Horrified, Tammy looked down at the notepad. Clozapine: an anti-psychotic.
Tammy’s hand trembled as she held the paper. It’s not that she was anti-medication. Far from it. She was a doctor, for heaven’s sake! Medication saved lives. It worked wonders for the people who needed it. But her father wasn’t a psychiatrist, and yet he handed out brain meds like candy.
‘I… I-I don’t need th-this.’
Dang it, why do I always do that? Stutter when I talk to my father? It doesn’t happen with anyone else.
Vincent stood in the doorway, folding his arms. ‘Think about it, Tammy,’ he said. ‘If you don’t stop this behavior — playing with dolls and acting like a child — then I’m afraid there’s no way I can have you working at my practice.’
Wait, what?
All Tammy’s life, she’d been told that the family practice would one day be hers. Could her father really take it away from her? She didn’t have any siblings. There was no-one else in the family who practiced medicine. This placehadto be hers. It was, like, herbirthright. More than that, it was her dream.
Wasn’t it?
‘I’m a c-capable woman,’ said Tammy, as bravely as she could muster. ‘Whether or not I like to play with, with, with t-toys isn’t an issue.’
Vincent shook his head at her with a patronizing, falsely sympathetic look. ‘Don’t you see, Tammy? That’sexactlythe issue. The people around here are good, old-fashioned people. Nobody is going to take medical advice from a— well, you know.’
‘No, actually,’ said Tammy. ‘I don’t. Awhat?’
‘A sexual pervert,’ replied Vincent with fists clenched so hard his knuckles were white. ‘A grown woman who plays with toys and wears diapers and thinks she’s a giant baby.’
Tammy’s mouth hung open in shock. She had never felt more misunderstood in all her life. She didn’t wear diapers, as it happened, but so what if she did? It was her body, and what she did in private was fine, as long as it wasn’t hurting anyone else. Right?
‘I’m afraid,’ said Vincent, ‘that I don’t want you living here until you’ve got yourself sorted. Now, take my advice and get yourself these tablets. Find yourself a good head doctor — preferably one in another State, so they don’t make the connection between the two of us. And I’ll see you when you get better. Then we’ll talk about whether or not I feel comfortable having you work at the practice. OK?’
When I get… better?
Tammy was so hurt and angry that she couldn’t even bring herself to speak.
‘You have plenty to think about,’ said Vincent. ‘But please think about it once you’ve vacated the premises. I want you out of here within the hour, Tamsin.’
With that, he turned on his heels and left.
Tammy grabbed her Tiny Tears off the floor, holding it close to her chest. But the Tiny Tears wasn’t crying.Shewas.
She collapsed down on her mattress, on the bed she’d lain on every night until she was eighteen. Within the four walls that had been there, surrounding and protecting her, as she grew up. She looked out at the view she knew so well. The familiar patch of sky and trees. Northern Red Oaks, Pignut Hickories. The tree her tire swing used to hang from before her dad sawed it down. The tree she once climbed so high she got stuck up there for three hours.
She had only just got back here, to this strange place of such mixed emotions that she called home.
How could her own father make her leave again, just like that?
She took her phone out of her jeans pocket, wishing she had a friend to call. It’s not like she hadn’t made acquaintances during all her years of study. But she was a shy girl, and a studious one, and had never had much of a social life. Plus, she’d moved around a lot for her different schools, and then the residency. She had never gotten to know anyone that well before it was time to move on.
Unable to think of a single person to call, she opened up Google instead. At least the internet might have some answers for her.
‘What is a Little?’ she asked Google.
It took a while for the search engine to throw up anything useful because it was a bit of a vague thing to ask. Open to a lot of misinterpretation. But eventually, she saw the question: ‘What’s a Little in a relationship?’ And that’s where she found this answer: ‘A Little is a person of any gender who enjoys acting childlike. They are likely to be a submissive who engages in age play as part of a CGL (Caregiver-Little) relationship. Some onlyactLittle while roleplaying. For others, being Little is a lifestyle. It cannot be switched on or off; it is simply a person’s natural state.’
Tammy swallowed. There was so much to take in here.
Had her father been correct? Was she a Little?
And what was a Caregiver? Did she need one?
Was she a natural Little?