Callie spends countless hours staring at appliances to make sure they are really unplugged. She wastes obscene amounts of time checking for murderers in various corners of her house and entire sleepless nights performing pointless checking rituals. Then every spare minute is filled with inspecting doorknobs, chairs, floors, etc. for minuscule traces of germs. Oh, and she does all of this as she counts to three over and over again in her head. She does this every day. Without fail.

Dr. Blake just doesn’t fit into her schedule. Until he does. Until Callie begins to trust him. Until she starts to need him. And want him. And . . .

5-star praise for Checked:

“Loved it…funny, sad, witty, charming…”

“…A fast read…exciting every minute.”

“… beautifully written…gives the reader a romance without degrading their intelligence — a rare find in contemporary romances.”

an excerpt from

Checked

by Jennifer Jamelli

1

THE APPOINTMENT

            {In my head radio, the Pretenders start the second verse of “I’ll Stand by You.”}

“Have a seat, please, Miss Royce,” says the red-headed receptionist as she extends a manicured hand to indicate the seating area. Red. Bright red nails. And a small scratch on the pad of her pointer finger. A scratch or perhaps some wayward nail polish? Please let it be nail polish. Please don’t let it be blo—

            She stares at me, waiting. I flush.

            “Like I said, I’m fine here, really, if I’m not in your way or anything. I don’t mind standing. Really.” Stop talking, freakshow. She gets it—you don’t want to sit. I move slightly away from her desk so I am standing in the seating area. We are both quickly distracted by the jingle of bells at the door. A short, plump man with a trench coat and a briefcase comes flying in the room. {Frank Sinatra takes over, crooning “Fly Me to the Moon.”}

            I step back further into the waiting room just in time to prevent the side of his briefcase from touching my black pea coat. Clutching my silky black and white purse, I watch him fling the briefcase on the counter as he talks at the receptionist.

            “Cancel my appointments for today, tomorrow, and Friday. I have to get to the airport by three to be in New York by evening visiting hours.” He pauses to breathe and quietly adds, “He’s in critical condition.”

            To avoid imposing further upon this conversation, I take another step into the seating area, careful not to touch any of the clustered blue chairs. I look down at my purse and fiddle with the silver hardware on the handles. {Sinatra moves right on to the second verse.}

            Mr. Briefcase finally gives the receptionist a chance to speak.

            “Yes, sir, Dr. Spencer. I’ll cancel your appointments right away. Oh but, um…” I can feel her gazing toward me. I keep my hands and eyes on the silver rings on my purse.

            She quietly says, “Your two fifteen is here a little early. A referral from Lennox Counseling.” I look up at this man who is apparently going to be my psychiatrist. I remember the card from Dr. Lennox hanging on my fridge. Dr. Keith Spencer. Pierce Mental Health. 2:15 p.m.

            “See if Dr. Blake can handle it,” he says, picking up his briefcase with one hand while fumbling for his keys with the other. “If he starts the initial consultation, he can just leave the paperwork on my desk.” He glances over at me, and I move my eyes abruptly back to my purse. He then continues his conversation with the receptionist. “I’m sure I’ll be back here by two fifteen next Wednesday.”

            When I eventually look back up, Miss Receptionist and Dr. Spencer peer intently at her computer screen. Perhaps Dr. Blake can’t “handle” me either.

The receptionist taps a red nail on the computer screen as she whispers, “But he won’t treat—”

            “It’s just an initial consultation,” Dr. Spencer interrupts before turning and flying back through the door without another glance in my direction.

            Won’t treat what? Women? Graduate students? Catholics?

            “I’ll be right with you, Miss Royce.” The receptionist cuts into my thoughts as she stands up from her chair to go toward the back part of the office.

             Back to my purse buckle. {Time for the refrain again. Ready for a big key change.}

            “Ma’am.” She is at her desk again. “Dr. Blake, a psychologist in this practice, will be seeing you today. Please just step through this door, and I’ll show you to his office.”

            I look at the brown door to her left, the one those red fingernails point out to me. It isn’t one of those swing doors I can just push in with my foot or leg or back. It has a horizontal silver bar handle. Shit. SHIT. SHIII-TT.

