Read Online Golden Boy by Abigail Tarttelin - Free Book Online Page A

conservative Victorian era, thirteen-year-olds have been engaged in sexual activity, teenagers have procreated, and the LGBT issues we think of as contemporary existed in all their variations and multiplicity.
    What has changed, perhaps, is that our ability to connect with these people in our society has grown via the internet. Some policy has advanced because of this, and is clearly outlined in best-practice documents and in medical school curricula, but some areas are still being debated. In particular, medical approaches to trans, intersex and asexual people can vary greatly between jurisdictions.
    I know that our practice is ahead of most in our approach to these teenagers, but there are some areas where I do not know enough, and we need to improve. Like most clinics, like the curricula, like the policy-makers, we are struggling to keep up with scientific advancements, and also with our patients.
    Between my list of patients and the adolescents who come to the drop-in sexual health sessions I run after hours at the clinic on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I look after about 700 adolescents, five of whom I know to experience some degree of gender dysphoria. About thirty have discussed a non-heterosexual preference with me. A number have come in to the after-hours clinic upset because they don’t ‘get’ sex. One hundred and thirteen are on the pill. Three have had abortions in the past year. I treat the occasional sexually transmitted disease. About eighty per cent of all my patients come to the clinic for free condoms.
    As I run the late night clinics, I often work from 2 p.m. until 10 p.m. Today I pull my car into the drive in the early afternoon and the leaves crunch as I walk towards the doors.
    Ahead of me reception is busy as always. A blond boy, a Hemingway teen, dressed in the high school’s uniform of suit trousers, white shirt, a black V-neck jumper, black tie and blazer, leans in close to the service window, his hand on the frame. The warmth of the low autumn sun is caught in his fair hair and on the skin of the other patients next to him, creating a blinding glow that makes it difficult to see. I lift my hand up to shade my eyes. As I move nearer a few of them turn hopefully towards me. To my left, the cluster of heads in the waiting room lifts, and I feel, as I usually do, bad that I can’t see all of them, that I will only be taking one person through to my office to release them from the long wait and bland magazines. Then the blond boy steps forward, out of the light.
    He moves towards me purposefully and his lips part.
    ‘Can I help you?’ I ask.
    He smiles and glances at my nametag. ‘Dr Verma? Can I talk to you?’
    ‘Have you made an appointment? What’s your name?’
    He hesitates, then whispers softly as I pass by, my step brusque, ‘Max Walker.’
    I stop and turn around to look at him. As an older couple pass, Max ducks his head down and hair falls over his face.
    The Walker family is a mainstay of the Hemingway Post , and all the local press. Max’s father and mother both frequently appear on the evening news. His mother advises people who call in on legal matters and his father often gives statements about current cases. They are both lawyers of some kind, and Max’s dad, particularly, is something big in local law enforcement. But I cannot recall having met Max before.
    ‘Are you a patient of mine?’ I ask.
    ‘The receptionist says so.’
    I look towards the waiting room. People watch Max over their magazines.
    ‘It’s urgent? Will it be quick?’
    Max nods emphatically.
    ‘Alright then,’ I say. ‘Let’s be quick.’
    ‘Thanks.’ He smiles, visibly relieved.
    I slip into the office and murmur to the receptionist, ‘Hold my list, OK? And I need Max Walker’s file.’
    I escort Max briskly to my room and close the door, just as the office phone starts ringing. ‘Let me just get that,’ I say to Max, slinging my bag on the table. It’s the receptionist.
    ‘No, I said Max