Lone Wolf A Novel

by Jodi Picoult

  —Bulgarian proverb

  PART TWO

  CARA

  At first, when the alarm goes off, I don’t even realize what’s happened.

  Then I look up from my mother’s shoulder and see Edward on his knees, still gripping the electrical cord that trails from the ventilator. He is holding the plug in his hand as if he cannot believe it is actually there.

  I start to scream, and all hell breaks loose.

  The nurse near Edward stumbles upright as another nurse calls for security. A burly orderly rushes into the room, shoving my mother out of the way as he tackles Edward. He slams Edward’s hand against the floor, and the electrical cord flies free; immediately, the nurse plugs the machine in again and hits the Reset button.

  Maybe all of this takes twenty seconds. It’s the longest twenty seconds of my life.

  I hold my breath until my father’s chest starts to rise and fall again, and then I give myself permission to burst into tears.

  “Edward,” my mother gasps. “What were you thinking?”

  Before he can answer, security arrives. Two guards stuffed like sausages into their uniforms grab Edward’s arms and haul him upright. Dr. Saint-Clare runs into the room, short of breath. He bends over my father, immediately assessing the damage Edward’s done, as a nurse brings him up to speed.

  I can feel my mother tensing behind me. “Where are you taking him?” she demands, trailing the officers as they start to drag Edward off. Abby Lorenzo, the hospital lawyer, follows them.

  “Stop! Please. He’s been here round the clock, hardly sleeping,” my mother begs. “He wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “I can’t believe you’re defending him!” I say.

  I can see the storm in her eyes, the one that’s tearing her in two. I take a step back, putting distance between us. After all, she did it first.

  My mother looks at me, apologetic. “He’s still my son,” she murmurs, and she leaves the room.

  Immediately, Trina approaches. “Cara, why don’t we sit down somewhere quiet while your mother sorts all this out?”

  I ignore her. “Is my dad okay?” I ask Dr. Saint-Clare.

  The neurosurgeon looks at me. I know what he’s thinking: Your father wasn’t okay to start with. “It depends on how long he spent without oxygen,” Dr. Saint-Clare says. “If it was longer than a minute, it might be clinically significant.”

  “Cara,” Trina says again. “Please.”

  She touches my good arm, and I let myself be led away. But the whole time, my mind is racing. What kind of person pulls the plug, literally, on his own father? How much hate did Edward have to be nursing to deliberately go behind my back, to tell all these doctors and nurses that I had agreed to terminate life support, and then, when it didn’t go according to plan, to take matters into his own hands?

  Trina leads me down the hall to a lounge. There are a few on the ICU floor, for families who are in for a long wait. This one is empty, with uncomfortable orange couches and magazines from 2003 on the coffee tables. I curl into a ball in the corner of one of the couches. I feel impossibly small, overlooked.

  “I know you’re upset,” she says.

  “Upset? My brother lied to everyone so that he could kill my father. Yeah, I’m a little upset.” I swipe a hand across my eyes. “My dad stopped breathing. What’s that going to do to his recovery?”

  She hesitates. “Dr. Saint-Clare will let us know as soon as he can if there was any damage. I know that you have to be without oxygen for about ten minutes for it to lead to brain death, if that’s any comfort.”

  “What if my brother tries this again?”

  “First of all, he won’t have the opportunity,” Trina says. “The hospital will press charges for assault; Abby’s having him brought down to the police station right now. And second of all, even though Edward’s the one legally capable of making a decision about your father, we never would have scheduled a DCD if we didn’t believe you’d given your consent. I’m sorry, Cara. The donor coordinator told me that Edward had your permission, but someone should have asked you directly. I can assure you that won’t happen again.”

  I don’t believe a word she’s saying. If Edward found a way to snow them once, he can find a way to snow them again.

  “I want to see my father,” I insist.

  “I’m sure you do,” Trina says. “But let’s give the doctors some time to make sure he’s all right.”

