Critical Conditions

Fourteen

I drove the rest of the way home thinking about Sam’s proposal to hospitalize Merritt in Denver. There would certainly be advantages for John and Brenda, and God knew they could use any break I could offer them. I also suspected that Sam’s idea had something to do with Sherry and Brenda that he wasn’t talking about.

Emily was thrilled to see me. I’d left her in her dog run while I was gone and when I opened the gate she ran free like an escaped felon. I offered a quick walk down the lane and promised her a meal and a bowl of ice water upon our return. She seemed to think the plan was great, but then, Emily usually thought I was pretty brilliant.

It was one of my favorite things about her.

Lauren had called while I’d been out discovering that Merritt was likely to be arrested for murder.

Bee-eep.

“Hi, hon, it’s me. You there?…Thought you would be home. Is there a hockey game tonight? I can’t keep up. Things are fine here, all things considered. Mom’s doing the same. I miss you. I hope you miss me. Give Emily a big hug for me and call me tomorrow. I’m going to bed early. I love you. I mean that. I do.”

Lauren usually went to bed early these days. Since the serious exacerbation of her multiple sclerosis that had taken place last autumn, her accommodation to her illness had gone through a major metamorphosis.

Since she had disclosed her illness to me when we were dating, I’d always marveled at her adaptiveness, at how invisible she was able to make her disease appear-or, I guess, disappear. Sure, there were times when I knew she was anchored in place by fatigue or absolutely distracted by some ephemeral pain or unexplainable weakness, but most of the time Lauren managed to appear to live a life unencumbered by her illness. That I knew it wasn’t true only managed to make the illusion seem even more magical.

But no more.

The blindness that had struck her last fall persisted to some degree for weeks, and the residual effects were still apparent. Her vision, once so acute and a source of pride, was now compromised by gaps and holes and acuity problems that vexed her daily. She made a silent, unexplained transition from reading the newspaper to watching television in order to absorb current events, and the pile of novels by her bed wasn’t getting smaller anymore. She hinted twice that the nineteen-inch TV in our bedroom wasn’t really big enough for the room, was it?

The new one I purchased is twenty-seven inches. Much less optimistic than her, I pressed for a thirty-two-inch model. Denial, I think, caused her to insist on the smaller one.

Pain that once struck her occasionally was now a daily siege of heavy afternoon artillery, wreaking constant, wearying, aching damage on the bones and muscles of her legs and hips, sometimes on her hands and shoulders.

When I asked, she complained that her legs were often “heavy” now, and the once daily walks we took with Emily, our dog, on the dirt lanes near our home at sunset were now the exception and not the rule.

She didn’t return to work until February 1, and was only now beginning to adopt a caseload in the DA’s office that approached half-time. I could see in her face that she wasn’t sure she could really do it anymore, but she wasn’t ready, yet, to talk about not really doing it anymore.

Alone, I saw all these changes, and alone, I’m sure she did, too.

We rarely mentioned this new evolution of our relationship. I was giving her room to believe that her denial had some validity-that her stubborn belief that all things MS-related would soon pass would again be borne out.

The reality was going to be different this time, I suspected. Although MS is not contagious to other individuals, and I knew I would never catch it from her, I had begun to believe it was a communicable disease within families, and within relationships, and that our relationship was going to need to find a way to adjust to having been freshly stricken.

All these thoughts went through my head while I walked Emily and fed her and before I picked up the phone and punched in the number for The Children’s Hospital in Denver.

If I could pull it off, I decided, I was going to try to get Merritt transferred from Boulder to Denver in the middle of the night. I feared that if I procrastinated, by noon tomorrow Merritt might be on her way first to the Boulder Police Department and then to the state hospital at Fort Logan, out of my care, and out of my influence.

It was simple to discover that there were two female beds available at Children’s. I asked the charge nurse to hold one for me and started planning the moves I would need to make to get Merritt to Denver. I knew, to pull this scenario off on time, that I was going to need to be as quick on my feet as Tommy Tune.

Adrienne loved conspiracy, and I had no doubt that I could count on her. When I filled her in on the latest developments, she was irate at the stupidity of the police for even considering arresting Merritt for murder, and she made it clear she would love to interfere with their march to her patient’s door. She volunteered to take care of getting Marty Klein’s approval for the transfer and would ensure that the discharge and transfer orders were written and ready.

“What about the ambulance?”

Over the phone line I heard her snap her fingers.

“What about MedExcel and approvals?”

“This is the middle of the night, right?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Merritt is a high suicide risk?”

“Couldn’t be higher.”

“Sounds like an emergency transfer to me. I’ll certify that it’s a life-threatening situation and they’ll pay for the transfer and probably one inpatient day while they figure out how to save themselves any additional money. After that you’ll have to fight with them through the business office at Children’s to determine length of stay.”

“One day at a time is all I’m asking for now. I can live with that. The state will probably be paying Merritt’s bills after tomorrow, that is if they let us keep her at Children’s at all. And there are no guarantees about that.”

“What about her parents? What do they say about all this? Do they want her at Children’s?”

“I haven’t asked. That’s the last call I have to make. I assume that they’ll be agreeable. At least if Merritt goes to the inpatient unit at Children’s, they will have both their kids in one building. Let’s assume they concur, what do you say we set this up for four-thirty tomorrow morning? We get the paperwork in order and wheel Merritt out of her room in a wheelchair, make it look routine. Do the transfer to the ambulance stretcher down in the ER. There’s probably a cop outside her door already, and I don’t want the cop to get suspicious about what we’re doing until it’s too late to stop the transfer.”

