Critical Conditions

Twenty-nine

“It’s about Chaney?”

When she answered me, Merritt’s voice was low, tentative, as though she were speaking to herself. She said, “Yes. Everything is about Chaney.”

With another agenda in different circumstances the therapist in me could have mined the sibling issues in those words for a mother lode. But my agenda this day insisted that I dig differently, cautiously. So I waited.

A minute or so later, Merritt said, “I hate it when Trent does that.”

“Does what?”

“The silent thing. Waiting for me to talk. To say something stupid.”

I said, “You think I’m waiting for you to say something stupid?”

She slapped her open hand against the knee of her sweatpants and yelled, “Don’t! Damn it, don’t! This is too important for your games. Jesus. I thought you knew that. Don’t you see what’s going on?” And she started to cry.

I felt as though I’d been slapped across the face. I said, “I’m sorry.” And I was.

“I don’t want her to die.”

“I know you don’t.”

“Everything I did, I did because I don’t want her to die. You have to believe that.”

“I do. I believe that.”

She looked at me. She said, “I have to pee.”

I almost smiled. In the same situation, an adult would have held it in. I said, “After you do, we’ll continue?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go find a nurse.”

Peeing took a long time. Merritt returned in her familiar leggings and T-shirt, with heavy socks on her feet. This T-shirt was inscribed HICK. Her T-shirts were like hieroglyphics to me. Her face was washed, her hair combed and down. She ran her tongue across the front of what I guessed were freshly brushed teeth.

She said, “I feel better.”

I said, “Good.”

“I promised I’d never tell anyone this story.”

“I’m sure it’s hard.”

“But Madison’s dead now, so…” Her face tightened and she fought tears.

“The promise was with her?”

She nodded. “You really won’t tell?”

“No.”

“What I did was Madison’s idea. Don’t blame her for everything. It wasn’t her fault. It was my fault. Blame me for what happened. But it was her idea.”

She paused for a moment as I considered why it was so important to her that I believe that Madison had been the instigator of whatever had transpired. Merritt seemed to soften as I sat with her. Intuitively, I guessed that she was trying to determine if I was planning to permit her to tell this story her way. I forced my face to remain fifty times more impassive than I felt.

“Trent knew where he lived. Dr. Robilio. I’d heard my mom and him talking about Dr. Robilio. They said that there were two people who could give Chaney the procedure she needs. One was the insurance guy, the head of the board that decides who gets what. And he had already turned us down. The other was Dr. Robilio. He could give Chaney the procedure if he wanted. If he said okay, then Chaney could go to Washington and get those drugs and get the transplant.

“I followed my dad there a couple of times. To his house, Dr. Robilio’s house. Madison helped me tail him. She’s older than me. She can drive. She’d get her mom’s car. And we would sit and wait a block away while my dad just sat and waited outside Dr. Robilio’s house.

“One day, Trent finally talked to him. I couldn’t see them the whole time, but I think they went in the house. I was so excited. I couldn’t imagine anyone would turn us down. Trent just had to make him see that it was a choice between money and Chaney. I thought we’d won for sure.

“That night at dinner, though, Trent was mad, as mad as I’d ever seen him. He was pissed off. I finished up eating as fast as I could and excused myself and went and sat on the stairs and listened to him tell my mom that he’d gone back to Robilio’s house and he’d been turned down. That Dr. Robilio had said no.” She closed her eyes. “And he said that he thought that…he could kill him.”

I had the impression I was supposed to be shocked here. But I’d already heard this story from John Trent. Merritt seemed puzzled at my neutral reaction.

“I finished my homework and went over to Madison’s apartment. I took the bus. Just told my mom I was leaving. I told Mad what had happened with my dad and Dr. Robilio. I said something like, ‘All he cares about is his money. He doesn’t care about my sister.’

“And Madison gets this funny grin on her face and she says, ‘Maybe he cares about something else. Maybe there’s something else he wants. We could trade it for your sister.’”

My heart was doing a drum solo in my chest.

“And you know what she does then? She can be really funny sometimes, and she can also be really gross. You know what she does?”

I said, “No, what?”

