I smiled meekly, bit my tongue, and told him to enjoy his meal.
My afternoon was relatively uneventful. Before returning to Denver, I stopped home long enough to amuse Emily for a while and give her an early dinner. I was being a neglectful parent and still she greeted me as gleefully as a child greets Christmas morning.
The situation hadn’t changed much at Children’s. Chaney remained stable. Critical, but stable. Merritt was camped out two inches from her sister’s bed. When I arrived, she was reading a dog-eared copy of Catcher in the Rye. She waved at me and smiled a greeting. Brenda was sitting in a rocking chair, keeping vigil with her daughter. John was pacing in the hall and saw me enter.
With a wave, he beckoned me over to the nursing station door. He said, “Merritt won’t talk to anyone but Chaney. And when Chaney stirs she won’t shut up, just puts her mouth next to Chaney’s ear and whispers to her.”
“How is she, John? Chaney?”
“Same. The transplant team repeated their imaging this afternoon. Her primary has been on the phone with Seattle. Chaney’s eligibility for the procedure is now questionable. If her lung function deteriorates much more they won’t take her even if we get the insurance approval.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He was looking at the floor, sliding the toe of one shoe back and forth. “I’m an old hippie, Alan. Stuff doesn’t mean much to me. It just doesn’t. I can honestly say that this is the only time in my life I’ve ever been envious of rich men. And today, I want to be a rich man, too. My baby’s dying in that room, in that bed, and I can’t do anything about it. A rich man could do something about it. Do you have any idea how that feels?”
I wanted to touch him, but he had wrapped himself in his grief. I said, “No, John, I don’t. I can only imagine.”
“Merritt’s calm as can be. She seems absolutely convinced that her sister’s going to be fine. I worry about what it’s going to be like for her when she realizes the gravity of what’s happened, what’s going on.” He looked up from the floor. “She’s going to need you then. You know that?”
“I know, John. I’ll do everything I can.”
We both knew I could do precious little. Maybe put a pillow down to cushion a ten-story fall.
I waited with John and Brenda about ten minutes until the respiratory technicians arrived to do a treatment on Chaney. As she left her sister’s bedside, I casually invited Merritt to join me in an empty conference room adjacent to the intensive care unit.
Without a moment’s hesitation, she came along. I was surprised.
I said, “Hi. Tough day. What you’re doing for your sister is wonderful. It really makes a difference.”
She shook her head. Didn’t speak. Instantly, I feared that we had returned to square one: Silence.
I said, “The police still haven’t found Brad. I thought you would want to know.”
One side of the conference room had glass windows facing the ICU. Merritt stood and adjusted the blinds so that she could clearly see her sister’s bed. She ignored my comment about the fraternity boy, but asked, “How is Mrs. Monroe doing? Is she, I don’t know…?”
I was relieved that she was still speaking. “I haven’t talked to Ms. Monroe. I’m sure it’s an incredibly difficult time for her.”
In a halting voice, Merritt asked, “Does she blame me? For what happened?”
My next words were crucial, I knew that. I softened my voice and narrowed my focus. I leaned forward on my chair, resting my elbows on my knees. I said, “I don’t know, Merritt. Should she?”
Merritt returned to the chair opposite me and sat. Her gaze stayed aimed at the window. She said, “Probably,” and she shook her head, a disbelieving kind of shake. “But I told Madison not to tell Brad. I knew he’d do something stupid. God.”
My impulse was to say, “Tell him what?” I didn’t. I sat back and feigned patience and allowed Merritt to find a pace for telling this story that suited her. She bit on her lower lip for a moment, then, with a thrust of her jaw, she began to bite on her upper one.
“Do you wonder why I wouldn’t talk for so long?”
“Of course I do.”
“Okay, here’s why.
“That day, the last day, I went over to Dr. Robilio’s house again. By myself this time, Madison wasn’t with me. I’d been working out at school. I took the bus and then I walked the rest of the way to his house. I wanted to…I don’t know…I don’t know…”
Merritt struggled, looking for a word. The silence stretched for at least ten seconds.
“Plead with him-beg him?-to save my sister. When I got there, I saw my stepdad’s car parked around the corner. Trent has this old beat-up Jetta, you can’t miss it. It’s an antique, at least as old as me. Anyway, I waited for him to come out. When he did, he came out of the back yard, not out of the front door, and calm as could be, he walked back to his car, started it up, and drove away.”
Merritt stood and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jeans. She was in profile to me, and she looked even taller and leaner stretched out against the window.
“I almost went home right then. Figured Trent had already done what I wanted to do.”
I waited a few beats. I said, “But you didn’t go home?”
“No, I didn’t. I rang the doorbell. Nobody answered. I rang it again. Nothing. So I went around back the same way Trent had come out of the yard.”
I reminded myself that the preamble to this story had to do with why Merritt had chosen to be silent. I was aware of her breathing being labored and wondered where she was heading.
“There’s all these doors back there that go into the house. And a big patio. And a pool with a fancy fence around it. I looked inside the house, didn’t see anybody. So I tried the doors. One of them opened. I went in.”
I had the strangest sensation right then, as though I were watching a movie and the music was reaching a crescendo and I knew something terrible was about to happen to one of the characters. I almost blurted out a warning to Merritt not to go in, to instead turn on her heels and run home. As fast as she could.
“When I did, I realized I had walked into this theater. The man has his own…private…theater. I couldn’t believe it. He has this big mansion and a stupid swimming pool and his own private theater and all I want is to have my sister stay alive…”
I desperately wanted to see Merritt’s face right then, but all I could see was a distorted reflection in the glass. It told me nothing.
“I looked around. Didn’t say anything at first. I was just getting madder and madder and madder about the money he has that he wouldn’t spend on Chaney.” She spun right then and faced me, her hands still in her pockets. “I went down this little hallway and there was this door. It was closed. I opened it and that’s when I saw him.”
While her left hand covered her mouth, her eyes were seeing nothing in the present. She was revisiting some horror. And it was freezing her.
I said, “Go on, Merritt.”
She swallowed. “I had never seen so much blood. It was everywhere. Everywhere.”
What?
“It was like he had drowned in it. And then I saw the gun, down near the edge of the desk, and I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to run. Maybe I should have run.”
Run! Yes, run!
“But I tried to save him. I needed him to be alive to help Chaney. He was my only hope. I didn’t want him dead.”
Her forehead wrinkled into a frown. “He was slumped on this chair and I pulled him onto the floor-God, I wasn’t strong enough and he just plopped down and blood splashed everywhere, and I, I-I’ve taken Red Cross lifesaving-and I tried to resuscitate him. Mouth-to-mouth. It was awful. There was blood in his mouth and each breath I forced into him made this sick noise and I was kneeling in his blood and his body felt so awful to touch and his damn heart wouldn’t start beating and between breaths I was yelling at him and yelling at him not to let my little sister die.”