PART ONE

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Hardy, but there's nothing we can do."

I stared at the ring of doctors standing in the waiting room. "But...I don't...what is happening?"

The doctors hemmed and hawed, and finally a nurse shooed them out. All of them, and they were glad to go, which should have told me something right there. What doctor gives up his position to a nurse? Unless it is really something so bad the doctor can't confront it?

"Mrs. Hardy, sit here. I'll go over what has happened."

Dully, somewhat in shock, I sat down. Ten days ago I had brought my husband in. Joe had COVID. Corona Virus 19. I knew he had had a rough time, but I had waited outside, talked to him on the phone, and prayed to God.

Then the doctors called me in, and they were going to tell me something, but that something had fallen to the nurse.

"Your husband didn't have COVID 19."

"What? But why did you keep him here?"

"As you know the virus has been mutating, and Joe presents what we think may be the final phase of the mutation."

I shook my head, not understanding.

"The doctors have labeled it COVID SC, and it is quite a bit more virulent than the normal COVID."

By this time I was ashen and even trembling. My wonderful husband had...had...

"What COVID SC does is attack the Y chromosomes in a man's body."

"Wait a minute. A woman doesn't have Y chromosomes...does this thing only attack men?"

"Yes, Mrs. Hardy."

For a long moment I grappled with the concept, attacking Y chromosomes? Why? And what did it do?

"So is he going to be all right?"

"He's ready to go home right now."

That was too easy, and I stared at her suspiciously. "What aren't you telling me?"

I had visions of Joe being a basket case, of him laying in bed for the rest of his life and myself having to wait on him hand and foot.

"Joe has turned into a woman."

"What?" I felt like somebody else was asking her the question. I felt like I was outside my body.

"That's right. All the Y characteristics have been deleted from his body. The COVID SC made him into a woman."

"Okay. Enough. Tell me the truth. I want to see my husband!"

I was pretty frantic, my hands were shaking. Heck, my whole body was shaking, and the nurse placed her hands on mine and tried to calm me down.

"We can go see him whenever you'd like. In fact, we don't have to go see him, I'll have him brought down. But I need to know you're calm enough to handle it."

I did deep breathing, under her advice, for a minute, then I managed to frame a decent question. "You're not a nurse, are you?"

"No. I'm a doctor who...let's just say my specialty is helping people undergoing transition."

"Transition?"

"Sex change. People are born male and want to be a female, or the other way around. I counsel them and-"

"I know...I know." I wanted her voice to stop.

She waited a while, she was willing to wait for me to come to grips with my new situation. Finally, I nodded. "Can you bring him down now?"

She hit a contact on her cell phone and spoke into it. To me she said, "He'll be right down."

I sat on that uncomfortable chair in the waiting room for five minutes, and the things that went through my mind.

Bruce Jenner. Transitioning. Having the testicles and manhood cut off. What had happened? The doctors said they didn't do anything, but Joe was now a woman? How could that be.

The elevator dinged at the end of the waiting room, the doors slid back, and my husband was pushed out.

Joe had been six feet tall, 200 pounds, lots of muscles, short hair. He owned a construction company, and he looked like it. He even watched football and smoked big cigars.

Now he was five foot six, maybe 120 pounds, and his face was a delicate oval. His hair was longer, much longer, and his lips were plump.

But he was still recognizable. He was Joe, but he was a she.

I fainted.

***

I drove home, and Joe cried all the way.

I had never seen Joe cry before in my life.

"What am I going to do?" he kept asking.

So, by the time we were home, I said, "First off, you're going to suck it up. Being a woman isn't the end of the world. You might even like it."

Tough love, eh? Well, he needed it! Heck, I've been a woman for 30 years, and I have enjoyed the heck out of it. Men opening doors for me, pulling out chairs, whistling when I show a little leg...it's all good.

Of course, I have had to learn to bite my tongue, people who are physically weaker don't deliberately provoke people who are physically stronger. But that's sort of universal, you know?

We pulled into the driveway and got out of the car, and first thing idiot Bob comes over.

I call him 'Idiot' Bob because he's sort of a goof. Always making stupid remarks, acting all manly, and looking down on women. He even treats his wife, Joanna, like she's a lame brain. Now that's an idiot if ever there was one.

"Hey! Joe...you're not Joe."

