Excerpt from In Fidelity by M.J. Rose, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Having raised this child, and knowing how she would respond, I chose not to pursue the conversation. It was no use. Once she disappeared into "the land of the camera," as I called it, there was no way to reach her.

My cellular phone rang again. Hesitantly, I answered it.

"Hello?"

"Dr. Sloan?"

"Yes?" I didn't recognize the woman's voice on the other end.

"Its Adrienne Blessing."

Adrienne was a new patient I'd been seeing for a month and a half. This was the first time she had called over a weekend.

"I'm still waking up every night at three and can't get back to sleep. I've tried all the techniques we discussed. Nothing works. Can you prescribe something? Anything? I'm nonfunctional here."

"Adrienne, I'm sorry, but you know I can't prescribe drugs. We can talk about you seeing a psychopharmacologist in session, but in the meantime, when you wake up, do something: read, watch a movie, work, just don't lie there."

"I've tried all that."

"I know how frustrating it is. But we can solve this; we just have to work towards understanding the stress that's causing the insomnia."

"Are you sure it's stress related?" she asked.

"From what we've talked about in session, it certainly sounds that way. Falling asleep easily but consistently waking up around three in the morning fits the pattern. Are you still falling asleep easily?"

"Yeah, no problem there. It's just from three on I'm a zombie. Isn't there anything I can take?"

"You can try Tylenol PM or Benadryl allergy pills."

I glanced at Lilly, then back at the road. I would have preferred not to talk to a patient with my daughter in the car.

Suddenly there was a loud horn and the sound of tires screeching. Ahead of me a blue BMW had cut me off. As my right arm shot out to protect Lilly, I looked in the rearview mirror to make sure the driver behind me wasn't coming up too fast. Within seconds, I knew we were okay, but my heart was racing faster than the car.

In maneuvering to avoid an accident, I'd dropped the phone, but Lilly had picked it up and handed it back to me. "I think she's still on, Mom."

"Adrienne, I know how difficult insomnia can be to deal with. Let's focus on this in your next session on Monday, all right?"

"You're never judgmental of your patients, you know that?" Lilly commented after I'd snapped the phone shut.

"I wouldn't be doing my job if I was."

She thought about that for a moment. "Have you ever noticed that Grandma is never judgmental?"

We had reached New Haven. I drove down the exit ramp and stopped too suddenly at a red light. It was my turn not to answer Lilly -- I wasn't ready for the lessons my daughter wanted to teach me. Instead, I looked up. In the sky, a first star was visible. Such bright light emanating from something that had died such a long time ago.

The basic precepts of therapy are based on how your past affects your present. Lilly liked to say we should live in the moment. But she spoke out of idealism, out of theory. Her past had no ghosts living in it yet.

A few minutes later I sat in my car in front of Cooper's dorm and watched my daughter walk away.

The luckiest of us learn to use our histories as a ladder to climb to the future. That was what I hoped my daughter would be able to do one day. What I tried to help patients to do -- was helping Adrienne Blessing to do. But who was going to help me climb out of my past?

Copyright © 2000 by M.J. Rose. For permission to reproduce this excerpt please contact the author at http://www.mjrose.com