Keeping Faith

by Picoult, Jodi

  Metz stands up for his cross-examination and walks toward the psychologist. “Dr.

  Keller,” he says, “do you know what you’re suggesting here?”

  She blushes. “Yes.”

  “Isn’t it true you went to parochial school for twelve years?”

  “Yes.”

  “And didn’t you have a very strong Catholic upbringing?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “At a symposium, Doctor, didn’t you go so far as to admit that once you personally felt God beside you when you were praying?”

  Dr. Keller looks into her lap. “I was only a child, but I’ve never forgotten it.”

  “Don’t you think that you might be predisposed to believing Faith is also seeing God?”

  At that, the psychiatrist glances up with a cool, professional demeanor. “Regardless of my personal beliefs, Mr. Metz, I conducted a variety of clinical tests–“

  “Yes or no, Dr. Keller?”

  “No,” she says militantly.

  Metz rolls his eyes. “Aw, come on,

  Doctor. Don’t you believe in God?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you go to Mass every week?”

  “I do.”

  “And the conclusion you’ve drawn is that Faith’s seeing God. Do you think your conclusion might be different from someone who’s … say … an atheist?” Metz turns around, his eyes skimming over Ian, sitting in the gallery.

  “If I was an atheist,” she says, “I’d still be a very thorough psychiatrist. And I’d still say this child is not psychotic.”

  Metz narrows his eyes. This is not going the way he planned. The little wren of a woman should have folded five questions ago. “Dr. Keller,

  didn’t you present Faith’s case at a psychiatric symposium?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  Metz advances on her. “Isn’t it true that you brought up the case at the symposium because you wanted to make yourself look good, Doctor?”

  “No. In fact, I was putting my reputation on the line.” She smiles sadly. “How many psychiatrists honestly want to go on record as saying that a child is seeing God?”

  “But you did get attention for yourself, at the expense of the client’s confidentiality,” he repeats. “Isn’t that somewhat unethical?”

  Surprising him yet again, Dr. Keller withdraws a piece of paper from the notebook on her lap. “I have a signed release right here from Mariah White, authorizing me to take her daughter’s case to the symposium as long as Faith’s name was not mentioned.”

  “Really!” Metz says. “So we have evidence of Mrs. White trying to prostitute her daughter to gain an audience.”

  “Mrs. White and I discussed this in depth,”

  Dr. Keller says. “It was our hope that we could involve a specialist with more experience than I have, who might help us get to the root of Faith’s visions. As you know, twenty degrees working together on a case is considerably better than just one. We weren’t looking for an audience,

  Mr. Metz. We were looking for a cure.”

  “Did you ever interview Mrs. White in the role of a therapist?” Metz asks.

  “No, I was her daughter’s psychiatrist.”

  “Then can you say with absolute certainty that somewhere in this mother’s twisted mind she wasn’t trying to make you put her daughter on display?”

  Dr. Keller looks at Mariah, then at Faith sitting several rows behind her.

  “No,” she says, her word soft as it falls into Metz’s outstretched hand.

  “She was brought into the emergency room, bleeding from both palms,” Dr. Blumberg says in response to Joan’s question. “Traditional emergency-medical procedures failed to stop the bleeding, and I was called in for a consultation.”

  “What did you do, Doctor?”

  He leans back in the chair. “I x-rayed her hands.”

  “What did you find?”

  “No sign of trauma. Literally, a hole went straight through. No tearing of tissue, no mangled bones, nothing to indicate that this was a puncture wound of any kind, in spite of the slow and steady flow of blood.”

  “Had you ever seen anything like this before, Dr.

  Blumberg?”

  “Absolutely not. It stumped me. I called in experts and colleagues, pediatric and surgical and orthopedic specialists, and we ruled out the medical possibilities one by one.

  Eventually I just treated the symptoms and sent the girl home, then went back to my office and started reading medical journals.”

  “What did you discover?”

  “That, as many people know, this had happened in the past.

  And I mean in the way, way past. I was wary of believing it myself, but apparently several Catholic saints have exhibited stigmata, or spontaneous bleeding from the palms, side, and/or feet that is medically inexplicable, but also medically verifiable. And there is no physical cause for it.”

  “When was the last documented case?” Joan asks.

  “Objection–Dr. Blumberg hasn’t been ordained.”

  “I’ll allow it,” the judge says.

  “Doctor?”

  “There was a man named Padre Pio, who died in 1968. But the most famous stigmatic would probably be Saint Francis of Assisi,

  who lived in the twelfth century. According to the reports I read, the wounds are quite real, quite painful.”

  “What are the main characteristics you found in journals about stigmata?”

  “They can’t be cured by ordinary remedies used to control bleeding or induce clotting. They last for months or years at a time, but unlike long-term natural wounds,

  don’t fester.”

  “How does that correspond to Faith’s wounds?”

  “Very closely,” the doctor says.

  “Did you officially diagnose Faith with stigmata?”

  Blumberg grimaces. “No. I was too skeptical. On her record I wrote that after weighing all medical possibilities, the conclusion I’d reached was that it was possible that Faith suffered from stigmata. But frankly,

  I’m still not comfortable with that diagnosis.”

