The mattress he laid me on was hard. I lay there with my eyes shut and my thoughts dancing like mad things.

He started at the face. Relax the muscles. I fought it, felt the tension gathering around my eyes, and was told to move my whole perception there, to walk around the tightness I could feel behind the surface of them. I brought the anatomy of the eye to mind, and things eased at once.

Then lower. My throat seized. Instead of relaxing, a sharp pain arrived.

I wanted to shout that I was not a robot. I obeyed instead.

The knot went. And as the whole space of my thinking filled with the prayer, I felt his fingers resting lightly on my chest, a little above the heart.