Critical Conditions

Seven

Sam wasn’t exactly grumpy during the game. But he was preoccupied. Mostly, though, he wasn’t content. I counted on Sam’s underlying contentedness, even when he was irritated or pressured. His demeanor was a constant, like the color of his eyes or the contours of his immense shoulders.

Shortly after Sam and I had started going to hockey games, Lauren had asked, “What do you guys talk about? Just sports, or what?” I knew that it was sometimes Lauren’s style to begin meaningful conversations with a distancing move. Years ago, my interpretation of her style had been wrong; I’d decided since that the tendency had little to do with her discomfort with intimacy. Rather, she was protecting some transferential image she had of me, allowing me room to pretend that nothing meaningful was actually occurring during the conversation. It was a simple relationship sleight-of-hand to try and keep me from running.

She asked the question about Sam and me and hockey as she turned her back to begin clearing dishes from the dinner table.

Instinctively, I thought I knew where she was heading. I said, “Well, we do talk a lot of hockey. Sam’s a hockey evangelist and I don’t think he’s going to stop preaching until I’m converted and can recite every name on the Stanley Cup since 1950. But we talk about other stuff, too.”

“That would be hard? The Stanley Cup name thing?”

“If you’re not Canadian or from Minnesota, yes, it would be hard.”

“Like, what else do you talk about?”

“Cop stuff. Life. You know.”

“No, I don’t know. Hanging out at sporting events isn’t exactly your style. It’s forty-five minutes to McNichols, the games seem to last forever, it’s forty-five minutes back home. You guys go to two games a week sometimes. You’re spending a lot of time together. Does he talk about his family, do you talk about us? What goes on?”

I presumed that she wasn’t interested in just the facts. “You know how Sam used to seem content all the time? I mean gruff and prickly, but content?”

She thought about it a moment, said, “Yeah.”

“It’s different now. I’m not sure what it is, but I think he’s working up to telling me about it, whatever it is. Something has knocked Sam off balance. We’re still dancing around it.”

“Different how?”

“The contentedness, the joy, is gone. He’s brooding about something.”

“Something with Sherry?”

“Maybe. He doesn’t talk much about her.”

“Do you ask?”

“I don’t pry.”

“Simon?”

“He seems thrilled with Simon. Simon’s great. Soccer, peewee hockey; Simon even has Sam out rollerblading, if you can believe that.”

She tried on the image. “I think I’d like to see that.”

“Me too.”

“Work? Is it work?”

“No, I don’t think so. If I had to guess, I’d say family, or maybe something existential, some life-change thing. I’m not sure yet.”

“Does it have to do with last fall? With the shootings and everything?”

“That’s what I thought at first, but no, I don’t think so. He doesn’t seem to dwell on that much. I really don’t think that what’s bothering him is anything he’s talking about.”

“Well, then, it must be something he’s not talking about. What is he avoiding?”

I’m the psychologist. It should’ve been my line.

I said, “That’s a good question, sweets. But I’m not sure. Maybe it’s Sherry, maybe it’s his marriage. I’m patient. He’ll talk when he’s ready.”

She pulled a stool up to the sink so she could sit, and started washing dishes. With her back turned, she said, “You avoided my question before. Do you and Sam talk about us, about you and me?”

I had avoided it once and I was tempted to ask her to repeat the question and blame it on the running water. I didn’t. I said, “Yes, sweets, we do.”

She nodded.

“You want to know about what?”

“You’d tell me?”

“Of course.”

She edged closer to the front of the stool so she could more easily reach the sink. “I’m not sure that I want to know. I’ll let you know when I do.”

Our eyes never met during the entire interchange.

My mother always said don’t ask questions that you don’t want to know the answer to. Prosecutors, like Lauren, always say don’t ask a question that you don’t already know the answer to. My assessment was that this time Lauren’s discretion adhered to both rules.

What she wasn’t prepared to hear again was that her illness had changed us. I thought she wanted to know if I was confiding in Sam about it. But what was more compelling to her was her need to hold onto the luxury of pretending that her ascetic style of coping with multiple sclerosis was working like flawless software, and that our marriage remained blissfully uncontaminated by the toxic neurological residue of her stripped myelin.

Gretzky had scored during the early penalty but the Avalanche were up three to one when the second period ended. Peter Forsberg had a hat trick already. Sam said he liked Forsberg’s toughness much more than his puck handling and then stood and asked me if I wanted anything. He meant at the concession stands.

I replied, “Yes, Sam, there is something I want. I want to know what’s bugging you lately.”

“Case today is screwy.” He didn’t miss a beat before replying and pronounced his answer in a convincing fashion, as though he were really upset about work.

I said, “Yes, it sounds like it is. But it’s not your case and that’s not it anyway. Screwy cases consume you, they don’t bum you out. Anyway, whatever has been going on with you has been going on quite a while. Much longer than Dr. Edward Robilio has been Dead Ed. What is it, Sam?”

He looked at me as though he were actually going to answer. Instead, he shook his head a little and said, “I have to piss,” stood up, and disappeared down the tunnel that was next to his seat.

