Spotlight on Dark Blossom by Neel Mullick
What happens when doctor and patient find themselves in the
same sinking boat, yet rowing in opposite directions—one clinging to the past,
and the other unable to move beyond it?
Sam returns home from a business trip a day before his son's
thirteenth birthday to find his world cruelly shattered in one fell swoop.
Initially thinking he can cope on his own, Sam finally seeks the help of
Cynthia, an experienced therapist. What he doesn’t know is that Cynthia herself
is trying to recover from a debilitating divorce and the sinister shadow of her
ex-husband. In the midst of it all is Lily, Cynthia's daughter, who harbors a
secret that has the power to explode the lives around her.
Taut with tension and intensity, Dark Blossom explores what lies beneath the surface of the lives of
apparently “normal” people.
An excerpt from Dark Blossom
In the Same Boat
I love to stroll in the city but, that day, I had to
be brisk. I needed to keep the cold out and didn’t want to miss the next train
back home. Stepping carefully on the icy pavement, I planned the rest of my
day. I still had a couple of patients to see later in the evening, giving me
just enough time to prepare dinner for Lily and myself. I went through a mental
checklist of the ingredients that would get us through with minimal fuss. Teens...Aargh!
What I wouldn’t give for her to be all grown up? Or for me to be that age
again?
As I entered the terminal, the aroma of coffee and
sugar-steeped bread wafting through the labyrinth of people took my breath
away. My fondest memory—that of my father standing near a pillar almost ten
meters away and whispering how much he loves me, and my wonder at being able to
hear it all the way across the whispering gallery—is another reason the
terminal has that effect on me.
With more than forty platforms, it’s the largest
station in the world. That almost three-quarters of a million people pass
through it every day doesn’t overshadow its incredible history. The backwards
Zodiac with 2,500 stars sprawled across the ceiling, the hocus-pocus the
Vanderbilts fed the world about the mural being backwards because it was meant
to depict god’s view of the universe, and the hole above Pisces serving as a
reminder of the rocket that was housed there during the Cold War era—all add to
its grandeur. And these are just parts of the opening act of the gala that is
Grand Central.
Descending into New York City’s deepest basement to
wait for the train to roll in, I looked down at the tracks running side by
side. I couldn’t help but think of the parallels between Sam’s life and mine.
While he had lost his family to a tragic accident, I had recently lost the
veneer of mine to a debilitating divorce from Connor. My own loss was more
bearable than his. Moreover, it was of my own making.
Following the tracks and seeing them criss-cross in
the distant darkness, I thought of the paradoxes between our lives. While he
couldn’t stop thinking of his family because he missed them and wanted them
back, I couldn’t stop thinking of Connor because I couldn’t get rid of the
sinister shadow he had cast over Lily and me.
I suddenly found myself in the same boat as Sam. And
it was my job to keep him afloat. Only, we were rowing in opposite directions.
Settling into a window seat on the train, I thought
of how a fatal crash at the turn of the nineteenth century had instigated a
thirty-seven-year-old visionary to recommend the extravagant remedy of razing
the existing depot to build the engineering marvel that is the Grand Central
Terminal. Although I’m a staunch believer in just one life, I could see how in
the passing of the old there is the birth of something new.
But not for Sam. My thoughts slipped back to him.
The loss of a loved one is like an amputation for
the bereaved. Even though he may transition from anger to acceptance
eventually, the phantom pain may never go away. I wanted to write some notes—all
I had from our session was numbness in my index finger and thumb from holding
the pen too tight.
I rummaged through my handbag for my Sam-notebook. I
keep separate notebooks for each of my patients—they’re pocket-sized and each
one comes with its own pen. That one was pastel blue with a darker, more
vibrant embossing of Antoni Gaudí’s mosaic-dragon from the entrance of Park Güell
in Barcelona. And it had a light-green pen nestled in a matching loop. It was distinctively
Gaudí, as were most of my notebooks. He is my favorite architect, after my
father of course.
Sam was stuck somewhere between denial and anger but
much closer to the latter. He said he had gained weight, stopped socializing,
and started smoking again. His work was his panacea but he had lost his mojo
even for that—something that had never happened before. He had managed to pull
himself together for the funeral, but his grief had exacerbated after the
family had left.
The tussle between the past and the present—that of
living through the experience and venting one’s emotions—is important for
moving on. There is no better substitute than mourning—the lesser he mourned,
the more difficulty he would have in letting go.
Yet something about our session didn’t add up. It
had been a while since the tragedy, yet his memories had been very vivid,
almost fresh. That’s not what piqued me though—what did surprise me was how
angry he had been at the start of the session and how quickly he had crumbled.
I wondered if he had expressed his feelings and shared the painful memories
with anyone since the accident, or if our session was the first time he was
talking about them. It mattered less for our therapy but more for his
well-being that he had others to talk to as well about such intimate details.
It was clear he needed to share and express more.
The announcement for Stamford broke my reverie. Even
though it had been a somewhat tentative start with Sam, I was happy to be
practicing again and knew I could help.
As I tucked away the notebook, my heart went out to
him and then turned to Lily. I was filled with gratitude for having her in my
life. She’s my pride and my passion. Even the rewards for helping my patients
are a distant second to my gratification from nurturing her. She had gone
through a lot but the worst was finally over—Connor had moved out and the
divorce had come through.
I was almost at our doorstep as I thought—how
could I have not seen it? How could my need to preserve the façade
of a family have made me so blind to such a monster?
From
Dark Blossom by Neel Mullick © 2019 by Neel Mullick.
This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.
Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are confronted by the possibility
of an eco-terrorist targeting their city.
The use of electricity as a weapon is both frightening and
plausible. In addition to the
terrorist, the infamous Watchmaker is spotted in Mexico and Rhyme is
collaborating with the Mexican police to finally capture him.
