She faced me.
“Please have a seat. It’s time for you to hold up the white flag. It’s time for you to surrender. Let me help you do that. Let me help you surrender.”
I thought she looked like a caged animal. Not like Emily in her dog run. Emily always wanted the gate to open. Merritt preferred the cage. She was a fearful animal. She was fearful that the cage would be opened. And that she would no longer be safe.
She sat. Folded her arms across her chest. I noticed that she was wearing her CHURCH GIRL T-shirt again.
“Merritt?” I said. “Look at me, please.”
Petulantly, she did. In that instant, with that expression, I was reminded that there was still plenty of adolescent residing in this remarkable girl.
“One more thing you should know. The police have your fingernail. The red one. The one you broke when you were at his house.”
This time she couldn’t stop the tears.
A good five minutes later, her eyes were dry and she was staring at me with a mixture of indignation and surprise. I imagined it was the look she would flash at a referee who had just fouled her out of a game on a questionable call. My ambush, I was afraid, had failed. She wasn’t going to talk.
Her shoulders dropped. She swallowed. Before my eyes, her resolve crumbled into pieces, and she said, “Okay, I think I’m ready to talk.”
The sound of Merritt’s voice should have shocked me, but it didn’t. I’d imagined her voice before, of course, but I’d imagined it wrong. I’d anticipated an edge to it, a snarliness, but her voice was soft and tentative and was graced with the soft curves of a young girl’s melody. I’d imagined, too, the poignancy of her first words to me, and I’d imagined that wrong as well. She was matter-of-fact about beginning to speak, almost as though talking was something she had been doing her entire life.
I said, “Great.”
She said, “I guess.”
“Hi,” I said. It was probably clinically ill advised to smile, but I couldn’t help myself.
She smiled back. My indiscretion, I decided, had been worth it.
The times I don’t know what to say in psychotherapy are easily as numerous as the times I think I do. Most of the time, I think, my patient and I are better off when I admit that I’m at a loss for words. I said, “I’ve already talked too much, Merritt. I don’t know what to say now. I think now that you’ve decided to speak that it’s up to you to decide what happens next.”
She smiled again, the rueful smile I’d already witnessed where the corners of her mouth actually turned down a little. She held up her left hand and spread her fingers. She said, “The police know I broke my nail?”
“I don’t know what they suspect. I know that they recovered the broken part.”
“And they know about my-about Trent?”
Brenda called her husband by his surname. Merritt had apparently adopted the name, too.
“Again, I don’t know what they suspect. They know that he was there.”
She retreated for almost a minute, and I feared that she had decided to once again be dumb. Finally she said, “I have some other questions.”
“Okay,” I said. I almost said, “Shoot.” Sometimes I’m really stupid.
“Trent’s a psychologist, you know that, right?”
“Yes.”
“And I know all about the rules that you keep reminding me about that says he, or you, can’t say anything about what happens with somebody that they’re talking to. But he does, you know? Not seriously, but he’ll tell my mom that my patient, George, or whoever, said this or that, or did this or that, or whatever. You know?”
“Yes, I know. Unfortunately, it happens. Are you concerned I will do that, too?”
“Can you wait before you ask your questions?”
Chastised, I said, “Of course, please continue.”
“My roommate told me something last night that I didn’t know. She said I have rights, even though I’m a kid, that I can talk to you and tell you things and that you can’t tell anybody, even my parents, what I said. Is that true?”
Colorado law grants fifteen-year-olds many of the psychotherapy privileges and protections that are enjoyed by adults.
“Yes,” I said, “that’s true. With some exceptions.”
She seemed surprised and troubled by my reply. “What are the exceptions?”
“Child abuse is one. Or if I think you’re going to kill yourself, or if you threaten to hurt someone else. That’s about it.”
“That’s about it? Or that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Can I even keep you from telling Mr. Maitlin what I said?”
“Technically, yes, you can.”
“Even though I’m a kid?”
“Even though you’re a kid.”
“I am fifteen, you know.”
“I know.”
“Good.” She looked at her feet. “I’m including your wife. You have a wife, right?” She moved her gaze to my left hand searching for a ring.
“Yes, I’m married.”
“Not her, either. You can’t tell her.”
“Not her, either. That’s no problem.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Except for the trusting me part.”
She rubbed the place on her arm where the IV catheter had been pulled. “I already trust you. I was beginning to trust you before Chaney got so bad the other night. That night aced it for me.”
“I’m glad you trust me, Merritt. Consider yourself warned, though, I’m not convinced that keeping everything secret is what’s best for you, especially not from your attorney and your parents.”
“Well…maybe that’s because you don’t know what I have to say.”
“Maybe.”
“You remind me of Trent.”
Dangerous ground. I didn’t comment.
Merritt read my reticence and said, “Don’t worry, that’s a compliment.”
“What about me reminds you of your stepdad?”
“You don’t get caught up in stuff. Things go nuts all around you and you act like it’s going to be fine. And like I said, I think I can trust you.”
“Thanks. You trust him? Trent?”
“Yeah, I do. Maybe more than my mom. What do you want to know first? Why I’ve been silent?”
“Sure.”
“Wait, what about the people here at the hospital? The nurses, and Dr. Franks? Can you tell them what I say without my permission?”
In all my years of inpatient work, I’d rarely had a patient ask for confidentiality from the treatment team. “Again, technically, you can keep me from telling anyone what you tell me. Including the treatment team. I doubt if I have to tell you that I think that’s a bad idea. But it’s your right to prohibit me from telling anyone.”
She straightened in her chair. “Okay, let me list the rules. If you want me to tell you what’s been going on, then you’re going to have to consider yourself prohibited. From telling anybody anything. My parents, my lawyer, anybody here, anybody.”
I thought about her offer and said, warmly, “Fine. I understand what you’re asking. And with that restriction in place, our session is over.”
“What? I’ve just started talking.” She couldn’t believe I would walk away from the opportunity to hear her story.
“Merritt, you have rights, and because of those rights you can set the rules. Clinically, I’ll accept that you may have valid reasons for wanting confidentiality from your parents and even your lawyer. I’m not saying I agree, but I’ll abide by those rules. But I disagree with your exclusion of the treatment team here at the hospital. And I do have a choice about that. I won’t be manipulated by your rules. I won’t conspire with you around them, and I won’t let them dictate my treatment of you. If you insist that I keep our conversations secret from the treatment team, then I have to do that. What I don’t have to do is be your collaborator. As long as you insist I keep secrets from the hospital staff, I won’t listen to your secrets. We won’t have conversations until you change your mind.”
She pulled her legs back up onto the chair, again resting her heels on the lip of the seat. She lowered her head to her hands and gazed at me through the space between her knees. She eyed me, unblinking, lips parted, for what felt like an eternity of seconds.