Chapter Thirty-Three

Jacob held his hand outside the waiting room. Both of them had skipped breakfast in the morning; Ethan needed to forgo it for the procedure, and Jacob followed for solidarity. The surgery would be over in three, maybe four hours at most. It was a short operation, and Ethan would barely spend an afternoon knocked out and under bright lights. Jacob said he’d hang around the whole time and read a book, maybe even catch up on the old lessons his dad used to give him from the New Testament. Ethan didn’t bother to ask why the Bible had suddenly become a book he needed to learn, especially on an empty stomach in a waiting room at a plastic surgery clinic. Maybe it was to fight off another ghost as a just-in-case measure since there was nothing like quoting scripture to bring someone to their knees. Or maybe Jacob was nervous, and the only way he could process Ethan going under was to go back in time to his own first memory, being around his father and hearing the story of his own name.

“You know,” Ethan said. “Jacob means supplanter in Hebrew. I looked it up this morning.”

Jacob tilted his head to the side. “I knew that. In the Bible, Jacob is born holding Esau’s heel, trying to be first in line. Why do you mention it?”

“Because I also looked up my own name. It’s Hebrew too.”

“What does it mean?”

“Firm, strong—but also long-lived,” Ethan said. “It seems fitting, doesn’t it?”

“It does.” Jacob kissed Ethan’s knuckles, moving closer as he did. “You okay? Nervous?”

“Always nervous. I won’t be able to do much of anything afterward.” Ethan’s mind rushed with a dozen stray thoughts of the items he still had to clean or clear out from his apartment, especially as he and Jacob had decided to move in together. Jacob thought he meant the mark, and the inability to be a vessel anymore. He touched the back of Ethan’s neck and held him close for a kiss.

“You can do anything. The marks don’t matter. You have enough to keep you going.”

They’d visited Tessa one last time, mostly to update her on what had transpired in hopes of preventing future cases of hostile ghosts. Ethan hadn’t taken anything over the border either way; he’d only donated his drawings of Vinny and his family to the Crown’s archive. He tried to transcribe what little Hindi he remembered but came up with nothing usable. During the trip, he’d purchased a Barnes and Noble copy of The Bhagavad Gita and highlighted all the passages he remembered. The book was the last object he gave Tessa. Everything else was gone. There was only his body. His quiet, quiet body. A shell of what it used to be for other people.

But soon enough, it would be his home.

“Ethan Cohle,” the nurse called. She went over to the two of them, her blue eyes and scrubs shining bright. “I’m ready to take you back.”

Jacob kissed him one last time and promised he’d stay right here. Ethan believed him. As he was wheeled back onto a gurney, he could only see a glimpse of Jacob’s eyes above his book and his black, black curls.

The anaesthesiologist stood over him. She put the mask over his face. “Count down from ten, sweetheart. Then you won’t remember a thing.”

Ethan counted down from ten. He blacked out before he hit five. But everything else had been a lie. He remembered everything.

The entire trip at the beach in North Carolina came to him in full. The long car ride home with his skin burned from the sun, flaking off with scabs from the sand against him. Broken ribs, the bruise that faded away and only left a triangle mark, which duplicated to his neck and foot. He recalled saying goodbye to the vacation house; then his mind flashed to years later when he’d come out as trans to his father and he’d looked away. His father stared into the night sky, a glass of whisky in his hand, and with the same forlorn expression he’d had on his face as they drove away from the vacation home in OBX. His father watched as paradise receded into highway lines and then his own daughter, Ashley, receded as she became Ethan, and would stay Ethan, for the rest of his life. His dad wasn’t chain-smoking in the memory, like Ethan had always thought. He wasn’t even on the porch, but on the couch in the living room, glancing at the night sky through the window. That was all he did too. He stared into the distance, his pipe in his hand like a security blanket for at least five minutes before speaking.

Then he apologized, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not something to be sorry about,” Ethan said. “It’s a thing I have to deal with. So I’m going to deal with it.”

“I’m still sorry. I wish I understood.”

