Keeping Faith

by Picoult, Jodi

  Instead of returning to Faith, Millie moves down the corridor. There, she leans against the wall and covers her face with her hands.

  “Mrs. Epstein?”

  She quickly wipes away tears to find Dr.

  Blumberg standing before her. “Don’t mind me,”

  she sniffs.

  They fall into step, slowing as they approach the door to Faith’s room. “Has there been any change since last night?”

  “Not that I can tell,” Millie says,

  pausing at the threshold. “I’m worried about Mariah. Maybe you could say something.”

  Dr. Blumberg nods and enters the room.

  Mariah lifts her eyes just enough to see the nurses scatter. The physician pulls up a chair.

  “How are you doing?”

  “I’d rather talk about Faith,” Mariah answers.

  “Well, I’m not sure what to do for her just yet. You, though … you want something to help you sleep?”

  “I want Faith to wake up and come home with me,” she says firmly, staring at the shell of Faith’s ear. There were times when Faith was a baby that Mariah would watch the blood coursing through the thin membrane of skin, thinking that surely she could see the platelets and the cells,

  the energy going to this tiny body.

  Dr. Blumberg clasps his hands between his knees. “I don’t know what’s the matter with her, Mariah. I’ll run more lab tests this morning. And I’ll do whatever I can to keep her comfortable; you have my word on that.”

  Mariah stares at the doctor. “You want to know what’s the matter with her? She’s dying. How come I can see that, even without a medical degree?”

  “She’s not dying. If that were the case, I’d tell you.”

  Mariah focuses on Faith’s face with a passion, gazing at the blue smudges beneath her eyes, the tiny slope of her nose. She leans close, so close that only Faith will be able to hear her words. “Don’t you give up on me,”

  she whispers. “Don’t you dare. You didn’t for years and years. Don’t you do it now.”

  “Mariah, honey, we’ve got to go to court.”

  Millie taps her wristwatch. “Ten o’clock.”

  “I’m not going.”

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  Mariah turns so quickly her mother takes a step back. “I’m not going. I’m not leaving her.” She touches Faith’s cheek. “I do have a choice.”

  The only concession that Joan Standish has made to the fact that she’ll be facing the infamous Malcolm Metz in a courtroom is the addition of fifteen minutes of butt exercises to her daily routine. They come in between brushing her teeth and drinking coffee, a brutal procession of squats and lunges and lifts that leave her clenched and sweating. She likes to picture Metz while she does them, imagines him gaping at her fanny after she wins the case and sashays away down the hall of the superior court.

  So on the morning of the custody hearing, she does her exercises, showers, and then pulls a red wool suit from her closet. It’s conservative, but it’s bright, and she’s willing to use any trick she can to draw attention away from Malcolm Metz.

  Sometime during her bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats she remembers that she needs gas in her car. Joan gives herself a mental pat on the back for attention to detail; maybe even at this very moment Metz is running ten minutes late because he forgot to fill up. She washes her hands carefully so as not to splatter her suit and gathers up the briefcase she’s packed the night before.

  She leaves twenty minutes ahead of schedule, thinking it’s good to be a little early, never knowing that the phone in her house rings just moments after she is gone.

  Joan can feel the perfect cone of calm she’s erected around her professional self crack the moment Millie Epstein comes running toward her, clearly agitated. “Tell me Mariah’s in the bathroom,” Joan says warily.

  “The hospital. I tried to call you.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not what you think,” she explains.

  “It’s Faith. She’s incredibly sick, and Mariah refuses to leave her.”

  “Goddamn it,” Joan mutters as Malcolm Metz and Colin and a young female associate approach the plaintiff’s table of the courtroom.

  “Joan,” Metz says pleasantly,

  “I’ve got one for you: What’s the difference between a lawyer and a catfish?”

  “Not now.” Joan is vaguely aware that the gallery of the court, usually deserted for custody hearings, is now packed to the point of discomfort with media representatives.

  “One’s a scum-sucking bottom feeder,”

  Metz says, laughing, “and the other one’s a fish.

