Jodi Picoult - Change of heart

That was enough to bring me crashing 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 twodonut 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 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 Hampshire 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 me this, but I hadn't wanted to believe it.

"You know what's interesting?" the doctor said. "I believe it's potassium 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 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 Hampshire. We're assuming 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 Hampshire Criminal

Code; going through the sections and subsections was like navigating through molasses. 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 (XXlll). 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 passed.

Or in Shays case, eleven years.

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

Everything I knew about the death penalty I had learned at the

ACLU. Prior to working there, I hadn't given the death penalty much thought, beyond when someone was executed and the media made a huge story out of it. Now I knew the names of those who were killed. I heard about their last-minute appeals. I knew that, after death, some inmates were found to be innocent.

Lethal injection was supposed to be like putting a dog to sleep-a drowsiness overcame you, and then you just never woke up. No pain, no stress. It was a cocktail of three drugs: Sodium Pentothal, a sedative to put the inmate to sleep; Pavulon, to paralyze the muscular system and stop breathing; and potassium chloride, to stop the heart. The Sodium Pentothal was ultra-short-acting-which meant that you could recover quickly from its effects. It also meant that a subject might have feeling in his nerves, yet be just sedated enough to be unable to communicate or move.

The British medical journal the Lancet published a 2005 study of the toxicology reports of forty-nine executed inmates in four U.S. states; forty-three of the inmates had a level of anesthesia lower than required

Anesthesiologists say that if a person were conscious at the time potassium chloride is administered, it would feel like boiling oil in the veins.

An inmate might feel as if he were being burned alive from the inside, but be unable to move or speak because of the muscle paralysis and minimal sedation caused by the other two drugs. The Supreme Court had even had its doubts: although they still ruled that capital punishment was constitutional, they'd halted executions of two inmates on a narrower issue: whether the excessive pain caused by lethal injection was a civil rights infraction that could be argued in a lower court.

Or-to put it simply-lethal injection might not be as humane as everyone wanted to believe.

630:5 (XIV). The commissioner of corrections or his designee shall determine the substance or substances to be used and the procedures to be used in any execution, provided, however, that if for any reason the commissioner finds it to be impractical to carry out the punishment of death by administration of the required lethal substance or substances, the sentence of death may be carried out by hanging under the provisions of law for the death penalty by hanging in effect on December 31,1986.

Oliver settled on my lap as I read the words again.

Shay didn't have to be executed by lethal injection, if I could make the commissioner-or a court-find it impractical. If you coupled that with the RLUIPA-the law that said a prisoner's religious freedoms had to be protected in prison-and if I could prove that part of Shay's belief system for redemption included organ donation, then lethal injection was impractical.

In which case, Shay would be hanged.

And-here was the real miracle-according to Dr. Gallagher, that meant Shay Bourne could donate his heart.

Lucius

The day the priest returned, I was working on pigments. My favorite substance was tea-it made a stain you could vary in intensity from an almost white to a yellowish brown. MEtM's were vibrant, but they were the hardest to work with-you had to moisten a Q-tip and rub it over the surface of the MftM, you couldn't just soak off the pigment like I was doing this morning with Skittles.