Lone Wolf

PART TWO

If you call one wolf, you invite the pack.

– Bulgarian proverb

***

CARA

At first, when the alarm goes off, I don’t even realize what’s happened.

Then I look up from my mother’s shoulder and see Edward on his knees, still gripping the electrical cord that trails from the ventilator. He is holding the plug in his hand as if he cannot believe it is actually there.

I start to scream, and all hell breaks loose.

The nurse near Edward stumbles upright as another nurse calls for security. A burly orderly rushes into the room, shoving my mother out of the way as he tackles Edward. He slams Edward’s hand against the floor, and the electrical cord flies free; immediately, the nurse plugs the machine in again and hits the Reset button.

Maybe all of this takes twenty seconds. It’s the longest twenty seconds of my life.

I hold my breath until my father’s chest starts to rise and fall again, and then I give myself permission to burst into tears.

“Edward,” my mother gasps. “What were you thinking?”

Before he can answer, security arrives. Two guards stuffed like sausages into their uniforms grab Edward’s arms and haul him upright. Dr. Saint-Clare runs into the room, short of breath. He bends over my father, immediately assessing the damage Edward’s done, as a nurse brings him up to speed.

I can feel my mother tensing behind me. “Where are you taking him?” she demands, trailing the officers as they start to drag Edward off. Abby Lorenzo, the hospital lawyer, follows them.

“Stop! Please. He’s been here round the clock, hardly sleeping,” my mother begs. “He wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“I can’t believe you’re defending him!” I say.

I can see the storm in her eyes, the one that’s tearing her in two. I take a step back, putting distance between us. After all, she did it first.

My mother looks at me, apologetic. “He’s still my son,” she murmurs, and she leaves the room.

Immediately, Trina approaches. “Cara, why don’t we sit down somewhere quiet while your mother sorts all this out?”

I ignore her. “Is my dad okay?” I ask Dr. Saint-Clare.

The neurosurgeon looks at me. I know what he’s thinking: Your father wasn’t okay to start with. “It depends on how long he spent without oxygen,” Dr. Saint-Clare says. “If it was longer than a minute, it might be clinically significant.”

“Cara,” Trina says again. “Please.”

She touches my good arm, and I let myself be led away. But the whole time, my mind is racing. What kind of person pulls the plug, literally, on his own father? How much hate did Edward have to be nursing to deliberately go behind my back, to tell all these doctors and nurses that I had agreed to terminate life support, and then, when it didn’t go according to plan, to take matters into his own hands?

Trina leads me down the hall to a lounge. There are a few on the ICU floor, for families who are in for a long wait. This one is empty, with uncomfortable orange couches and magazines from 2003 on the coffee tables. I curl into a ball in the corner of one of the couches. I feel impossibly small, overlooked.

“I know you’re upset,” she says.

“Upset? My brother lied to everyone so that he could kill my father. Yeah, I’m a little upset.” I swipe a hand across my eyes. “My dad stopped breathing. What’s that going to do to his recovery?”

She hesitates. “Dr. Saint-Clare will let us know as soon as he can if there was any damage. I know that you have to be without oxygen for about ten minutes for it to lead to brain death, if that’s any comfort.”

“What if my brother tries this again?”

“First of all, he won’t have the opportunity,” Trina says. “The hospital will press charges for assault; Abby’s having him brought down to the police station right now. And second of all, even though Edward’s the one legally capable of making a decision about your father, we never would have scheduled a DCD if we didn’t believe you’d given your consent. I’m sorry, Cara. The donor coordinator told me that Edward had your permission, but someone should have asked you directly. I can assure you that won’t happen again.”

I don’t believe a word she’s saying. If Edward found a way to snow them once, he can find a way to snow them again.

“I want to see my father,” I insist.

“I’m sure you do,” Trina says. “But let’s give the doctors some time to make sure he’s all right.”

My father taught me that wolves can read emotion and illness the way humans read headlines. They know when a woman is pregnant before she does and will treat her more gently; they single out the visitor who suffers from depression and try to engage him. Already the medical community has learned that canines can actually sniff out an invisible illness, like heart disease or cancer. In other words, you cannot fool a wolf.

But you sure as hell can fool a human.

I stare down at my lap, widening my eyes until they tear up, and then I look up at Trina. “I want my mom,” I say, making my voice small and wounded.

“She’s probably downstairs talking to the hospital attorneys,” Trina says. “I’ll get her. Why don’t you just wait here?”

So I do, counting to three hundred, until I’m sure Trina is gone from the ICU hallway. Then I peek my head out the lounge door and start walking calmly to the staircase. I know, from my father’s prior visit to the hospital for stitches in his arm, that the ER doors are on a completely different side of the hospital, and that’s where I’m headed. To an exit where I won’t run into my mother, my brother, or anyone else who might stop me.

I’m not thinking about what I’m going to do, once I’m outside in my street clothes without a winter coat or a phone or transportation.

I’m not thinking about the fact that I haven’t technically been discharged yet, either.

I’m just thinking that desperate times call for desperate measures, and that someone’s got to keep my brother from doing this again.

Really, I ought to become a professional liar. Apparently, I have a gift: I have now managed to fool the cops, my mother, a social worker, and a woman at the Starbucks right down the street from the hospital. I told her that my boyfriend and I had a fight and he drove off in his car, leaving me without my coat and my purse and my phone-and did she have a phone I could borrow so I could call my mom to come get me? Having my arm wrapped like the broken wing of a bird helps with the sympathy votes. Not only did the lady give me her cell but she also bought me a hot chocolate and a poppy-seed muffin.

I don’t call my mother. Instead, I call Mariah. The way I see it, she owes me big-time. If she hadn’t been stalking some loser, I never would have been at that party in Bethlehem. If I hadn’t been at the party in Bethlehem,