Joe was on the other side of the car, head down and hair hanging in front of his face.

"That's Joe."

"What?"

He went around the car before I could stop him, bent down and looked up into Joe's face.

"Holy fu-what the hell happened? This isn't Joe!"

Denial, in the face of proof. I told you he was an idiot.

"Joe caught a new strain of COVID."

"And it changed him into a woman?"

Suddenly Bob backed up. "Whoa, man. Don't come close to me! I don't want to catch that shit!"

What we didn't know was that it was already too late. The doctors had said Joe wasn't contagious, but they were working off old COVID 19 data, not new COVID SC data.

"Go home, Bob."

Bob went.

We entered the house and I threw all the medicines that had been given to me for Joe into the trash. The damage was done, no medicine was going to help Joe now.

Joe went into the living room and sat down in front of the TV. He didn't turn it on, he just sat and stared at the floor.

And I knew I had to do something. The gloom was thicker than Joe's farts after chili. It was the kind of gloom that, if left alone, would swelter and finally flare up into suicide.

Heck, just because he was a girl didn't mean I didn't love him. In fact, I liked how cute he was. His big honker had turned into a cute button. His hair was really thick and luscious, though it needed a combing. And his face was...I blinked.

Joe was sitting there sad as Jesses James after he got shot. And what do women do when they are sad?

I turned Pandora to a classics station and turned it up so it filled the house. The neighbors might think I was nuts, celebrating after my husband had been in the hospital for ten days, but half the neighbors were. like Idiot Bob, and the other half were like me, sexy women who needed no excuse to party.

"What are you doing?" asked Bob.

I took his...her...hand and lifted her up. I led her to the kitchen table and sat her down.

"What?"

I poured her a big, old whiskey and Coke. I didn't know, maybe she would like wine spritzers, but she used to love Coke and bourbon, so...

I went to the bedroom and grabbed my make up kit and brought it back to the table.

"What's that?"

"It's good looks in a bottle," I cracked. "Now drink some more."

So he sipped, and protested and said he didn't want to put on make up.

I held up my hand mirror. "You see this?" He stared at himself. "That is an ugly woman. Do you want to stay an ugly woman?"

"Uh...I don't want make up."

"Why?"

"It's...it's all gooey stuff and things."

"Gooey stuff and things? Are you kidding me? That's not what your dick says when I wear make up."

"That's different."

"Why?"

"You're a woman."

"And I'm a beautiful woman," I smiled, flipped my chestnut hair, and puckered a kiss at him. He stared at my red lips. "You, on the other hand, are an ugly woman. Now shut up and drink and let me do my magic."

So he sipped, a lot, and I worked him over. Eyebrows, pluck those babies, leave nice, little arches. Moisturize his face, foundation, base, all that stuff, even a little rouge. Then, my real fun, I worked on his eyes. Oooh, sweet charcoal on the lids to accentuate his grey eyes. Lengthen those lashes. Mmmm. And, finally-by now he was fascinated-I painted his lips.

And showed him the hand mirror.

His eyes went wide. He was no longer an ugly woman. He was beautiful. Pardon me, I keep slipping, SHE was beautiful.

"Oh my God. Is that me?"

"We should have done your hair first, but I'll just comb it out. We can style it later." I combed her lush locks out, and it was gorgeous. I trimmed them and brushed his hair with a wet brush and managed to get it to curl around his face. Mmm. Good looking bitch, if I do say so. In fact, I think I was a little jealous.

DING DONG!

Joe panicked. "Oh, no!"

"Just sit here," I commanded, and I went to the front door.

"Hi Jesse. Bob told me that Joe is...changed. I'm sorry, please forgive me, but I had to see for myself."

I brought my neighbor into the kitchen.

Joe was frozen. He was totally frazzled. His face was bright red under the make up.

"Joe? Oh. My. God! you are..." she turned to me, "She's beautiful!"

"The magic of cosmetics. Want to help?"

"Absolutely. What's next?"

"Nails."

"Long and stylish?"

"The longest. And the reddest. We have to make sure that Joe never forgets how beautiful she is. You can imagine how messed up the poor dear is. She doesn't even want to be a woman. Can you imagine that?"

"Oh, Lord," Joanne breathed. "Why not? Especially if you look like that?"

So we spread Joe's hands out and put on inch long stilettos, and we painted them blood red. Mmmm.

