“When you were there-think back-did you notice her hands, her fingernails?”
Oh, God. “Yes, they were painted red. A bright cherry red.”
He was silent again. Waiting for me to join him somewhere. Guiding me someplace significant with his formidable will.
I said, “One nail was broken. Badly. The kind of break that would really hurt. Let me think. It would have been her left hand. I was sitting on the left side of the bed. The ring finger. The ring finger of her left hand.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“The next day when I saw her upstairs, after she regained consciousness, the nail polish had been removed and the break had been filed down.” I paused, trying to remember. “I think that’s it.”
“Remind me, what was your question before?”
What? “I asked if there was anything that you could tell me-”
“Yeah, I remember, that was it. Listen, I have to go. Brenda’s agreed to have lunch with me, if you can believe it. I don’t think I should be late. Good luck with Merritt later on, say hi for me. Tell her I love her.”
As was becoming our routine, I greeted Merritt in the dayroom and walked beside her as we made our way across the locked unit to the walk-in-closet-size interview room. Other than the night she visited her sister, she had not been allowed off the unit.
On the aggravating drive into Denver I continued to question my therapeutic strategy with her. From the start, I had been treating her as though she were any other patient, any other talking patient, and would schedule and start a daily psychotherapy session, as though such a thing could exist solely in silence. And as though time were on my side and the corrosive quality of familiarity and routine would eventually sway her enough so she would trust me sufficiently to begin talking.
So far, though, my strategy hadn’t worked; no words but mine had fractured the silence in the interview room.
I’d decided that today would need to be different. The eroding quality of time wasn’t working well as a strategy. Two kids were in significant danger. And the police were going to be questioning John Trent about his actions soon enough.
I turned the knob and pushed the door inward. Merritt preceded me inside, as she had each time. This time, though, she walked across the room and curled herself casually in the chair that I had used the previous three days.
The room was furnished with a total of six chairs so that small groups and families could meet. I chose one of the chairs about five feet from her and sat down. I had spent much of the hour on the drive from Boulder to Denver pondering how long I would permit this session to go on in silence before I exposed my new strategy. Was ten minutes long enough? Twenty minutes too long? Or should I go right after her from the first bell. What?
Joel Franks and the treatment planning team had felt from day two of the admission that I should be putting some increased pressure on Merritt to start talking. As was common in this milieu, they were tempted to use privileges on the unit as bait. She could do this if she talked; she could do that if she talked. Or we could threaten her with a transfer to the state hospital at Fort Logan and use that as an incentive.
With another kid, I might have signed on. With Merritt, I wasn’t sold.
Merritt’s silence had never felt like a behavioral issue to me. In fact, other than the consideration that she hadn’t spoken a word since her arrival, she was a model of decorum on the unit; this wasn’t some kid zipping it up in order to be defiant. And as paradoxical as it sounded, her silence had never really felt like a control issue to me, either.
I had already decided by then that her silence was tactical. I hadn’t concluded exactly what the battle was, or what the tactic was supposed to accomplish. But there was a method to the silence. And the method, I had been assuming, had to do with Dead Ed, the gun, and the bloody clothes that Merritt had stuffed under her bed. Now I was adding two additional motivations and complications: Merritt’s stepfather, John Trent, and her best friend, Madison Monroe.
If I was being totally honest with myself, I would have admitted, however, that even before this day, I had grown frustrated with the lack of progress and with the fact that Merritt was more patient about our standoff than I was. I consoled myself with the reality that at least I was being more patient than just about everyone else who was involved in the case: the treatment team, Joel Franks, Cozy Maitlin, Merritt’s parents, MedExcel, and the Boulder Police Department.
I said, “You chose a different chair today?”
If she wasn’t going to talk, she couldn’t much object to my little confrontation, and I supposed I could be as trivial as I wanted to be. So far, I’d done serious soliloquies on Madison’s reaction to our meeting at Starbucks, reasoned explanations of Merritt’s incredible legal troubles, poignant presentations on the sorrow surrounding her sister’s illness, and provocative commentary on the state of women’s basketball in America.
A petulant diatribe about what chair she sat in didn’t seem too far out of line.
Her eyes were warm. Her lips formed the words, “Thank you.”
It struck me that she was entirely too comfortable sitting with me in silence, day in, day out.
I said, “You’re welcome. I assume you’re talking about my breaking every rule in the book to allow you to go visit your sister?”
She nodded.
“It appeared that it made a remarkable difference for Chaney, your being there.”
She tightened her jaw and widened her eyes. I thought she was trying not to cry.
On another day, in another mood, with another agenda, I might have exploited her vulnerability in an effort to weaken her resistance. But not this day. I was planning a more direct approach.
I said, “You’re in a tough battle, aren’t you?”
Instantly, her expression turned as bland as oatmeal. But I thought I detected a flash of curiosity in her eyes.
“This fight you’re in, it’s tough. You’re alone and you don’t have many weapons on your side. Silence feels like all you have going for you. But from where I sit, it doesn’t look like much leverage anymore. The other side has all the big guns. You have silence. That’s nothing.”
Finally, after examining my words from every possible direction, looking for subtext, she nodded suspiciously.
“The other side? Your opponent? They’re not playing fair anymore. Do you know that?”
She shook her head.
“They’ve started taking prisoners and they’re spying on the good guys.”
She shrugged, too quickly. I was sure her pulse was quickening. I was circling close to something.
“I don’t know what you think. Maybe you think you have them outfoxed. You don’t. They know about your stepfather’s visit. The police know he was there.”
Merritt looked away and pulled her long legs up to her chest and rested her heels on the lip of the chair. Her torso was almost totally screened from my view. Finally she peeked at me from around her right knee.
“And Madison? Your friend? She has a boyfriend named Brad somebody? A frat boy? They screwed up big time. Broke into Dr. Robilio’s mountain home and stole his RV. Half the cops in the state are looking for them right now. They’re armed and the cops know they’re armed.”
Merritt looked enraged. She stood and spun toward the door. The act was cat quick, and startled me.
In a tone that I knew was too parental the moment the words escaped my lips, I said, “We’re not done here. You’re not going back to the unit just because I’ve succeeded in making you uncomfortable. This isn’t about retreating from me anymore. Though I admit you’re good at that.”
She stopped. Her back puffed out and I could see the definition of her musculature as she inhaled.
I adjusted my voice. “This isn’t about retreating, Merritt. It’s about surrendering.”