Change of Heart

by Jodi Picoult

  "I'll give you five minutes," the nurse said. "But you have to promise you won't bring him in again before the transplant."

  Claire, who had a death grip on the dog, glanced up. "Transplant?" she repeated. "What transplant?"

  "She was being theoretical," I said quickly.

  "Dr. Wu doesn't schedule theoretical transplants," the nurse said.

  Claire blinked at me. "Mom?" There was a thread in her voice that had started to unravel.

  The nurse turned on her heel. "I'm counting," she said, and left the room.

  "Is it true?" Claire asked. "There's a heart for me?"

  "We're not sure. There's a catch ..."

  "There's always a catch," Claire said. "I mean, how many hearts have turned out to not be as great as Dr. Wu expected?"

  "Well, this one ... it's not ready for transplant yet. It's sort of still being used."

  Claire laughed a little. "What are you planning to do? Kill someone?"

  I didn't answer.

  "Is the donor really sick, or old? How could she even be a donor if she's sick or old?" Claire asked.

  "Honey," I said. "We have to wait for the donor to be executed."

  Claire was not stupid. I watched her put together this new information with what she'd heard on television. Her hands tightened on Dudley. "No way," she said quietly. "I am not taking a heart from the guy who killed my father and my sister."

  "He wants to give it to you. He offered."

  "This is sick," Claire said. "You're sick." She struggled to get up, but she was tethered to the bed with tubes and wires.

  "Even Dr. Wu said that it's an amazing match for you and your body. I couldn't just say no."

  "What about me? Don't I get to say no?"

  "Claire, baby, you know donors don't come along every day. I had to do it."

  "Then undo it," she demanded. "Tell them I don't want his stupid heart."

  I sank down on the edge of the hospital bed. "It's just a muscle. It doesn't mean you'll be like him." I paused. "And besides, he owes this to us."

  "He doesn't owe us anything! Why don't you get that?" Her eyes filled with tears. "You can't tie the score, Mom. You just have to start over."

  Her monitors began to sound an alert; her pulse was rising, her heart pumping too hard. Dudley began to bark. "Claire, you have to calm down ..."

  "This isn't about him," Claire said. "This isn't even about me. It's about you. You need to get payment for what happened to Elizabeth. You need to make him pay for what he did. Where do I fit into that?"

  The nurse flew into the room like a great white heron, fussing over Claire. "What's going on in here?" she said, checking the connections and tubes and drips.

  "Nothing," we both said simultaneously.

  The nurse gave me a measured glance. "I highly recommend you take that dog away and let Claire get some rest."

  I reached for Dudley and wrestled him back into the duffel bag. "Just think about it," I pleaded.

  Ignoring me, Claire reached into the bag and patted the dog. "Good-bye," she whispered.

  MICHAEL

  |||||||||||||||||||||||||

  I had gone back to St. Catherine's. I told Father Walter that I had not been seeing clearly, and that God had opened my eyes to the truth.

  I just neglected to mention that God happened to be sitting on I-tier about three miles away from our church, awaiting an expedited trial that began this week.

  Each night, I said three consecutive rosaries--penance for lying to Father Walter--but I had to be there. I had to do something constructive with my time, now that I wasn't spending it with Shay. Since I'd confessed to him at the hospital that I'd served on the jury that had convicted him, he'd refused to see me.

  There was a part of me that understood his reaction--imagine how it would feel to know your confidant had betrayed you--but there was another part of me that spent hours trying to figure out why divine forgiveness hadn't kicked in yet. Then again, if the Gospel of Thomas was to be believed, no matter how much time and space Shay put between us, we were never really separate: mankind and divinity were flip sides of the same coin.

  And so, every day at noon, I told Father Walter I was meeting a fictional couple at their house to try to guide them away from the path of divorce. But instead, I rode my Trophy to the prison, burrowed through the crowds, and went inside to try to see Shay.

  CO Whitaker was called to escort me to I-tier after I'd passed through the metal detectors at the visitor's booth. "Hi, Father. You here to sell Girl Scout cookies?"

