Lone Wolf A Novel (37 page)

Edward is wearing his father’s buffalo check jacket again; I think it’s morphed in status from outerwear to a talisman. When Cara sees him in it, her eyes widen and she comes halfway out of her seat, only to have her attorney pull her down and start whispering furiously.

“You remember everything I told you?” I murmur to Edward.

He jerks his chin, a nod. “Stay calm,” he says. “No matter what.”

I fully expect him to be painted as a hothead, as someone who makes rash decisions. Who else walks away from home after an argument and moves to Thailand? Or, frustrated by a turn of events, yanks the plug of a ventilator out of the wall? It doesn’t help, too, that even if the criminal charge can’t be admissible in court since it’s been vacated, this is a small town. Everyone knows what Edward did.

It’s up to me to spin it so he looks like an angel of mercy instead of a disgruntled prodigal son.

The clerk looks around at everyone who’s clustered at the tables. “We all ready, folks?” he asks. “All rise, the Honorable Armand LaPierre presiding.”

Although I haven’t argued before this judge before, I am well aware of his reputation. He’s allegedly an empathetic man. So empathetic, in fact, that he has trouble making any decisions. He often
leaves court during his lunch hour to go down the street to Sacred Heart, the closest Catholic church, where he says novenas for the parties involved and prays for guidance.

The judge enters in a cloud of black—black robe, black shoes, jet-black hair. “Before we begin,” he says, “this is a deeply disturbing case for everyone here. We are convened to determine the permanent guardianship of Luke Warren. I understand that his medical condition hasn’t changed since I appointed a temporary guardian last Friday. Today I see that the hospital is represented, as well as the ward’s two children as parties of interest.” He frowns. “This is a very unconventional hearing, but these are unconventional circumstances. And what the court hopes to keep in mind is that ultimately we’re trying to make a decision that would be in line with what Luke Warren would want, if he were here to speak for himself. Are there any preliminary matters that need to be discussed?”

That’s my cue. I rise from my chair. “Your Honor, I’d like to bring to the court’s attention that one of the parties of interest here today is a minor. Cara Warren is not the age of majority, which suggests that she is legally incapable of being vested with the authority to make decisions about her father’s end-of-life care.” I look directly at the judge, unable to face the heat of Cara’s eyes. “I ask the court to strike her appearance here today and have her leave the courtroom, and to have her representative, Ms. Notch, dismissed from the proceedings, as her client doesn’t have the legal standing to make this sort of choice on her father’s behalf.”

“What are you talking about?” Cara cuts in. “I’m his daughter. I have every right to be here—”

“Cara,” her attorney warns. “Judge, what my client
meant
to say—”

“I’m quite sure what your client meant to say had a few choice expletives in it,” the judge replies. “But people, seriously. We’re thirty
seconds into the proceeding and we’re already at each other’s throats? I know emotions are running high, but let’s be calm and just look at the legal precedent.”

Zirconia Notch stands. She is dressed like a lawyer from neck to knees, but her tights are a shocking lime green with red stripes, and her pumps are sunshine yellow. It’s as if the top half of her body fell on the bottom half of the Wicked Witch of the West. “Your Honor,” she says, “my client is seventeen, true, but she is also the only person in this courtroom who has been intimately involved in the day-to-day life of Mr. Warren. Under RSA 454-A, a guardian must merely be competent. The fact that Cara’s birthday isn’t for three months doesn’t have any impact on whether the court can vest her with the authority to make decisions regarding her father’s life. Indeed, if she’d been charged with a felony, like her brother, she would have been tried as an adult in court—”

“Objection,” I say. “That charge was dismissed. Ms. Notch is trying to bring up this irrelevant claim to prejudice my client.”

“People,” the judge sighs, “let’s confine ourselves to the matter before the court this morning, all right? And Ms. Notch, could you remove those wrist bells? They’re distracting.”

Undaunted, Zirconia strips off her bracelets and continues. “Once the court begins hearing her testimony, I’m certain Your Honor will determine that this young woman is of sufficient age, maturation, and intelligence to have an opinion and to be considered competent, as the criteria of the statute state.”

