I wiped my eyes, straining not to cry as I drove north on Hunter to Secor. But by the time I turned South on the Taconic Parkway, my eyes spilled over.
I thought about Luke being despised by his own mother even before he was born.
That she was as evil as she was damaged.
And that she offered him nothing but the emotional leftovers of bones and crumbs, of gristle and rind.
How could her bitterness and hate do anything other than turn his heart to stone?
There was only one thing Luke could be.
Deformed.
The realization of it all hit me hard. My fingers wilted around the steering wheel, and my body, stiff and tense moments ago, was heavy from the force of gravity. Weary, broken, and utterly alone, I was on the brink of collapse. I felt the nothingness of despair closing in. Crushing me.
I gathered all my strength and jammed the brakes, screeching the car to the shoulder of the highway. I hauled the drive shaft into park and snapped on the emergency lights.
Everything became cold.
Especially my hands. They felt like ice. I pulled them closer and tried to warm them with my breath. I shook my palms and fingers hard and let them fall limply in my lap.
For a moment, I regarded them.
My hands didn’t just reach, touch, feel, and grasp. My hands housed a voice.
I held them open and positioned them flat-palmed near my shoulders—just ahead of my body. I pushed them outward. Over and over and over again.
The sign meant many things.
Go on.
Forward.
Future.
I grabbed the cell phone from my handbag and reached for the business card of Dr. Prader’s colleague in Colorado, Dr. Eric Bibleaux.
I thought about the twists and turns of fate and the secrets I'd hidden for so long as I pressed the numbers.
I closed my eyes and imagined sitting in the waiting room in a chair nearest to the exit.
How the light would slowly filter in from the other room as Dr. Bibleaux opened the door. I thought about the last moment of the unknown, where two strangers meet and a life story begins.
And as the phone rang, I hit the hands-free Bluetooth button in the Saab, ready to make the call.
And merged back onto the highway.
Deborah Serani is an award-winning author and psychologist who has been in practice for thirty years. She is also a professor at Adelphi University and is a go-to media expert for psychological issues. Her interviews can be found in Newsday, Psychology Today, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The Associated Press, and affiliate radio programs at CBS and NPR, among
others. Dr. Serani has also been a technical advisor for the NBC television show, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. The character Judge D. Serani was named after her.
The Ninth Session Page 19
