Editor’s note: This is the third in an occasional series.

Marsha Morgan picks out three small furry stuffed animals, five pink tulips, a bottle of pink Chandon, chocolate wrapped in pink foil and a balloon announcing, “It’s a girl!”

She carefully arranges the collection on a small round table in her best friend’s hospital room. But unlike other rooms at the hospital with similar displays, this is not for a baby girl.

This celebration is for Tessa Kelley, an adult who in eight hours will return from surgery without the male equipment she’s carried since she was born. With Morgan’s own sex reassignment surgery Monday at Kaiser Permanente West Los Hospital, the Navy veteran quietly shares she hopes she receives the same kind of support.

It will be the hospital’s first foray into such a life-changing operation. But Morgan, a former sonar technician on a fast attack submarine in the Persian Gulf, exudes the kind of confidence one only gains after decades of deep inner struggle and knowing you are about to transform into the person you always knew you were.

Six-foot-3, bald with a large colorful red rose tattooed on her skull and — by her own admission — built like a linebacker, Morgan, now 54 years old, tried to become the man she never was most of her life.

She tried out for the swim team in high school, helped her dad in his asphalt business, worked as a Disneyland Jungle Cruise skipper, married a woman, helped raise a step-daughter.

But a few years ago, Morgan finally came out with the truth: she was transgender and had made the decision to become a woman in every way possible, including making love.

“It’s very much like jumping off a high dive,” says the San Clemente resident. “Once you jump, you better be ready to get wet because if you don’t swim, you’re going to drown.

“There are no re-dos, no go-overs, no go-backs,” says the school bus driver, named employee of the year in 2005 by the Capistrano Unified School District.

With an estimated 1.6 million transgender people in the United States, Morgan and her BFF aren’t alone in facing a decision most humans never face and many don’t understand.

‘Living in the wrong body’

After driving back to Orange County following the long weekend with Kelley in Arizona, Morgan confesses she “cried like a baby when I first saw her results.”

The experience of staying with Kelley before, during and after her surgery only steeled Morgan’s two-year resolve to have surgery. “I’ve studied everything I can study; I’ve read everything I can read; I’ve looked at photos.

“I’m going to look down,” she says with pride and anticipation, “and see entirely female equipment.”

Morgan makes it clear she appreciates whatever support she gets. Still, having a transgender friend at the hospital on Monday is critical. “Transgender people understand what you’re feeling, what you’ve gone through,” she offers. “Even spouses aren’t able to understand what it’s like being transgender.

“You realize you’re living in the wrong body.”

At a recent support group called TG Rainbow at Church of the Foothills in Santa Ana, a dozen people discuss everything from hormone treatments to President Donald Trump’s decision to stop allowing public school students to use bathrooms that match their gender identity.

One woman is here to learn more about her transgender child, another person is here to encourage tolerance. But most sitting in a square of chairs and couches are transgender people who are here to talk, to learn and to better understand both their own journey and the journey of others in the room.

Michelle Evans, president of Mach 25 Media in Lake Forest, dismisses chatter that transgender students would ever abuse bathroom rights. “When we go to the bathroom,” she says, pushing back long gray her, “it’s because we need to go to the bathroom.”

Evans shares she was scared when she first told friends and family she was a woman and was having sex reassignment surgery. But her parents and friends were supportive.

“Don’t sell your friends short,” Evans advises. “My Dad said, ‘My God, what a hell you must have lived.’”

But for many people considering physical changes, such decisions remain closely guarded secrets until they become impossible to hide.

Rebecca Chang is in her 20s and started hormone therapy eight months ago. Her mother knows about the treatment. But it’s possible her father, now in his 70s, will never know.

Chang’s parents live in Taiwan and she agrees with mom that dad will never be able to deal with calling his former son “Rebecca.” She explains her culture expects sons to get married, sire children, take over family businesses. Coming out transgender in her homeland would, she says, build walls of guilt and shame.

“I want to do everything I can to help,” Chang explains, “and if that means ignorance is bliss that’s OK.”

Miles of smiles

Morgan has had several years of hormone treatments, worked at changing her baritone to a more feminine octave, endured painful electrolysis — even on her genitals.

She also is aware that while surgeries are far more safe than they were decades ago, sex reassignment operations carry risk.

At the support group, the mother with a transgender son acknowledges things went wrong and her child became very ill.

Kelley’s surgeon in Arizona, Dr. Ellie Ley, was Dr. Eleazar Ley until she realized that what was missing in her life was living the correct gender. Still, Ley is careful not to bring up her own medical history when treating patients.

Once surgery is confirmed, however, Ley reassures patients by mentioning her own background. Instead of sex reassignment surgery, Kelly’s physician calls the operation “gender confirmation.”

Kelley shares she agrees with the term and tells me, “I’ve been all smiles since the surgery.”

For Morgan, the procedure will include reforming male genitals to look and function like female genitalia. For some people, those images send shudders.

“One doctor,” Evans confides, “called me an abomination.”

But times are changing and science and understanding are advancing. One young man at the support group says his generation doesn’t care about someone being transgender or having surgery.

Debbie Bennett, a woman who calls herself a transgender ally since the 1970s, shares that when a friend had gender confirmation surgery a neighbor who was an Orange County Sheriff’s deputy “was the first person who came to her defense.”

The deputy went so far as to visit the transgender patient at the hospital.

Evans speaks for the group when she points out transgender people are as varied as the general population — including when it comes to making decisions about their bodies.

Some people can’t tolerate hormones, others want them, Evans says. “Some people don’t want surgery. Some people want it.”

Evans adds, “That’s what completes them.”

For Morgan, life will change dramatically in the next 48 hours. But in other ways, nothing will change.

She will still ride her motorcycle. She will still fire guns at the target range. She will still have her military service medals on the wall.

She will still enjoy the eggs scrambled with spinach, cheese and mushroom at Adele’s Restaurant. And she will still have her pink duvet on her bed.

“It’s not about what’s down between our legs,” Evans reminds the support group. “It’s what’s between our ears.”

Contact the writer: dwhiting@scng.com