  "You know it," I replied. "Anything exciting happen today?"

  "Let's see. Joey Kunz got a medical visit for diarrhea."

  "Wow," I said. "Sorry I missed that."

  As I suited up in my flak jacket, Whitaker went into I-tier to tell Shay I'd come. Again. But no more than five seconds had passed before he returned, a sheepish look on his face. "Not today, Father," he said. "Sorry."

  "I'll try again," I replied, but we both knew that wasn't possible. We had run out of time: Shay's trial began tomorrow.

  I left the prison and walked back to my motorcycle. All modesty aside, I was the closest thing Shay had to a disciple; and if that was true, it meant learning from the mistakes of history. At Jesus's crucifixion, His followers had scattered--except for Mary Magdalene, and his mother. So even if Shay didn't acknowledge me in court, I would still be there. I would bear witness for him.

  For a long time, I sat on my bike in the parking lot, going nowhere.

  In fairness, it wasn't like I wanted to spring this all on Maggie a few days before the trial. The truth of the matter was that if Shay didn't want me as his spiritual advisor anymore, I had no excuse for not telling Maggie that I'd been on the jury that convicted him. I'd tried to contact her several times over the past week, but she was either out of her office, not at home, or not answering her cell. And then, out of the blue, she called me. "Get your ass down here," she said. "You have some explaining to do."

  In twenty minutes, I was sitting in her ACLU office. "I had a meeting with Shay today," Maggie said. "He said you'd lied to him."

  I nodded. "Did he go into detail?"

  "No. He said I deserved to hear it firsthand." She crossed her arms. "He also said he didn't want you testifying on his behalf."

  "Right," I mumbled. "I don't blame him."

  "Are you really a priest?"

  I blinked at her. "Of course I am--"

  "Then I don't care what you're lying about," Maggie said. "You can unburden your soul after we win Shay's case."

  "It's not that simple ..."

  "Yes it is, Father. You are the only character witness we've got for Shay; you're credible because you're wearing that collar. I don't care if you and Shay had a fight; I don't care if you moonlight as a drag queen; I don't care if you have enough secrets to last a lifetime. It's don't ask, don't tell until the trial starts, okay? All I care about is that you wear that collar, get on the stand, and make Shay sound like a saint. If you walk, the whole case goes down the toilet. Is that simple enough for you?"

  If Maggie was right--if my testimony was the only thing that would help Shay--then how could I tell her something now that would ruin the case? A sin of omission could be understandable if you were helping someone by holding back. I could not give Shay his life back, but I could make sure his death was what he wanted.

  Maybe it would be enough for him to forgive me.

  "It's normal to be a little freaked out about going to court," Maggie said, misreading my silence.

  During my testimony, I was supposed to explain in layman's terms how donating a heart to Claire Nealon was one of Shay's spiritual beliefs. Having a priest say this was a stroke of genius on Maggie's part--who wouldn't believe a member of the clergy when it came to religion?

  "You don't have to be worried about the cross-exam," Maggie continued. "You tell the judge that while a Catholic would believe that salvation comes solely through Jesus Christ, Shay believes organ donation's
necessary for redemption. That's perfectly true, and I can promise you that lightning isn't going to crash through the ceiling when you say it."

  My head snapped up. "I can't tell the court that Shay will find Jesus," I said. "I think he might be Jesus."

  She blinked. "You think what?"

  The words began to spill out of me, the way I always imagined it felt to be speaking in tongues: truths that tumbled before you even realized they'd left your mouth. "It makes perfect sense. The age, the profession. The fact that he's on death row. The miracles. And the heart donation--he's literally giving himself away for our sins, again. He's giving the part that matters the least--the body--in order to become whole in spirit."

  "This is way worse than having cold feet," Maggie murmured. "You're crazy."

  "Maggie, he's been quoting a gospel that was written two hundred years after Christ's death--a gospel that most people don't even know exists. Word for word."

  "I've listened to his words, and frankly, they're unintelligible. Do you know what he was doing yesterday when I briefed him on his testimony? Playing tic-tac-toe. With himself."

  "You have to read between the lines."