  Get it?”

  “Speak for yourself, Malcolm,” Joan says,

  extracting files.

  “All rise for the Honorable Judge A.

  Warren Rothbottam!”

  Joan stands, lifting her gaze at the last possible moment. Judge Rothbottam flips briefly through the file in front of him, then glances from the plaintiff to the defendant. “Ms.

  Standish. Are you missing something?”

  “My client, Your Honor. May I approach?”

  Rothbottam sighs. “I just knew this one couldn’t go easy. Come on up.”

  Metz falls into place beside Joan,

  looking like the cat that has swallowed the canary.

  “Your Honor,” Joan says, “there’s been a terrible emergency. My client’s daughter was hospitalized last night, and she won’t leave her bedside in order to be present in court. I request a continuance until the girl is released from the hospital.”

  “Hospitalized?” Rothbottam looks for confirmation to Metz, who shrugs. “Is she dying?”

  “I don’t believe so,” Joan answers.

  “It’s my understanding that Faith is suffering from medically inexplicable bleeding.”

  “So-called stigmata,” Metz interjects.

  “The doctors have not come to that conclusion yet,”

  Joan snaps.

  “Oh, that’s right. It could be something worse.”

  Rothbottam scowls at him. “If I feel that I need an interpreter, Mr. Metz, you’ll be the first one I call.” Turning to Joan, he says, “I assume the girl is in critical condition?”

  “I … I think so, Your Honor.”

  “I see. However, the child’s father managed to make it to the courtroom; I expect the mother to do the same. And don’t think I can’t see through some “angel of mercy” device. My docket is a nightmare until Christmas. I’m denying the request for a continuance. You’ve got twenty minutes to figure out how to get your client to come to court, or I’m sending a sheriff out there to bring her in locked up. We’ll resume at ten-thirty.”

  “Before she goes to find the defendant, Your Honor,” Metz interjects, “I need a court order.”

  “Do you,” the judge says dryly.

  “Your Honor, time is of the essence here, and I need a ruling this morning on an issue that might make the difference between life and death for the girl.”

  “What the hell is this?” Joan says. “An emergency hearing? Now?”

  Metz bares his teeth at her. “That’s why they call it an emergency, Joan.”

  “That’s it,” Rothbottam announces. “I want you two in chambers. Now.”

  Joan walks to the defense table to collect her notepad. Seeing the judge leave, she runs down the aisle to the door and beckons Millie. As a sequestered witness,

  she’s not in the courtroom–but isn’t allowed to stray too far. “Do whatever it takes to get her here,” Joan hisses. “She’d better be in court by the time I get out of chambers, or she’ll be dragged in by the police.”

  When Joan enters the judge’s chambers,

  Metz has already taken the comfortable chair.

  Rothbottam waits for Joan to sit, too.

  “Malcolm, what are you doing? This isn’t Manchester. This isn’t New York City. This isn’t the three-ring circus you like to run your dog-and-pony show in.
This is New Canaan,

  boy. Grandstanding isn’t going to get you jackshit.”

  “Your Honor, this isn’t just a ploy for positioning. I need a restraining order against Mariah White, preventing her from visiting her daughter.”

  Joan laughs. “Get over yourself,

  Malcolm.”

  “Your Honor, I won’t dignify that outburst. I was concerned enough when the physical damage to the child just involved Faith’s hands, but the situation’s gotten worse–the child is in critical condition at Connecticut Valley Medical Center. We’ve taken the liberty of contacting an expert, who’s on his way here from the West Coast as we speak, and who will explain why Mariah White exhibits the classic characteristics of a person suffering from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy–a mental illness that would cause her to harm her own daughter.”

  Joan narrows her eyes, smelling a rat.

  She’s savvy enough to know that Metz wouldn’t pull this strategy out of a hat overnight. It’s something he’s had lined up for a while, certainly long enough for her to depose his expert. This surprise witness is no surprise at all–at least not to Metz.

  But he is the picture of innocence and righteous fervor. “It’s a complicated disorder. The mother actually makes a child physically or psychologically ill to attract attention to herself.