  “This past weekend, what was Faith’s medical status?”

  “She was critically ill. She had been put on dialysis and had gone into cardiac arrest twice, her hands and side were bleeding again, and she’d slipped into a comatose state. My professional opinion was that she wasn’t going to recover.”

  “What is Faith’s medical status now?”

  Blumberg grins. “Shockingly healthy.

  Kids tend to bounce back quickly, but this is truly remarkable. Nearly all her bodily systems are functioning at a hundred percent,

  or are well on the way to doing so.”

  “In your opinion, Doctor, was Faith’s heart and kidney failure intentionally caused by someone?”

  “No. There are too many medical personnel around in an ICU for that to happen. Not to mention that traces of medicine which might, for example,

  cause the heart to arrest were not found in Faith’s bloodwork.”

  “Were her hand and side wounds caused by someone?”

  He shakes his head. “As I’ve said, there was no indicative trauma. Just a tiny tunnel … right through the skin and muscle and bone and sinew.” He holds up his palm. “There are more bones in the hand than anywhere else in the body,

  Ms. Standish. It’s virtually impossible to puncture it without causing some trauma. Yet that’s what I saw. Faith was just … bleeding.”

  “Doctor, are you required by law to file reports of possible child abuse?”

  “Yes, any physician must.”

  “Did you file this report after seeing Faith White a month and a half ago?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Did you file this report after admitting Faith White on Thursday night?”

  “No.”

  “Was there any reason for you to file that report?”

  “Absolutely none.”

  “Thank you,” Joan says. “Nothing fur
ther.”

  “Dr. Blumberg,” Metz asks, “how many cases of stigmata have you treated?”

  The doctor smiles. “Just this one.”

  “But you feel qualified to give us an expert opinion here? Isn’t it true that because you couldn’t diagnose Faith’s wounds, you made an educated guess?”

  “First let me tell you what I ruled out,

  Mr. Metz. I considered both direct and indirect trauma to the appendage. I examined the possibility of skin secretions, or nerves adjacent to the skin producing some substance, but the emissions were laboratory-tested, and they were indeed blood. Stigmata was the only diagnosis I could find that even came close to matching the clinical observations I made.”

  “Can you say without a doubt that this is stigmata?”

  “Of course not, it wouldn’t be my job. It’s the pope’s, I guess. All I can tell you is, Faith White was bleeding. And there was no medical explanation for it.”

  “Is there a psychological explanation for it?”

  Blumberg shrugs. “In journals I read,

  there were attempts to replicate stigmata in patients under hypnosis. In a couple of very rare cases, psychiatrists managed to induce a kind of colored sweat … but no blood.

  There’s no scientific proof that the imagination can produce stigmata apart from a religious idea.”

  “Could the wounds have been produced during a sleepwalking episode?”

  “I doubt it. As I said, they looked nothing like puncture wounds.”

  “Can you say conclusively that Faith’s injuries were not caused by Faith herself,

  or by another person?”

  “It wasn’t apparent,” Blumberg says carefully. “I certainly couldn’t come down with an absolute, but this clearly was not a case of child abuse. Mrs. White refused to leave her daughter’s side, was extremely concerned about Faith’s prognosis, and became very agitated when I hypothetically suggested a diagnosis of stigmata.”

  “Have you ever seen cases of child abuse, Dr.

  Blumberg?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “In any of those cases did the parent harm the child in front of you?”

  “No.”

  “In any of those cases did the parent seem concerned about the child’s prognosis?”

  “Yes,” the doctor admits.

  “In any of those cases did the abusive parent herself bring the child in to be treated?”

  Blumberg clears his throat. “Yes.”

  Metz turns on his heel. “Nothing further.”

  Faith leans to the right. “Kenzie,” she whispers, “I’ve got to pee.”

  “Now?” the guardian ad litem asks.

  “Yeah. Like right now.”

  Kenzie grabs the girl’s hand and makes their excuses down the row of seated people. Outside the courtroom, she turns left toward the ladies’

  room. She waits for Faith to finish in a stall and come out and wash her hands. Then she smooths the girl’s hair. “How you doing?”

  “It’s boring in there,” Faith whines. “Can we get a Coke?”

  “It’s important that we stay inside. It won’t be too much longer.”

  “Just a Coke? Five minutes?”

  Kenzie stretches out the kink in her back.

  “All right. Five minutes.” She leads Faith to the machines just inside the main lobby of the courthouse. People mill about: sequestered witnesses awaiting their limelight, attorneys on cell phones, uniformed men laying new mud mats on the floor. Kenzie deposits seventy-five cents and lets Faith push the buttons so that the can hurtles out of the chute.

  “Mmm. That’s good,” Faith says after taking a sip. She pirouettes, testing out her legs after sitting so long, and stops abruptly when she looks through the glass doors of the courthouse. On the steps, on the snow-covered lawn, are hundreds of people. Some of them hold up placards with Faith’s face posted; some of them wave rosaries in the air. Their shout of support swells like a tsunami as they catch a glimpse of her.

