by Jodi Picoult
I touch my father’s hand where it lies on top of the covers. It’s like a mannequin’s hand, waxy and cool.
If I fulfill my father’s last wish, does that wipe clean the karmic slate? Am I forgiven for hating him every time he missed a meal with us, for breaking up my parents’ marriage, for ruining Cara’s life, for running away?
Corinne stands. “I’m sure you need some time to think about this,” she says. “To discuss it with your sister.”
My sister has trusted me with this decision, because she’s too close to make it.
“My sister and I have talked,” I say. “She’s a minor. It’s ultimately my decision.”
She nods. “If you don’t have any more questions, then—”
“I do,” I say. “I have one more question.” I look up at her, a silhouette in the dark. “How soon can you do it?”
That night, I tell my mother that Cara and I have talked, that she doesn’t want to deal with this nightmare anymore, and I don’t want her to have to. I tell my mother that I’ve made the decision to let Dad die.
I just don’t tell her when. I am sure she’s thinking that the termination of life support will be a few days from now, that she will have time to help Cara process all those emotions, but really, that’s completely pointless. If I’m doing this to protect Cara, then it should happen fast, before it hurts more than it has to. It’s not enough that I’m making the decision; it has to be carried out as well, so that there’s no more second-guessing and she can’t tear herself up inside.
My mother holds me when I cry on her shoulder, and she cries a little, too. She may have split with my father, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t love him once. I know she’s lost in her thoughts about her life with him, which is probably what keeps her from asking too many questions I cannot answer truthfully. By the time she remembers to ask them, everything will already be done.
After she goes to keep vigil in Cara’s room again, I sign the paperwork and call a funeral home on the list Corinne has given me, and then I leave the hospital. Instead of going to my father’s house, though, I drive to the highway that runs past Redmond’s and park along the shoulder near the reservoir where we once went fishing.
It takes some bushwhacking to find the overgrown trail that my father led me down years ago, the one that heads back toward the wolf enclosures. In the dark, I curse myself for not bringing a flashlight, for having to navigate by the glow of the moon. The snow in these woods is up to my knees; it’s not long before I am soaked and shivering.
I see a light on in the trailer at the top of the hill. Walter’s still awake. I could knock on his door, tell him about this decision I’ve made on my father’s behalf. Maybe he’d break out a bottle and we’d toast the life of the man who was the link between us.
Then again, Walter probably doesn’t have a bottle there. My father always said a wolf’s sense of smell is so advanced it doesn’t just notice shampoos and soaps—it can scent what you’ve digested and when and how, days after you indulged. It can smell fear, excitement, contentment. A wolf pup is born deaf and blind, with only its sense of smell to recognize its mother, and the other members of its pack.
I wonder if the wolves know I am here, just because I am my father’s son.
Suddenly I hear one mournful note, which breaks and falls a few steps into another. There is a beat of silence. The same note sounds again, as clear as a bow drawn across a violin. It makes something inside me sing like a tuning fork.
At first I think the wolves are calling an alarm, because they can smell an intruder, even from this distance.
Then I realize it is an elegy.
A requiem.
A song for a pack member who isn’t coming back.
For the first time since I received that phone call in Thailand, for the first time since I’ve been home, for the first time in a long time, I start to cry.
It is a funeral. We just don’t have the body, yet.
I stand awkwardly next to my father’s bed. It is 9:00 A.M. on the dot. The transplant team is ready in the OR. Corinne is here, and two ICU nurses, and Trina. There’s a woman in a suit—I’ve been told she’s from the legal department. I guess the hospital needs to have all its i’s dotted and t’s crossed before they turn off life support.
Trina steps beside me. “Are you all right?” she asks softly. “Can I get you a chair?”
“I’d rather stand,” I say.
In five minutes, my father will be pronounced dead. And somebody else will get a new lease on life.
Dr. Saint-Clare slips into the room, followed by Dr. Zhao, the ICU physician. “Where’s Mr. Warren’s daughter?” Dr. Zhao asks.
All eyes turn to me. “Cara told me to take care of everything,” I reply.
Dr. Zhao frowns. “As of yesterday she wasn’t too keen on the idea to discontinue her father’s life support.”
“Edward assured me that she’d given her consent before he signed the paperwork,” Dr. Saint-Clare says.
Don’t they understand that this is what my father would have wanted? Not just for him to be released from this vegetative hell but for me to protect Cara. I’m saving her from having to make a decision that will break her heart. And I’m saving her from wasting her life as the caretaker of an invalid.
“That’s all very well and good,” the lawyer says, stepping forward, “but I need to hear it from Cara herself.”
LUKE
Two days after the pack howled in reply to me, I was sitting beneath a tree untangling a trap when the big male wolf stepped out of nowhere and ran toward me at full tilt. The other four wolves appeared like ghosts between the trees, coming to stand like sentries in a line. I was defenseless, sitting down like this. I was certain this was the moment I’d die. I could roll onto my back and offer my throat, but I didn’t know if I had the time to ask the animal for trust before his jaws sank into my flesh.
