Excerpt of The Beckoning of Broken Things by Calinda B

“So tell me how you feel.”

I must be pretty heavily sedated because when the therapist asks me that question, the word “feel” comes out sounding like it’s a slide. I’ll just bet if I could climb on top of that slide, I’d be able to slip from the room and not have to answer that stupid question. I shake my head. What does she mean, how do I feel? I feel like been given something like heroin or Clonazepam or Secobarbital or some other mind-numbing agent. I feel like I weigh a thousand pounds, and I’m looking at her through thick glass walls and she’s talking to me through some kind of filter made of seven layers of dense foam. I feel like…wait, I know. I’m in here because I’m different. I’m sitting here with what feels like two hundred pounds of cotton between my ears because they don’t “get” who and what I am. They think there’s something wrong with me. They all think I’m broken.

She pushes up her glasses on her nose and taps her pen on the arm of the brown leather chair in which she sits, like a prim, porcelain doll. “I’m waiting.”

“Are you talking to me?”

Her face is wrinkled, like an Amish Apple Doll. Her dyed brown hair needs a touch-up. White and gray roots serve as a flag to her age. She smiles, a crisp, stiff smile like peanut brittle. “I don’t see anyone else sitting across from me, do you?”

I picture taking her smug smile in my fingers and snapping it in two, resulting in my own satisfied smile. “Where’s Daniel?”

“Who?”

“Daniel Navid. My soul bound lover.”

She frowns and scribbles a few notes in the black binder sitting on top of her lap. She smoothes her blue tweed skirt. Clears her throat. Tries again. “How do you feel right now, Ms. Engles? Your sisters were pretty concerned about you when they brought you in here.”

“Where, exactly, is here?”

“You don’t know?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t ask the question.”

The therapist nods, as if I’ve just said something profound. She gestures to the room with her certificates of accomplishment and education lining the beige walls like little soldiers. “Well, you’re at the Brookstone Center for Healing, in Bellevue, Washington. Do you know where Bellevue is?”

“Are you kidding me? I’ve lived in this area all my life. I live over in West Seattle, two bridges away from Bellevue. Of course I know where Bellevue is.” I reach up and rub my eyes, trying to clear the spider webs, mud puddles, and sludge clouding my mind.

“Do you know what day it is?” The peanut brittle smile appears again.

I want to smash that smile with a hammer. “Yeah, it’s today. And yesterday was yesterday. And tomorrow’s going to be tomorrow.”

She taps her pen. Scribbles. Frowns. Scribbles some more. “So you don’t actually know what day it is.” She says that as a statement, not a question.

“Let’s see, two days ago I was in Brazil, and it was Thursday. That must make today Saturday. What do I win?”