Jodi Picoult - Lone Wolf

I lean forward, as if I’m going to kiss his cheek, but really I’m doing this so Rita can’t hear me. “Dad,” I whisper. “How about I forgive you, if you forgive me?”

And just like that, he opens his eyes.

“Oh, my God,” I cry.

Alarmed, Rita looks down at her patient. She reaches for the intercom behind the bed and pages the nurses’ desk. “Get neurology up here,” she says.

“Daddy!” I get off the bed and walk around it so that I can sit closer to him. His eyes slide to the left as I walk in that direction. “You saw that, didn’t you?” I say to Rita. “How he followed me?” I put my hands on his cheeks. “Can you hear me?”

His eyes are locked on mine. I’ve forgotten how blue they are, so bright and clear they almost hurt to look at, like the sky the morning after a snowstorm. “I’m fighting for you,” I tell him. “I won’t give up if you don’t.”

My father’s head lolls to the side, and his eyes drift shut. “Dad!” I shout. “Daddy?”

I cry and I shake him-nothing happens. Even after Dr. Saint-Clare comes in and tries to make him react with more clinical tests, my father does not respond.

But for fifteen seconds-for fifteen glorious seconds-he did.

My mother is pacing in the hospital lobby when I race across it, ten minutes late for our scheduled pickup. “You’re going to be late for court,” she says, but I throw myself into her arms.

“He woke up,” I say. “He woke up and looked at me!”

It takes a moment for my words to sink in. “What? Just now?” She grabs my hand and starts running toward the elevator.

I stop her. “It was only for a little bit. But there was a nurse in there who saw it, too. He looked right at me and his eyes followed me when I walked around the bed and I could see he was trying to tell me something-” I break off, hugging her tight around the neck. “I told you so.”

My mother pulls her cell phone out of her pocket and dials a number. “Tell Zirconia.”

Which is how, twenty minutes later, I find myself racing back into the courtroom as Judge LaPierre begins to speak. “Ms. Notch, I understand you have something you need to say?”

“Yes, Your Honor. I need to recall my client and a new witness to the stand. Some evidence has come to light that I think the court needs to hear.”

Joe stands up. “You rested your case,” he argues.

“Judge, a man’s life or death hangs in the balance here. This happened only moments ago, or I would have given notice earlier.”

“I’ll allow it.”

So once again I climb into the little wooden balcony built for a witness. “Cara,” Zirconia asks, “where did you go during the lunch break?”

“To visit my father in the hospital.”

“What happened when you got to his room?”

I look right at Edward, as if I am telling him the story, and not the judge. “My dad was just lying there, like usual, like he was asleep. His eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving. But this time, when I started talking to him, his eyes opened.”

Edward’s jaw drops. Immediately, Joe leans toward him and whispers something in his ear.

“Can you show us?”

I close my eyes, and then as if I am a doll coming to life, I snap them open.

“What happened next?”

“I couldn’t believe it,” I say. “I got up and walked around the bed, and he kept looking at me, all the way until I sat down next to him again. He watched me the whole time.”

“And then?” Zirconia asks.

“Then his eyes closed,” I finish, “and he went back to sleep.”

Joe is leaning back in his chair with his arms folded. I’m sure he thinks this is my Hail Mary pass, my eleventh-hour attempt to make up some crazy story that sways the judge in my favor. The thing is, it’s not a story. It happened, and that has to mean something.

“Clearly Mr. Ng thinks it’s incredibly convenient for you to have witnessed this,” Zirconia says. “Is there anyone who can corroborate what you’ve told us?”

I point to Rita, the nurse, who has slipped into the back row of the gallery. She’s still wearing her scrubs and her hospital ID tag. “Yes,” I say. “Her.”

The hardest part about being back in the human world was relearning emotion. Everything a wolf does has a practical, simple reason. There is no cold shoulder, no saying one thing when you mean something else, no innuendo. Wolves fight for two reasons: family and territory. Humans are driven by ego; wolves have no room for it and will literally nip it out of you. For a wolf, the world is about understanding, knowledge, respect-attributes that many humans have cast off, along with an appreciation of the natural world .

The Native Americans know that wolves are mirrors for humans. What they show us are our strengths and our weaknesses. If we don’t respect our territory, the wolf will invade it. If we don’t keep our children close by, if we don’t value the knowledge our senior population has accrued, if we leave our garbage around, the wolf will overstep its bounds to let us know we’ve made a mistake. The wolf is one of those creatures that links everything in the ecosystem. Where they exist in the wild, they regulate the prey populations-not just by controlling their numbers but also by assuring their parenting skills. If a wolf is in the area, there will be fewer cold-related fatalities among other animals, because domestic animals are taken inside or hidden in brush, or herded around a youngster to keep her warm and protect her from the threat of the wolf .

When I lived with the wolves, I was proud of the reflection of myself .

But when I came back, I always paled in comparison .

After all the hours I spent in his hospital room, by his bed, maintaining a vigil, my father opened his eyes when I wasn’t there.

Story of my life.

Joe’s already called a recess so that he can talk to Dr. Saint-Clare, and he’s told me that I shouldn’t believe everything I see, and neither should Cara. “It’s evidence, but it doesn’t mean a thing until the doctors explain it,” he said.

And yet.

What if it had been me in the room when my father woke up? What would I have said to him?

What would he have said to me?

I wonder if the conversations you’ve never had with someone count, if you’ve been over them a thousand times in your mind.

Rita Czarnicki sits on the witness stand now, reciting all her medical qualifications and the number of years she’s worked in the ICU. “I was checking the IV,” she says. “Mr. Warren’s daughter was in the room, talking to him.”

“Did you assess your patient’s condition when you entered the room?”

“Yes,” Rita says. “He was unresponsive and still appeared to be in a vegetative state.”

“Then what happened?” Cara’s lawyer asks.

“As his daughter was talking, Mr. Warren opened his eyes.”

“Are you saying he woke up?”

“Not like you’re thinking.” The nurse hesitates. “Most VS patients lie with their eyes open when they are awake and closed when they’re asleep. But they still have no awareness of themselves or their environment and are totally unresponsive.”

“So what made this event remarkable?” the lawyer asks.

“Mr. Warren’s daughter got up very quickly and moved from the foot of the bed around to the side, and his gaze seemed to follow her before his eyes closed again. That’s tracking, and that doesn’t happen with VS patients.”

“What did you do?”