Alexis Season

"Do you want to know the sex of the child?" Dr. Salinzki asked as he placed the ultrasound's transducer over Anne Williams' belly. "Your baby should be developed enough by to be able to tell with the ultrasound."

"I think it would be good to know that, don't you?" Anne asked her husband.

"Easier to decorate the nursery, isn't it?" Jeff Williams said in good humor.

"Okey-doke," Dr. Salinzki said as the image of Anne's uterus appeared on the screen. Salinzki studied it for a moment, and he frowned. "Um, Mrs. Williams? I could be mistaken, but this ultrasound seems to show. something."

"What's the problem, doc?" Jeff said, as his wife gripped his hand harder. Jeff didn't like to beat around the bush.

"Well, your child appears to be."

"Out with it!"

"The baby is a hermaphrodite, Mr. Williams."

Anne and Jeff took it in. They were prepared for things like the baby being born with a mental handicap, but this sort of thing never crossed their minds.

"Are you sure?" Jeff asked, after too long a silence.

"It appears to be that way. But the baby is still developing, so it might not come out that way. If you look here-" Salinzki pointed at the screen, "-you can see the penis, and here the testicular sac is forming, but it appears to be forming around a vaginal opening. Now, I don't mean to worry you if I'm wrong, so we'll make some still images of this and send it to the lab, and next month we'll do another ultrasound, and we may find out I'm just going cross-eyed."

But Dr. Salinzki was not going cross-eyed, and the next month, when Anne and Jeff went back, the situation remained the same. The baby appeared to be forming a normal set of male genitals, but a vaginal opening still appeared on the sonogram. Mr. and Mrs. Williams had to be prepared for the possibility when the birth came around.

"But, this is not unheard of, of course," Salinzki told them on their next check-up. "I have never personally delivered a hermaphroditic baby before, but a colleague of mine has, and when a baby is born like that, only one set of organs is fully formed, and the other is not, so surgery will take care of the unformed genitals, you see?"