            Since the receptionist appears to be gathering a file (mine?) from the desk, I quickly thrust my coat-covered elbow onto the end of the silver handle and push down and forward at the same time. The door opens. I catch it with my right black pump and try to move my elbow back to a normal spot. But instead, I drop my purse. Smooth, Callie. So graceful.

            Now holding my file, the receptionist is looking at me. Awesome. I grab the top part of my purse, carefully avoiding any contact with the sections that touched the carpet or door.

            “Right this way, please.”

            Sure, Red. As you wish.

            I follow her for what seems like forever. Her slow, calm pace doesn’t help matters. We go to the end of one brightly lit hallway only to turn left into another. Uniformly framed pictures line the walls, pictures of meadows and birds.

            We make a second left turn and there is yet another large bird staring at me. A robin, I think. I hate birds. They randomly crap on things that would otherwise be clean. Cars. Park benches. Picnic tables. Mmmm…nothing says yummy picnic better than a big white and black pile of—

            We are turning again. {Frankie fades out, and The Beatles slide in with “The Long and Winding Road.”}

            We’re here. The receptionist twists the silver doorknob to open the door and then presses her back against it so I can enter.

            “Miss Calista Royce, Dr. Blake.”

            A quiet, so quiet voice says, “Thank you, Annie.”

            Annie. Of course your name is Annie.

            Annie steps in the room a moment, and soon that quiet, deep voice speaks again.

 “Come in, Miss Royce.”

            The door stays open even after Annie leaves. Excellent. Not an automatically closing door. I walk in, and my eyes meet, um, no one. No one sits behind the massive cherry desk that faces me.

            “Dr. Lennox referred you to this office?” That hushed voice pulls my gaze around, over to the right corner of the room. Blue dress shirt over muscular arms. Black pin-striped pants. Dark brown hair.

All facing away from me.

            “Um…yes.”  As you clearly just read in my file. Why bother asking?

            “He wants you to seek further treatment. Medication from Dr. Spencer.” This comes as a murmur as he appears to look up and directly out the window in front of him. “Very tense. Obsessions occupying approximately eighty-five percent of the day. Compulsive behaviors linked to the majority of these…difficulty sleeping, working, socializing. Excessive checking habits…”

            He turns and gradually begins walking, all the while flipping through my file. Face down…reading…walking. Toward me? To shake my hand? To take my coat?

            As he approaches me, I clutch the top part of my purse even tighter in my right hand and bring my left hand down to play with a button on the front of my coat. He stops in front of me but doesn’t look up. I hold my breath as he reaches behind me to close the door. Still looking down at the file, he heads back to the window.

            I don’t resume my breathing until he is again facing away from me.

            Silence. {“The Long and Winding Road” ends and then starts right back up again…twice.} My purse is getting heavy. I let go of my coat button and grasp the top of my purse with both hands.

            He clears his throat and speaks. “So you’re looking for some quick fix, some medicine from Dr. Spencer.”

            Quick fix?

            I try to explain. “Dr. Lennox suggested that, um, taking some medicine might alleviate some of my issues.”

            Quiet. Nothing. Just the back of a man—a statue in front of me. His hand moves through his artfully-tousled hair. Silence. I clear my throat.

            “He did want me to see Dr. Spencer specifically so I can just wait until next week when—”

            “Dr. Spencer wants me to conduct this opening consultation with you.” He turns from the window to walk to his desk.

            “Just a few standard questions—if you are ready.”

            I nod my head in agreement. But he can’t see me because he is now sitting at his desk and looking down at a clipboard.

            “Mmhmm…” I say quietly, pointlessly nodding again. He takes a shiny silver pen out of his left shirt pocket.

            Pen poised to write, he speaks again, “First question.” He pauses.

            He still doesn’t look at me. I move my own gaze to the bookshelves behind his desk. Lots of thick books with fancy, complicated titles. A framed degree. Dr. Aiden Blake.

            One picture. A young woman holding a maybe two-year-old boy. Both with the same dark hair. It looks like a professional picture gone wrong. The woman has a warm smile directed at the camera. The little boy is sitting on the woman’s (his mother’s?) lap and his body is facing the camera. His head, though, is turned up toward the woman’s face, and his little right hand rests on her cheek. As if the little boy whipped his head around during the photographer’s count of three to check to make sure his mother was still there. Sweet. Perhaps Mrs. Quiet and son.

