Rikki looked ran a hand down her breast and smiled. She was back in human form and wearing a hospital gown. She had been hooked back up to the monitors and her vitals were liking really good. She had just finished feeling her breasts when Kathy came in and sat down on a chair by the bed side. "I'm going to be going home in a bit but I need to ask you a few questions before I go," she said looking a little concerned. "First, how do you feel?"
"I feel great," Rikki said enthusiastically.
"So there's no pain?" Kathy asked with a slight smile.
Rikki shook her head and answered, "None at all."
"Ok," Kathy said making a note. She then seemed to steel herself for her next question. "Do you remember who you are?" She may be stepping on Frances Twist's tail with this but she had to have an idea of the extent of brain damage caused by the unusual transformation. She would of course order MRI, CT, and PET scans though those would take time and she wanted an idea of the damage as soon as possible.
Rikki made a long face as she seemed to struggle to remember. Finally she said, "I remember I was born male but I can't remember my name."
"Do you remember when you were born?" Kathy asked dreading that Rikki won't remember.
Again Rikki seemed to struggle to remember before saying, "I can't remember." She then broke down sobbing and asked, "Why can't I remember my name or when I was born?"
Kathy instinctively hugged her and said, "The transformation was rough on you. You had a high grade fever and some of your cells were destroyed rejecting the variant of the werebeast virus you were exposed to. This included some brain cells which seems to have held your old name and birthdate. We would have needed to change those anyway since you now appear to be a 14 year old girl. There's just no way we could explain what happened to you without revealing ourselves and without you becoming a curiosity at least. Now you don't need to worry about how we'll explain the disappearance of the old you. Now do you remember the last grade you completed?"
Rikki smiled and said, "I do remember that. The last grade I completed was the 8th grade."
"I see," Kathy said somewhat slowly. "Well that means we'll have to get you enrolled in school. We'll be enrolling you under the name Rikki Tucker since Frank and I are going to adopt you. Now I'm going to order some tests done so you'll need to stay here for the rest of tonight and possibly tomorrow night as well. If you need anything through the night just press the call button and one of the nurses will take care of you. Also I'm afraid that you'll have to have a catheter since you're hooked up to these machines. It should only be for tonight though. Now get some rest and I'll see you tomorrow." With that Kathy kissed Rikki's forehead. She hadn't planned on it but it felt like the right thing to do.
Kathy slipped out and went a little ways down the hall. Upon seeing her Frank asked, "Ready to go get some dinner?"
"I'm more than ready," Kathy said with a faint smile. "I just wish Rikki could join us."
"We'll go out again after she's out of the hospital," Frank promised. Frank saw that his wife wasn't cheered up so he asked, "What's wrong?"
"Rikki may have lost more memories than I thought," she said. Seeing the confused look on her husband's face she added, "She doesn't remember what her name was or her birthdate. She does remember completing 8th grade so she'll have to go back to school. I didn't want to ask her anything else because she had become upset at not remembering her name or birthdate."
"Well we'll just have to wait and see what developed," Frank said nodding. "She'll definitely need to see Frances Twist and it probably won't hurt for Diane to see her as well."
"Do I really have to see her?" Diane asked with a little whine in her voice.
"I think after everything it is a good idea for you to see her," Kathy said nodding. "Frank told me how horrified you were when you accidentally scratched Rikki."
"I thought he was going to die," Diane said shuddering.
"SHE," Kathy corrected making sure to emphasize the word. "Rikki is a girl now no matter what she was before and you will treat her as such. That means making sure you refer to her as a girl when you talk about her."
"You know I wonder how the mayor will handle this," Frank mused.
"We'll probably read a headline in a couple of days saying a cryptozoologist disappeared in a national park hunting for Sasquatch," Kathy said shrugging her shoulders. "I'll have to update him on what happened with Rikki but I don't want to call him just yet since he may be having dinner." Frank just nodded as they went out the door. As they drove to the restaurant Kathy went over what she would say to the mayor in her mind. The update on Rikki was easy but she wanted to convince the mayor that every normal needed to be karyotyped even if they didn't plan on becoming a werebeast. Recent events have definitely shown that accidents and rogues happen and if another situation like Rikki's arose with someone who wasn't planning on becoming a werebeast precious time would be wasted trying the standard procedure for saving the person's life and might result in them dying. It wasn't a risk she was willing to take. It might be a stretch of her authority but she could order every normal to be tested for health reasons though she would much rather have the mayor with her on that. Also there was the fact that the virus enhanced sexual characteristics so someone who appeared to be fully male but has Klinefelter syndrome could conceivably become more feminine with the dual sex strains and that could lead to some potential mental issues. This was just a theory though but one she didn't want to see tested. Then there were other genetic issues like XX males and XY females. What would a mono sex version do to them? What would the dual sex version do? Does the mono sex version enter through the entire chromosome or just the SRY gene? It would be best to do as much testing on blood samples as they could should they find anyone who has any of these genetic deviations. She just hoped that she could convince the mayor that it was necessary to test all the normals in Moon Lake. There probably would be some push back with testing all normals but she figured it would be far less than the push back if someone was accidentally scratched by a mono sex werebeast and they died because they didn't know that there could be a problem with the traditional treatment not working. That of course was a worst case scenario but depending on what could happen with some of the other circumstances there may be more push back than previously thought.