Change Of Heart Part 11

It wasn't until I was twelve that I was allowed to skip a Sunday Ma.s.s to tag along with my grandfather. My grandmother sent me off with a bag lunch and an old baseball hat to keep the sun off my face. "Maybe you can talk some sense into him," she said. I had heard enough sermons to understand what happened to those who didn't truly believe, so I climbed into his little aluminum boat and waited until we had stopped underneath the reaching arm of a willow tree along the sh.o.r.eline. He took out a fly rod and handed it to me, and then started casting with his own ancient bamboo rod.

One two three, one two three. There was a rhythm to fly-fis.h.i.+ng, like a ballroom dance. I waited until we had both unspooled the long tongue of line over the lake, until the flies that my grandfather laboriously tied in his bas.e.m.e.nt had lightly come to rest on the surface. "Grandpa," I asked, "you don't want to go to h.e.l.l, do you?"

"Aw, Christ," he had answered. "Did your grandmother put you up to this?"

"No," I lied. "I just don't understand why you never go to Ma.s.s with us."

"I have my own Ma.s.s," he had said. "I don't need some guy in a collar and a dress telling me what I should and shouldn't believe."

Maybe if I'd been older, or smarter, I would have left it alone at that. Instead, I squinted into the sun, up at my grandfather. "But you got married by a priest."

He sighed. "Yeah, and I even went to parochial school, like you."

"What made you stop?"

Before he could answer, I felt that tug on my line that always felt like Christmas, the moment before you opened the biggest box under the tree. I reeled in, fighting the whistle and snap of the fish on the other end, certain that I'd never caught anything quite like this before. Finally, it burst out of the water, as if it were being born again.

"A salmon!" my grandfather crowed. "Ten pounds, easy ... imagine all the ladders it had to climb to make its way back here from the ocean to sp.a.w.n." He held the fish aloft, grinning. "I haven't seen one in this lake since the sixties!"

I looked down at the fish, still on my line, thras.h.i.+ng in splendor. It was silver and gold and crimson all at once.

My grandfather held the salmon, stilling it enough to unhook the fly, and set the fish back into the lake. We watched the flag of its tail, the ruddy back as it swam away. "Who says that if you want to find G.o.d on a Sunday morning, you ought to be looking in church?" my grandfather murmured.

For a long time after that, I believed my grandfather had it right: G.o.d was in the details. But that was before I learned that the requirements of a true believer included Ma.s.s every Sunday and holy day of obligation, receiving the Eucharist, reconciliation once a year, giving money to the poor, observing Lent. Or in other words-just because you say you're Catholic, if you don't walk the walk, you're not.

Back when I was at seminary, I imagined I heard my grandfather's voice: I thought G.o.d was supposed to love you unconditionally. Those sure sound like a lot of conditions to me. I thought G.o.d was supposed to love you unconditionally. Those sure sound like a lot of conditions to me.

The truth is, I stopped listening.

By the time I left the prison, the crowd outside had doubled in size. There were the ill, the feeble, the old and the hungry, but there was also a small cadre of nuns from a convent up in Maine, and a choir singing "Holy Holy Holy." I was surprised at how hearsay about a so-called miracle could produce so many converts, so quickly.

"You see?" I heard a woman say, pointing to me. "Even Father Michael's here."

She was a paris.h.i.+oner, and her son had cystic fibrosis. He was here, too, in a wheelchair being pushed by his father.

"Is it true, then?" the man asked. "Can this guy really work miracles?"

"G.o.d can," I said, heading that question off at the pa.s.s. I put my hand on the boy's forehead. "Dear St. John of G.o.d, patron saint of those who are ill, I ask for your intercession that the Lord will have mercy on this child and return him to health. I ask this in Jesus's name." can," I said, heading that question off at the pa.s.s. I put my hand on the boy's forehead. "Dear St. John of G.o.d, patron saint of those who are ill, I ask for your intercession that the Lord will have mercy on this child and return him to health. I ask this in Jesus's name."

Not Shay Bourne's, I thought. Shay Bourne's, I thought.

"Amen," the parents murmured.

"If you'll excuse me," I said, turning away.

The chances of Shay Bourne being Jesus were about as likely as me being G.o.d. These people, these falsely faithful, didn't know Shay Bourne-they'd never met met Shay Bourne. They were imposing the face of our Savior on a man with a tendency to talk to himself; a man whose hands had been covered with the blood of two innocent people. They were confusing show-mans.h.i.+p and inexplicable events with divinity. A miracle was a miracle only until it could be proved otherwise. Shay Bourne. They were imposing the face of our Savior on a man with a tendency to talk to himself; a man whose hands had been covered with the blood of two innocent people. They were confusing show-mans.h.i.+p and inexplicable events with divinity. A miracle was a miracle only until it could be proved otherwise.

