Stephen White - Critical Conditions

“I know, John. I’ll do everything I can.”

We both knew I could do precious little. Maybe put a pillow down to cushion a ten-story fall.

I waited with John and Brenda about ten minutes until the respiratory technicians arrived to do a treatment on Chaney. As she left her sister’s bedside, I casually invited Merritt to join me in an empty conference room adjacent to the intensive care unit.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she came along. I was surprised.

I said, “Hi. Tough day. What you’re doing for your sister is wonderful. It really makes a difference.”

She shook her head. Didn’t speak. Instantly, I feared that we had returned to square one: Silence.

I said, “The police still haven’t found Brad. I thought you would want to know.”

One side of the conference room had glass windows facing the ICU. Merritt stood and adjusted the blinds so that she could clearly see her sister’s bed. She ignored my comment about the fraternity boy, but asked, “How is Mrs. Monroe doing? Is she, I don’t know…?”

I was relieved that she was still speaking. “I haven’t talked to Ms. Monroe. I’m sure it’s an incredibly difficult time for her.”

In a halting voice, Merritt asked, “Does she blame me? For what happened?”

My next words were crucial, I knew that. I softened my voice and narrowed my focus. I leaned forward on my chair, resting my elbows on my knees. I said, “I don’t know, Merritt. Should she?”

Merritt returned to the chair opposite me and sat. Her gaze stayed aimed at the window. She said, “Probably,” and she shook her head, a disbelieving kind of shake. “But I told Madison not to tell Brad. I knew he’d do something stupid. God.”

My impulse was to say, “Tell him what?” I didn’t. I sat back and feigned patience and allowed Merritt to find a pace for telling this story that suited her. She bit on her lower lip for a moment, then, with a thrust of her jaw, she began to bite on her upper one.

“Do you wonder why I wouldn’t talk for so long?”

“Of course I do.”

“Okay, here’s why.

“That day, the last day, I went over to Dr. Robilio’s house again. By myself this time, Madison wasn’t with me. I’d been working out at school. I took the bus and then I walked the rest of the way to his house. I wanted to…I don’t know…I don’t know…”

Merritt struggled, looking for a word. The silence stretched for at least ten seconds.

“Plead with him-beg him?-to save my sister. When I got there, I saw my stepdad’s car parked around the corner. Trent has this old beat-up Jetta, you can’t miss it. It’s an antique, at least as old as me. Anyway, I waited for him to come out. When he did, he came out of the back yard, not out of the front door, and calm as could be, he walked back to his car, started it up, and drove away.”

Merritt stood and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jeans. She was in profile to me, and she looked even taller and leaner stretched out against the window.

“I almost went home right then. Figured Trent had already done what I wanted to do.”

I waited a few beats. I said, “But you didn’t go home?”

“No, I didn’t. I rang the doorbell. Nobody answered. I rang it again. Nothing. So I went around back the same way Trent had come out of the yard.”

I reminded myself that the preamble to this story had to do with why Merritt had chosen to be silent. I was aware of her breathing being labored and wondered where she was heading.

“There’s all these doors back there that go into the house. And a big patio. And a pool with a fancy fence around it. I looked inside the house, didn’t see anybody. So I tried the doors. One of them opened. I went in.”

I had the strangest sensation right then, as though I were watching a movie and the music was reaching a crescendo and I knew something terrible was about to happen to one of the characters. I almost blurted out a warning to Merritt not to go in, to instead turn on her heels and run home. As fast as she could.

“When I did, I realized I had walked into this theater. The man has his own…private…theater. I couldn’t believe it. He has this big mansion and a stupid swimming pool and his own private theater and all I want is to have my sister stay alive…”

I desperately wanted to see Merritt’s face right then, but all I could see was a distorted reflection in the glass. It told me nothing.

“I looked around. Didn’t say anything at first. I was just getting madder and madder and madder about the money he has that he wouldn’t spend on Chaney.” She spun right then and faced me, her hands still in her pockets. “I went down this little hallway and there was this door. It was closed. I opened it and that’s when I saw him.”

While her left hand covered her mouth, her eyes were seeing nothing in the present. She was revisiting some horror. And it was freezing her.

I said, “Go on, Merritt.”

She swallowed. “I had never seen so much blood. It was everywhere. Everywhere.”

What?

“It was like he had drowned in it. And then I saw the gun, down near the edge of the desk, and I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to run. Maybe I should have run.”

Run! Yes, run!

“But I tried to save him. I needed him to be alive to help Chaney. He was my only hope. I didn’t want him dead.”

Her forehead wrinkled into a frown. “He was slumped on this chair and I pulled him onto the floor-God, I wasn’t strong enough and he just plopped down and blood splashed everywhere, and I, I-I’ve taken Red Cross lifesaving-and I tried to resuscitate him. Mouth-to-mouth. It was awful. There was blood in his mouth and each breath I forced into him made this sick noise and I was kneeling in his blood and his body felt so awful to touch and his damn heart wouldn’t start beating and between breaths I was yelling at him and yelling at him not to let my little sister die.”

She slid to the floor and leaned against the window wall. “But it was stupid. He was dead.”

“You didn’t kill him.” I forced an inflection that made the words not sound like the question that they were.

“No, I didn’t kill him. Trent did.”

“You’ve been protecting your stepfather?”

She looked at me hard. “No, no. I’m still protecting my stepfather. Don’t forget your promise.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“Good.”

She gestured out the window. “They’re done out there. I want to go back and be with Chaney while she’s still awake.”

In a firm voice, I said, “I have some questions first. About what happened.”

She smiled at me coolly. “They can wait. There’s no hurry anymore. The man’s dead, he can’t help Chaney anymore.”

I tried to counter. “But what about Brad? He’s in serious jeopardy. Half the police in Colorado are after him.”

“Brad? Screw Brad. He doesn’t care about Chaney at all. Never did. Take me back out there.”

I thought about it for a long time. I was in a power struggle with a teenager who had an array of weapons I couldn’t match. In addition, she had two trump cards. One, of course, was her vow to return to silence. The other was a willingness to die for her cause.

I agreed to return Merritt to her sister’s bedside while I was trying to figure out some way to explain to the psychiatric unit staff what I was doing so that it resembled something like a treatment plan.

I made my way out of the ICU to the elevator lobby to head upstairs to make a note in Merritt’s chart. As the elevator door opened, Sam Purdy stepped out, accompanied by his wife, Sherry.

It should have been an inconsequential visit, an aunt and uncle visiting a critically ill niece. Sadly, in tertiary care hospitals like this one, such visits happen all the time. But it wasn’t an inconsequential hospital visit and Sam, Sherry, and I all knew it.