  My father taught me that wolves can read emotion and illness the way humans read headlines. They know when a woman is pregnant before she does and will treat her more gently; they single out the visitor who suffers from depression and try to engage him. Already the medical community has learned that canines can actually sniff out an invisible illness, like heart disease or cancer. In other words, you cannot fool a wolf.

  But you sure as hell can fool a human.

  I stare down at my lap, widening my eyes until they tear up, and then I look up at Trina. “I want my mom,” I say, making my voice small and wounded.

  “She’s probably downstairs talking to the hospital attorneys,” Trina says. “I’ll get her. Why don’t you just wait here?”

  So I do, counting to three hundred, until I’m sure Trina is gone from the ICU hallway. Then I peek my head out the lounge door and start walking calmly to the staircase. I know, from my father’s prior visit to the hospital for stitches in his arm, that the ER doors are on a completely different side of the hospital, and that’s where I’m headed. To an exit where I won’t run into my mother, my brother, or anyone else who might stop me.

  I’m not thinking about what I’m going to do, once I’m outside in my street clothes without a winter coat or a phone or transportation.

  I’m not thinking about the fact that I haven’t technically been discharged yet, either.

  I’m just thinking that desperate times call for desperate measures, and that someone’s got to keep my brother from doing this again.

  Really, I ought to become a professional liar. Apparently, I have a gift: I have now managed to fool the cops, my mother, a social worker, and a woman at the Starbucks right down the street from the hospital. I told her that my boyfriend and I had a fight and he drove off in his car, leaving me without my coat and my purse and my phone—and did she have a phone I could borrow so I could call my mom to come get me? Having my arm wrapped like the broken wing of a bird helps with the sympathy votes. Not only did the lady give me her cell but she also bought me a hot chocolate and a poppy-seed muffin.

  I don’t call my mother. Instead, I call Mariah. The way I see it, she owes me big-time. If she hadn’t been stalking some loser, I never would have been at that party in Bethlehem. If I hadn’t been at the party in Bethlehem, I wouldn’t have been drinking. And my father wouldn’t have had to come get me. And, well, you know the rest.

  Mariah is in French class when I call her. I hear her whisper, “Hang on,” and then, over the drone of Madame Gallenaut conjugating the verb essayer, Mariah says, “May I go to the bathroom?”

  J’essaie.

  Tu essaies.

  I try. You try.

  “En français,” Madame says.

  “Puis-je aller aux toilettes?”

  There is a flurry of static, and then Mariah’s voice. “Cara?” she says. “Is everything okay?”

  “No,” I tell her. “Things are totally messed up. I need you to come pick me up at the Starbucks that’s on the corner before the turnoff to the hospital.”

  “What are you doing there?”

  “Long story. I need you to come now.”

  “But I’m in the middle of French. I have a free period fifth—”

  I hesitate, deploying the big guns: “I would do it for you,” I say, the same words Mariah used to convince me to go to that party in Bethlehem in the first place.

  There is a beat of silence. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she answers.

  “Mariah,” I say. “Fill up the gas tank.”

  The county
attorney’s office looks nothing like the way law offices look on TV. It’s got crappy furniture and a secretary punching away at a computer so old it probably still runs BASIC. There’s a framed poster of Machu Picchu on the wall, and also two photographs—one of a serene Obama, and one with Danny Boyle shaking Governor Lynch’s hand. A rubbery plant is dying in the corner.

  Mariah’s waiting in the parking lot in her car. She wasn’t thrilled about a road trip to North Haverhill, but she drove me all the same, and she even helped me figure out a ruse to get me into the county attorney’s office. “Danny Boyle,” she’d said. “Sounds like he ought to be dancing on a Lucky Charms box.”

  That had gotten me thinking—someone whose name sounded like he had relatives in Killarney, and who built his political platform on saving unborn babies was most likely a devout Catholic. I couldn’t be sure, but it was a decent guess. And every Catholic kid I knew in my school seemed to have a thousand cousins.

  So I approach the secretary’s desk and wait for her to finish her phone call. “Thanks, Margot,” she says. “Yes, it’s the Fox News segment about his recent conviction. DVD format would be great.”