Merritt grew as nervous as I’d ever seen her. She played with her hair, she looked away from me, she folded and unfolded her arms. Finally she said, “She lifts up her top, and holds it up under her chin, and she grabs her boobs, and holds them up, too.” Merritt giggled, raised her eyebrows, and said, “Boy, she has big boobs. Anyway, she has one of her tits in each hand, and she says, ‘These.’”

The moment was snapped by three sharp raps on the door.

I said, “Just one second,” and opened the door far enough to see who it was whose timing was so bad.

Georgia, the head nurse, stood at the door with sad eyes.

She said, “I’m so sorry to interrupt. But it’s Chaney. She’s crashing.”

Merritt was behind me in a flash. She had both hands firmly on my shoulders. For a second, I thought she was going to throw me to the floor.

She said, each word clearly enunciated, “Take me to her, now.”

I said, “Yes.”

“Let’s go!”

Georgia’s mouth was agape. She had just heard Merritt speak for the first time.

I said, “Georgia, what privileges does she need for this? To leave the unit and go see to her sister? With staff?”

“You would need to, uh, d/c the suicide precautions and increase her level to II, at least.”

“Merritt, do you promise not to try to hurt yourself?”

“I promise.”

“I mean it.”

“I promise.”

“And you promise not to run?”

“I promise. I need to be with my sister. She needs me right now.”

“Georgia, consider it done. Will you write those orders, please? I’ll sign.”

For Chaney, this crisis was different from the last one. But for me, watching helplessly from across the intensive care unit, it looked remarkably the same.

Brenda Strait was sitting by herself on a chair next to an empty bed, two beds down from her daughter. On the way down the stairs, Merritt had prepared me for Brenda’s presence in the ICU. “Mom was here last night, not my stepdad. Trent’s in Boulder. She’s not going to handle this as well as he does. You need to know that. Okay?”

The “Okay?” was this fifteen-year-old’s way of reminding me that I had a job to do when we arrived at the ICU.

Merritt hugged her mother, whispered something I couldn’t hear, and walked confidently over to her sister’s bedside. She weaved through the staff and disappeared from view. I couldn’t see Chaney through the crush of equipment and the thick crowd of staff that was surrounding her.

I stood next to Brenda and said, “I’m so sorry, Brenda. How bad is it?”

She held a hand in front of her pale lips. “Bad. She’s so sick. My baby is so sick.”

“Her lungs again?”

She nodded.

“Anything else?”

She nodded again.

I waited for her to elucidate. She didn’t. I asked, “Have you called John?”

“He’s on his way.”

“Anything I can do?”

“Save my baby.”

Tiny popping sounds rat-a-tatted from her lips.

The crowd around Chaney didn’t thin for another thirty minutes. During the half hour some docs and nurses retreated and some reinforcements arrived with new equipment. But the throng stayed thick.

I knew that Merritt was in there somewhere whispering encouragement to her sister, providing her the essential spiritual nutrition that modern medicine couldn’t provide via intravenous line.

John Trent arrived at the ICU in a rush and barely said hello to his wife and me before he asked, “Is Merritt over there with her?”

I said, “Yes.”

He said, “Good, thanks, Alan,” and jogged over to try to corner one of Chaney’s critical care docs to get an update on her condition.

Brenda said, “It’s in God’s hands now.”

I thought, It’s been in God’s hands all along and He hasn’t been doing too great a job.

We watched the gradual thinning of the armies who were helping Chaney stay alive. They departed in ones and twos. My fear, the one that had my heart bobbing against my Adam’s apple, was that at some point all who remained would depart the bed together.

That didn’t happen.

Finally, after two remaining respiratory techs retreated to the nursing station, I was able to see Merritt, stretched on her side like a big letter S, her upper body curled around her sister. I couldn’t see Chaney’s face but could hear the rhythmic hiss and pulse of a ventilator. Chaney Trent was no longer breathing on her own.

John came to his wife’s side and took both of her hands and kneeled down in front of her. He said, “It’s not good. Pray, Bren. Pray.”

My mind wanted to escape, to be somewhere else, anywhere else, and my thoughts kept drifting back to the provocatively inane question: What on earth did Madison Lane’s breasts have to do with any of this?

I looked at my watch and knew the answer was going to have to wait. A patient I’d already rescheduled once would be expecting me to be in my Boulder office in seventy-five minutes.