“It’s okay. I don’t even understand sometimes.”

“But you still have to do it?”

Ethan opened his mouth to explain the procedures that would follow his transition, but his dad waved his hand in the air.

“None of that makes sense to me. I understand it’s important, but please don’t tell me.”

“Okay. What can I tell you about?”

“I don’t know.” His father cleared away his notes from the chair next to him. He’d been in the middle of reading over a business contract in front of the TV when Ethan had finally snapped and knew they needed to talk. Now the notes were underneath the chair legs, and Ethan had a place to sit down. His father turned on the TV as a sign of contrition, forgiveness. So they watched together until the beeping from his father’s watch made him sigh. He rose in front of the TV, his body splitting the screen in half. He seemed so much like a giant. He always was to Ethan; he’d always wanted to be a giant standing next to him.

“Sorry, champ,” he addressed Ethan like he was twelve and they were leaving the vacation house, never to return. “It’s time to go. Always time to go.”

His father’s tired face, shuffling off to bed as if nothing and everything had changed with his daughter becoming his son, soon merged into his mother’s face full of disapproval. Then to waiting rooms with bad paint jobs and surly doctors, nurses who insisted on calling him ma’am. The Toronto skyline at dusk, drawing with Madeline in the middle of a university campus, being put on a waiting list at CAMH. Opening an envelope with his then brand-new legalized name Ethan Daniel Cohle on the front, and having that feeling of freedom tarnished by being rejected. Finding Francesca on the curb, crying over her result, and not even bothering to pretend to be Sandra anymore, in between sobs. Her grabbing his hand and saying that they should go and get a drink, then move to Fort Erie together because there was a doctor prescribing hormones on the down-low, and a therapist named Nadine Black who would let them get away with saying anything. The move, the nightshift, all the monotony of the last decade suddenly changed as fairies were let out into the spring air. The start of the missions, the cryptic bumper stickers and the smell of hickory root, the thousand petal flower logo of the Crown. Dianne’s humming. Barry’s accented jokes. And Vinny’s fucking chatter.

All of it was his. All of it would always be his. An F to an M on the license blotted out the history between those two points. The surgery sealed it all away. He could put on a shirt over the wounds, take care of them as they healed, and make sure to empty fluid from the drains. But his memories would always be here, always be his.

As the hours of the operation passed away, Ethan’s consciousness still roamed. It wasn’t the obscene theatre of before, but a nostalgic living room where he used to live. He longed for the memories and pictures of himself as a young girl, the ones he’d tried to suppress. The girl in kitten shoes. The girl on Santa’s lap. The sister named Ashley, who was two years older than Leslie, who liked Barbies and even wanted to be a mom one day. The person who liked stuff that never made sense, like make-up and high heels, boys and girls, and being fucked. The person who loved the feeling of a beard on his chin and who desperately wanted a flat chest and to be addressed as sir.

Ethan remembered everything. Even when everyone told him he’d remember nothing and long to forget every aspect of his former self. He remembered it all.

And he wanted it all.

And he loved it all.

When Ethan awoke, hours later, the pain ripped through his body. Two fresh wounds ran across his chest. He touched them to make sure they were real. His bandages bled through. They were real. So were his memories, and he held onto both even though it made everything feel that much more serious, that much worse.

“Hey.” Jacob squeezed his hand. “How do you feel?”

“Good.” Ethan was parched. After drinking water and failing to keep it down, Jacob undid Ethan’s too-big hospital shirt. The mark of the vessel was covered by a bandage, but Ethan already knew it was gone.

Jacob changed his dressing and his shirt. He spoke in short sentences as he worked, letting Ethan know the procedure went well. Jacob had his pain medication refilled at the same twenty-four-hour Superstore where they’d once gotten pregnancy tests. Ethan had been home for six hours so far, sleeping for most of them. It still felt like twenty-nine, almost thirty, years of sleep.

“I think Frannie wanted to come by,” Jacob said. “I got a message from her. She said she remembered your surgery date from the card.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I was taking care of you. But we could have dinner someday.”

