Lone Wolf

this condition as ‘eyes-open unconsciousness,’ and that’s what seems to have happened today to Mr. Warren,” the doctor says. “Like many VS patients, his eyes opened when he was stimulated by a voice, but that doesn’t mean he was aware.”

“Can VS patients track moving objects with their eyes?”

“No,” Dr. Saint-Clare says. “That finding would be evidence for awareness and, and suggest the presence of a minimally conscious state.”

“How would a patient with MCS present?”

“He would exhibit an awareness of self and the environment. The patient would be able to follow simple commands, smile, cry, and follow motion with his eyes.”

“According to Ms. Czarnicki and Cara, it seems that Mr. Warren was able to do the last, isn’t that right?”

Dr. Saint-Clare shakes his head. “We think that what was construed as a movement of the eyes was actually a muscle reflex of the eyes closing. A rolling of the eyes, if you will, rather than a tracking. Since this first happened, we’ve tried repeatedly to get Mr. Warren to respond again, and he hasn’t-not to noise or touch or any other stimuli. The injuries sustained in the crash by Mr. Warren-the brain stem lesions-suggest that there’s no way he could be conscious now. Although he opened his eyes, there was no awareness attached to that movement. It was a reflexive behavior, and doesn’t warrant an upgrade in diagnosis to a minimally conscious state.”

“What would you say to Cara, who would contradict your interpretation of the event?” Joe asks.

The doctor looks at my sister, and for the first time since he’s taken the stand, so do I. The light has gone out of Cara’s face, like a falling star at the end of its arc. “Often in a vegetative state, patients will exhibit automatic behaviors like eye opening and closing, and a wandering gaze, or a facial grimace that family members mistake for conscious behavior. When someone you love suffers a trauma this severe, you’ll grab on to any hint that he’s still the same person, maybe buried beneath layers of sleep, but there nonetheless. Cara’s job, as Mr. Warren’s daughter, is to hope for the best. But my job, as his neurosurgeon, is to prepare her for the worst. And the bottom line is that a patient in a vegetative state like Mr. Warren’s carries a very grim prognosis with a small chance of meaningful recovery, which diminishes further over time.”

“Thank you,” Joe says. “Your witness?”

Zirconia has her arm around Cara’s shoulders. She doesn’t remove it, doesn’t even stand up to question the neurosurgeon. “Can you tell us beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Warren has no cognitive function?”

“On the contrary, I can tell you that he does have cognition. We can see that on an EEG. But I can also tell you that the other injuries to his brain stem prevent him from being able to access it.”

“Is there any objective scientific test you can administer to determine whether or not Mr. Warren’s eye movement was purposeful? If he was trying to communicate?”

“No.”

“So, basically, you’re reading minds now.”

Dr. Saint-Clare raises his brows. “Actually, Ms. Notch,” he says, “I’m board-certified to do just that.”

When the judge calls for a short recess before Helen Bedd, the temporary guardian, gives her testimony, I walk over to Cara. Her attorney is holding a pair of hospital socks, the kind that boost circulation, which the nurses put on my father’s feet. “This is all you could find?” Zirconia asks.

Cara nods. “I don’t know what they did with the clothes he was wearing the night of the accident.”

The lawyer bunches the socks in her fists and closes her eyes. “I’m getting nothing,” she says.

“That’s good, right?” Cara asks.

“Well, it’s certainly not bad. It could mean that he hasn’t crossed over yet. But it could also just mean that I’m better with animals than with humans.”

“Excuse me,” I interrupt. “Could I talk to my sister?”

Both Zirconia and my mother look at Cara, letting her decide. She nods, and they retreat down the aisle, leaving us alone at the table. “I didn’t make it up,” Cara says.

“I know. I believe you.”

“And I don’t care if Dr. Saint-Clare says it’s medically insignificant. It was significant to me.”

I look at her. “I’ve been thinking. What if it had happened when we were both here in court? I mean, if it was less than a minute, that’s not a long time. What if he’d opened his eyes and you hadn’t been there to see it?”

“Maybe it’s happened more than once,” Cara says.

“Or maybe it hasn’t.” My voice softens. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m glad you were there when it did.”

Cara looks at me for a long moment, her eyes the exact same color as mine. How have I never noticed that before? She grabs my forearm. “Edward, what if we just agreed to do this together? If we went up to the judge and told him that we don’t need him to pick between us?”

I pull away from her. “But we still want different outcomes.”

She blinks at me. “You mean, even after knowing Dad opened his eyes, you’d want to take him off life support?”

“You heard the doctor. He had a reflex, not a reaction. Like a hiccup. Something he couldn’t control. And he wouldn’t have even opened his eyes, Cara, if that machine wasn’t breathing for him.” I shake my head. “I want to believe it was more than that, too. But science trumps a gut feeling.”

She shrinks back in her chair. “How can you do that to me?”

“Do what?”

“Make me think you’re on my side and then cut me down?”

“It’s my job,” I say.

“To ruin my life?”

“No. To piss you off and to get you riled up. To get under your skin. To treat you the way nobody else gets to treat you.” I stand up. “To be your brother.”

LUKE

When the Abenaki tell a story, there are several ways to start. You can say, Waji mjassaik: in the beginning. You can say N’dalgommek: all my relations. Or you can begin with an apology: Anhaldamawikw kassi palilawaliakw. It means, I’m sorry for the wrong I might have done you this past year.

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