  "Yeah, right. And I bet when you listen to Britney Spears records backward, you hear 'Sleep with me, I'm not too young.' For God's sake--no pun intended--you're a Catholic priest. Whatever happened to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? I don't remember Shay being part of the Trinity."

  "What about everyone camped outside the prison? Are they all crazy, too?"

  "They want Shay to cure their kid's autism or reverse their husband's Alzheimer's. They're in it for themselves," Maggie said. "The only people who think Shay Bourne is the Messiah are so desperate that they'd be able to find salvation beneath the lid of a two-liter bottle of Pepsi."

  "Or through a heart transplant?" I countered. "You've worked up a whole legal theory based on individual religious beliefs. So how can you tell me, categorically, that I'm wrong?"

  "Because it's not a matter of right or wrong. It's life or death--namely, Shay's. I'd say whatever I had to to win this case for him; it's my job. And it was supposed to be yours, too. This isn't about some revelation; it's not about who Shay might have been or might be in the future. It's about who he is right now: a convicted murderer who's going to be executed unless I can do something about it. It doesn't matter to me if he's a vagrant or Queen Elizabeth or Jesus Christ--it just matters that we win this case for him, so that he can die on his own terms. That means that you will get on that damn stand and swear on that Bible--which, for all I know, might not even be relevant to you now that you've found Jesus on I-tier. And if you screw this up for Shay by sounding like a nut job when I question you, I will make your life miserable." By the time Maggie finished, she was red in the face and breathless. "This old gospel," she said. "Word for word?"

  I nodded.

  "How did you find out about it?"

  "From your father," I said.

  Maggie's brows rose. "I'm not putting a priest and a rabbi on the stand. The judge will be waiting for a punch line."

  I looked up at her. "I have an idea."

  Maggie

  |||||||||||||||||||||||||

  In the client-attorney conference room outside I-tier, Shay climbed on the chair and started talking to flies. "Go left," he urged as he craned his neck toward the air vent. "Come on. You can do it."

  I looked up from my notes for a moment. "Are they pets?"

  "No," Shay said, stepping down from the chair. His hair was matted, but only on the left side, which made him look absentminded at best and mentally ill at worst. I wondered what I could say to convince him to let me brush it before we went out in front of the judge tomorrow.

  The flies were circling. "I have a pet rabbit," I said.

  "Last week, before I was moved to I-tier, I had pets," Shay said, then shook his head. "It wasn't last week. It was yesterday. I can't remember."

  "It doesn't matter--"

  "What's its name?"

  "Sorry?"

  "The rabbit."

  "Oliver," I said, and took out of my pocket what I'd been holding for Shay. "I brought you a gift."

  He smiled at me, his eyes piercing and suddenly focused. "I hope it's a key."

  "Not quite." I passed him a Snack Pack butterscotch pudding. "I figured you don't get the good stuff in prison."

  He opened the foil top, licked it, and then carefully folded it into his breast pocket. "Is there butter in it?"

  "I don't know."

  "What about Scotch?"

  I smiled. "I truly doubt it."

  "Too bad."

  I watched him take the first bite. "Tomorrow's going to be a big day," I said.

  In the wake of Michael's crisis of faith, I had contacted the witness he recommended--an academic named Ian Fletcher whom I vaguely remembered from a television show he used to host, where he'd go around debunking the claims of people who saw the Virgin Mary in their toast burn pattern and things like that. At first, putting him on the stand seemed to be a sure way to lose a case--but the guy had a PhD from the Princeton Theological Seminary, and there had to be some merit in putting a former atheist on the stand. If Fletcher could be convinced there was a God--be it Jesus, Allah, Yahweh, Shay, or none of the above--then surely any of us could.

  Shay finished his pudding and handed the empty cup back to me. "I need the foil, too," I said. The last thing I wanted was to find out a few days from now that Shay had fashioned a shank out of the aluminum and hurt himself or someone else. He took it out of his pocket meekly and handed it back to me. "You do know what's happening tomorrow, right?"

  "Don't you?"

