Keeping Faith: A Novel (57 page)

And when Joan first asks her to list her credentials, her voice shakes.

“How long have you been a child psychologist,

Dr. Keller?”

“Seven years.”

“What are your specialties, Doctor?”

“I do a lot of work with younger children who’ve suffered family trauma.”

“Why were you chosen to be Faith’s psychiatrist?”

“I was referred to Mrs. White by her own psychiatrist, Dr. Johansen. He called me up and asked me, as a favor, to take this case.”

“How many times did you see Faith?”

Dr. Keller folds her hands in her lap.

“Fourteen,” she says.

“What sorts of things did you do?”

“Basically, I watched her play. It’s an excellent way to pick up on disturbing behaviors.”

“What were some of the behaviors you noticed?”

“Well, there was a very strong defense mechanism she’d developed–an imaginary friend who could keep her safe. Faith referred to her by a certain name–her guard, I thought she was saying. It made wonderful psychological sense: A little girl who’s been dealt several difficult blows found someone to protect her. I thought it was very healthy.”

“Then what happened?”

“Mrs. White became concerned because Faith began to exhibit behaviors not consistent with her upbringing. She was quoting Bible verses, although she’d never seen a Bible in her life. And there were a couple of instances where Faith came in contact with an ill person, and managed to make them better.”

“What did that lead you to believe, Doctor?”

Dr. Keller smiles ruefully. “I didn’t jump to any conclusions at first. But I started to wonder if instead of calling her imaginary friend her “guard,” Faith was actually saying “God.”" She removes her glasses and wipes them on the hem of her skirt. “Seeing God is usually a sign of psychosis,” she explains. “It didn’t sit well with me, because Faith was able to function normally in every aspect of her life, with the exception of these hallucinations.

But I recommended to Mrs. White that Faith go on a trial run of Risperdal.”

“What happened when she was taking the medicine?”

“She became groggy and tired, but the visions didn’t abate. We tried a different antipsychotic medicine, and she still exhibited this behavior.”

“Finally, Dr. Keller, what did you decide to do?”

“I called in a colleague, a specialist in childhood psychosis. He observed Faith and agreed that she didn’t seem psychotic. I felt validated. There are a great deal of things I don’t understand in this world, but I do know what a psychotic child looks like, and Faith isn’t it.”

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 further.”

“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.”