Some things don’t sort quickly.

My drive back to Boulder was a jumble of the last twelve hours. My mother-in-law’s negative biopsy. Adrienne’s sexual confusion. Merritt’s revelation about trailing her father. Chaney’s deterioration. Madison’s murder.

Madison’s breasts.

And Merritt’s contention that she thought John Trent had gone inside Edward Robilio’s house.

What the hell did that mean? Had Merritt seen him go in or was she assuming he went in? Why didn’t John Trent tell me that himself?

I arrived in my office with seven minutes to spare. I used them to call Sam Purdy to fill him in about the latest crisis with Chaney.

He sounded beaten down by the news. He asked, “But she was alive when you left?”

“Yes. She’s on a respirator now. She didn’t look good, Sam. Nobody was making any optimistic noises.”

“I’ll call right down there. Listen, thanks for going with Lucy last night. Sorry about the way things turned out. I thought you might be able to help if the kids didn’t want to come out on their own.”

“I’m sorry, too. Mostly, I’m sick that Madison’s dead, Sam. Any word on the boy?”

“No, it’s going to be a lot harder to find a kid on a motorcycle than it is to find a fifty-foot land yacht.” He paused and lowered his voice. He was at the police department, in a little cubicle surrounded by other detectives in their little cubicles. “I want to tell you something about the inside of the motorhome that you aren’t supposed to know. Maybe it will help you with my niece. You understand?”

“Absolutely.”

“Before she was shot, the girl, uh-”

“Madison.”

“Yeah, Madison. She was beaten around the face and head with a videocassette.”

“A videocassette?”

“Yeah. The cops who did the scene said it was violent, a real rage thing. The damn cassette was crushed into a hundred pieces, tape loose all over the place, the poor kid’s blood was everywhere. Whoever did it almost ripped her damn ear off.”

“Jesus. And it was Brad?”

“Probably, his latents are everywhere. The kid’s not using his head at all anymore. That worries me.”

Merritt apparently was right on the money. Madison had reason to be afraid of Brad. “What does it all mean?”

“Don’t know. But it must mean something. The attack took place in the middle of the motor home, in the kitchen area. The VCR and the tapes are in a fancy cabinet above the driver’s seat. The boy had better weapons close at hand-knives, pots and pans. I don’t know why he used a videocassette.”

“What was the tape? Do they know what’s on it?”

“No. The label’s handwritten, says, ‘PRETTY WOMAN.’”

“Do you think these kids had anything to do with the extortion attempt?”

He was silent.

“Lucy told me about it last night.”

“I don’t know any more than you do. It’s unclear whether that was them. The kids. I just don’t know.”

“I’m still seeing Merritt every day. I hope I can learn something that helps with all this, Sam. I’m doing my best. And Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Lauren and I have some money. We want to donate it to Chaney’s fund.” I thought I could hear his teeth grind. “It’s almost thirty-one thousand dollars. I know it’s not enough, but maybe-”

“Thanks a lot. That’s generous of you. I’ll see if it will help. I’ll let you know. Sit on it for now.”

“We want to help, Sam.”

“I appreciate it. Listen, do you think it’s funny that the threats against Brenda stopped shortly after Chaney got sick? Is that a coincidence, do you think?”

The change in direction unnerved me, which was probably Sam’s intention. “I don’t know, Sam. I haven’t thought about it, but I would guess that the guy’s boiler just ran out of steam. Or maybe he heard about Chaney being sick and figured that God had answered his prayers. Biblical retribution. You know, an eye for an eye.”

“Exactly. That’s what I was thinking, too. But see, I asked Brenda about it when we had lunch yesterday and she said that the threats and harassment stopped a few days before she went public with the insurance problem. So if the asshole who was after her stopped because he figured that Brenda had gotten hers, you know, with Chaney being so sick-”

“How did they know?”

“Exactly. How did the asshole know? He cooled his heels before Chaney’s story was on the news.”

“You’re speculating here, aren’t you, Sam?”

“No, I’m theorizing. Civilians speculate.”

“You working this on the side?”

“I’m talking to some people. You know, unofficially.”

“Are there suspects?”

“The Denver police had some leads.”

I smiled as I hung up the phone. Sam was searching the bottom of the bag for that last remaining french fry.