I started pus.h.i.+ng through the mob, moving in the opposite direction, away from the prison gates, a man on a mission. Maggie Bloom wasn't the only one who could do research.

Maggie

In retrospect, it would have been much simpler to place a phone call to a medical professional who might lecture me on the ins and outs of organ donation. But it could take a week for a busy doctor to call me back, and my route home from the prison skirted the grounds of the Concord hospital, and I was still buzzing with righteous legal fervor. These are the only grounds I can offer for why I decided to stop in the emergency room. The faster I could speak to an expert, the faster I could start building Shay's case.

However, the triage nurse-a large graying woman who looked like a battles.h.i.+p-compressed her mouth into a flat line when I asked to talk to a doctor. "What's the problem?" she asked.

"I've got a few questions-"

"So does everyone else in that waiting room, but you'll still have to explain the nature of the illness to me."

"Oh, I'm not sick ..."

She glanced around me. "Then where's the patient?"

"At the state prison."

The nurse shook her head. "The patient has to be present for registration."

I found that hard to believe. Surely someone knocked unconscious in a car accident wasn't left waiting in the hall until he came to and could recite his Blue Cross group number.

"We're busy," the nurse said. "When the patient arrives, sign in again."

"But I'm a lawyer-"

"Then sue me," the nurse replied.

I walked back to the waiting room and sat down next to a college-age boy with a b.l.o.o.d.y washcloth wrapped around his hand. "I did that once," I said. "Cutting a bagel."

He turned to me. "I put my hand through a plate-gla.s.s window because my girlfriend was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g my roommate."

A nurse appeared. "Whit Romano?" she said, and the boy stood up.

"Good luck with that," I called after him, and I speared my fingers through my hair, thinking hard. Leaving a message with the nurse didn't guarantee a doctor would see it anytime in the next millennium-I had to find another way in.

Five minutes later I was standing in front of the battles.h.i.+p again. "The patient's arrived?" she asked.

"Well. Yes. It's me."

She put down her pen. "You're sick now. You weren't sick before."

I shrugged. "I'm thinking appendicitis ..."

The nurse pursed her lips. "You know you'll be charged a hundred and fifty dollars for an emergency room visit, even a fabricated one."

"You mean insurance doesn't-"

"Nope."

I thought of Shay, of the sound the steel doors made when they sc.r.a.ped shut in prison. "It's my abdomen. Sharp pains."

"Which side?"

"My left ... ?" The nurse narrowed her eyes. "I meant my other other left." left."

"Take a seat," she said.

I settled in the waiting room again and read two issues of People People nearly as old as I was before being called into an exam room. A nurse-younger, wearing pink scrubs-took my blood pressure and temperature. She wrote down my health history, while I mentally reviewed whether you could be brought up on criminal charges for falsifying your own medical records. nearly as old as I was before being called into an exam room. A nurse-younger, wearing pink scrubs-took my blood pressure and temperature. She wrote down my health history, while I mentally reviewed whether you could be brought up on criminal charges for falsifying your own medical records.

I was lying on the exam table, staring at a Where's Waldo? poster on the ceiling, when the doctor came in.

"Ms. Bloom?" he said.

Okay, I'm just going to come out and say it-he was stunning. He had black hair and eyes the color of the blueberries that grew in my parents' garden-almost purple in a certain light, and translucent the next moment. He could have sliced me wide open with his smile. He was wearing a white coat and a denim collared s.h.i.+rt with a tie that had Barbie dolls all over it.

He probably had a real live one of those at home, too-a 38-22-36 fiancee who had double-majored in law and medicine, or astrophysics and political science.

Our whole relations.h.i.+p was over, and I hadn't even said a word to him.

"You are are Ms. Bloom?" Ms. Bloom?"

How had I not noticed that British accent? "Yes," I said, wis.h.i.+ng I was anyone but but.

"I'm Dr. Gallagher," he said, sitting down on a stool. "Why don't you tell me what's been going on?"

"Well," I began. "Actually, I'm fine."

"For the record, appendicitis rates as pretty ill."

Ill. I loved that. I bet he said things like flat flat and and loo loo and and lift, lift, too. too.