Ethan caught a flash of Jacob carrying him from the car to the apartment and tucking him in. He remembered the small gestures of care, of kindness, and it overwhelmed him. His face must have belied his sudden emotion because Jacob was at his side again.

“Did I do okay? I didn’t want to overstep with her, but I also think she should know. Not everything, but something. If you’re willing to tell. Did I…did I do okay?”

“Yeah,” Ethan said. “You’re doing just fine.”

Hours later, Jacob returned to the bedroom with soup. A day after, Ethan was strong enough to walk to the couch without too much pain. They watched more bad sci-fi movies, and Ethan tried to learn Spanish and Ladino from Jacob. He wasn’t good at either, so he let Jacob read him stories from the Bible, ones that didn’t make sense until Jacob explained the terminology and symbolism. Sometimes, Jacob left him alone all night when he was out on a run. If Ethan woke and the apartment was empty, he put on “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “The Passenger” until he fell asleep again.

One night, Francesca came over and they shared an awkward cup of tea. Ethan still didn’t tell her the truth, but something close to it about a drug run going bad and needing extra time to heal. Francesca seemed sceptical, but she eventually nodded.

“You promise you’re done though?” Francesca asked, staring into her mug of tea. “Like for real?”

“Yes. No more drug runs like the one that got me in trouble.”

She rolled her eyes but didn’t push him on the last bit. He wasn’t going to be carting ghosts across the border anymore, so that part was true. “As long as you won’t make me ID your body. I’ll do it, but I’ll be very upset with you.”

“Same here,” Ethan said.

Soon enough, they were able to pick up where they left off, shit-talking Chelsea and their customers, her belief sanctified. When Francesca left, Ethan figured he was strong enough to grab the last few items from his place. Aurora met him and Jacob in the hallway with tea already made, as if she’d known they were coming, or as if she was the one who called him over.

At Aurora’s, Jacob told her all he’d seen in his own trips back and forth across the border, adding to Ethan’s knowledge of him in the long-term. Aurora explained how Tessa was a hack, which made Jacob laugh even harder. Ethan sat in silence, watching the two of them talk, high as a kite on his pain meds, and forever thinking his happiness was a side effect. It had to be a dream. It had to be some strange afterlife he’d wandered into. Everything was perfect.

That night, when Jacob had lay next to Ethan like a mirror on the bed, Ethan asked if it was all real.

“Oh, yeah,” Jacob said. “Every last bit. Why?”

“I’m worried I died again. On the operating table.” Ethan wanted to touch his mark, but the bandages were there.

Jacob grasped the mark on Ethan’s neck instead. He tilted Ethan’s head so he could see it again. “It’s still there, and there’s only one. You didn’t almost die again. Another would have appeared—that’s what Tessa’s said in the past. But then again, Tessa’s a hack.”

Ethan laughed so hard and so suddenly, he bled through some of his bandages. Jacob changed them without a word, without complaint, and they slept face to face like mirrors again. Everything unravelled, but it was also being built back up.

When the bandages came off a week later, Ethan went into the doctor’s room alone. He watched as his skin emerged flat as a board. He touched between his chest, where the incision from the doctor split the triangle mark in half. No longer useful. No longer present.

That’s okay, Ethan told himself. He ran his fingers along the angry red lines that would soon be scars before he called Jacob inside. He made the right amount of impressed noises, as if this was something he’d also been invested in.

“You look good.” Jacob slid his hands around his waist. “I can’t wait to get you home.”

When they had sex for the first time after the procedure, three days later, Ethan had been amazed at how close he could get to Jacob. Without his breasts in the way, there was so much room—and so little protecting his heart. It beat in a staccato rhythm against his ribcage, his bones now against the skin. Even the scar tissue seemed thinned when his blood coursed so close by.

He pressed his chest to Jacob’s for a long time after they were done. Eventually, Jacob placed his head between Ethan’s scars. The pattern became a habit. Everything healed. Everything became boring and old. Standard. Quotidian.

And Ethan knew what he had to do.