Excerpt from Soft Flannel Hank

“Why don’t you tell me about yourself, Hank?”

“Well, I’m here because I can’t sleep anymore. Not since I left the force. Not since--,” he cleared his throat, his voice feeling crackly and brittle from days of disuse. How long since he’d had dinner with Buck? “I don’t sleep. I don’t leave my house. I--”

“Hank?” a soft voice interrupted. “I’m so sorry to interrupt you, but I didn’t ask you why you’re here. I asked you to tell me about yourself. Let’s start there.”

“I thought you’d need to know about all that so you know how to fix me.”

Her eyes crinkled at the corners as she gave him the same pursed smile that his mother used to wear before she said, “Oh, Hank, honey, you’re just such a mess.” And he had been. Always covered in mud or jam or snow or, sometimes, blood. A  rough and tumble child wandering around the woods of the Pacific Northwest with his friends Buck Black and James Edwards.

He remembered running through the woods, his cheeks tingling from the winter air that felt new out of a sealed package, like a blast from the freezer door at the supermarket - cold and crisp and so intense that it stole your breath. His mother mending the holes in his flannel, his jackets, his jeans, the clothes he could never manage to keep together. Much like the rest of his life. His clothes, his marriage, his relationship with his daughter, his job, and now, his goddamn brain.

“I just want you to fix me,” he mumbled to the ceiling, gripping the arms of the chair in his hands. He felt his knuckles crack, felt the rasp of his calluses against the linen upholstery. Was it linen? Is this what linen felt like? He didn’t know. 

His ex wife, Marnie, had a linen sundress and he tried to remember the texture. But he couldn’t conjure it, couldn’t remember how the linen felt as he gathered big palm fulls, rucking it up her body to grip her backside as he pulled her against him. All he remembered was the feel of his calloused hands against her smooth skin, how she complained about them.

Feeling the calluses scrape against the armrests again made his stomach lurch and he moved his hands to his knees, the worn denim sliding effortlessly under his palms. Easy. Soft. Uncomplicated.

“Hank,” the voice broke through again and Hank’s breath sawed out of him, making him aware that he’d actually been holding it in the first place. He looked up, seeing a head tilted on a delicate neck on delicate shoulders on a delicate body. 

Nadja Stonebreaker was the licensed clinical social worker in town who offered counseling at a pay-what-you-can rate. And since his abrupt departure from the Forks Police Department six months prior, what he could pay was not much. She sat in a chair that looked a lot like his and wore blue jeans and a cream fisherman sweater that threatened to swallow her whole.

When he’d seen people in therapy on TV, there was always a couch where a person reclined flat and poured their guts out for a tweedy therapist with tortoise shell glasses and a legal pad who would nod and ask the occasional question about how a thing made them feel.

Those scenes looked nothing like the room where he found himself now. Floor to ceiling windows spanned one wall, with the dense, feathery branches of evergreens trailing through the October rain that glazed the windows. A worn oak coffee table separated him from her, the varnish gone in several places, on which sat his untouched white paper cup of black coffee and a travel mug that said, “I’m a therapist, not a magician!” in bright pink letters.

She wanted him to tell her about himself. Where to start? How he’d grown up wild in the woods? That he’d given up the college scholarship to take care of his parents whose bodies both decided to start calling it quits at the same time? That he fell in love with a girl who was only passing through and unintentionally trapped her with a marriage proposal and a baby? That he’d let her leave and take their daughter without a fight because he was scared? Scared of his dying parents? Scared of leaving the forest that had raised him while they’d worked? Scared of starting over? Scared of finally being proven once and for all to not be enough? Scared of her coming to that realization with him in a strange place without the comfort of the woods and sea that had raised him?

That he only ever wanted to help people? To keep them safe? Only to discover that he’d been in league with a whole new kind of predator in spite of all his best intentions? That he left the police force because he just couldn’t do it anymore? He couldn’t be the enforcer of rules that didn’t look the same for everybody? Couldn’t tell one more person there was nothing he could do to help them because of a broken system? 

That he hadn’t slept in six months, since that raid that went wrong? Since that innocent boy was shot and killed in his front yard by an officer only a few years older than him? Since the department tried to sweep it under the rug when the governor pressed?

That he was a failed father? That his daughter came home for one year, fell in love, fell out of love, and left him with as much ease and speed as her mother had seventeen years prior? 

That showering hurt his body? That food didn’t taste like anything? 

Or should he tell her that he was living off of savings because he couldn’t bring himself to leave his house for more than the absolute essentials. And even then. That he felt like he’d been hollowed out and stuffed with old rags, an approximation of the man he used to be? That he might look like himself and walk like himself and wave and nod from his battered truck window like himself but that inside he felt like the torn and ruined remains of who he once was?

“Hank,” she said again gently, “Can you take three deep breaths with me?”

Hank vaguely registered Nadja’s presence, saw her set her floral notebook and Bic pen down on the coffee table, watched from a mile away as she wound around the coffee table and knelt on the floor in front of him. He felt her press the paper cup of coffee into his hands, molding his fingers around the sides with her own, squeezing them gently. He felt the warm cup on his palms, her cold fingers against the back of his hands.

“Three deep breaths, Hank. Let’s take them together. You’re a blink away from a panic attack.”

Somehow, he did take them. Somehow he took three more.

And somehow he murmured answers when she asked him to name five things he could see. Her red scrunchie. The coffee table. The trees outside. The worn persian rug. His boots. 

Four things he could feel with his body. The warmth of the cup in his hands. The heat from the register blowing on the side of his face. The sock that had slid down too far in his boot and scrunched under his heel. The neck of his t-shirt that suddenly felt impossibly tight.

Three things he could hear. The percussion of rain on the roof. The hum of a humidifier in the corner of the room. His heartbeat in his ears.

Two things he could smell. The vanilla candle, extinguished before his arrival, but still scenting the air. Nadja’s shampoo, which smelled like mint and the tea tree oil his ex-wife had used on blemishes.

One thing he could taste. What did he taste? He tasted nothing. He hadn’t tasted anything in months. 

“Hank,” Nadja said, gently pushing on his hand. “What do you taste?”

He looked down to his hand holding the paper cup. Lifted it to his lips. And drank. 

“Coffee. I taste coffee,” he said, his eyes wide with disbelief.

She smiled that gentle smile again. The one that said, “Oh, Hank, honey. You’re such a mess.” 

And he was. He was and he knew he was. But as he lifted the cup again and took a second sip, as he felt the slippery blackness coat his tongue, tasted the bitter comfort, he felt, for the first time in six months, that he might not always be a mess.

And that was enough for now. 

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