The judge looks like he’s having an ulcer attack. His mouth twists, his eyes water. “I’m not inclined to dismiss Cara from the proceedings at this time,” he says. “I have yet to hear the evidence, and I need to hear her perspective just as much as I need to hear from her brother, Edward. I’m going to ask you two to present brief opening arguments. Ladies first, Ms. Notch.”

She stands up and walks toward the bench. “Terry Wallis,” she
says. “Jan Grzebski. Zack Dunlap. Donald Herbert. Sarah Scantlin.

You’ve probably never heard of these people before, so let me introduce you. Terry Wallis spent nineteen years in a minimally conscious state. Then one day, he spontaneously began to speak and regained awareness of his surroundings. Jan Grzebski, a Polish railroad worker, woke up from a nineteen-year coma in 2007. Zack Dunlap was declared brain-dead after an ATV accident and was on the verge of having life support terminated so his organs could be donated, when he showed signs of purposeful movement. After five days, his eyes were open; two days later, he was off a ventilator, and today he can walk and talk and continues to improve.”

She walks toward Edward. “Donald Herbert,” she continues, “suffered a severe brain injury while fighting a fire in 1995. After ten years in a vegetative state, he uttered his first words. Sarah Scantlin was a pedestrian hit by a drunk driver in 1984. After a six-week coma she entered a minimally conscious state, and then, in January of 2005, she started talking again.” Zirconia spreads her hands, a plea. “Each of these men and women had injuries from which they were never expected to recover,” she says. “Each of these men and women had lives ahead of them that their families had given up hope of them living. And each of these men and women are here today because someone loved them enough to believe in their recovery. To give them time to heal. To
hope
.”

She walks back to her table, her hand resting on Cara’s good shoulder. “Terry Wallis, Jan Grzebski, Zack Dunlap, Donald Herbert, Sarah Scantlin. And just maybe, Your Honor, Luke Warren.”

The judge looks up at me as Zirconia sits down. “Mr. Ng?”

“Different people believe life starts at different places,” I say, standing up. “Tibetan Buddhists say it begins at orgasm. Catholics trace life to the moment the sperm meets an egg. Those who use stem cells say an embryo isn’t alive until it is fourteen days old,
when it develops a primitive streak—the thickened bit that becomes a backbone.
Roe v. Wade
says life begins at twenty-four weeks. And the Navajo, they believe that life begins the first time a baby laughs.”

I shrug. “We’ve gotten used to there being a multitude of beliefs about the start of life. But what about the end of life? Is its definition as muddy? In the 1900s, Duncan McDougal believed that you could put a dying patient on a scale and know the exact moment death occurred, because he’d lose three-quarters of an ounce—the weight of the human soul. Nowadays, the Uniform Determination of Death Act defines death as the irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions or the irreversible cessation of all brain functions. That’s why brain death qualifies as death, and why cardiac death qualifies as death.”

I look at the judge. “We’re here today, Your Honor, because Luke Warren did not leave us a directive that would show us how he defines death. But we do know how he’d define life. Life, to Mr. Warren, meant being able to run with his wolves . . .”

Leaving your wife and kids at home,
I think.

“It meant becoming an expert on pack behavior . . .”

Even though you knew nothing about how to keep your own family close
.

“It meant seamlessly integrating himself with nature . . .”

While his wife waited up for him.

“It didn’t mean lying in a hospital bed, unconscious, unable to breathe on his own, with no presumptive hope for recovery. Your Honor, you’re the one who said that we should be making a decision in line with what Luke Warren would want.” As I pause, I meet Edward’s gaze. “Luke Warren,” I say, “would ask us to let him go.”

During the first fifteen-minute recess, Edward and I head to the restroom. “Do you believe it?” he asks, while we are both standing at the urinal. “What that lawyer said?”

“You mean about all those people who recovered from brain injury?”

He nods, flushing and then heading to the sink to wash his hands. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know. But I’m sure as hell going to ask the neurosurgeon about them,” I say. I finish up and find Edward staring into the bathroom mirror, as if he cannot place his own face. “Look,” I tell him. “Today you don’t have to make any decisions about your father. You just have to win the right to make that decision.”

We leave to grab a soda before we have to go back to the courtroom. In the vending machine area, Zirconia and Georgie are seated at the small industrial table across from Cara.

“Ladies,” I say. I wink at Cara.

