Jodi Picoult - Lone Wolf

“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.

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 contents 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.

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.