Page 1 of Soft Flannel Hank

1

“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 Magda? “I don’t sleep. I don’t leave my house much. I—”

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

“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 blood. A rough-and-tumble child wandering around the woods of the Pacific Northwest with his friends, Buck and Jamie.

“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 had a linen sundress. He tried to remember the texture, but he couldn’t conjure it, couldn’t remember how the linen felt as he gathered big palmfuls, 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. 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 at him.

Magda had been pushing him to go to therapy for months and, as a favor to her, he’d finally relented. It certainly couldn’t hurt. 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 World’s End Police Department six months prior, what he could pay was not much.

What an ironic place to live. The legend went that the explorer who first colonized the area that became the town thought he’d reached the end of the very world itself. Sometimes it felt like that to Hank.

Nadja 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 tortoiseshell glasses and a legal pad who would nod and ask the occasional question about how a thing made them feel. The thought of sitting through that gave him hives, but he’d made the call anyway. What did he have to lose? He certainly didn’t want to keep going on the way he had been and if Magda thought therapy would help, Hank was willing to try it. He was willing to try just about anything.

He was relieved to find that Nadja’s office was nothing like those stuffy, close rooms he’d pictured. Floor-to-ceiling windows spanned one wall, with the dense, feathery branches of evergreens trailing through the October rain glazing 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 Nadja’s travel mug, which 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 taken care of his parents when their bodies decided to start calling it quits far too soon? 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? 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 he had only ever wanted to help people and keep them safe? 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 a raid that had gone wrong in a town not so different from his own, a mere two hours away? Since that innocent boy had been shot and killed by an officer in his own home? Since the department tried to sweep it under the rug when the governor pressed? Since he’d quit his job without notice, turned over his weapon and equipment to his chief without a word because he couldn’tstandto be in the same building with his colleagues talking about it the way they had? Couldn’t stand to be a part ofanyof it anymore?

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 essentials? That he felt like he’d been hollowed out and stuffed with old rags, an approximation of the man he used to be?

“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.”

Somehow, he did take them.

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 colorful rug. His boots.

Four things he could feel with his body. The warm 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. 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.