  If the child is left in the mother’s care, well,

  God only knows what might eventually happen.

  Paralysis, coma, even death. Clearly, this issue will weigh upon who gets custody of the child in the long run, but for now, Your Honor, I beg you to protect Faith by issuing a restraining order against Mrs. White for the length of the trial.”

  Joan waits for him to stop speaking, and then bursts out laughing. “Are you going to let him get away with this, Your Honor?”

  Metz doesn’t even spare her a glance.

  “Just listen to the evidence, Your Honor.

  Isolating the child from the mother is the way Munchausen by Proxy is usually detected by mental-health professionals. If the mother can’t get to the child, the child suddenly isn’t sick all the time.” He leans forward. “What have you got to lose,

  Judge? This is a win-win situation. If Mariah White isn’t suffering from Munchausen by Proxy … well, Faith’s in the hospital anyway, and in good hands. If Mrs. White is suffering from it, then you’ve saved the kid’s life. How can it possibly hurt to have a temporary order enforced until you’ve listened to the testimony of my expert and drawn a conclusion of your own?”

  Judge Rothbottam turns to Joan. “You have anything to say, Standish?”

  She looks at Metz, then at the judge.

  “This is bullshit, Your Honor. In the first place, unlike Mr. Metz’s client, who clearly is putting his own interests first, the reason my client isn’t here is because she needs to be at her daughter’s bedside. That merits a commendation, not a restraining order. In the second place, Mr. Metz is trying to divert attention from my client’s devotion to her child with this new disease-of-the-week ploy. I don’t know what this syndrome is; I don’t even know how to spell the damn thing. This trial is starting in less than a half hour, and I’m ready to go, but out of nowhere Metz waltzes in with this obscure clinical diagnosis–not that I remember him getting a degree in psychology, come to think of it–and I’m going to need time to research it and make a rebuttal.”

  “More-Us-Not–” Metz says slowly.

  “Go jump in a lake.”

  He raises his hands in mock affront. “Just trying to help you “spell the damn thing.”"

  “I’m not done yet, Metz.” She turns toward the judge. “He can’t pull in a witness from thin air the day–no, correction–the minute the trial starts. That’s totally unfair.”

  Judge Rothbottam turns to Metz. “If you cut out all the soliloquies I’m sure you’ve budgeted into your directs, how long will it take to run through your other witnesses?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly into tomorrow.”

  Rothbottam considers for a moment. “All right.

  I’ll grant the restraining order for now.

  Let’s play it by ear. We’ll start the trial,

  and, Mr. Metz, you’ll put your Munchausen expert on last. When it comes to that, we’ll adjourn to chambers and see if Ms. Standish needs more time to prepare her cross.”

  “I think it would be beneficial if everyone could hear testimony on the disorder first–“

  “You’re lucky I’m letting you put the guy on the stand, period. This is what we’re doing.

  I like it–the child is safe, Joan gets at least a day to prepare, and frankly, Metz, I don’t care what you think at all.” The judge cracks his knuckles and gestures toward the door. “Shall we?”

  Early that morning Father MacReady walks into Faith’s room. He stops for a moment at the threshold, taken by the sight of Faith, intubated and deathly still, of Mariah holding her daughter’s forearm and dozing. Perhaps this wasn’t the time to bother them; he’d just heard from one of the parishioners that the girl had been taken off in an ambulance the night before, and he wanted to pay a call. He backs up toward the door quietly, but the sound of his boots on the linoleum makes Mariah startle awake.

  “Oh,” she says huskily, then clears her throat. When she realizes who the visitor is,

  she becomes visibly upset. “Why are you here?”

  Father MacReady puts two and two together,

  realizes that for some reason Mariah thinks he’s been summoned for last rites. It would never happen, since Faith is not a Catholic child, and yet that hasn’t stopped his interference in her life before. He sits down beside Mariah on a chair.

  “I’m here as a friend, not as a priest,” he says.

