“It may have been. She was with him.”

“Did he beat her again?”

“Has he beaten her before?”

“He’s hit her before. He has a temper. Did he beat her?”

I thought about the bloody trail and Madison’s pitifully crumpled body. I said, “Someone may have.”

“He beat her to death?”

“No, she wasn’t beaten to death.”

“How did she die?”

“She was shot.”

“Did you see her?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“In the mountains. Near Steamboat Springs.”

“No, no. Where was she shot? Where on her body?”

“She was shot a number of times, Merritt. Different places.”

“Was it really awful? Like…Dr. Robilio?”

“I didn’t see him. What happened with Madison wasn’t pretty, Merritt. I don’t think she suffered, though.” I had no idea whether or not Madison had suffered. But I desperately wanted to put a Band-Aid on Merritt’s hurt.

“She’s so stupid. I told her not to stay with him. He’s, he’s trouble. He’s…”

“What?”

“He scares me, okay? I told her not to tell him. He’s such a jerk.”

“Tell him what?”

She looked at me with total concentration. I knew we had reached the edge of the frontier. She had to decide whether to guide me through it.

She hesitated, hugged herself, and said, “It’s about Chaney.”

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?”