Jodi Picoult - Lone Wolf

“What do I do now?” I shouted.

“Hold on,” my father instructed. “I’ll help you as soon as I get mine in.”

The fish was a perch, tiger-striped, with tiny jagged edges along its fins. Its eyes were glassy and wild, like those of the porcelain doll that used to belong to my mom’s grandma and that she said was too old and special to do anything but sit on a shelf. I tried twice to grab the perch, but it slithered and flapped out of my grasp.

But my father had told me to hold on, and so, even though I was afraid those spikes on its fins would poke into me, even though the fish smelled like the inside of a rubber boot and slapped me with its tail, I did.

My fist closed around the fish, which was no bigger than six inches long, but which seemed huge. My fingers didn’t fit all the way around its belly, and it was still struggling against me and trying to dislodge the hook in its mouth, which broke through the silvery skin of its throat and made me feel sick to my stomach. I squeezed a little harder, to make sure it wouldn’t get away.

But I guess I squeezed a little too hard.

The eyes of the perch bulged, and its entrails squirted from its bottom. Horrified, I dropped my fishing rod and stared at my hand, covered with fish guts, and at the dead perch still hooked to the line.

I couldn’t help it; I burst into tears.

I was crying for the fish and the worm, which had both died for no good reason. I was crying because I had screwed up. I was crying because I thought this meant my father wouldn’t want to fish with me again.

My father looked at me, and at the remains of the perch. “What did you do ?” he said, and in that single moment of distraction, his own line snapped. Whatever huge fish he’d been reeling in was gone.

“I killed it,” I sobbed.

“Well,” he pointed out. “You were going to kill it anyway.”

This did not make me feel any better. I cried harder, and my father looked around, uncomfortable.

He was not the parent who held me when I was sick, or who calmed me down when I had a nightmare-that was my mother. My father was as out of his element with a terrified kid as I was with a fishing pole.

“Don’t cry,” he said, but I had crossed the line of panic that small children sometimes do, where my skin was hot and my breath came in gasps, a punctuation of hysteria. My nose was running, and that made me think of the slime of the fish between my fingers, and that made me cry even harder.

He should have hugged me. He should have said that it didn’t matter and that we could try again.

Instead, he blurted out, “Did you hear the joke about the roof? No? Well, it’s probably over your head anyway.”

I don’t know what made him tell a joke. A bad joke. But it was so awkward, so different from what I needed at that moment, that it shocked me into silence. I hiccuped, and stared up at him through spiked lashes.

“Why do doctors use red pens?” he said, the words fast and desperate. “In case they need to draw blood.”

I wiped my nose on my sleeve, and he took off his shirt and used it to gently wipe my face and settle me on his lap. “Guy walks into a bar with a salamander on his shoulder,” my father said. “The bartender says, ‘What’s his name?’ And the guy says, ‘Tiny. Because he’s my newt.’”

I didn’t understand any of the jokes; I was too young. And I’d never really thought of my father as a closet comedian. But his arms were around me, and this time there was no casting lesson involved.

“It was an accident,” I told him, and my eyes filled up again.

My father reached for the knife he carried in his pocket and snipped the line, kicked the remains of the fish into the water, where I wouldn’t have to see it anymore. “You know what the dad buffalo said to his kid when he went to work in the morning? ‘Bye, son.’” He wiped his hands on his jeans. “Rule number three of fishing: what happens at the pond stays at the pond.”

“I don’t know any jokes,” I said.

“My grandfather used to tell them to me when I got scared.”

I could not imagine my father, who thought nothing of wrestling with a wolf, being scared.

He helped me to my feet and picked up my rod and his. The wisps of loose fishing line flew through the air like the silk from a spider.

“Did your dad tell you jokes, too?” I asked.

My father took a step away from me then, but it felt like a mile. “I never knew my dad,” he said, turning away from me.

It was, I realized, the one thing we had in common.

I’m sitting in the dark in my father’s room, the green glow from the monitors behind him casting shadows on the bed. My elbows rest on my knees, my chin is cupped in my hands. “How do you know Jesus likes Japanese food?” I murmur.

No reply.

“Because he loves miso.”

I rub my eyes, which are burning. Dry. Tearless.

“Did you hear about the paranoid dyslexic?” I say. “He’s always afraid he’s following someone.”

Once, bad jokes had distracted my father enough to stop being scared. It isn’t working for me, though.

There is a soft knock on the open door. A woman steps inside. “Edward?” she says. “I’m Corinne D’Agostino. I’m a donation coordinator with the New England Organ Bank.”

She’s wearing a green sweater with leaves embroidered on it, and her brown hair is in a pixie cut. She reminds me of Peter Pan, which is ironic. There’s no Neverland here, no everlasting youth.

“I’m so sorry about your father.”

I nod. I know that’s what she’s expecting.

“Tell me a little bit about him. What did he like to do?”

Now that I’m not expecting. I’m hardly the most qualified person to answer that question. “He was outside all the time,” I say finally. “He studied wolf behavior by living with packs.”

“That’s pretty amazing,” Corinne says. “How did he get involved in that?”

Did I ever ask him? Probably not. “He thought wolves got a bad rap,” I reply, remembering some of the talks my father used to give to the tourists who swarmed Redmond’s in the summertime. “He wanted to set the record straight.”

Corinne pulls up a chair. “It sounds like he cared a lot about animals. Often, folks like that want to help other people, too.”

I rub my hands over my face, suddenly exhausted. I don’t want to beat around the bush anymore. I just want this to be over. “Look, his license said he wanted to be an organ donor. That’s why I asked to speak to you.”

She nods, taking my lead and dropping the small talk. “I’ve talked to Dr. Saint-Clare and we’ve reviewed your father’s chart. I understand that his injuries were so severe that he’s never going to enjoy the quality of life he used to have. But none of those injuries have damaged his internal organs. A donation after cardiac death is a real gift to others who are suffering.”

“Is it going to hurt him?”

“No,” Corinne promises. “He’s still a patient, and his comfort is the most important concern for us. You can be with him when the life-sustaining treatment is stopped.”

“How does it work?”

“Well, donation after cardiac death is different from organ donation after brain death. We’d begin by reviewing both the decision you made with the medical team to withdraw treatment and your father’s status as a registered donor. Then, we’d work with the transplant surgeons to arrange a time when the termination of life support and the organ donation could be done.” She leans forward, her hands clasped between her legs, never breaking my gaze. “The family can be present. You’d be right here, along with your father’s neurosurgeon and the ICU doctors and nurses. He’d be given intravenous morphine. There would be an arterial line monitoring arterial pressure, and one of the nurses or doctors will stop the ventilator that’s helping him breathe. Without oxygen, his heart will stop beating. As soon as he is asystolic, which means his heart has stopped, you’ll have a chance to say good-bye, and then we take him to the operating room. Five minutes after his heart stops, he’ll be pronounced dead, and the organ recovery will begin with a new team of doctors, the transplant team. Typically in donations after cardiac death, the kidneys and liver are recovered, but every now and then hearts and lungs are donated, too.”