"Let's just check you out," he said. He stood and hooked his stethoscope into his ears, then settled it under my s.h.i.+rt. I couldn't remember the last time a guy had slipped his hand under my s.h.i.+rt. "Just breathe," he said.

Yeah, right.

"Really," I said. "I'm not sick."

"If you could just lie back ... ?"

That was enough to bring me cras.h.i.+ng down to reality. Not only would he realize, the moment he palpated my stomach, that I didn't have appendicitis ... he'd also probably be able to tell that I had the two-donut combo at Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast, when everyone knows they take three days-each-to digest.

"I don't have appendicitis," I blurted out. "I just told the nurse I did because I wanted to talk to a doctor for a few minutes-"

"All right," he said gently. "I'm just going to call in Dr. Tawasaka. I'm sure she'll talk to you all you like ..." He stuck his head out the door. "Sue? Page psych ..."

Oh, excellent, now he thought I had a mental health problem. "I don't need a psychiatrist," I said. "I'm an attorney and I need a medical consultation about a client."

I hesitated, expecting him to call in security, but instead he sat down and folded his arms. "Go on."

"Do you know anything about heart transplants?"

"A bit. But I can tell you right now that if your client requires one, he'll have to register with UNOS and get in line like everyone else ..."

"He doesn't need a heart. He wants to donate donate one." one."

I watched his face transform as he realized that my client had to be the death row inmate. There just weren't a lot of prisoners in New Hamps.h.i.+re clamoring to be organ donors these days. "He's going to be executed," Dr. Gallagher said.

"Yes. By lethal injection."

"Then he won't be able to donate his heart. A heart donor has to be brain-dead; lethal injection causes cardiac death. In other words, once your client's heart stops beating during that execution, it's not going to work in someone else."

I knew this; Father Michael had told told me this, but I hadn't wanted to believe it. me this, but I hadn't wanted to believe it.

"You know what's interesting?" the doctor said. "I believe it's pota.s.sium that's used in lethal injection-the chemical that stops the heart. That's the same chemical we use in cardioplegia solution, which is perfused into the donor heart just prior to sewing it into the patient. It keeps the heart arrested while it's not receiving a normal blood flow, until all the suturing's finished." He looked up at me. "I don't suppose the prison would agree to a surgical cardiectomy-a heart removal-as a method of execution?"

I shook my head. "The execution has to happen within the walls of the prison."

He shrugged. "I cannot believe I'm saying this, but it's too bad that they don't use a firing squad anymore. A well-placed shot could leave an inmate a perfect organ donor. Even hanging would work, if one could hook up a respirator after brain death was confirmed." He shuddered. "Pardon me. I'm used to saving patients, not theoretically killing them."

"I understand."

"Then again, even if he could could donate his heart, chances are it would be too large for a child's body. Has anyone addressed that yet?" donate his heart, chances are it would be too large for a child's body. Has anyone addressed that yet?"

I shook my head, feeling even worse about Shay's odds.

The doctor glanced up. "The bad news, I'm afraid, is that your client is out of luck."

"Is there any good news?"

"Of course." Dr. Gallagher grinned. "You don't have appendicitis, Ms. Bloom."

"Here's the thing," I said to Oliver when I had gotten us enough Chinese takeout to feed a family of four (you could keep the leftovers, and Oliver really did like vegetable moo shu, even if my mother said that rabbits didn't eat real food). "It's been sixty-nine years since anyone's been executed in the state of New Hamps.h.i.+re. We're a.s.suming that lethal injection is the only method, but that doesn't mean we're right."

I picked up the carton of lo mein and spooled the noodles into my mouth. "I know it's here somewhere," I muttered as the rabbit hopped across another stack of legal texts scattered on the floor of the living room. I was not in the habit of reading the New Hamps.h.i.+re Criminal Code; going through the sections and subsections was like navigating through mola.s.ses. I'd turn back a page, and the spot I'd been reading a moment before would disappear in the run of text.

Death.

Death penalty.

Capital murder.

Injection, lethal. 630:5 (XXIII). When the penalty of death is imposed, the sentence shall be that the defendant is imprisoned in the state prison at Concord until the day appointed for his execution, which shall not be within one year from the day sentence is pa.s.sed.

Or in Shay's case, eleven years years.

The punishment of death shall be inflicted by continuous, intravenous administration of a lethal quant.i.ty of an ultra-short-acting barbiturate in combination with a chemical paralytic agent until death is p.r.o.nounced by a licensed physician according to accepted standards of medical practice.