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I turn toward the doorknob on his door.

“Calista.” That quiet voice pulls me around yet again.

I freeze. He’s looking at me. Sorrowful eyes…heavy…inconsolable. A tragedy in blue.

I can’t look away. I begin to feel a dull ache in my left side.
{Damien Rice fills my head with
“The Blower’s Daughter.”
}

His eyes hold mine. They are relentless. The sharpening pain in my side weighs me down, cementing my shoes to their place on the floor. My lips part slightly as my body tries to remember to breathe.

In slow motion almost, he releases me, closing his eyes and clenching them shut. The blue eyes that open back up to me are hard, stony.

He swiftly spins his chair to grab the box of tissues on his bookshelf. Without meeting my eyes, he turns back around and holds the box out to me.

“To help you out of here,” he says in an almost inaudible voice.
What?

“Th-thank you,” I stammer. I clutch my purse and take six slow steps toward his desk. Three steps at a time. One two three. One two three.

He stares past me, blankly looking at the door. I pull three white tissues from the box he’s holding and turn back to his point of focus. When I get to the silver doorknob, I quickly cover it with the three tissues spread out in my left hand.

And I’m out.

The creepy birds on the walls watch me as I walk back through that twisting path in a daze. I use my three tissues to open the next silver-handled door, and I’m back in the waiting room.

The receptionist is on the phone, arguing heatedly with someone about which bar to go to on Friday night. She’s mad. She doesn’t even look up as I pass.

Later, Annie. Hope your sun shines again tomorrow.

I use Dr. Blake’s tissues one last time to push out the main door (no silver handle) to the building, and I hastily throw them into the large trash can right outside the office. Carefully, I hold up my purse with my right hand. I unzip it with my left and remove my wallet, a pen, my phone, deodorant, a package of tissues, a calculator, my checkbook, lip gloss, and three Band-Aids. I shove the items in my coat pockets and drop the purse directly into the trash can.

Too bad. It really was a nice Christmas gift.

I quickly retrieve my keys from my right coat pocket and find my car. After I climb into the driver’s seat, I just sit for a moment.

What the hell was that? The longest stare ever, no doubt. Preceded by the most elongated period of time avoiding eye contact. Some kind of game, perhaps?  I smile to myself. Maybe this is simply part of the “standard” treatment.

I look at the clock on the dashboard. 2:38 p.m. Better get moving. I have to be at the writing center by 4:00 p.m. I count to three, start my car, count to three again, and turn on the radio.

My little rented house is in front of me eight minutes later. Mandy’s car is not in her spot. It’s nice to have my sister for a roommate, but she really isn’t around much. Busy with all of those stimulating undergraduate courses, maybe. More like all of those parties and sorority events.

2:47 p.m. I open the front door and leave my shoes on the black towel just inside. The kitchen sink is eighteen steps away from the front door. Six counts of three. After rinsing all of the soap off of my hands and lower arms, I dry myself off and hit the “PLAY” button on the answering machine.

“Hey, Callie. Guess you’re not back yet. I’m just checking to see how things went. Call me when you can!”

Melanie. I pick up the phone and dial her number. On the first ring, I hear Abby, my six-year-old niece.

“Hey, Abby. Is your mommy home?”

Silence. And then, “Hi, Aunt Callie. I just got a new—”

“Abigail—I’ll take the phone now. Hey, Callie.” My older sister’s authoritative voice interrupts our conversation. I hear some small whines from Abby in the background.

“Hey, Melanie. Couldn’t wait for me to call, huh?”

She laughs. “I was just hoping they’d be able to fix you in under fifteen minutes and have you all bouncy and sunshiny before work.”

“Not quite. I think it’s gonna take at least twenty minutes. Thirty, tops.”

Melanie laughs. “Okay. How did it really go?”

“Well, I think I managed to get in and out of the office without contracting any new diseases. Barely, though.” I decide not to tell her about my purse. If I try to keep it light, we can talk things out comfortably, normally. Otherwise she worries too much. Besides, she was the one who gave me the purse last Christmas.

I take a new dishrag out of a drawer, drench it with dish soap and water, and begin wiping off the counter.

She’s waiting to hear more.