            My eyes involuntarily move to his left hand. No ring.

            “Why do you spend most of your day seeing problems that do not exist?”

What? That is your “standard” question?

            I abruptly move my gaze back to him, but he, of course, is not looking at me. I don’t think he is going to speak again until I offer an answer.

            “Umm…I don’t really…I’m not entirely…I don’t know.”

            “You don’t know. I just figured you did know since you’re ready to put a medicinal bandage on this whole problem.”

            Medicinal bandage? Who says that?

            “Um…no. I’m not really…you know, I can just wait until next week. Really. I have to, uh, work at the writing center in just a couple—”

            “You’re a writer?” he interrupts.

            “Well, I want to write, yes. I am taking graduate courses in creative composition at, um, Pierce University, and well, I have to write for, uh, my courses.”

            Eloquent, Callie. No wonder he thinks you’re a writer.

            “Well then, Miss—” (He looks back at my chart.) “Royce. These questions can easily be answered in writing.”

            “Great.” Just tell me what you want me to write about, and I can give my answers to Dr. Spencer next week then. I’ll stop ruining your day.

            I start to dig in my coat pocket to find my keys.

            “I’d like you to start by writing about some early memories of your issues. Perhaps you can email these to me by, let’s say, Friday afternoon.”

            What? Is this like a homework assignment? As though I don’t have enough to—

            “Is there a problem, Miss Royce?” Oh—did he see my irritation? I look up.

            Of course not. He has now spun his chair around to face the sole picture on his bookshelf.

            “Um, well, when I write I prefer to use an old-fashioned pen or pencil.” Pause. “By the way, it’s Calista.”

            “That’s fine. Try to get it in the mail by Friday then. I see we have your email address on file, so I’ll just send you some other topics to think about later in the week.”

            “Oh. Okay. Thank you.” Again, sorry for disrupting your existence.

 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 lawyery 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.

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…

            Okay, so cleaning products and forks were nightmares, but they couldn’t even compete with the treacherous mouse droppings.

            More words of wisdom from my father. “Wash your hands after you play in the garage. There is probably mouse crap out there.”  Hmm…sounded pretty bad if this actually merited a warning from my father. (He never really gave random warnings or advice.) What could these mouse droppings do?

            It wasn’t like there was a bottle I could use to check out warnings for this feces product. This was also obviously before the Internet was really in swing so I had no help there. Instead, I had to leave the potential dangers to my imagination. Smart move, I know—just brilliant.

            That mouse crap was almost paranormal—it could paralyze or even blind a person quite easily. All someone would have to do was walk out to the laundry room (in the garage) in bare feet, come inside, and walk on the living room carpet—and the house was suddenly infested.

            If I accidentally picked something up from the carpet after an infestation, I would immediately wash my hands, my feet, the thing that I had picked up—all contaminated objects. It was an endless cycle. We are lucky we had no fatalities.

            I did my part. I wore shoes if I had to go out to the laundry room, and I refused to use anything that had ever resided in the garage. My other family members didn’t do their part though. They still don’t. I’ve seen them countless times doing laundry in bare feet, using tools they’ve found in the garage, and coming inside without washing their hands. I constantly fear a call from the hospital. One of them is bound to end up there.

          I finish my shift pretty pleased with my completed assignment so I grab an envelope and fold it so it fits inside. If I just drop this in the mailbox on the way home, I don’t even have to think about it for the next couple of days. I do just that.

#

I begin my night preparations shortly after returning home. Thermostat: 70 degrees. Stove: off. Doors: locked. Blinds: closed. Alarm: set. Teeth: brushed. Pictures: straightened. Clothes for tomorrow: out. Mandy’s room: cleaned. Nails: painted. Email inbox: empty. Laundry: away. Entire house: dusted. Kitchen: scrubbed. My bathroom: sanitized. Evening shower: taken. Body lotion: applied. Pajamas: on. Hair: dried. Prayers: said. TV: on.

            Eventually, I fall asleep while a skinny woman on the television goes through the steps for making ravioli.