Ten minutes later he returned and handed me a soft pretzel covered with hard grains of some product that was masquerading as cheese. I said, “Thanks.” The scent of the faux Parmesan flashed me back to the aroma of Mike Toohey puking on my desk in the seventh grade. I held the wax paper at arm’s length and started breathing through my mouth.

He asked, “Don’t you ever have work things that get you going? Make you goofy?”

“Sure. All the time. Right now I have a new patient in the hospital, a kid, who’s, I don’t know, on my mind a lot.”

He said, “See? Some of it’s like that. And okay, some of it’s Sherry. What’s going on. Some of it’s her family. I’m not used to crap like this.” He filled his mouth with pretzel and chewed for a while. “My family in Minnesota is normal. People talk to each other, they help each other out. I don’t know about family grudges and holding stuff in. And I’m not handling it well with Sherry and her damn family and their squabbles. There’re apparently all kinds of goofy rules that get applied by these people and I don’t seem to know any of them.”

I waited a few heartbeats to see if he was planning to continue on his own before I asked, “What is it? What’s going on with Sherry and her family?”

He drained his beer. “Sherry has one sister. Older, by a few years. The sister moved to town eight, nine months ago. Boulder. The two sisters, they don’t get along, haven’t as long as I’ve known Sherry. Sherry won’t give her sister the time of day because of this thing that happened years ago, and Sherry says she’s furious at her sister because of how she treats their parents. All of this was bad enough for me when the sister lived out of state, but Sherry has been-well, what Sherry has been is a first-class bitch since her sister and her family moved to Colorado.”

He looked over. I don’t know if he was checking for boredom on my part, or what, but he apparently approved of what he saw. He continued.

“See, okay, this has been hard for Sherry. Her sister and her don’t talk at all, not a word.”

He paused. I said, “That’s funny. This new patient who’s on my mind? She’s not talking either.”

Sam was focusing on his story. “The sister is this big-time TV reporter. You watch Channel 7, the news? Brenda Strait? Seen her? That’s Sherry’s sister. Brenda Strait, you know, the Strait Edge? It drives Sherry crazy-it’s her maiden name, Strait. Sherry wants to pretend her sister doesn’t even exist and then she drives around and sees Brenda on billboards and on the sides of buses all over town. In our house, we can’t watch any programs on Channel 7 so that Sherry doesn’t have to run the risk of seeing some promo pushing her sister’s latest exposé. I don’t think she’s told anyone that her sister is Brenda Strait. It’s been eating her alive since Brenda’s family moved to Boulder.”

At the mention of Brenda Strait, I was busy catching my breath, sucking air through my mouth, visualizing dominos falling over, trying to peer far enough into the future to see where the last one was going to tumble.

Sam saw my near-apoplexy. As much for diversion as for compassion, I said, “I bet I know where you’re going, Sam. The little girl, Chaney. The one who’s been on the news all the time. She’s your niece, isn’t she? It must be awful, her being so sick.”

“Yeah.” He stared up at the rafters, then back down at the Zambonis. “Chaney’s my niece. You know me, Alan. I want to help. And I barely know her, Chaney. But it’s tearing me up. Brenda gives me the cold shoulder when I try to help. And John, I don’t know him that well. He’s her second husband. If I call, Brenda’s cold, tells me they’re doing fine, considering. I take food over, you know, for the family. Like I was a neighbor, but I’m family. I’m not somebody she works with or something. So I give it to the older daughter. Brenda and John are never home since this started, they’re always working or at the hospital. So I give it to the older kid, who I know a little better. I mean, I’ve known her longer, at least. I think she likes me, anyway. And…”

Sam paused and swallowed nothing. The new, more recent injury was more tender and raw and more difficult for him to talk about.

I didn’t know what to say. I tried, “That must be rough for you, too.”

The platitude failed to distract him. Sam exhaled in a quick burst and spun on me. His reaction to my feeble comment would not have been more intense had I warned him that his chair was on fire.

I tried to look compassionate and concerned. There were no mirrors anywhere around, but I feared that I ended up looking merely sheepish.

Sam seemed to be replaying the last two minutes of conversation in his head. And he didn’t need a road map to see what was going on. He said, “Oh, shit. I can’t believe this. The patient who’s not talking? You’re the one-oh, shit. No.”

I said, “Sam, until right this minute, I didn’t know she was your niece. Honest. If I had known, I probably wouldn’t have agreed to take on the case. I would have asked someone else do it.”

Sam tilted his head back and stared at the catwalks crisscrossing high above the arena. “Oh, God. Oh, hell. This is too much.”

Bruce Springsteen stopped singing mid-lyric and the players moved to center ice. The crowd hushed. The referee dropped the puck to start the third period. A Ranger one-timer from the blue line brought a loud buzz.

I tried to continue the conversation.

Sam said, “Later, after the game.”

After the game, we talked hockey, not family. The game ended with the home team up six to four. Too much scoring for Sam, who prized defense above all hockey skills. He had been a defenseman when he played in the Minnesota youth leagues as a kid.