  When she hangs up, I try to give my most pathetic smile. After all, I’m standing there in a freaking arm sling. “Can I help you?” the secretary asks.

  “Is Uncle Danny in?” I say. “It’s kind of an emergency.”

  “Dear, did he know you were coming? Because he’s quite busy right now—”

  I tighten my voice to the knife edge of hysteria. “Didn’t my uncle tell you I had a really bad car accident? And I just got into this huge fight with my mom and she told me I can’t drive again until I’m forty and I have to pay off the insurance premium and I might as well find someone else to fund my college education and oh, God, can’t I just please talk to Uncle Danny right now?” I start crying.

  Seriously, I am becoming an Oscar contender.

  The secretary blinks at the onslaught of words, then recovers and gets up to comfort me, gently patting me on my good shoulder. “You just go right on back to his office, honey,” she says. “I’ll buzz him and tell him his niece is here.”

  When I knock on the door that says DANIEL BOYLE, COUNTY ATTORNEY in gold lettering on glass, he tells me to come in. He’s sitting behind a big desk stacked with files. His hair gleams, black like the wing of a crow, and his eyes look like he hasn’t gotten a lot of sleep lately. He stands up, assessing me as I walk through the door.

  “You’re not as tall as you look on TV,” I blurt out.

  “And you don’t look like any of my nieces,” he replies. “Look, kid, I don’t have time to help you do your extra-credit project in Civitas. Paula can give you a packet about local government on your way out—”

  “My brother just tried to kill my father and I need your help,” I say.

  Danny Boyle frowns. “What?”

  “My father and I, we were in a car accident,” I explain. “He hasn’t regained consciousness. My brother left six years ago after a fight with my dad. He’s been living in Thailand but he came home after the accident. It’s only been seven days since the crash—my dad just needs time to get better—but my brother doesn’t see it that way. He wants to turn off the ventilator and donate my father’s organs and then go back to living his life. He managed to convince the hospital to do it, and when I freaked out and tried to stop them, Edward shoved a nurse out of the way and pulled the plug out himself.”

  “What happened?”

  “The nurse reset the ventilator. But the doctors still don’t know if being without oxygen hurt my dad even more.” I take a breath. “I’ve seen you on the news. You’re good at what you do. Can’t you prosecute Edward?”

  He sits down on the edge of his desk. “Listen, honey—”

  “Cara,” I say. “Cara Warren.”

  “Cara. I’m really sorry—about your father, and about your brother’s behavior. But this is a family issue. I prosecute criminal cases.”

  “It’s attempted murder!” I say. “I may just be a high school student, but I know that when you shove a nurse out of the way, and unplug someone who’s unconscious from a ventilator, you intend to kill him! What’s more murderous than that?”

  “Intent to kill isn’t the only piece in the puzzle,” Boyle says. “You have to prove malice, too.”

  “My brother hates my father. It’s why he walked out six years ago.”

  “That may be,” Boyle says, “but pulling out a plug is significantly different than coming after someone with a knife or a gun. I’ll pray for your father, but I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  I stiffen my spine. “If you don’t, then my brother’s going to try again. He’ll go to court and say that my opinion doesn’t matter, because I’m younger than him. He’ll get the procedure rescheduled. But with a criminal charge against him, he can’t be named a legal guardian for my father.” When Boyle looks at me, surprised, I shrug. “Google,” I explain. I’d used Mariah’s iPhone on the drive over.

  Boyle sighs. “All right. I’ll look into it,” he says. He reaches onto his desk and hands me a legal pad and a pen. “Give me your name and phone number.”

  So I write these down for him. I hand back the pad. “My dad may not be doing so well right now,” I tell him. “But that doesn’t give my brother the right to play God. A life,” I say, parroting Boyle’s own words, “is still a life.”

  As I walk down the hallway to the reception area again, I can feel Danny Boyle’s stare, like an arrow in my back.