At the last moment he stopped dead in front of me. He craned his neck, as if he wanted to smell me but didn’t want to get any closer. Then, without warning, he nipped at my knee in exactly the same spot I’d been nipped years ago by Arlo at the zoo. Abruptly he turned and walked back to the rest of his pack, which started licking him like mad around the mouth.
The next day, the big male returned, this time with two pups, a male and a female. They flanked him, watching carefully. The big wolf sniffed my boots, and then circled me, as if he was trying to suss out if there was anything new about me that might be a threat. The youngsters came closer to investigate, and the big wolf snapped at their muzzles. Three times he nipped at me, pinching the flesh under my knees, leaning into my shoulder. After each bite he looked at me, inscrutable. He rubbed his body against me, like a cat on a scratching pole.
Then he moved behind me, leaving the pups in front. I started to sweat—it just didn’t feel comfortable having a wild animal somewhere I couldn’t see him—and in that instant the wolf’s jaws closed around my neck from behind. I could feel his long teeth scraping against my jugular.
The female pup darted forward and took a sizable nip at my knee at that moment, just as the big male let go of my neck. When he sauntered back to the two remaining wolves that were waiting at the edge of the clearing, the pups in tow, I did something I still cannot believe I had the nerve to do.
I followed.
I was on my hands and knees, stumbling, awkward. Twice, the big male looked over his shoulder and clearly saw me behind him. I figured he could very easily teach me a lesson if he thought that was a bad idea, but instead, he just kept going. I had never been this close to the wild pack before; I could smell the mud caked into their paws and the wet musk of their coats.
Of the two wolves that had stayed back from me, one was the alpha female. She was smaller, with black lines marking her back and tail and the top of her head, thick as if she’d been striped with paint. Staring at me, she bared her teeth, curled her tongue.
I was about twenty-five yards away when she started growling.
>
Immediately, the pups ran to her side and glowered at me. The big male stepped between us, but she snapped at him and he fell into line, too. The alpha female flattened her ears and barked, low and threatening. Then she turned and took the others back through the tree line.
The big male hesitated, capturing my gaze.
A lot has been said about the stare of a gray wolf. It’s level, measured, eerily human. A wolf is born with blue eyes, but after six or eight weeks, they turn golden. And if you’ve ever been lucky enough to look into a wolf’s eyes, you know that they penetrate. They look at you, and you realize they are taking a snapshot of every fiber of your being. That they know you better even than you know yourself.
The wolf and I sized each other up. Then he dipped his head, turned, and loped into the woods.
I didn’t see the pack for another six weeks. From time to time I heard them calling, but it wasn’t a rallying call to replace a missing member anymore—just a locating call to make sure they kept other packs and animals at bay. My invitation had been revoked. I had replayed in my mind what had happened between us, whether that last look from the big male had been his way of communicating to me that I had been given a chance, and clearly had not measured up. But the fact that he hadn’t chosen to rip out my throat made me believe this couldn’t be the case. That even if the alpha female wasn’t very fond of me, more than half her pack was.
They appeared on the first day that felt like spring—when it was warm enough for me to break through the ice of the stream to drink without having to use a rock or stick, when I had unzipped my coveralls so that the breeze could cool me. Just like before, they came silently, a wall of gray mist. I immediately dropped so that my body was lower than theirs. Even the alpha female inched closer.
They were energetic and rowdy, more active than the last time they’d come. I felt an overwhelming relief that they were back, that I wasn’t alone in this wilderness. The big male came running at me again, as he had weeks before, and pinned me on my back with his full weight. In this vulnerable pose, I was offering my life to him, and frankly I was so happy to see him again that I wasn’t even as terrified as I probably should have been.
Maybe it was because my guard was down, maybe it was because the world felt like it was thawing and I was cocky after surviving the winter—there are a dozen reasons why I did not anticipate what happened next. The big wolf was suddenly gone, and the alpha female had taken his spot. Her front paws held my shoulders down on the ground, her weight was on my lower body. She was an inch from my face, and she was snarling and snapping at me. When the male moved closer, she lunged and bit him, and he slunk away.
Her breath came in hot gusts; her saliva streaked my forehead, but every time I thought she was going to tear into my flesh, she pulled the punch. I stayed perfectly still for the five minutes it was going on, and then she released me. She loped away, but instead of vanishing into the woods, she lay down on a rock in the sun. The big male settled beside her.
I was amazed that they had chosen to keep company with me, instead of disappearing like usual. And then, to my shock, the other three wolves left the protection of the trees and came into the clearing. They stretched out on either side of me. The younger female yawned and crossed her front paws.
We weren’t touching, but I could feel the heat of their bodies, and I was warmer than I’d been in months. I did not move for over an hour. Lying between them in the pool of sunlight, I listened to the sound of their breathing.
Unlike the wolves, I couldn’t sleep. Part of me was too excited; part of me kept glancing at the alpha female.
I realized she hadn’t been trying to kill me.
She’d been teaching me a lesson.
In those five minutes, I could have died. Instead, I was getting a new lease on life.
