Jodi Picoult: Lone Wolf

I saw an interview once where a teenage girl lifted a refrigerator off her little cousin when it accidentally fell on him. It had something to do with adrenaline.

A fireman who has been blocking my view moves and I can see another knot of EMTs gathered around my father, who lies very still on the ground.

“If it weren’t for you,” the woman adds, “your dad might not be alive.”

Later, I will wonder if that comment is the reason I did everything I did. But right now, I just start to cry. Because I know her words couldn’t be farther from the truth.

What I get asked all the time is: How could you do it? How could you possibly walk away from civilization, from a family, and go live in the forests of Canada with a pack of wild wolves? How could you give up hot showers, coffee, human contact, conversation, two years of your children’s lives?

Well, you don’t miss hot showers when all soap does is make it harder for your pack to recognize you by scent.

You don’t miss coffee when your senses are on full alert all the time without it.

You don’t miss human contact when you are huddled between the warmth of two of your animal brothers. You don’t miss conversation when you learn their language.

You don’t walk away from your family. You find yourself firmly lodged within a new one.

So you see, the real question isn’t how I left this world to go into the woods.

It’s how I made myself come back.

I used to expect a phone call from the hospital, and just like I imagined, it comes in the middle of the night. “Yes,” I say, sitting up, forgetting for a moment that I have a new life now, a new husband.

“Who is it?” Joe asks, rolling over.

But they aren’t calling about Luke. “I’m Cara’s mother,” I confirm. “Is she all right?”

“She’s been in a motor vehicle accident,” the nurse says. “She’s got a severe shoulder fracture. She’s stable, but she needs surgery-”

I am already out of bed, trying to find my jeans in the dark. “I’m on my way,” I say.

By now Joe has the light on, and is sitting up. “It’s Cara,” I say. “She’s been in a car crash.”

He doesn’t ask me why Luke hasn’t been called, as her current custodial parent. Maybe he has been. But then again, it’s likely Luke’s gone off the grid. I pull a sweater over my head and stuff my feet into clogs, trying to focus on the practical so that I am not swallowed up by emotion. “Elizabeth doesn’t like pancakes for breakfast and Jackson needs to bring in his field trip permission slip…” My head snaps up. “Don’t you need to be in court tomorrow morning?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Joe says gently. “I’ll take care of the twins and the judge and everything else. You just go take care of Cara.”

There are times that I cannot believe how lucky I am, to be married to this man. Sometimes I think it’s because I deserve it, after all those years of living with Luke. But sometimes-like now-I am sure there’s still a price I’ll have to pay.

There are not many people in the emergency room when I run up to the front desk. “Cara Warren,” I say, out of breath. “She was brought in here by ambulance? She’s my daughter?”

All my sentences rise at the ends, like helium balloons.

A nurse leads me through a door and into a hallway of glass rooms, shrouded with curtains. Some of the doors are open. I see an old woman in a hospital gown, sitting on a gurney. A man with his jeans cut open to the knee, his swollen ankle elevated. We move out of the way as a pregnant patient is wheeled past us, focused on her Lamaze breathing.

Luke is the one who taught Cara how to drive. For all his personal recklessness, he was a stickler when it came to the safety of his daughter. Instead of the forty hours she was supposed to log in before taking her driver’s test, he made her do fifty. She’s a safe driver, a cautious driver. But why was she out so late on a school night? Was she at fault? Was anyone else hurt?

Finally, the nurse steps into one of the cubicles. Cara lies on a bed, looking very small and very frightened. There’s blood in her dark hair and on her face and her sweater. Her arm is bandaged tight against her body.

“Mommy,” she sobs. I cannot remember the last time she called me that.

She cries out when I put my arms around her. “It’s going to be all right,” I say.

Cara looks up at me, eyes red, nose running. “Where’s Dad?”

Those words shouldn’t hurt me, but they do. “I’m sure the hospital called him-”

All of a sudden, a resident steps into the room. “You’re Cara’s mom? We need your consent before we can take her into surgery.” She says more-I vaguely hear the words scapula and rotator cuff -and hands me a clipboard for a signature.

“Where’s Dad?” Cara shouts this time.

The doctor faces her. “He’s getting the best care possible,” she says, and that’s when I realize Cara wasn’t alone in that car.

“Luke was in the accident, too? Is he all right?”

“Are you his wife?”

“Ex,” I clarify.

“Then I can’t really disclose anything about his condition. HIPAA rules. But yes,” she admits. “He is a patient here, too.” She looks at me, speaking softly so Cara can’t hear. “We need to contact his next of kin. Does he have a spouse? Parents? Is there someone you can call?”

Luke doesn’t have a new wife. He was raised by his grandparents, who died years ago. If he could speak for himself, he’d tell me to phone the trading post to make sure Walter is there to feed the pack.

But maybe he can’t speak for himself. Maybe this is what the doctor can’t-or won’t-tell me.

Before I can respond, two orderlies enter and begin to pull Cara’s bed away from the wall. I feel like I’m sinking, like there are questions I should be asking or facts I should be confirming before my daughter is taken off to an operating suite, but I’ve never been good under pressure. I force a smile and squeeze Cara’s free hand. “I’ll be right here when you get back!” I say, too brightly. A moment later, I’m alone in the room. It feels sterile, silent.

I reach into my purse for my cell phone, wondering what time it is in Bangkok.

A wolf pack is like the Mafia. Everyone has a position in it; everyone’s expected to pull his own weight.

Everyone’s heard of an alpha wolf-the leader of the pack. This is the mob boss, the brains of the outfit, the protector, the one who tells the other wolves where to go, when to hunt, what to hunt. The alpha is the decision maker, the capo di tutti capi, who, from ten feet away, can hear the change of rhythm in a prey animal’s heart rate. But the alpha is not the stern disciplinarian that movies have made him out to be. He’s far too valuable, as the decision maker, to put himself in harm’s way.

Which is why in front of every alpha is a beta wolf, an enforcer. The beta rank is the bold, big thug who is pure aggression. He’ll take you down before you get too close to the boss. He’s completely expendable. If he gets himself killed, no one will really care, because there’s always another brute to take his place.

Then there’s the tester wolf, who’s very wary and suspicious, who doesn’t trust anyone he meets. He’s always scouting for change, for something new, and he’ll be hiding out at every corner to make sure that, when and if it happens, he’s there to alert the alpha. His skittishness is integral to the safety of the pack. And he’s the quality-control guy, too. If someone in the pack doesn’t seem to be pulling his weight, the tester will create a situation where the other wolf has to prove his mettle-like picking a fight with the enforcer, for example. If that beta can’t knock him to the ground, he doesn’t deserve to be the beta wolf anymore.