“Why the dead of night?”

“Sooner the better. Cozy thinks she could be arrested any minute, although he doesn’t expect it until tomorrow. And the nurses at Children’s don’t really want her to arrive at shift change. Is four-thirty okay with you? I said I would try and be accommodating.”

“I’ve synchronized my watch.”

Before I phoned Brenda, I also needed to line up a psychiatrist to sponsor the admission at Children’s. Given the political ramifications of the case, I wanted that psychiatrist to be one who wouldn’t be put off by the media and law enforcement pressure that was sure to follow the revelations about Merritt’s arrest.

Joel Franks, the psychiatrist, who was the assistant director of the inpatient unit at Children’s, had been a resident of the same hospital in Denver where I had been a clinical psychology intern. Joel and I weren’t friends then, and we weren’t now, but we had managed to maintain contact over the years through an occasional admission I made to Children’s, or at an occasional party at the home of a mutual friend. Although I would never have awarded him psychiatry “best-of-show,” I considered him a good example of his breed. My impression was that he viewed me in about the same fashion.

But I knew Joel liked the spotlight. During our training year, I loved attending his case presentations and once skipped a lunch date with a beautiful medical student to see him perform at Grand Rounds. He pushed the podium aside and worked the staid crowd like a stand-up comic with an IQ of 190.

I guessed he would bite at the chance to have Merritt Strait on his unit.

I called him at home, apologized for the lateness of the hour, and explained my dilemma.

He seemed hesitant, as he should have. I dangled details that I’d withheld. First Chaney, then the pending murder charge against Merritt, and finally the elective mutism.

He bit.

As I suspected, Brenda Strait adored the idea of transferring Merritt to Denver and said she would call John and get right back to me.

After less than a minute, the phone rang. Brenda said, “John thinks it’s a great idea as long as you stay involved.”

“I’m planning to, Brenda.”

“Then let’s do it, Dr. Gregory.”

I had intentionally waited until last to call Cozier Maitlin and ask for his assistance. It wasn’t necessary for Cozy to cooperate in this plan, but I thought his presence at the hospital during the transfer might be insurance should we require help distracting the cops.

To say he wasn’t thrilled by the hour of the night that I expected him to be in place at the hospital was an understatement.

My head was on the pillow by midnight. Three and a half hours later I was in the shower.

The plan went forward with minimal drama. Everyone did what was expected of them.

I met Brenda Strait in the hospital lobby and together we proceeded upstairs to wake Merritt and inform her of what was happening. She cried at the news and hugged her mother, and then calmly assisted in getting her few personal things together.

The police officer in the hall was suspicious of all the middle-of-the-night activity, but not savvy enough about hospital procedure to actually guess what we were doing behind the closed door to Merritt’s room.

The nursing staff helped move Merritt from her bed to a wheelchair for the trip downstairs. As soon as the door to Merritt’s room reopened, the officer demanded to be told what was going on. The nurse shrugged and said, “Doctor’s orders; we’re taking her downstairs for something.”

The cop said, “My orders are to stay with her.”

The nurse said, “My orders don’t say anything at all about your orders. You can come on down with us if that’s what you want.”

Brenda and I trailed behind. The elevator was crowded and tense.

The ambulance crew was ready and waiting to implement the transfer to Denver, and the cop looked back and forth between them and Merritt before she finally discerned that something was seriously amiss.

“Wait, I’m sorry, what are you doing? You can’t take her from here. My orders are to-”

This was Cozy’s cue to hit his mark. His timing was, as always, perfect. He stepped onto the scene from the doorway to a small office nearby and said, “Excuse me, Officer, have I missed something? I’m an attorney and this young lady is my client. Has she been placed in custody?”

The cop raised her chin to look up at Cozy, who was suited in yards of fine wool and looked quite imperial.

“Um…no. Not that I…no, she’s not under arrest, but-”

“Thank you, Officer, for clarifying that. I’m so relieved I didn’t overlook something so important. It would have been most embarrassing.” He turned to Brenda and said, “I hope you and your daughter have a safe trip. I’ll speak with you both later today.”

The officer said, “I…um…need to get some instructions from my superiors.”

Compassionately, Cozy said, “Why don’t you do that? There’s a phone right over here.”

I smiled at Cozy’s panache as I walked over and assisted first Merritt and then Brenda into the ambulance. Finally, I leaned in and said to Merritt, “I’ll see you later today. You hang in there.”

She caught me with her eyes and without touching me held me as tightly as I’ve ever been held in my life. She waved good-bye to me, a delicate trill of the fingers of her left hand. I could not have been more moved right then had she spoken a thousand words.

Sam Purdy emerged from some shadows across the parking lot as I made my way to my car. There was no way I would have seen him lurking there if he hadn’t wanted me to. I raised my hand to wave and slowed my walk. He immediately receded again into the darkness.

I figured he had appointed himself Merritt’s guardian angel, willing to risk whatever it took to make sure that the transfer to Denver occurred without incident.

I changed my direction and headed toward him. When I arrived at the place where he had been standing, he was nowhere to be found.