Age Recommendation: 18+
Talison is a bright and happy trans woman, despite everything in her life. She never expected better, until her sweaty knight came rolling into the picture.
It all started out simply enough.
Everything always does, when it comes to the way health can completely screw you over. It just starts with a slight hand tremor. Or you feel a little bit tired. Something small and niggling, like a pain that never fades.
In the end, you get a journey through doctor after doctor telling you that you’re making it up, or they can’t see anything wrong - move along. You battle against the system for years, all the while things get worse and worse, until you finally get another doctor.
One who looks at you twice, laughs, and gives you some really long name like fibromyalgia or temporomandibular joint dysfunction or something else that doesn’t seem to mean much as an actual word, but gives you a huge feeling of relief to finally have a damn name.
Of course there’s testing to confirm it all, and that takes time. In the case of Talison, that was still at least four months away. The hospital needed to give her an EEG with video, whatever the heck that was, to confirm she didn’t have epilepsy, and that she did have something with the worst acronym ever.
To the surprise of no one, life went on.
Talison found herself glaring at her phone on her one day off in the week, as her boss called her in. He did it nicely enough, begging for help and promising not just overtime pay, but a bonus as well. They just didn’t have enough people.
So Talison found herself cursing and puffing as she went up Greenhalgh’s Hill, red in the face and sweating like crazy. A couple cars went by as she pedalled furiously, and swore at her gearbox some more. The people in the cars laughed at her.
Using a pedal bike more than a car made sense. Partly because her little mystery illness came along with seizures, and no one wants you behind the wheel if you could crash without warning. License revoked. Riding also made sense because she only lived two and a half kilometres (or one and a half miles as her Dad would put it) from her work.
She used to jog the distance, but with today being urgent, she took the bike. She crested the hill covered in sweat, looking forward to the breeze when she could hit some real speed on the footpath.
All she had to do first, was get her way around the roundabout. That was painful, because there were no bike tracks. The council always spent the summer advertising how everyone should walk or use a bike, but didn’t actually build the infrastructure.
There was a small footpath, after the roundabout, out towards the shopping centre. No one ever really walked on it, and there was a service road next to it that she could divert onto instead of running anyone down.
Talison leaned inwards as she kicked her bike out into the roundabout, puffing and cursing even more as someone in a car didn’t see her, headed out behind her, and then honked at her for existing and causing them to brake.
She needed to get up.
She didn’t want to, she was exhausted and her head was spinning. Talison had the worst headache ever, though it probably wasn’t technically a migraine, but she really didn’t want to get up.
She needed to get to work. Her boss had called her promising… That didn’t make sense. He had called her, and she could remember going out the door. She couldn’t… She wasn’t at home.
“F-f-f-f-fuck…” Talison gasped, gritting her teeth and pushing her hands into the ground with all her strength. Just barely dragging her head up and off the hard surface. Blinking and trying to focus, unable to keep her eyes open.
She clenched her fists, dragging against the rough gravel, and pushed herself onto her knees. Biting her lip and staring around blearily, before cursing as a car shot right by her, almost blowing her off her shaking knees.
Talison put aside her confusion and pain, and forced herself to stagger upright to her feet. She felt a slickness, a wetness, on her face. It wasn’t raining. Maybe she was balling her eyes out.
She saw her bike nearby, lying on the grass beside the road, and staggered over to it, before falling to her knees beside it. Talison pulled out her phone to let her boss know she’d be late, before staring at the touchscreen that had been made useless by being turned into a million fine spiderwebs of broken glass.
She groaned, clenching her eyes shut and trying to shake off the feeling.
“Bloody hell. Stop moving, gal.”
Talison blearily looked up to see a monster of a man falling to his knees in front of her. Pudgy hands grabbing her face without asking, as he stared at her with eyes full of concern that she immediately knew was genuine.
She tried to weakly brush his hands away, “I’m… Okay.”
“The fuck you are.” The man laughed, shaking his head, “Girl, you just hit the fucking road. You’re bleeding. There is no way your head is right. Let me check you over, and get you to the hospital.”
“M-my bike -”
“We can fit it in my truck. Don’t worry.” He brushed off her concern, before making her hiss and clench her teeth as he poured what felt like lightning down the side of her face.
He relaxed a little, “Looks like roadrash. Just need to make sure you’re not concussed or anything. Can you walk?”
“Uh… It think so…” Talison forced herself upright again, blinking in confusion again as he hoisted her bike in one hand, and took her hand in his other. Gently guiding her over to where a truck was on the side of the road, lights blinking out a gentle caution.
“You pulled over for me?”
The man nodded, “Yeah, lemme just get you up in the cab…”
Talison had to suppress a surprised squeal as his hand went around her waist and she was just about launched upwards to land on the seat in the truck, before he went around the back.
As he did, a little more thinking began to creep back into her shellshocked head. No one else had actually stopped. He’d pulled over and flicked the emergency lights, but absolutely no one else had cared that she’d hit the road.
