Stephen White - Critical Conditions

On the way to Merritt’s room, the nurse assigned to her prepared me for what I’d find. “Her roommate’s name is Christina. She’s being stabilized on lithium right now and that hole you’re about to see in her cheek isn’t the only one she has. She’s been pierced in a few other places, too, if you know what I mean.”

I didn’t, but I could guess. The details weren’t important. Merritt’s assigned roommate turned out to be a skinny Chicana with big brown eyes full of heat and the promised large piece of metal coming out of her cheek. She was standing just outside the door listening to a CD player on headphones, but I could hear the Latin rhythm seeping out all the way from the door. I waved hello. She waved back.

The nurse paused before she left and pointed across the unit toward an empty consultation room that I could use for psychotherapy sessions. I asked Merritt to join me. She smiled a good-bye to Christina, who smiled back, exposing a metal-embedded tongue and a mouthful of braces. The kid would be hell going through security at the airport.

Merritt sat. I talked. I asked her if she was doing all right. She shrugged. I asked her if she understood the rules of the unit. She nodded yes. I asked her if she needed anything. She shook her head. I asked her if she wanted to be able to see her sister.

She did. Finally I saw some animation.

“I figured that. It’s a privilege, like any other privilege that’s earned by patients on the unit. The way it works is that you won’t be allowed off the unit for anything, even to visit your sister, until you earn the trust of the staff. They will teach you how to accomplish that, how to earn privileges. The intent isn’t to keep you from your sister; it’s to keep you safe. I’m sorry. That’s just the way it works.”

She looked away from me then, and didn’t look at me again. Permission to see Chaney was apparently all she wanted from me. I’d already decided not to do anything more than invite her to talk. That having failed, I had nothing left to say; it was apparent she hadn’t changed her mind about staying mute. I led her back to her room and watched her lower herself to her bed. She curled up facing the wall.

One of the nurses on the cardiology unit helped me track down Brenda Strait and John Trent in the almost deserted hospital cafeteria. They were sitting alone in the far corner of the room, sharing a piece of apple pie, holding hands across the table.

I thought they looked old.

Before I disturbed them, I poked my head into one of the private dining rooms adjacent to the cafeteria, hoping to find a place we could meet privately. The Doctors Dining Room was empty.

Brenda saw me approaching the table and released her husband’s hand. She whispered something and John, too, looked my way.

He wasn’t what I’d expected. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that I had expectations about his appearance, but I did. In my mind’s eye, John Trent was robust and hefty with a generous smile and abundant hair the color of autumn grasses. In the hospital cafeteria that day, though, he was thin and gaunt and somber and what hair was left on his head was crew-cut and almost black.

He stood.

I said, “No, no, please, sit down. I’m Alan Gregory; it’s nice to finally meet you.”

“John Trent.”

I looked toward Brenda and said, “Hello, Brenda. Well, we pulled it off, the transfer. Thanks for all your help last night.”

She offered a weak smile in return.

“I just checked the Doctors Dining Room over there, and it’s empty. Why don’t we move in there and get some privacy and I’ll catch you both up with what’s going on.”

Trent said, “Fine. Brenda, you want any more of this pie?”

She shook her head.

We all settled at one end of a table in the private room. The room smelled of burnt toast. In the distance, some food-service workers were complaining about not getting their breaks.

I waited to see if either John or Brenda was eager to start. They weren’t. I said, “How’s your little one doing?”

Trent answered. “Chaney’s…all right. She’s resting now. She had a decent enough day today, wouldn’t you say, Bren?”

“Decent. Yes. A decent day. The pulmonary treatments went well. That’s something.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I’m looking forward to meeting her. Maybe tomorrow? I just came from the psychiatric unit where I saw Merritt. You saw her earlier, too?” The nurses on the unit had informed me that Merritt’s parents had stopped by.

Brenda said, “Yes. She looks fine to me. Totally recovered, I would say. Trent?”

“From the overdose, sure. She looks like herself. Still silent, though. She won’t talk to us at all, not a word. You either?”

“Nothing to me or the staff. She may be talking to the other kids, but if she is, we haven’t heard about it yet,” I said.

John’s eyes were warm as they held mine. “I think she realizes what’s at stake now, though. Brenda and I told her what we could, what we’ve learned from the lawyers and the police. She realizes how serious things are, how bad it looks with the clothes and the blood and everything.”

I assumed “everything” was a palatable euphemism for the gun.

Brenda stared at me, away, then she leaned forward, halfway across the table before words spilled from her mouth like ice from a bucket. “How could she do it? Kill that man? How could they accuse her of that? With a gun? How? She’s a child, she doesn’t know about guns, and, and…”

John took her hand across the table. “The situation is bad, Dr. Gregory. We talked to that lawyer, Mr. Maitlin, an hour ago. The evidence doesn’t look good for Merritt. When you found us, we were talking, trying to come up with some way to cope with the possibility that Merritt may have actually gone and…killed that man.”

“And what were you coming up with? Anything?”

John seemed prepared for the question. He didn’t hesitate. “If she did it-and I’m not convinced she did, despite how it looks-it was stupid, stupid, stupid. An awful tragedy for his family. And now another tragedy for ours. But for Merritt, right now, I-we, Brenda and I-we have to view whatever happened, if Merritt was involved, as an act of…for lack of a better word…honor. If she did it, it was like sticking up for her sister in a schoolyard fight-don’t get me wrong, this was much more serious. Twisted somehow, but honorable.”

I thought I could guess where John Trent was going, but I wanted him to finish, I wanted to hear the rationalization in his own words. “Go on.”

“For the sake of argument, let’s assume she was involved somehow. All I can think is that, that Merritt must have viewed him, Dr. Robilio, as a bully, a bully who was hurting Chaney, picking on Chaney. Merritt went over there, to his house, to stick up for her sister, to stand up to the bully, and something went terribly wrong. The shooting…was an aberration, an…accident, I’m absolutely sure of that. Merritt’s not an aggressive kid. It’s her biggest liability on the basketball court. She just isn’t aggressive enough, won’t play to her own advantage. So I don’t know what happened at his house with the gun, maybe no one does. I don’t think she could have shot him; I just can’t picture her…you know. But what drove her there in the first place was honorable, I’m sure of that. Merritt was trying to help her sister stay alive and she saw Dr. Robilio as the enemy.”

Brenda had started to cry and to make those little popping noises with her lips that I’d heard for the first time in Boulder.

Therapeutically, I had a half-dozen choices about which trail to follow. I didn’t take any of them.

Instead, I asked, “How did she know about Dr. Robilio’s relationship to Chaney’s medical care? It’s not the sort of information a typical teenager would understand or have access to.”