  He gazes at Faith’s small, pinched face–so tiny to have caused so much controversy.

  “It was her hands again?”

  Mariah nods. “Now it’s her fever, too.

  And her dehydration. And the screaming and the fits.”

  She rubs her hands over her face. “It was worse than the first time, much worse.”

  “Fits?”

  She shudders. “Colin and I–we could barely hold her down. The first time this happened, she was unconscious. But this time … this time she hurt.”

  Father MacReady gently strokes his palm along Faith’s cheek. “”Eli, Eli,

  lama sabachthani,”" he murmurs.

  The words make Mariah go still. “What did you say?”

  Surprised, he turns. “It’s Hebrew,

  actually.”

  Mariah thinks back to the previous night, when Faith called out for Eli. She cannot be sure of the other unfamiliar syllables, but they could have been what Faith was moaning, as well. She tells this to the priest.

  “It’s a biblical verse,” he says.

  “Matthew twenty-seven: forty-six.”

  “Faith doesn’t speak Hebrew.”

  “But Jesus did. That was his language. The words translate to “My God, My God,

  why hast thou forsaken me?”‘ Saint Matthew tells us that Christ didn’t go gently into that good night. At the last moment, he wanted to know why God was making him go through this.” He hesitates,

  then looks at Mariah. “The bleeding, the pain,

  that phrase–it sounds like Faith was in ecstasy.”

  “Agony is more like it.”

  “It’s not the word as you know it. Most accredited stigmatics experience periods of religious ecstasy. Without it, it’s just bleeding from the hands.”

  At that moment Faith shifts in her sleep, and the blanket falls away to reveal the wound on her side. Father MacReady draws in a breath.

  “This, too?” When Mariah nods, he knows that he is fairly glowing, that his response is inappropriate for the severity of the occasion. But the wound on Faith’s right side falls almost exactly where Jesus was supposedly nailed to the cross. It makes him dizzy, just to think of it.

  Sobering, he calls upon his resources as a pastoral counselor.
“Mariah, Faith isn’t feeling pain of her own. From everything you’ve told me, she was simply reliving Jesus’ pain,

  acting out his sufferings on the cross.”

  “Why her?”

  “Why Him?” Father MacReady says quietly. “We don’t know why God gave us His only son, to die for our own sins. And we don’t know why God lets some people experience the Passion of Christ when others can’t even understand it.”

  “Passion,” Mariah spits out. “Ecstasy.

  Whoever came up with these names didn’t go through it.”

  “Passion comes from the Latin passio.

  “To suffer.”"

  Mariah turns away from Father MacReady’s earnest convictions. Passion. She repeats the word softly to herself, and thinks of Ian, of Colin, of Faith, wondering if all love–earthly or divine–is certain to hurt.

  When the nurses come to take Faith for X rays again, Mariah says good-bye to the priest.

  She does not particularly care what happens to Father MacReady. She does not care if Faith is experiencing Christ’s suffering or her own. She only wants it to go away.

  Faith is sitting in a wheelchair, nodding in and out of sleep. Mariah’s hand rests on her shoulder as the nurse wheels her into the elevator.

  They get out on the third floor and wait in the hallway while the nurse finds out which room they are headed to.

  While they stay there, a man is rushed by on a stretcher, surrounded by a knot of doctors all working frantically en route to the ER. Mariah hears them yelling out things about defibrillation and operating room number three and she shudders,

  thinking of her mother’s heart. The man’s hand dangles off the stretcher, brushes Faith’s knee as he is wheeled by.

  But Faith, moaning softly, doesn’t even seem to notice.

  “Mariah.”

  When she doesn’t answer, Millie grabs her shoulders and gives her a shake. “Have you heard anything I’ve been saying?”

  “You go, Ma. I’ll try to come later.”

  “You don’t understand. If you don’t get up and walk out this door, the police will physically carry you out.” Millie leans over her. “If you don’t come to the hearing, Colin will get Faith.”

  That one sentence spikes through Mariah’s confusion. “He can’t,” she says, slowly getting to her feet. “He just can’t.”