Jodi Picoult - Change of heart

"It doesn't matter."

"It does matter," I said urgently. "The governor denied your stay of execution, which means we're up against a brick wall. DNA evidence is used routinely now to overturn capital punishment verdicts. There was some talk about sexual assault during the trial, wasn't there, before that charge was dropped? If that semen sample still exists, we can have it tested and matched to Kurt... I just need you to give me the details about what happened, Shay, so that I can get the ball rolling."

Shay stood up and walked toward me, resting his hands on the bars between us. "I can't."

"Why not?" I challenged. "Were you lying when you told Father Michael you were innocent?"

He glanced up at me, his eyes hot. "No."

I cannot tell you why I believed him. Maybe I was naive, because I hadn't been a criminal defense attorney; maybe I just felt that a dying man had very little left to lose. But when Shay met my gaze, I knew that he was telling me the truth-and that executing an innocent man was even more devastating, if possible, than executing a guilty one. "Well, then," I said, my head already swimming with possibilities. "You told

Father Michael your first lawyer wouldn't listen to you-but I'm listening to you now. Talk to me, Shay. Tell me something I can use to convince a judge you were wrongly convicted. Then I'll write up the request for

DNA testing, you just have to sign-"

"No."

"I can't do this alone," I exploded. "Shay, we're talking about overturning your conviction, do you understand that? About you walking out of here, free."

"I know, Maggie."

"So instead of trying, you're just going to die for a crime you didn't commit? You're okay with that?"

He stared at me and slowly nodded. "I told you that the first day I met you. I didn't want you to save me. I wanted you to save my heart."

I was stunned. "Why?"

He struggled to get the words out. "It was still my fault. I tried to rescue her, and I couldn't. I wasn't there in time. I never liked Kurt

Nealon-I used to try to not be in the same room as him when I was working, so I wouldn't feel him looking at me. But June, she was so nice. She smelled like apples and she'd make me tuna fish for lunch and let me sit at the kitchen table like I belonged there with her and the girl. After Elizabeth... afterward... it was bad enough that June wouldn't have them anymore. I didn't want her to lose the past, too.

Family's not a thing, it's a place," Shay said softly. "It's where all the memories get kept."

So he took the blame for Kurt Nealon's crimes, in order to allow the grieving widow to remember him with pride, instead of hate. How much worse would it have been for June if DNA testing had existed back then-if the alleged rape of Elizabeth had proved Kurt as the perpetrator?

"You go looking for evidence now, Maggie, and you'll rip her wide open again. This way-well, this is the end, and then it's over."

I could feel my throat closing, a fist of tears. "And what if one day

June finds out the truth? And realizes that you were executed, even though you were innocent?"

"Then," Shay said, a smile breaking over him like daylight, "she'll remember me."

I had gone into this case knowing that Shay and I wanted different outcomes; I had expected to be able to convince him that an overturned conviction was a cause for celebration, even if living meant organ donation would have to be put on hold for a while. But Shay was ready to die;

Shay wanted to die. He wasn't just giving Claire Nealon a future; he was giving one to her mother, too. He wasn't trying to save the world, like me. Just one life at a time-which is why he had a fighting chance of succeeding.

He touched my hand, where it rested on the bars. "It's okay, Maggie.

I've never done anything important. I didn't cure cancer or stop global warming or win a Nobel Prize. I didn't do anything with my life, except hurt people I loved. But dying-dying will be different."

"How?"

"They'll see their lives are worth living."

I knew that I would be haunted by Shay Bourne for a very long time, whether or not his sentence was carried out. "Someone who thinks like that," I said, "does not deserve to be executed. Please, Shay. Help me help you. You don't have to play the hero."

"Maggie," he said. "Neither do you."

June

Code blue, the nurse had said.

A stream of doctors and nurses flooded Claire's room. One began chest compressions.

I don't feel a pulse.

We need an airway.

Start chest compressions.

Can we get an IV access...

What rhythm is she in?

We need to shock her... put on the patches...

Charge to two hundred pules.

All clear...fire!

Hold compressions...

No pulse.

Give epi. Lidocaine. Bicarb.

Check for a pulse...

Dr. Wu flew through the door. "Get the mother out of here," he said, and a nurse grasped my shoulders.

"You need to come with me," she said, and I nodded, but my feet would not move. Someone held the defibrillator to Claire's chest again. Her body jackknifed off the bed just as I was dragged through the doorway.

I had been the one present when Claire flatlined; I was the one who'd run to the nurse's desk. And I was the one sitting with her now that she'd been stabilized, now that her heart, battered and ragged, was beating again. She was in a monitored bed, and I stared at the screens, at the mountainous terrain of her cardiac rhythm, sure that if I didn't blink we'd be safe.

Claire whimpered, tossing her head from side to side. The monitors cast her skin an alien green.

"Baby," I said, moving beside her. "Don't try to talk. You've still got a tube in."

Her eyes slitted open; she pleaded to me with her eyes and mimed holding a pen.

I gave her the white board Dr. Wu had given me; until Claire was extubated tomorrow morning she would have to use this to communicate. Her writing was shaky and spiked. WHAT HAPPENED?

"Your heart," I said, blinking back tears. "It wasn't doing so well."

"Anything, honey."

I glanced down; I was not touching her.

Claire circled the words again; and this time, I understood.

Suddenly I remembered something Kurt had told me once: you could only save someone who wanted to be saved; otherwise, you'd be dragged down for the count, too. I looked at Claire, but she was asleep again, the marker still curled in her hand.

Tears slipped down my cheeks, onto the hospital blanket. "Oh,

Claire... I'm so sorry," I whispered, and I was.

For what I had done.

For what I knew I had to do.

Lucius

When I coughed it turned me inside out. I could feel the tendons tangle on the outside of my skin and the fever in my head steaming against the pillow. You put ice chips on my tongue and they vanished before I swallowed isn't it funny how now things come back that I was so sure I'd forgotten like this moment of high school chemistry. Sublimation that's the word the act of turning into something you never expected to become.

The room it was so white that it hurt the backs of my eyeballs. Your hands were like hummingbirds or butterflies Stay with us Lucius you said but it was harder and harder to hear you and I could only feel you instead your hummingfly hands your butterbird fingers.

They talk about white lights and tunnels and there was a part of me expecting to see oh I'll just say it outright Shay but none of that was true.

Instead it was Him and He was holding out His hand and reaching for me.

He was just like I remembered coffee skin ebony eyes five o'clock shadow that dimple too deep for tears and I saw how foolish I had been. How could

I not have known it would be Him how could I not have known that you see God every time you look at the face of the person you love.