"What unit were you with, Lt?”

I replied that I was with 2/5.

"I used to be a gunner on a chopper with the wing.”

"What! You mean that you were a Marine too?

Of course, or I wouldn't be in this program now. I was shot down in 1965 and was one of the first patients of this system. I felt like you and I had no one to help me with my decision, but I'm glad to this day that I made it. These last five years have been some of the happiest that I have ever had. I won't say that it was easy, it was damn rough, but it's the best thing to do. I would probably have killed myself if I had to walk around as an empty shell.

She made sense, and I told her that I would think about it. She promised to come back and explain more about the operation and treatment the next morning. She left me staring out the window and thinking the deepest thoughts that I had ever had to contemplate.

CHAPTER TWO

After Jean left, I sat there with my thoughts rambling back to the events of my life in college and in the service. I thought about the girls that I had dated, and loved, and I knew that I could never be that sort of a person. I was not lovely, graceful, or even in the least feminine. I had been attracted by the clothes that girls wore but I didn't ever want to share that life.

But then my thinking went to the life ahead of me when I left the hospital. I couldn't even begin to visualize myself as a girl, so I switch- ed my thoughts to just getting out, getting my medical discharge and heading back to the world I used to know. A job would be no problem, but what then, dating was out and as society as we know it is usually two by two I would be condemned to being a third wheel. I could see myself, thin, emaciated, holed up in some back room, collecting string after work. I couldn't still visualize the alternative that the two doctors had offered me, but at least it must be better than that, it was an ad- venture anyway, a bit of hope and if it didn't work out I could always kill myself later. Tired from my injuries and the strain of the days con- versation, I fell into a troubled sleep.

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