  LUKE

  I have been asked repeatedly why a pack of wild wolves would accept a human into their ranks. Why bother with a creature that follows too slowly, stumbles in the dark, can’t speak their language fluently, and inadvertently disrespects their leaders? It was not as if the pack didn’t know I wasn’t a wolf, or didn’t realize that I couldn’t help bring down a kill for food, or protect them with teeth and claws. The only answer I can come up with is that they realized they needed to study a human as much as I needed to study them. The human world is encroaching closer and closer to the wolf world. Instead of just denying that fact, they wanted to find out as much as they could about people. From time to time you will find a feral dog adopted by a wolf pack for the same reason; accepting me into their ranks just brought them one step closer.

  My goal, once they seemed to relax with me in their company, was to be allowed to follow them when they slipped between the trees and vanished. Now, this wasn’t the brightest idea I’d ever had—I could easily get lost; and if they’d started hunting, I wouldn’t have been able to keep up. But I couldn’t let myself get this close and give up now, so when the wolves got up and left, I went with them.

  At first I was able to follow. But it was night, pitch-black, and as soon as we reached a thickly wooded area I lost them; my eyes were no match for theirs. On the way back to the clearing, I smacked my head on a low-lying branch and was knocked out cold.

  When I woke up, the sun was already high in the sky and the young female wolf was licking the cut on my head. (Of all the injuries I had in those years, not a single one became infected. If I’d been able to bottle the medicinal properties of wolf saliva, I’d be a rich man.) I sat up gingerly, temples throbbing, and watched the wolf pick up a haunch from a deer, hoof still attached. She rolled it around in the dirt a bit, batting it with her paws, and then dropped it on my leg.

  I would come to learn that an alpha female can read every single bit of food you put into your body. Make a choice that’s going to keep you strong and fit for the pack and you will pass muster; make a choice that’s the equivalent of chocolate cake in the human world and you’ll wind up urinating in streams to disguise your scent, or else suffer the consequences. There are nutritional foods, eaten daily to foster strength and health. Social foods help reinforce pack roles—when six wolves are feeding on a single carcass, the alpha will go to the internal organs, the beta will get the muscle-packed rump and thigh meat, and the omega gets the intestinal con
tents and nonmovement meat, like the neck, spine, and rib cage. The tester wolf will get about 75 percent nonmovement meat and 25 percent vegetable matter; the numbers wolf will get 50 percent nonmovement meat and 50 percent stomach contents; the lookout will have 75 percent stomach contents and 25 percent nonmovement meat. If you go for a portion that’s not yours, even by accident, you’ll find yourself flat on your back. Emotional foods like milk or stomach contents take a wolf back to a time in its life when it was placid and accepting of anything given by its mother; feed the same foods to older wolves and they’ll mellow out. At first I didn’t know if the young female wolf was testing me, if she wanted to see whether I’d try to take her food away. But she picked it up and dropped it again. So I lifted the deer leg to my mouth and started to eat.

  How did the raw meat taste?

  Like the finest filet.

  It had been months since I’d eaten anything more substantial than rabbit and squirrel. I had been brought this food by a wild wolf, which may not have wanted me to go hunting but still wanted me well fed, like any other member of the pack.

  As I tore at the meat with my teeth, the wolf watched me calmly.

  From then on, every time the pack went hunting, they brought me back food. Sometimes it was rolled in droppings or urinated upon. After a hunt, they’d stay in my company or let me follow them; then suddenly they would leave me. Sometimes I would howl, and if they were within hearing range, they’d answer. On their way back, they would howl to me. Without fail, that sound would bring me to my knees. It felt like the phone call you receive when someone you love has been out driving on a sheet of ice: I’m back, I’m safe, I’m yours again.

  It made me realize that I had a new family.

  GEORGIE

  I knew that my son was gay before he did. There was a gentleness to him, an ability to see the world for its pieces instead of its whole, that made him different from the other boys in his nursery school class. When they picked up a stick, it was a gun or a whip. When Edward picked up a stick, it was a spoon to bake mud cookies, a magic wand. At playdates when he and a friend dressed up, Edward was never the knight but rather the princess. When I wanted to know if an outfit made me look fat, I never turned to Cara for frank advice but instead, to Edward.