She didn’t think much of her hometown, but she had thought more of them than that. If she saw someone hit by a car she’d help.
He climbed in the other side, hoisting himself by the handhold and into the seat of the rumbling truck, slamming the door. The vehicle growled into life, and crunched out onto the road slowly.
“Th-thanks.” Talison fought back a heavy yawn.
He shrugged, “That was a rough one. My sister has epilepsy. But I’ve never seen a seizure as bad as that.”
“Sh-shit.” Talison cursed, “I didn’t get hit by a car, did I?”
“Car? No… No you went down on your own.” He said with concern, “Have you had a seizure before?”
“Yeah, yeah.” She gave a bitter laugh, “More than I can count. They’re… Sort of… I don’t get them. But maybe stress induced? Oh, fuck. Stress on the body, not just the head. I was working out. Damn it.”
“New to it, eh? Health shit can be a real bugger.” He said, guiding the vehicle around a corner. “So what’s your name, lass?”
“Talison.” She smiled sadly, “Well, that’s the name I gave me. You won’t hear my parents calling me that. Oh no. When they check on me in hospital, it’ll be Tomas all the fucking way.”
“Tomas…? Oh. Oh, I didn’t even notice.”
Talison blushed at that, biting her lip nervously. She absolutely adored it when people didn’t. As much as stuck up pricks always said they’d notice, there were a lot of them who never did.
That being said, he might have been a little more distracted by the road rash and crash, to notice if she was born with balls or not.
“My dad is my emergency contact.” Talison tried to explain, “Been living on my own for a while.”
“Don’t blame anyone who still boards.” The man shook his head, “The Australian housing market is complete bullshit. We’re going back the way of three generations living in the same place, because no one can afford to own a damned thing.”
She smiled sadly, “And I just diverted you from your delivery run, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but I don’t think it’ll matter much.” He shot her a sideways smile.
Talison raised an eyebrow, “Your bosses aren’t going to care?”
“Oh, plenty. But it hardly matters when the gal who I reckon will be unloading, is also in the cab.”
She blinked, and then looked down at her uniform, “Oh. Oh! You were delivering to us! I’m not an unloader, actually. I’m a spreadsheet entrepreneur.”
“Careful lass, that actually sounds like something someone might try.”
Talison giggled, “True. Yeah, I’m an accountant. I was going to be the one tabulating what you deliver, how much we’re short of, what we need more of. Where the losses will be. All the usual business shit.”
“An accountant who rides a bike, wearing a retail uniform. You’re a fascinating mix of tales there, lass.”
She really did like it that he was still calling her lass. It did not matter a single iota to him. He saw her… The way she saw herself. She completely flushed red, “Well, you know my name. So what should I call my saviour?”
“You could call him your knight in sweaty armour.” The man joked lightly, before pulling the truck up in front of the emergency department. “See you around, lass.”
Talison hesitated, really wanting his name, but also knowing he was overdue at her work and no one would care that he was helping anyone out. She leaned over and gave his cheek a quick kiss before dropping down out of the cab.
As she headed in slowly, she realised that talking over with her knight, her head had really cleared up. The fog wasn’t gone exactly, but it was just hovering around the edges.
There was no line in the emergency room, but it took long enough that Talison was almost falling off her feet with tiredness by the time the glass window slid open. “How can we help?”
“I uh… Fell on the road.” Talison pointed to the dried blood on the side of her head.
“Were you in a car?”
She sighed heavily, and began to go through the long process that the overtired staff could barely get through. It wasn’t their fault that they weren’t up to much. All the same, it still sucked for her.
She was directed to take a seat, and to wait, with a potential brain injury. Talison didn’t exactly like that, especially when the next person to arrive was taken straight through. They probably had a good reason, but she still felt put out by it.
The TV was playing a rather violent murder mystery of some kind. One that made her rather queasy when it showed a shadow and light show of a rape scene in prison, when the first suspect was abused. That shouldn’t be playing in a hospital. Anyone here could be trying to get help for exactly that.
In her previous life, Talison wouldn’t have been brave enough to do anything. She’d feel sick, look away, and pretend nothing was happening. But the point of the new life was to actually live.
She staggered upright, suddenly being hit by a massive headache, and shuffled over and pressed the power switch under the TV.
“Stop messing around, and get up. Or we’re throwing you out.”
“N-not… What?”
A foot nudged her gut, and Talison blinked painfully, before very slowly sitting up on her knees with a thumping headache. She cringed, “Fuck. I had another one, didn’t I?”
“You don’t have seizures. No one here believes you. Please, just go.” The doctor standing over her tapped his foot.
Talison rolled her eyes, “Talk to Kane in Neurology, then. He’s the one who diagnosed me with penis.”
“Yes, yes. Sad that you have a penis.”
She shook her head, “No, no. P. N. E. S. Penis. The stupid illness where my brain fucks around and found out.”
© Copyright 2024, James Milne