Lone Wolf

“Shit!” I yelp. “What was that for?”

I lean down to see if he’s drawn blood, but by then the doors have opened and a candy striper is waiting with a stack of files. “Hi,” I say, hoping to distract her from the fact that I have a wolf on a leash.

“Oh!” she says, surprised. “Hello.”

That’s when I realize that if I’m blind, I shouldn’t have known she was there.

Suddenly Zazi starts loping down the hall. I struggle to keep up, forgetting about the candy striper. An Amazon of a nurse follows. She is taller than me, with biceps that suggest she could probably beat me in arm wrestling. I saw her the first day I came to the hospital, but she hasn’t been at work again until today-so she doesn’t recognize me, or question my sudden new disability. “Excuse me, sir? Sir?”

This time I remember not to turn around until she calls me.

“Are you talking to me?” I ask.

“Yes. Can you tell me which patient you’re here to see?”

“Warren. Lucas Warren. I’m his son, and this is my guide dog.”

She folds her arms. “With three legs.”

“Are you kidding me?” I say, grinning with my dimples. “I paid for four.”

The nurse doesn’t crack a smile. “We’ll have to get clearance from Mr. Warren’s doctors before the dog can go inside-”

“A guide dog can go in all places where members of the public are allowed and where it doesn’t pose a direct threat,” I recite, information gleaned from Google on my phone after my sunglasses purchase at the gas station. “I find it hard to believe a hospital would violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

“Service dogs are allowed into the ICU on a case-by-case basis. If you’ll just wait here for a second I can-”

“You can take it up with the Department of Justice,” I say as Zazi starts pulling hard on the leash.

I figure I have five minutes max before security gets here to remove me. The nurse is still shouting as Zazi drags me down the hall. Without any direction from me, he leads me through the doorway of my father’s room.

Cara is cradled against the canvas sling of a wheelchair; my mother stands behind her. My father is still immobile on the bed, tubes down his throat and snaking out from beneath the waffle-weave blanket. “Zazi!” Cara cries, and the wolf bounds over to her. He puts his front paws on her lap and licks her face.

“He bit me,” I say.

My mother has backed into a corner, not too thrilled to be in the same room as a wolf. “Is he safe?” she asks.

I look at her. “Isn’t it a little late to be asking that?”

But Zazi has turned away from Cara and is whimpering beside my father’s bed. In a single, light leap, he jumps onto the narrow mattress, his legs bracketing my father’s body. He delicately steps over the tubes and noses around beneath the covers.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” I say.

“Just watch,” Cara replies.

Zazigoda sniffs at my father’s hair, his neck. His tongue swipes my father’s cheek.

My father doesn’t move.

The wolf whines, and licks my father’s face again. He drags his teeth across the blanket and paws at it.

Something beeps, and we all look at the machines behind the bed. It’s the IV drip, needing to be changed.

“Now do you believe me?” I say to Cara.

Her jaw is set, her face determined. “You just have to give it a minute,” she begs. “Zazi knows he’s in there.”

I take off the sunglasses and step in front of her, so that she has to meet my gaze. “But Dad doesn’t know Zazi’s here.”

Before she can respond, the door bursts open and the desk nurse enters with a security guard. I shove the sunglasses onto my face again. “It was my sister’s idea,” I say immediately.

“Way to throw me under the bus,” Cara mutters.

The nurse is practically having a seizure. “There. Is. A dog. On the bed,” she gasps. “Get. The dog. Off. The. Bed!”

The security guard holds me by the arm. “Sir, remove the dog immediately.”

“I don’t see a dog in here,” I say.

The nurse narrows her eyes. “You can drop the blind act, buster.”

I take off my sunglasses. “Oh, you mean this?” I say, pointing to Zazi, who jumps down and presses himself against my leg. “This isn’t a dog. This is a wolf.”

Then I grab the leash and we run like hell.

The hospital decides not to press charges when Trina the social worker intervenes. She is the only member of the staff who understands why I had to bring the wolf to the hospital. Without it, Cara wouldn’t broach a conversation about my father’s condition and his lack of improvement. Now that my sister has seen with her own eyes how even his wolves can’t elicit a reaction, Cara can’t help but understand that we’re running out of options, out of hope.

I think Zazi knows what’s up, too. He goes into his crate without any fight and curls up and sleeps for the entire ride back to Redmond’s Trading Post. This time when I drive up to the trailer, Walter comes out to greet me. His face is as open as a landscape; he’s waiting for the good news, for the story of how my father suddenly returned to the world of the living. But I can’t speak around the truth that’s jammed like a cork in my throat, so instead I help him haul the crate out of my car, and carry it down to the enclosure where Zazi’s companion is keeping watch along the perimeter of the fence. When Walter releases Zazi, the two wolves slip between the army of trees standing at attention at the back of the pen. I watch Walter lock the first gate to the enclosure, and then walk to the second gate. He’s holding the leash and harness in his hands. “So,” he prompts.

“Walter,” I say finally, testing the size and shape of these words in my mouth, “whatever happens, you’ll still have a job. I’ll make sure of it. My dad would want to know someone he trusts will still take care of the animals.”

“He’ll be back here in no time, telling me what I’m doing wrong,” Walter says.

“Yeah,” I say. “No doubt.”

We both know we’re lying.

I tell him I have to get back to the hospital, but instead of leaving Redmond’s right away, I stop to watch the animatronic dinosaurs. I dust snow off a cast-iron bench and wait the twelve minutes to the hour, so that I can hear the T. rex come to life. Just like earlier, he cannot thrash his tail the way he should, because of the snowdrifts.

In my sneakers and my jeans, I jump the fence so that I am knee-deep in the snow. I start clearing it out with my bare hands. It only takes a few seconds before my fingers are red and numb, before the snow melts into my socks. I smack the green plastic tail of the T. rex, trying to dislodge the ice, but it stays stuck. “Come on,” I yell, striking it a second time. “Move!”

My voice echoes, bouncing off the empty buildings. But I manage to do something, because the tail begins to sweep back and forth as the fake T. rex goes after the same fake raptor once again. I stand for a second, watching, with my hands tucked under my armpits to warm them up. I let myself pretend that the T. rex might actually reach the fraction of an inch that’s necessary to finally get his prey, that instead of his going through the motions there will be progress. I let myself pretend that I have, successfully, turned back time.

A lot can happen in six days. As the Israelis will tell you, you can fight a war. You can drive across the United States. Some people believe six days is all it took for God to create a universe.

I’m here to tell you that a lot might not happen in six days, too.

For example, a man who’s suffered a severe head trauma might not get any worse, or any better.

For four nights now, I’ve left behind the hospital room to go to my father’s home, where I pour a bowl of stale cereal and watch Nick at Nite. I don’t sleep in his bed; I don’t really sleep at all. I sit on the couch and listen to endless episodes of That ’70s Show.

It’s weird, walking out of the hospital every night during a vigil. The whole day has somehow passed me by,