  She had not seen them coming in; Kenzie had taken her through a rear entrance simply so that she would avoid this. “Hold my drink, please,”

  Faith says, handing Kenzie the Coke can.

  “Faith, don’t–” she calls, but she’s too late. Faith has already pushed open the doors to stand on the stone steps that lead into the courthouse. After a rousing cheer from her supporters, she raises her hands, and they cry out even louder. Stupefied, Kenzie finds herself unable to move. “Hello,” Faith says,

  waving. She smiles as their prayers fall over her, accepting her due like a queen.

  “I’ve been treating Mariah White for seven years,” Dr. Johansen says. “Ever since she left Greenhaven.”

  “What was your opinion about her institutionalization?”

  “It never should have happened in the first place,” the doctor says. “There were a variety of other treatments for depression that would have been just as effective.”

  “Was there any way Mariah could have prevented herself from being hospitalized?”

  “No. Her husband believed it was the best option. Her mother was in Arizona at the time,

  unaware of the proceedings. Mariah was heavily medicated, and so removed from reality that she couldn’t stick up for herself.”

  “What was your opinion of Mariah White’s mental state upon release from Greenhaven?”

  Dr. Johansen frowns. “I found her to be emotionally fragile, but receptive to learning coping skills. And, of course, she was very preoccupied with her pregnancy.”

  “Did she exhibit signs of psychosis at that time?”

  “No.”

  “No delusions, no hallucinations?”

  “Never. Even when Mariah was hospitalized,

  it was for depression.”

  “Dr. Johansen, what is your opinion of Mariah’s mental state today?”

  The psychiatrist stares at his client as if divining her thoughts. “I think she’s getting stronger and stronger,” he says solemnly. “As evidence of that, you need only consider that she’s waived doctorstpatient confidentiality here in court, in an effort to retain custody. And look back to August: When presented with virtually the same trigger situation that once made her suicidal, she reacted this time in a much healthier manner. She pulled herself together, took care of her daughter, and went on with her life.”

  “Doctor, in your mind is there any possibility that this woman would harm her daughter?”

  “No.”

  “In your therapy over the past seven years,

  has there ever been an admission, inclination, or thought of Mariah harming her daughter?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Has Mariah spoken to you about the current circumstances surrounding Faith?”

  “You mean the visions and the media? Yes.”

  “Does Mariah believe that her daughter is,

  indeed, a visionary?”

  Dr. Johansen is silent for so long that Joan starts to repeat the question. “Mariah believes her daughter is telling the truth,” he says. “For whatever that’s worth.”

  “How do you go about getting someone committed to a mental institution?” Metz begins.

  “It’s a court process,” Johansen says. “A psychiatrist evaluates the person, and the judge reviews the files.”

  “So several people are involved in the decision.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does the system work?”

  “Most of the time,” the psychiatrist says.

  “In the cases where you can’t trust a person’s own judgment on the matter.” He stares pointedly at Metz. “However, in this particular case the system didn’t work. Mariah White was severely depressed and overmedicated, and her own wishes were not respected.”

  “If the judge had believed that Mrs. White didn’t need institutionalization, would the court order have been passed?”

  “No.”

  “If the psychiatrist had believed that Mrs.

  Whit
e didn’t need institutionalization, would the court order have been passed?”

  “No.”

  “If the next of kin, Colin White, had believed that Mrs. White didn’t need institutionalization, would the court order have been passed?”

  “No.”

  “I see. So you’re suggesting that these various people should have set aside their observations and taken the opinion of a woman who cut open her wrists a week earlier?”

  “That’s not–“

  “Yes or no, Doctor?”

  The psychiatrist nods firmly. “Yes, that is what I’m saying.”

  “Let’s move on. What did you prescribe for Mariah White when she first left Greenhaven?”

  Dr. Johansen looks down at his notes.

  “Prozac.”

  “Was this a continuous prescription?”

  “For a while. But after a year she went off it,

  and she functioned beautifully.”

  “You considered her emotionally stable?”

  “No question in my mind,” Johansen answers.

  “Has Mariah White asked for a refill of that prescription?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Three months ago,” the psychiatrist says. “August.”

  “Right after her husband left? Then she wasn’t as stable as you thought–right, Doctor?”

  Dr. Johansen straightens. “The same exact thing that threw her for a loop seven years ago happened again, Mr. Metz. This time, instead of attempting suicide, she called me up and said, “I need help.” Any psychiatrist in the country is going to view that as a mark of mental stability.”

  “Are there side effects to Prozac?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “Such as?”

  “Sometimes fluoxetine may cause headaches,

  chills, nervousness, insomnia, drowsiness,

  anxiety, dizziness. Also hypertension, rashes,

  nausea, diarrhea, weight loss, chest pain,

  and tinnitus.”

  “What about hallucinations?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Johansen admits. “But quite rarely.”

  “And suicidal ideation?”

  “On occasion. However, you must remember that I’ve seen this particular patient on this particular drug at a dosage of twenty milligrams P.o. for over a year. I know how her body reacts to it. were this a new prescription, Mr. Metz, you might be right.

  But not in the case of Mrs. White.”