Stephen White: Critical Conditions

Brenda, hollow-eyed, watched Marty’s hustled exit and then turned back in my direction, viewing me as disdainfully as she would have scanned the leftovers at a buffet.

“You’re a psychologist, right? Right? Well, why did she do this?” she demanded. Her tone was mocking and condescending. I wasn’t sure whether it was intended to belittle me and my profession-and by implication, her husband and his-or her daughter, and the inconsiderateness of her suicide attempt.

Maybe she wanted me to bite on the hook of her anger. I couldn’t be sure. But I didn’t bite. I said, “I’m at more of a loss than you are, I’m afraid. I was hoping you and I could begin to puzzle that out together.”

She fidgeted. I think she would have preferred being provoked.

From the aroma building in the enclosed room, I hazarded a guess about her agitation. “Would you like to walk outside, Ms. Strait, for a cigarette maybe?”

“I quit three weeks ago. Chaney, you know? I could never get away from the hospital room for a smoke. You can still smell it on me, can’t you? I chewed half a pack of gum on the drive over here. I need to get to the dry cleaners. Maybe buy a new wardrobe.”

I said, “I know. It’s hard to quit.”

“My husband’s a psychologist. Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.” Until verified, I still considered Diane’s information to be gossip.

“His name is John Trent. You know him?”

“We may have met once. I’ve heard of him. He hasn’t been in town very long, has he?”

“Maybe it’s better that you don’t know him.”

“Better how?”

“Better for Merritt. It’ll be easier for her to trust you. I’m guessing.”

“Is trust an issue between Merritt and her father?”

“Stepfather. Oh, God, please don’t do this shrink-wrap shit with me. I get enough of this from John.” Her intensity accelerated; she was almost spitting words now. “What do you want to know? What could you possibly need to know that isn’t already apparent? This is obviously about Chaney, right? And about me ignoring Merritt. Right? What else could it be about? Well? What else am I going to be punished for? Tell me that. Go ahead, what else have I done wrong?”

I learned a few things.

Take away the burden of the stresses caused by the fact that her younger daughter was at death’s door, and that her older daughter had just joined her there, I suspected that Brenda Strait was a decent woman. Smart and incisive, and with a reservoir of wit that could carry her through the onslaught of most stresses.

Not these two stresses. But most.

The family move to Colorado had been accomplished despite Merritt’s objections. “My God, I understand that,” Brenda said. “She was fourteen years old. When we moved, we took her away from her friends, her school, her security. I would’ve hated my parents for that, too. I understand her being angry, okay. I thought I did, anyway. But at some point she has to get over it, right?” She sighed, swallowed. “I’m not being fair to Merritt, I should be fair. The truth is that Merritt was doing better before Chaney got sick. She was starting to adjust. She was being a trooper. That’s what John said.

“But Chaney, that, God, that’s done us all in. All except John. He’s been a rock for that baby, for all of us. Maybe except for Merritt. Before Chaney got sick, John was Merritt’s buddy at home. They’d be out on the driveway shooting baskets at all hours. The neighbors used to complain. Police even came by once and suggested that eleven was a little late for playing horse.” She smiled meekly at the memory. “I work a lot, odd hours, and John filled in with Merritt, with both girls. He’s good with them. But now he’s been in Denver so much, too. Maybe Merritt’s angry about that-about John being gone. Maybe she feels deserted, left alone. Like we don’t care about her. I’ve thought about that, I’m not insensitive.

“When we moved, we left Merritt’s dad, my ex, back in Wichita, too. She misses him. Who could possibly be a more receptive audience to bitch about your mother to than her ex-husband? So there’s that, too, not seeing her dad. It’s a lot, huh…?

“School? You probably want to know about school. She does well. She did better in Wichita. John says to give her time to adjust. So we don’t pressure her about grades. She’s an A and B student getting B’s and a few C’s. She plays on the basketball team. She’s tall and thin like her dad. Gosh, you’ve never seen her standing up, have you? Basketball’s been good for her…

“Friends? Boyfriends? Kids don’t really date these days like we used to. They go out in packs, don’t have to deal as much with the pairing-off pressure. Not a bad adaptation-do you remember high school?” Brenda’s shoulders shuddered in response to some distasteful memory. “Awful. She hasn’t had to be part of all that. Merritt’s popular, she’s funny, she’s pretty. She has two best friends. One in Wichita, Toni, and another girl who’s here in town, named Madison. They hang out together…”

I asked, “Have you and John talked about this…this suicide attempt?”

Brenda exhaled as though she were intent on deflating. “I’m not ready to call it that. So far, I can barely say ‘overdose.’ But, yes, we talked before I left Denver.”

“I’d like to call him.”

“Fine, I’m sure he wants to talk with you, too. Chaney’s in Room 406. He spends nights there, too. One of us always tries to be with her.”

“You looked like you were about to say something else?”

Her shoulders sagged. “I thought things were going to get better. For all of us. I’d been getting death threats for a while. I did a story that resulted in somebody dying. Maybe you heard about it. Afterwards, I got some nasty phone calls and then some threats. They stopped a few weeks ago. The threats. I told myself everything was going to get better.”

“Do you know who the threats were from?”

“No. I did a recycling story that had some major, I don’t know, ramifications. A mayor tried to kill himself. His wife had a heart attack. It’s about that. Someone slashed my tires at work. Broke my car window and threw a dead cat on my seat. The police don’t know.”

“But the harassment stopped?”

“Yes. It stopped.”

I moved on. “Your first husband, Merritt’s father? Where is he? Wichita?”

“Right now, he’s in the Persian Gulf on an oil platform; when he goes abroad, he’s over there for weeks, months even, at a time. You know-the Middle East? I’ll call him. If you need to talk with him, I’ll have him call you.”

“Please.”

“He’s more of an uncle to her than a father. Do you know how it started?”

How what started? I shook my head. “No.”

“Sniffles. Chaney had a runny nose, just like a hundred other little colds. That’s how it started. Sniffles. And now this.”

Brenda was a talker. All in all, I didn’t do much more than provide a few prompts. Still, before Brenda Strait returned to her daughter’s bedside, she had dumped a lot of her anger at my feet. She had made a transition from feeling victimized by fate to feeling able to once again be a mother. The anger wasn’t over, but the pressure was off for a few minutes, or a few hours. I felt confident that for some brief time, Brenda would be able to view her daughter’s struggle to survive with love, not just with fury.

I also learned a few things that I hoped I might be able to use to help Merritt when she recovered consciousness.

Late Sunday night, Marty Klein ordered Merritt off the ventilator.

The only break I had in my outpatient schedule on Monday was at lunch, so I wasn’t able to get over to the hospital to see her until shortly before noon. She had already been moved from the ICU to a private room.