“And I wasn’t one of these ‘offensive defensemen,’ either. The only time I scored was when somebody on the other team screwed up. But people didn’t score much on me, either. I look back on it sometimes and believe being a defenseman was good practice for what I do now. It’s like being a cop.”

We were walking to my car in the east lot at McNichols Arena. I liked to beat the traffic. Sam saw the postgame jam as part of the hockey experience.

He continued, “Except, what’s different is, in hockey, it’s all over in three hours. I like that better. Sometimes the cop stuff seems to drag on forever.”

He hadn’t mentioned his two nieces or Dead Ed Robilio since the third period had started. I valued my well-being too much to be the first one to broach the subject of his extended family. I figured he would get around to it.

He didn’t.

Almost an hour later we were back in Boulder. I turned into the lot on the south side of the police station where the cops park their personal vehicles and asked him where he had left his car.

“I’m not going home yet. I have to do the paperwork on Dead Ed before I go home.”

“Oh, I forgot.”

He smirked. “It seems to be one of your prerogatives. Forgetting.”

I killed the engine. “You’re way off base, Sam. I didn’t know Merritt was your niece.”

During a loud exhale he asked, “You talked to Brenda and John?”

“I’m on the case, Sam. Okay? I’m trying.”

“Brenda tell you about the other shit? The threats? The vandalism? All the trouble she causes?”

“Why don’t you pretend I don’t know. That’s not your case, is it?”

He shook his head. “God, no. Mostly being handled by Denver. We provided some protection for a while, some extra patrols.”

“It has to do with a story she did?”

“Yeah. Recycling contracts. She exposed some kickbacks and bribes and some mayor tried to kill himself, gorked himself out instead. His wife found him with a rope around his neck and then she had a coronary and died.”

“Yeah, I heard. Did they ever identify a suspect in the harassment?”

“Not that I know of. The guy was good at what he was doing. No wits, damn little physical evidence. Everybody figured it was because of the story. They were looking at personal connections, you know, irate relatives, and they were looking at the politicians who got swept up by her story.”

“Is the vandalism still going on?” I asked.

“Apparently it’s stopped.”

“At least there’s that.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s something. Small favors. So Brenda didn’t mention Sherry or me?”

“Let’s just say that I didn’t know she was your niece. But you know I can’t tell you what anyone said to me. That this is a member of your family doesn’t change any of those rules. I’m sorry.”

He opened his mouth as though he were going to say something, but just cleaned his molars with his tongue. I got the message clearly.

Sam said, “Well, I can say whatever I damn well please. John’s in Denver all the time at the hospital. Probably why you haven’t seen him. If it were Simon who was sick I know I wouldn’t leave his side for a second. Like I said, I don’t know him well, but I think John’s all right.”

I wasn’t sure where Sam was heading. It sounded as if he wanted his impressions of his sister-in-law’s family to be part of the mix I was considering in treating Merritt. If I was right, he was inviting me to descend a slippery slope.

“This is going to be awkward for us, Sam. I’m deep into this already. I mean with Merritt. Maybe too deep to get out cleanly, without doing some damage to her. For Merritt’s sake, you and I are going to have to find a way to sort all this out. One thing for sure is that I’m going to have to tell Merritt that you and I are friends. She has a right to know that we know each other.”

He shoved his lower lip under his mustache the way he does sometimes and curled his big hands into fists the size of pumpkins. He turned to face me. “I only plan to say this once. You ready?”

“Yes, I’m ready.”

“Don’t even consider getting holier than thou about this situation, Alan. And don’t even think of sermonizing to me about your work. I’m not a player in this, so don’t consider me. This is about helping Merritt. She’s a kid who deserves the best. If you are indeed the best person to be helping her right now, I can live with my role as fucked uncle. If you are not the best person to be helping her right now, God help you, you’ll need it.”

He took a deep breath and held it. My own breathing was shallow.

“So, from this moment forward, I’m going to assume that my niece is getting the best goddamn psychological care available on the face of this planet. Does that sit well with you, my assuming that?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Because if you jeopardize that care in any way, if you put Merritt at any risk by bailing out on her because of some misguided sense of propriety or because you decide some of your precious professional ethics are being threatened, well, God help you.”

“Sam-”

“Shut up. See, I know you better than you think, Alan. I’ve watched you in crisis. When things get hot, at first you’re a jumble of conflicting emotions, a damn philosopher in a foxhole. Dangerous shit, that. I also know that when things go from hot to flaming, you are able to do things that make me proud you’re my friend. Looking back, more than once, you’ve shown me you can take the heat.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m not going to pressure you to tell me Merritt’s secrets or to tell me what makes Brenda and John tick. All I’m going to do is to make sure you know that we, this family, are fast descending into a hell I could never imagine. And that makes this situation as hot as it gets. All I ask of you is that you make me proud one more time, buddy. That’s all.”

With an effort that seemed monumental, he lifted himself out of the car and closed the door gently.