Stephen White - Critical Conditions

He asked, “Don’t you ever have work things that get you going? Make you goofy?”

“Sure. All the time. Right now I have a new patient in the hospital, a kid, who’s, I don’t know, on my mind a lot.”

He said, “See? Some of it’s like that. And okay, some of it’s Sherry. What’s going on. Some of it’s her family. I’m not used to crap like this.” He filled his mouth with pretzel and chewed for a while. “My family in Minnesota is normal. People talk to each other, they help each other out. I don’t know about family grudges and holding stuff in. And I’m not handling it well with Sherry and her damn family and their squabbles. There’re apparently all kinds of goofy rules that get applied by these people and I don’t seem to know any of them.”

I waited a few heartbeats to see if he was planning to continue on his own before I asked, “What is it? What’s going on with Sherry and her family?”

He drained his beer. “Sherry has one sister. Older, by a few years. The sister moved to town eight, nine months ago. Boulder. The two sisters, they don’t get along, haven’t as long as I’ve known Sherry. Sherry won’t give her sister the time of day because of this thing that happened years ago, and Sherry says she’s furious at her sister because of how she treats their parents. All of this was bad enough for me when the sister lived out of state, but Sherry has been-well, what Sherry has been is a first-class bitch since her sister and her family moved to Colorado.”

He looked over. I don’t know if he was checking for boredom on my part, or what, but he apparently approved of what he saw. He continued.

“See, okay, this has been hard for Sherry. Her sister and her don’t talk at all, not a word.”

He paused. I said, “That’s funny. This new patient who’s on my mind? She’s not talking either.”

Sam was focusing on his story. “The sister is this big-time TV reporter. You watch Channel 7, the news? Brenda Strait? Seen her? That’s Sherry’s sister. Brenda Strait, you know, the Strait Edge? It drives Sherry crazy-it’s her maiden name, Strait. Sherry wants to pretend her sister doesn’t even exist and then she drives around and sees Brenda on billboards and on the sides of buses all over town. In our house, we can’t watch any programs on Channel 7 so that Sherry doesn’t have to run the risk of seeing some promo pushing her sister’s latest exposé. I don’t think she’s told anyone that her sister is Brenda Strait. It’s been eating her alive since Brenda’s family moved to Boulder.”

At the mention of Brenda Strait, I was busy catching my breath, sucking air through my mouth, visualizing dominos falling over, trying to peer far enough into the future to see where the last one was going to tumble.

Sam saw my near-apoplexy. As much for diversion as for compassion, I said, “I bet I know where you’re going, Sam. The little girl, Chaney. The one who’s been on the news all the time. She’s your niece, isn’t she? It must be awful, her being so sick.”

“Yeah.” He stared up at the rafters, then back down at the Zambonis. “Chaney’s my niece. You know me, Alan. I want to help. And I barely know her, Chaney. But it’s tearing me up. Brenda gives me the cold shoulder when I try to help. And John, I don’t know him that well. He’s her second husband. If I call, Brenda’s cold, tells me they’re doing fine, considering. I take food over, you know, for the family. Like I was a neighbor, but I’m family. I’m not somebody she works with or something. So I give it to the older daughter. Brenda and John are never home since this started, they’re always working or at the hospital. So I give it to the older kid, who I know a little better. I mean, I’ve known her longer, at least. I think she likes me, anyway. And…”

Sam paused and swallowed nothing. The new, more recent injury was more tender and raw and more difficult for him to talk about.

I didn’t know what to say. I tried, “That must be rough for you, too.”

The platitude failed to distract him. Sam exhaled in a quick burst and spun on me. His reaction to my feeble comment would not have been more intense had I warned him that his chair was on fire.

I tried to look compassionate and concerned. There were no mirrors anywhere around, but I feared that I ended up looking merely sheepish.

Sam seemed to be replaying the last two minutes of conversation in his head. And he didn’t need a road map to see what was going on. He said, “Oh, shit. I can’t believe this. The patient who’s not talking? You’re the one-oh, shit. No.”

I said, “Sam, until right this minute, I didn’t know she was your niece. Honest. If I had known, I probably wouldn’t have agreed to take on the case. I would have asked someone else do it.”

Sam tilted his head back and stared at the catwalks crisscrossing high above the arena. “Oh, God. Oh, hell. This is too much.”

Bruce Springsteen stopped singing mid-lyric and the players moved to center ice. The crowd hushed. The referee dropped the puck to start the third period. A Ranger one-timer from the blue line brought a loud buzz.

I tried to continue the conversation.

Sam said, “Later, after the game.”

After the game, we talked hockey, not family. The game ended with the home team up six to four. Too much scoring for Sam, who prized defense above all hockey skills. He had been a defenseman when he played in the Minnesota youth leagues as a kid.

“And I wasn’t one of these ‘offensive defensemen,’ either. The only time I scored was when somebody on the other team screwed up. But people didn’t score much on me, either. I look back on it sometimes and believe being a defenseman was good practice for what I do now. It’s like being a cop.”

We were walking to my car in the east lot at McNichols Arena. I liked to beat the traffic. Sam saw the postgame jam as part of the hockey experience.

He continued, “Except, what’s different is, in hockey, it’s all over in three hours. I like that better. Sometimes the cop stuff seems to drag on forever.”

He hadn’t mentioned his two nieces or Dead Ed Robilio since the third period had started. I valued my well-being too much to be the first one to broach the subject of his extended family. I figured he would get around to it.

He didn’t.

Almost an hour later we were back in Boulder. I turned into the lot on the south side of the police station where the cops park their personal vehicles and asked him where he had left his car.

“I’m not going home yet. I have to do the paperwork on Dead Ed before I go home.”

“Oh, I forgot.”

He smirked. “It seems to be one of your prerogatives. Forgetting.”

I killed the engine. “You’re way off base, Sam. I didn’t know Merritt was your niece.”

During a loud exhale he asked, “You talked to Brenda and John?”

“I’m on the case, Sam. Okay? I’m trying.”

“Brenda tell you about the other shit? The threats? The vandalism? All the trouble she causes?”

“Why don’t you pretend I don’t know. That’s not your case, is it?”

He shook his head. “God, no. Mostly being handled by Denver. We provided some protection for a while, some extra patrols.”

“It has to do with a story she did?”

“Yeah. Recycling contracts. She exposed some kickbacks and bribes and some mayor tried to kill himself, gorked himself out instead. His wife found him with a rope around his neck and then she had a coronary and died.”

“Yeah, I heard. Did they ever identify a suspect in the harassment?”

“Not that I know of. The guy was good at what he was doing. No wits, damn little physical evidence. Everybody figured it was because of the story. They were looking at personal connections, you know, irate relatives, and they were looking at the politicians who got swept up by her story.”