“My doctor couldn’t actually see me. Some emergency or something. They passed me off to some other guy.” Guy? Super busy man? Terrified, sad boy?

“Oh. What was he like?”

What do you want to know? I can give you a pretty detailed description of the back of his head, his tense shoulders…

“He was pretty busy, really.” Busy staring out his window…and at my file…and at his bookcase. “He didn’t have a lot to say. I’m just going to fill out some basic information and send it back to the office. My real doctor should be back next week.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad. Maybe it’ll be easier to get yourself into the office the second time.”

“Maybe.” Although I can’t imagine it will be much easier to get out next time. Unless, perhaps, I take six tissues instead of three.

“Okay, I have to make Abby some dinner before I go to yet another meeting. This case is killing my evenings.”

“A phone meeting? Or do you have to drive the whole way back to the office?”

“Back to the office. The firm likes us to be all professional and lawery for the big cases. At all times. We’ll probably be in Board Room I, the one with the enormous chairs.” She pauses.  “It is a forty minute drive, though, and that does mean I’ll have a total of eighty minutes in the car without hearing any crying or whining. I could use a little peace.”

“All right. Please—”

“Be careful. I know. I will be, Calista. Give Mandy a hug for me.”

“I will. Thanks for checking on me, Mel. Bye.”

2:59 p.m. Not much time before I have to leave again. As I take the dishrag to the hall laundry closet and put it in the washer, I think about this week’s to-do list. Work tonight. Groceries tomorrow morning. I pull out the knob to start the washer and grab the Lysol spray on the laundry shelf. Hmm…class tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. Professional Writing Lab I. Our second night of my professor’s Publishing Series. Some published writer will be speaking for the entire three hours. Trying to be inspirational. Really just feeding his or her ego.

Going back down the hallway, I disinfect my black pumps. Six seconds of spray per shoe.

Lysol can back on shelf. Hands washed in kitchen sink.

Let’s see. TA class on Friday afternoon. College Writing 101. I still haven’t done much more than sit and observe. I can hardly be called a teaching assistant. The freshmen yawning through class probably think I’m just a twenty-something-year-old creeper drooling over their teacher. Little do they know it’s the other way around.

After Dr. Gabriel officially introduces me to the class in late October, perhaps I’ll feel more comfortable about being there. Comfortable, yeah—for about two weeks before I have to teach a couple of the classes in November. With him watching me.
Ugh!

Quick trip up to my bathroom. Last one until I get back home tonight around 8:00 p.m. As I dry my hands, I look in the mirror to make sure I look together. Makeup—faded, but not running. Hair—a little frizz, but nothing disastrous.

I go back downstairs to the kitchen table to grab my notebook for Monday’s Literary Analysis II class. Maybe I’ll get some writing done tonight at work.

“You’re a writer?”
The memory of a deep, quiet voice questions me. Oh. That’s right. I have yet another writing assignment to complete this week. In the mail by Friday, he said. Before he sends me more “standard” questions. Fantastic.

Maybe I’ll just write my response for him this evening and get it out of the way. I can put it in the mail tomorrow, and we can get this process moving. I’ll have all the paperwork done before I see Dr. Spencer next Wednesday.

I smile, thinking of my conversation with Melanie. According to her, I’ll need just one short visit in Dr. Spencer’s office and my transformation to normal should be complete.

3:05 p.m. Preparations to leave the house.

3:48 p.m. Time to go. I grab my coat and notebook before taking my black leather purse from the closet. I transfer the items from my coat pockets to my new purse, step into my slightly damp heels, and I’m out. Door shut and locked. Handle twist. Handle twist. Handle twist. Locked.

On to work.

Chapter 2

the assignment

THE WRITING CENTER IS PRETTY empty. The usual. No one really comes until after dinner on weeknights. Most of them don’t even want help. They just want a quiet place to type.

For now, I’ll take advantage of this quiet place to write myself.
Earliest memories
…I begin to brainstorm as I get situated at my corner desk.

Hmm…my parents always tell me that I was a horrible baby. Always screaming.

Not sleeping unless I was on my mother’s chest. But maybe that is how babies are for the most part. Maybe Melanie and Mandy were just exceptionally good. Perhaps Jared was only different because he was a boy. Or maybe he seemed really easy because he came right after me. Could this really have started that early though?

