Change of Heart Read online

"Well," Shay said, "he's lousy at checkers."

  "Do you believe in God?"

  "Why do you believe in God?" He leaned forward, suddenly intense. "Did they tell you I want to donate my heart?"

  "That's what I came to talk about, Shay."

  "Good. No one else wants to help."

  "What about your lawyer?"

  "I fired him." Shay shrugged. "He lost all the appeals, and then he started talking about going to the governor. The governor's not even from New Hampshire, did you know that? He was born in Mississippi. I always wanted to see that river, take one of those gambling boats down it like some kind of cardsharp. Or maybe that's shark. Do they have those in rivers?"

  "Your lawyer ..."

  "He wanted the governor to commute my sentence to life, but that's just another death sentence. So I fired him."

  I thought about Warden Coyne, how sure he was that this was all just a ploy to get Shay Bourne's execution called off. Could he have been wrong? "Are you saying that you want to die, Shay?"

  "I want to live," he said. "So I have to die."

  Finally, something I could latch onto. "You will live," I said. "In the Kingdom of the Father. No matter what happens here, Shay. And no matter whether or not you can donate your organs."

  Suddenly his face went dark. "What do you mean, whether or not?"

  "Well, it's complicated ..."

  "I have to give her my heart. I have to."

  "Who?"

  "Claire Nealon."

  My jaw dropped. This specific part of Shay's request had not made it to the broadcast news. "Nealon? Is she related to Elizabeth?" Too late I realized that the average person--one who hadn't been on Shay's jury--might not recognize that name and identify it as quickly. But Shay was too agitated to notice.

  "She's the sister of the girl who was killed. She has a heart problem; I saw it on TV. What's inside me is going to save me," Shay said. "If I don't bring it forward, it's going to kill me."

  We were making the same mistake, Shay and I. We both believed that you could right a former wrong by doing a good deed later on. But giving Claire Nealon his heart wasn't going to bring her sister back to life. And being Shay Bourne's spiritual advisor wasn't going to erase the fact that I was part of the reason he was here.

  "You can't get salvation by donating your organs, Shay. The only way to find salvation is to admit your guilt and seek absolution through Jesus."

  "What happened then doesn't matter now."

  "You don't have to be afraid to take responsibility; God loves us, even when we screw up."

  "I couldn't stop it," Shay said. "But this time, I can fix it."

  "Leave that to God," I suggested. "Tell Him you're sorry for what you did, and He'll forgive you."

  "No matter what?"

  "No matter what."

  "Then why do you have to say you're sorry first?"

  I hesitated, trying to find a better way to explain sin and salvation to Shay. It was a bargain: you made an admission, you got redemption in return. In Shay's economy of salvation, you gave away a piece of yourself--and somehow found yourself whole again.

  Were the two ideas really so different?

  I shook my head to clear it.

  "Lucius is an atheist," Shay said. "Right, Lucius?"

  From next door, Lucius mumbled, "Mm-hmm."

  "And he didn't die. He was sick, and he got better."

  The AIDS patient; I'd heard about him on the news. "Did you have something to do with it?"

  "I didn't do anything."

  "Lucius, do you believe that, too?"

  I leaned back so that I could make eye contact with this other inmate, a slim man with a shock of white hair. "I think Shay had everything to do with it," he said.

  "Lucius should believe whatever he needs to," Shay said.

  "What about the miracles?" Lucius added.

  "What miracles?" Shay said.

  Two facts struck me: Shay Bourne was not claiming to be the Messiah, or Jesus, or anyone but himself. And through some misguided belief, he truly felt that he wouldn't rest in peace unless he could donate his heart to Claire Nealon.

  "Look," Lucius said. "Are you or are you not going to help him?"

  Maybe none of us could compensate for what we'd done wrong in the past, but that didn't mean we couldn't make our futures matter more. I closed my eyes and imagined being the last person Shay Bourne spoke with before he was executed by the State of New Hampshire. I imagined picking a section of the Bible that would resonate with him, a balm of prayer during those last few minutes. I could do this for him. I could be who he needed me to be now, because I hadn't been who he needed me to be back then. "Shay," I said, "knowing that your heart is beating in some other person isn't salvation. It's altruism. Salvation is coming home. It's understanding that you don't have to prove yourself to God."

  "Oh, for Christ's sake," Lucius snorted. "Don't listen to him, Shay."

  I turned to him. "Do you mind?" Then I shifted position, so that I blocked Lucius from my sight, focusing on Shay. "God loves you--whether or not you give up your organs, whether or not you've made mistakes in the past. And the day of your execution, he'll be waiting for you. Christ can save you, Shay."

  "Christ can't give Claire Nealon a heart." Suddenly Shay's gaze was piercing and lucid. "I don't need to find God. I don't want catechism," he said. "All I want to know is whether, after I'm killed, I can save a little girl."

  "No," I said bluntly. "Not if you're given a lethal injection. The drugs are meant specifically to stop your heart, and after that, it's worthless for donation."

  The light in his eyes dimmed, and I drew in my breath. "I'm sorry, Shay. I know you were hoping to hear something different, and your intentions are good ... but you need to channel those good intentions to make peace with God another way. And that is something I can make happen."

  Just then a young woman burst onto I-tier. She had a cascade of black curls tumbling down her back, and peeking out from her flak jacket was the ugliest striped suit I'd ever seen. "Shay Bourne?" she said. "I know a way you can donate your organs."

  Maggie

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  Some people may find it tough to break out of prison, but for me, it was equally as hard to get in. Okay, so I wasn't officially Shay Bourne's attorney--but the prison officials didn't know that. I could argue the technicality with Bourne himself, if and when I reached him.

  I hadn't counted on how difficult it would be to get through the throng outside the prison. It's one thing to shove your way past a group of college kids smoking pot in a tent, their MAKE PEACE NOT MIRACLES signs littering the muddy ground; it's another thing entirely to explain to a mother and her smooth-scalped, cancer-stricken toddler why you deserved to cut their place in line. In the end, the only way I could edge forward was by explaining to those who'd been waiting (in some cases, for days) that I was Shay Bourne's legal advisor and that I would pass along their pleas: from the elderly couple with knotted hands, whose twin diagnoses--breast cancer and lymphatic cancer--came within a week of each other; to the father who carried pictures of the eight children he couldn't support since losing his job; to the daughter pushing her mother's wheelchair, wishing for just one more lucid moment in the fog of Alzheimer's so that she could say she was sorry for a transgression that had happened years earlier. There is so much pain in this world, I thought, how do any of us manage to get up in the morning?

  When I reached the front gate, I announced that I had come to see Shay Bourne, and the officer laughed at me. "You and the rest of the free world."

  "I'm his lawyer."

  He looked at me for a long moment, and then spoke into his radio. A moment later, a second officer arrived and escorted me past the blockade. As I left, a cheer went up from the crowd.

  Stunned, I turned around, waved hesitantly, and then hurried to catch up.

  I had never been to the state prison. It was a large, old brick building; its courtyard stretched out behind the razor-wir