Jodi Picoult - Lone Wolf

Any of those, when I came back to the human world, would apply.

Even though I slowly got used to the sounds and smells, and I stopped diving every time a car roared around the corner or picking up my steak with my hands at the dinner table, there were still some spontaneous bleeds between my life in the wild and my life back among humans. When you live on the tightrope of survival and there’s no safety net, it’s hard to go back to walking on solid ground. I couldn’t dull the knife edge of instinct I’d developed with the wolves. If my family went out, even just to a McDonald’s, I would make sure to put myself physically between my children and anyone else in the establishment. I’d face away from them as they ate their hamburgers, because turning my back meant possibly missing a threat.

When my daughter brought home a friend from school for a sleepover, I found myself looking through a twelve-year-old’s pink duffel bag to make sure she didn’t have anything with her that might harm Cara. When Edward drove to school, sometimes I followed him in my truck just to make sure he got there. When Georgie went out, I grilled her about where she was going, because I lived in fear that something bad would happen to her when I wasn’t there to rescue her. I was like a veteran soldier who saw flashbacks in every situation, who knew the worst was just a breath away. I wasn’t really ever happy unless we were all in the house, under lock and key.

The first Abenaki word I ever learned was Bitawbagok- the word they use for Lake Champlain. It means, literally, the waters between. Since I’ve come back from Quebec, I have thought of my address as Bitawkdakinna . I don’t know enough Abenaki to be sure it’s a real word, but translated, it is the world between.

I had become a bridge between the natural world and the human one. I fit into both places and belonged to neither. Half of my heart lived with the wild wolves, the other half lived with my family.

In case you cannot do the math: no one can survive with half a heart.

Your Honor.

My name is Helen Bedd.

I’m an attorney and also a guardian in the New Hampshire Office of Public Guardian. I’ve practiced law for fifteen years, and for ten years before that I was a registered nurse. I’ve been appointed as a temporary or permanent guardian for more than 250 cases over the years.

When I received this appointment, I immediately spoke to the parties involved, given the expedited nature of the hearing. The medical team at Beresford Memorial told me in essence what Dr. Saint-Clare has reiterated today. There is little or no chance that Mr. Warren’s condition will improve. Seeing her father open his eyes today must have been very compelling for Cara, but my medical background and Dr. Saint-Clare’s testimony reinforce the unfortunate fact that this was probably an unconscious reflex and does not demonstrate any return to consciousness.

As part of my preparation for today, I also spoke with both Cara and Edward Warren. Both children deeply love their father, despite a disagreement about his health care needs and prognosis. Cara, at seventeen, has centered her life on her father. He’s the sun in the solar system of her life. Their relationship has been extremely close, as is often the case for children of divorce who bond particularly with one parent. I don’t doubt that Cara’s shouldered adult responsibilities, given her father’s unique lifestyle and job. However, I’ve also been forced to conclude that she is operating from an emotional standpoint and not a realistic one. Due to her emotional condition at this time, and her physical condition after the accident, she is unable to accept the reality of her father’s condition-whether that reality is presented by her brother, her father’s doctors, or the social worker at the hospital. And while the accident was not her fault in any way, I believe there’s some residual guilt that influences her vehement desire to keep her father alive at all costs. While I find her unadulterated hope for her father’s recovery touching and very moving, I also see it as a function of her immaturity at seventeen, and the fact that she is unwilling to accept a truth she does not want to believe.

On the other hand, Edward is the only living relative of Mr. Warren who is past the age of majority. Although he was able to produce a signed document from his father naming him as a health care guardian, that holds less weight for me than the fact that of the two siblings, Edward is the only one who has had an actual conversation with his father about what to do in this sort of situation. However, he has been estranged from his father for six years, and some details have come to light in this court that explain further his rash decision to abandon his family when he was eighteen. I believe that it’s still quite difficult for Edward to separate his anger at his father from his current actions, which led to a very rash decision that was made without consulting his sister, and an even more rash decision to take matters into his own hands when the termination of life support didn’t go according to plan. In this, Edward still has a lot of growing up to do. One has to wonder, given his propensity to act on impulse, how much thought he’s really given to his father’s wishes.

This is a unique case. Often when probate court becomes involved in a situation of guardianship, it’s because no one wants to step up to the plate and make the hard decisions. In this case, we have two very different individuals who both want the job. But we also have something that most wards do not have-a written and video testimony by Luke Warren himself. His autobiography and the countless hours of film, both televised and amateur, that show him in his element give us a very strong sense of the kind of man he was and what he would want if someone’s judgment was being substituted for his own. I have been impressed by how far Luke Warren’s children are willing to go for him. I have been impressed by Mr. Warren’s life, and how much he’s accomplished. I’ve been impressed by the adventurous spirit that is packed into the chapters of his book and by the colleagues on camera who never fail to mention that sense of excitement and that constant adrenaline which were part of being around Mr. Warren.

All of this points to a man who would not relish the thought of being bedridden, at best.

And yet.

The Luke Warren that was shown to the world was only one facet of the man. If you read between the lines of his book, you can just make out the shadow of another story. The hero in his autobiography isn’t a hero at all. He’s a failure-someone who couldn’t live with the animals he came to revere, and more important, someone who couldn’t manage to live by their code when he was apart from them. You’ve heard both Cara and Edward say it in their testimonies: to a wolf, family matters most. But Mr. Warren abandoned his family-literally, when he went into the woods of Quebec, and figuratively, when he carried on an extramarital affair that led to a terminated pregnancy.

I’ve never spoken directly to Mr. Warren. But I think that it probably hurt him to know that his son’s instinct was to leave home when the going got tough. A wolf would have never let his offspring out of his sight.

On the other hand, Cara’s idealism is based on the very foundation of a family mattering most. The odds are against Mr. Warren’s survival, but the reason she is advocating for it so strongly is simply because she doesn’t want to live without her father. And if Mr. Warren is lucky enough to be one of those medical anomalies who defies science, I think he’d be delighted to get a second chance. Not just at survival but at being a father.