Free Golden Boy by Abigail Tarttelin

list of hormones advised and then used for treatment, including documentation of injections and courses of pills. Then there are the photos. Max as a baby, Max as a toddler, Max as a four-year-old with a piece of paper held in front of his face for anonymity, while green-gloved hands prise apart his legs. The photographs cease. There is a full page of notation on parental reaction to the diagnosis, starting from birth and ending two years ago, just before Max’s fourteenth birthday. Most records seem to end at that time.
    I make a note to scan Max’s file into the computer. It’s much too cumbersome in paper form, and we are trying, slowly, to make the move over to digital.
    In my peripheral vision I notice Max watching me curiously and I look up from the files.
    ‘Max, are you sure you need this pill?’
    He nods, biting his fingernail. He notices me looking at it and lowers his hand. ‘Sorry.’
    I smile. ‘I don’t mind if you bite your nails.’
    He shrugs.
    ‘Did your specialists say you were fertile?’
    ‘They said there was a slim chance.’
    ‘You get periods?’
    He blushes. ‘Not very often.’
    ‘This says you have a uterus?’
    He shrugs. ‘Yeah.’
    ‘And you haven’t had it removed at any time?’
    Max shakes his head.
    ‘Are you on any type of contraception?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Just condoms?’
    ‘No,’ Max replies miserably. He opens his mouth, as if to say something, then shuts it firmly.
    ‘Do your specialists know you’re sexually active?’
    ‘Um . . .’ He does not continue, instead morosely ripping the top of his thumbnail off.
    ‘Didn’t they ask you about it?’
    ‘I haven’t seen them in ages and I . . . wasn’t then. They usually talk to Mum, not to me, anyway.’
    I point to the file. ‘These notes seem to run out almost two years ago. Is that perhaps when you last saw them?’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘Right.’ I nod and scan the last few pages.
    Suddenly Max pipes up, louder than before, ‘I’m not fertile in the . . . guy way.’
    I frown, not understanding. ‘So—’
    ‘No!’ Max is suddenly upset.
    ‘What do you mean, “No”?’ I ask, confused.
    ‘It’s not . . . I didn’t . . . I can’t self do it!’
    ‘Self-fertilise? No, of course you can’t, Max. I wasn’t suggesting that.’
    ‘Um, OK.’ He swallows, calming down. ‘Sorry. You . . . you can’t be both, can you?’
    ‘Fertile in two ways? I’ve haven’t heard of it. Medicine isn’t often a finite science, but I don’t think it’s possible. In humans,’ I add.
    I make a mental note to drag out my old textbooks at home and look up intersex diagnoses online. There are many, with many different causes. While most are classified as ‘disorders’, some are, to a certain extent, reversible, some are defects, caused by the body’s lack of hormones, or faulty hormone receptor, and some are to do with the sex chromosomes. Studying for a medical degree in England, our curriculum never went into much depth about intersex disorders. In fact, I recall when training that, on the odd instance they came up, we referred to them as hermaphroditism. The words have changed, and I wonder why.
    I frown at the file. It is true that I have dealt with some patients with ambiguous genitalia, but not to this extent. I flick through it again, trying to find the notes on fertility, but nothing jumps out at me.
    Max pulls his jumper over his fingers and wipes his face. His cheeks are red.
    ‘Max? Are you OK?’ I say to him. ‘I’m sorry to ask all these questions, I’m just trying to ascertain—’
    ‘I just need a pill! Can’t I get one?’
    ‘Of course you can. Of course.’
    ‘Can I have the thing that makes you not get an STD too?’
    ‘Excuse me?’
    ‘Isn’t there something that stops that?’
    ‘You mean HIV prevention medication?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Do you think you might have been exposed to HIV?’
    Max looks confused. ‘I don’t know. Probably not HIV.’
    ‘There’s nothing else that we have