“Excuse me.” A stick-thin girl with a campus sweatshirt interrupts me. “Can you help me with my paper?” She looks to the left, most likely toward the computer where she is working.

She thinks I am going to go over there? Clearly a freshman. I smile at her as patiently as I can and explain the process of emailing me the paper, attaching questions, and getting a response within a half hour.

“Oh. I just thought…” She drifts off. Thought what? That I would actually take a job where I had to sit and talk with college freshmen? That I would sit close to them and hear them chomp their gum as I worry that they’ll accidentally spit while they are talking to me? So close that I can smell their not always clean clothes and the scented sprays they’ve used to disguise their poor laundry habits? No, thanks.
Sorry, freshman. {Cue Green Day’s
“Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”
}

She is still standing in front of me. I manage to give her a smile before she turns to go back to her computer. It’s not entirely her fault that I find her disgusting.

This is probably her first college paper, and she really does look worried. I turn on the laptop sitting on my desk so I’m ready for the arrival of her email.

Back to early memories. So why did the baby version of me scream so much? Not bathed enough? Not changed enough? Maybe I was scarred from my experience with swimming in filthy amniotic fluid for months. Maybe a questionable looking doctor gave me my first shots. 

Or was the baby me just afraid that if I stopped crying I’d be left alone with my own scary thoughts? Were they already there?

Perhaps my mega-intense doctor man can tell me if this is even possible. Surely this couldn’t have been what he meant by earliest experiences though. I really think he meant early as in I could hold my head up and eat solid food but not old enough that I had my driver’s license yet.

I don’t have the chance to finish this enchanting conversation with myself because my computer dings. That means I have a paper to check.

My freshman. Brittany at Computer 7, so says her help ticket email. No paper is attached to the email. Just a question about making a cover page. She’s only on the cover page? Looks like I will be spending my whole shift with Brittany.

I type her a quick response, attaching some “standard” cover page examples.

Back to my “standard” question. I begin to write my response, and other than four dings from Brittany, I am pretty much left alone…

The Evil Forks and the

Dangerous Mouse Droppings

Some of my earliest fears were based on some simple fatherly advice. I don’t even know exactly why the advice was given; I’m sure my brother, Jared, and I were doing something questionable to bring it on though.

At dinner, Dad told me that a person could get something called “Lockjaw” from having a fork stabbed into his or her skin. Lockjaw sounded pretty scary.

For the next few years, every fork I saw became a nemesis. Luckily, I found that I could eat many foods without having to use utensils. (Knives and spoons were probably okay, but how could I know for sure? Dad hadn’t said one way or another on other eating devices so I thought it was safest to avoid them all.) But I couldn’t avoid them all of the time. Every week (usually during the weekend), there would be four index cards sitting on the kitchen counter, four lists of chores. One for my brother, one for each of my sisters, and one for me. Ah…the dreaded list. Mine always said “EMPTY DISHWASHER” in the small capital letters my dad used for list making. DAMN IT.

Carefully, oh so carefully, I’d pull out each spoon, each knife, and each terrifying fork. If my skin even brushed against one of the menacing prongs, I’d quickly open and shut my mouth a few times to make sure it wasn’t glued shut.

Eventually, the scandalous task would be over and, phew, I’d made it through yet another weekend list…almost. After my dad’s capital-lettered chores, my mom would often add some of her own in her more feminine, lower-cased writing. And many times it was there, the next worst task: dusting. AHH—people should be forced to read the warnings on some of those cleaning supply bottles before they use them. They are freaking scary. I could go blind. I could have to have my stomach pumped. Hell, I could even die. No way. Not me. If I wasn’t going to let the forks get me, there was no way a bottle of toilet bowl cleaner was taking me out. So at the age of seven, I proceeded (very carefully—with gloves) to find out which bottles had the least troublesome warnings. Window cleaner and dish soap won (but this was many years ago—I’ve found other acceptable products over the years.) From then on, all dusting was done with window cleaner or just water. And when one of those lists said “Clean bathroom sink and tub,” my parents could always count on the hall bathroom smelling like dish soap. Who knows how many times I saved my eyes, my stomach, my life…