'm not at liberty to say"
"Oh. So my sister got to him." The coward, thought Dee. "Why didn't you call?"
"I'm not at liberty to say."
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