Then we took pictures.

"You know, she's still in that stupid hospital gown."

Joe looked down at her gown. She looked up, and her eyes were just so doe-like and cute and trusting.

"I've got a dress that might be perfect, but her feet...I don't have any shoes."

"I've got some heels that will work. You get the dress."

Joanne rushed back to her house, and maybe that was when Idiot Bob got infected, though I tended to think that it happened what he got close to Joe earlier.

I got a blue dress, very metallic and shimmery, and I helped her put it on, and that was when it finally hit me. I was sitting there, staring at her, and Joanne re-entered the kitchen and stopped.

"What's wrong?"

I couldn't speak plainly, I was so shook by what I had just realized, that my speech was sort of...burbly, if you get what I mean. But I managed to say, "He...she...has no dick."

And it was plain to see. The dress hugged her mid section and presented her crotch, and there was no familiar man bump. There was no peeny lump, no hill where a cock might have been. Instead, it was just smooth.

"You're right," Joanne said, standing next to me and staring at Joe.

Joe was drunk now. I had been refilling her as needed. And she looked down at her crotch, and she looked up at us and in her sweet voice she said. "I have a cunt." And he began to cry. And not just little sniffling sobs, but a full blown make up shattering hysterical cry.

Joann and I rushed to her. "Don't, honey. You'll make your mascara run."

"It's okay, Joe. It's okay."

And: "A cunt is a lot better than a cock, anyway."

Her tears slowed down and she looked up at us. "It is?"

"Absolutely. If you get a boner, as a man, then everybody can see it. It's almost embarrassing the way guys are always walking around trying to hide the bump in their pants."

I added, "When you have a pussy it's easy to hide. you can be horny as all get out, and the only sign is going to be if somebody sees your panties are wet.

Joe giggled. Then she sobered. Then she said, "Instead of hard ons I'll get wet ons?"

"That's the skinny, Minnie," I reassured her.

"Have another drink, Joe," suggested Joanne. To me: "Do you have nylons?"

I did. And a garter belt. I got them and we lifted up Jo's dress and helped her put on garters and showed her how to roll nylons on.

Finally, we were done, and it wasn't a bad job. Her face was pretty, and her form was good, and I suddenly noticed something. "Her boobs are bigger."

"Really?"

"When I picked her up at the hospital she had little mounds. Now they're big."

"Well, she is stacked."

And Joe said, "I've got boobs." But, fortunately, he didn't break out in tears again. Of course, he was getting drunker, and that might have helped.

"Wait here," blurted Joanne suddenly.

While she was gone I had Joe walk across the room, and I gave her pointers on how to walk in heels. "Toes in line, keep those knees pointed inward. Yeah, let that butt sway."

Joanne came back in, and she had Idiot Bob in hand.

Bob stopped and stared.

Joe stood still and stared.

We girls giggled.

Joanne: "What do you think, Bob?"

Bob: "Wow."

And we all felt it then. In an instant, Bob had stopped seeing Joe as a man and started seeing her as a woman.

And, perverse me, I pushed it. The music was going good and I said, "Dance with her, Bob."

Joanne clapped her hands in glee. This was her manly man hubbie, a homophobe from way back, and now he was trapped.

"I don't...I think-"

"Oh, Bob. You big sissie. She's a beautiful woman, and I just gave you permission to dance with her. Now take her in your arms."

Joe, for her part, opened her mouth in shock. Now not just to look like a woman, but to be treated like one, to be danced with, to be taken in the arms of a man...yet, I say it again, she was drunk.

Hesitantly, but with a vigor I found disconcerting, and would find troublesome later on, Bob took Joe in his arms and danced with her.

At first they sort of shuffled, arm's length. But something was happening to Bob, and he pulled Joe closer, then they were body to body, and yet Bob kept his head back and stared at Joe, and his face was a picture of raptness which I didn't understand.

Then Bob started moving his head closer, and his lips started to focus on Joe's red lips, and I finally got the message.

"That's enough." I parted them, slightly in shock. Bob was actually going to kiss Joe?

And Joanne seemed a bit...weird about that.

On one hand she had encouraged it, and she hadn't spoken up, I had. She had seemed fascinated by the scene.

I think that was the point that I realized that things were happening here that I didn't understand.

A Note from Grace!

The Great Gender Swap

PART ONE