  "Well. About the trial," I began, "all you have to do is sit patiently and listen. A lot of what you'll hear probably won't make sense to you."

  He looked up. "Are you nervous?"

  I was nervous, all right--and not just because this was a high-profile death penalty case that might or might not have found a constitutional loophole. I lived in a country where 85 percent of the residents called themselves Christians and about half went regularly to some form of church--religion was not about the individual to the average American; it was about the community of believers, and my whole case was about to turn that on its ear. "Shay," I said. "You understand that we might lose."

  Shay nodded, dismissive. "Where is she?"

  "Who?"

  "The girl. The one who needs the heart."

  "She's in the hospital."

  "Then we have to hurry," he said.

  I exhaled slowly. "Right. I'd better go get my game face on."

  I stood up, summoning the CO to let me out of the conference room, but Shay's voice called me back. "Don't forget to say you're sorry," he said.

  "To whom?"

  By then, though, Shay was standing on the chair again, his attention focused on something else. And as I watched, seven flies landed in quick succession on the palm of his out-stretched hand.

  When I was five, all I wanted was a Christmas tree. My friends had them, and the menorah we lit at night paled in comparison. My father pointed out that we got eight presents, but my friends got even more than that, if you added up what was sitting underneath their tree. One cold December afternoon, my mother told my father we were heading to the movies, and instead, she drove me to the mall. We waited in line with little girls who had ribbons in their hair and fancy lace dresses, so that I could sit on Santa's lap and tell him I wanted My Pretty Pony. Then, with a candy cane fisted in my hand, we walked to the decoration display where there were fifteen Christmas trees set up--white ones with glass balls, fake balsam ones strung with red beads and bows, one that had Tinker Bell at the top and all the Disney characters dotted as ornaments. "Like this," my mother said, and right in the middle of the department store we lay down at a crossroads of the trees and gazed up at the blinking light displays. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. "I won't tell Daddy," I promised, but she said that didn't matter. This wasn't about ano
ther religion, my mother explained. These were just the trappings. You could admire the wrapping, without ever taking out what was inside the box.

  After I left Shay, I sat in my car and called my mother at the ChutZpah. "Hi," I said when she answered. "What are you doing?"

  There was a beat of silence. "Maggie? What's wrong?"

  "Nothing. I felt like calling you."

  "Did something happen? Did you get hurt?"

  "Can't I call my mother just because I feel like it?"

  "You can," she said, "but you don't."

  Well. There was just no arguing with the truth. I took a deep breath and forged ahead. "Do you remember the time you took me to see Santa?"

  "Please don't tell me you're converting. It'll kill your father."

  "I'm not converting," I said, and my mother sighed with relief. "I just was remembering it, that's all."

  "So you called to tell me?"

  "No," I said. "I called to say I'm sorry."

  "For what?" My mother laughed. "You haven't done anything."

  In that moment, I remembered us lying on the floor of the department store, gazing at the lit trees, as a security guard loomed over us. Just give her another few minutes, my mother had begged. June Nealon's face flashed before me. Maybe this was the job of a mother: to buy time for her child, no matter what. Even if it meant doing something she'd rather not; even if it left her flat on her back.

  "Yes," I answered. "I know."

  "Desiring religious freedom is nothing new," I said, standing up in front of Judge Haig at the opening of Shay Bourne's trial. "One of the most famous cases happened more than two hundred years ago, and it didn't take place in our country--namely, because there was no country. A group of people who dared to hold religious beliefs different from the status quo found themselves being forced to adopt the policies of the Church of England--and instead, they chose to strike off to an unknown place across the ocean. But the Puritans liked religious freedom so much they kept it all to themselves--often persecuting people who didn't believe what they did. This is precisely why the founders of the new nation of the United States decided to put an end to religious intolerance by making religious freedom a cornerstone of this country."

  This was a nonjury trial, which meant that the only person I had to preach to was the judge; but the courtroom was still filled. There were reporters there from four networks the judge had preapproved, there were victim's rights advocates, there were death penalty supporters and death penalty opponents. The only party present in support of Shay--and my first witness--was Father Michael, seated just behind the plaintiff's table.