She looks down at the table, nursing a Coke.

“How’s your dad doing?” I ask. I know that Cara had asked to visit Luke before coming to court today.

She narrows her eyes. “As if you care.”

“Cara!” Georgie draws in her breath. “Apologize to Joe.”

“In the grand scheme of things, I think he owes me one first.” She picks up her Coke and stands. “I’ll wait upstairs.”

But before she can leave, Edward blocks her exit. He pushes a pack of Twizzlers toward her, candy from the vending machine. “Here,” he says.

“What makes you think I want these?”

“Because you used to,” Edward tells her. “You used to beg me to buy them for you when we were on the way home from school, and I stopped off at a gas station to fill up. You’d bite off the ends and stick one in the milk carton you saved from school, like a straw. Said it was a strawberry shake that way.” He looks at Georgie. “We kept it a secret
from Mom, because she said you were a sugar addict and you’d lose all your teeth before you hit puberty.”

Holding her soda, she can’t grab the package; she only has one hand free. “I forgot about that,” she murmurs.

Edward tucks the candy into a fold of her sling. “I didn’t,” he says.

The hospital attorney, Abby Lorenzo, begins by calling Dr. Saint-Clare to the stand. He’s sworn in and rattles off his neurosurgeon credentials, looking the whole time like he could be doing something so much more important, such as saving lives. “Do you know Luke Warren?” she asks.

“Yes. He’s one of my patients.”

“When did you meet him?”

“Twelve days ago,” the doctor says.

“Can you tell us about Mr. Warren’s condition, when he arrived at the hospital?”

“He was brought in after a motor vehicle accident,” Saint-Clare says, “where he was found outside the vehicle. The EMTs on the scene assumed that he had a diffuse traumatic brain injury, based on the circumstances. He was given a five on the Glasgow Coma Scale, and came into the hospital presenting with an enlarged right pupil, left-side weakness, and a laceration on his forehead. When a CT scan revealed severe swelling around his brain and a periorbital edema around his eyes, I was called in.”

“Then what happened?” the lawyer asks.

“Mr. Warren was again tested on the coma scale and still scored a five—”

“What does that mean exactly?”

“It’s a neurological scale to measure responsiveness, or lack thereof, after head injury. The scale ranges from three to fifteen, with
three being a person in the deepest coma and fifteen being a normal, healthy individual. For patients who test between five and seven after twenty-four hours, fifty-three percent will die or remain in a vegetative state.”

Lorenzo nods. “How did you treat Mr. Warren?”

“The emergency CT scan suggested that he had a temporal lobe hematoma and subarachnoid hemorrhage, an intraventricular hemorrhage, and hemorrhages in the brain stem in the medulla, extending into the pons.”

“In layman’s terms?”

“Mr. Warren came in with blood around his brain, blood in the ventricles of his brain, and hemorrhages in the parts of his brain that affect breathing and consciousness. We put him on a drug called Mannitol to reduce pressure in the brain, and performed a temporal lobectomy—a surgery that would give room inside the cranium for his brain to expand, so that the swelling could go down. We removed the hematoma, as well as part of the anterior temporal lobe. After his surgery, he was still not breathing on his own and did not wake up; however, his right pupil became reactive again, which suggests the swelling did indeed go down in the brain. The temporal lobectomy means that Mr. Warren would probably lose some memories, but not all; however, since consciousness has been so severely compromised by the injuries to his brain stem, it’s unlikely that he’s ever going to be able to access any of those memories.”

“So he’s not brain-dead, Dr. Saint-Clare?”

“No,” the surgeon replies. “His EEG shows cerebral cortex activity.

But none of it’s accessible, because he can’t regain consciousness.”

“How is Mr. Warren being kept alive?”

“A ventilator is breathing for him, and he’s being nourished via feeding tube.”

“What’s your professional opinion regarding Mr. Warren’s chances of recovery?”

I look at Cara while the surgeon answers. Her eyes are narrowed, her jaw set firmly, as if his words are a bracing wind. “We’ve done a repeat CT scan every two days. Although we know the pressure in his brain has gone down, the hemorrhages in the brain stem have become a bit larger. He’s still unconscious, he’s in a vegetative state. In my opinion this is a serious brain injury from which we do not expect recovery.”