CARA
I’m being discharged. Now that my fever’s down and it seems I will survive this shoulder surgery, they want the bed for someone more needy. The bad news is that I cannot go back to school yet because I still can’t do things like hold a fork or a pencil or unzip my own jeans to pee. The good news is that I will be staying at my mom’s, and will have plenty of time to research traumatic brain injury and other cases like my father’s. Other cases where the patients, against all odds, have gotten better.
My mother promises that as soon as she gets the final papers from the nurse, we can go downstairs so I can see my father before I leave the hospital.
For the past hour I have been ready to go. I’m sitting on the bed, showered and dressed, chomping at the bit. My IV line has already been removed. From what the nurses’ station has told my mother, the paperwork is ready; it’s just a matter of my orthopedic surgeon coming by to give me discharge instructions, and to officially sign us out.
My mom is on her iPhone with Joe, telling him that we’ll be coming home. Her eyes are dancing in a way that they haven’t the whole time we’ve been cooped up here. She wants to get back to her old life, too. It’s just a little easier for her than it is for me.
When the door opens, she stands up. “Gotta go, honey,” she says, hanging up. We both turn, expecting my doctor, but instead Trina the social worker walks in with a woman I’ve never seen before in a pencil skirt and a kelly-green silk blouse.
“Cara,” Trina says, “this is Abby Lorenzo. She’s a lawyer for the hospital.” Immediately I panic—thinking of the two cops, and the blood test that showed I’d been drinking that night. My mouth goes dry, my tongue feels as thick as a mattress.
Does this mean they’ve figured out what happened?
“I wanted to ask you about your father,” the lawyer says, and in that instant I am sure that I’ve turned to stone, that I can no longer escape.
“You seem upset,” Trina says, frowning. “Edward said you two had talked.”
“I haven’t talked to him since yesterday,” I answer.
My mother puts her hand on mine, squeezes. “My son told me that he and Cara decided that Edward would make the medical decisions for their father from here on.”
“What?” I blink at her. “Are you kidding me?”
The lawyer looks at Trina. “So you haven’t given consent to terminate your father’s life support today?”
I don’t even think. I just stumble off the bed, barefoot, and use my good shoulder to shove my way between the two women. And I run. To the stairwell, down to the ICU floor, clutching my bad arm to my chest and fighting off the pain I feel with each jostle and turn.
Because this time, when I save my father, I’m not going to screw it up.
LUKE
My Native American friends call it the dance of death: the moment that two predators size each other up. For a wolf in the natural world, the brain doesn’t have a choice. It doesn’t get to say, There’s a bear coming and I’m going to die. Instead, it thinks, What do I know about this bear? What do I know about my environment? What members of my family do I need to protect myself? Suddenly the bear is no longer a threat. He knows that you’re a predator, and you know that he’s a predator. You respect each other’s ground, turning very slowly, eyeball to eyeball. The space between you is the difference between life and death. Does he see you as a prey animal? Or does he see you as something that can injure him as he comes after you? If you can put that doubt in his mind, chances are, he will leave you be.
EDWARD
She is a five-foot, three-inch storm: red-faced, tear-streaked, hair flying out wild. And she’s coming right for me.
“Stop!” Cara says. “He’s a liar!”
The doctors have gone, ready to be paged once we get the attorney’s permission. Corinne has been anxiously pacing; there is a narrow window of opportunity for organ donation that is slipping away moment by moment. I was just doing what Cara had asked. She wanted this to be over, but she was too close to my father; I understood that. It was like the little kid who holds out his arm for a vaccination and shuts his eyes tight, because he doesn’t want to look until it’s all ove
r.
But apparently Cara’s changed her mind. Before she can scratch my eyes out, a nurse grabs her around the waist. Corinne steps forward. “Are you saying that you didn’t give consent to the organ donation?”
“It’s not enough to kill him?” Cara yells at me. “You have to cut him into pieces, too?”
Maybe I should have asked my sister if she wanted to be here. Based on what she’d said yesterday, I figured she wouldn’t have been emotionally capable of it. This outburst only reinforces that.
“It’s not what Dad wanted. He told me so.”
By now, the hospital lawyer and Trina and my mother have reached the room. “Well, that’s not what Dad told me,” I say.
“When?” she scoffs. “You haven’t lived with us for six years!”
“All right, you two,” the lawyer says. “Nothing’s going to happen today, I’ll tell you that much. I’ll ask for a temporary guardian to be appointed to review your father’s case.”
Cara visibly relaxes. She falls back against my mother, who is staring at me as if she’s never seen me before.
What I do next, I do because I have a letter burning in my breast pocket that’s validation.
Or because I know better than Cara how you have to live with the choices you make.
Or because, for once, I want to be the son my father wanted.
I lean over, bracing my hands on my knees, as if I’m disappointed. Then I dive down to the linoleum, pushing aside the nurse who is sitting beside the machine that’s breathing for my father, waiting for a cue that isn’t going to come.
“I’m sorry,” I say out loud—to my father, my sister, myself—and I yank the plug of the ventilator from its socket.
If you call one wolf, you invite the pack.