The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  There were two ways of looking at any situation. What one person sees as a prisoner’s babble, another might recognize as words from a long-lost gospel. What one person sees as a medically viable stroke of luck, another might see as a resurrection. I thought of Lucius being healed, of the water into wine, of the followers who had so easily believed in Shay. I thought of a thirty-three-year-old man, a carpenter, facing execution. I thought of Rabbi Bloom’s idea—that every generation had a person in it capable of being the Messiah.

  There is a point when you stand at the edge of the cliff of hard evidence, look across to what lies on the other side, and step forward. Otherwise, you wind up going nowhere. I stared at Shay, and maybe for the first time, I didn’t see who he was. I saw who he might be.

  As if he could feel my gaze, he began to toss and turn. Only one of his eyes could slit open; the other was swollen shut. “Father,” he rasped in a voice still cushioned with medication. “Where am I?”

  “You were hurt. You’re going to be all right, Shay.”

  In the corner of the room, the officer was staring at us. “Do you think we could have a minute alone? I’d like to pray in private with him.”

  The officer hesitated—as well he should have: what clergyman isn’t accustomed to praying in front of others? Then he shrugged. “Guess a priest wouldn’t do anything funny,” he said. “Your boss is tougher than mine.”

  People anthropomorphized God all the time—as a boss, as a lifesaver, as a justice, as a father. No one ever pictured him as a convicted murderer. But if you put aside the physical trappings of the body—something that all the apostles had had to do after Jesus was resurrected—then maybe anything was possible.

  As the officer backed out of the room, Shay winced. “My face . . .” He tried to lift up his hand to touch the bandages, but found that he was handcuffed to the bed. Struggling, he began to pull harder.

  “Shay,” I said firmly, “don’t.”

  “It hurts. I want drugs . . .”

  “You’re already on drugs,” I told him. “We only have a few minutes till the officer comes back in, so we have to talk while we can.”

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  Ignoring him, I leaned closer. “Tell me,” I whispered. “Tell me who you are.”

  A wary hope lit Shay’s eyes; he’d probably never expected to be recognized as the Lord. He went very still, never taking his eyes off mine. “Tell me who you are.”

  In the Catholic Church, there were lies of commission and lies of omission. The first referred to telling an outright falsehood, the second to withholding the truth. Both were sins.

  I had lied to Shay since before the moment we met. He’d counted on me to help him donate his heart, but he’d never realized how black mine was. How could I expect Him to reveal Himself when I hadn’t done the same?

  “You’re right,” I said quietly. “There’s something I haven’t told you . . . about who I used to be, before I was a priest.”

  “Let me guess . . . an altar boy.”

  “I was a college student, majoring in math. I didn’t even go to church until after I served on the jury.”

  “What jury?”

  I hesitated. “The one that sentenced you to death, Shay.”

  He stared at me for a long minute, and then he turned away. “Get out.”

  “Shay—”

  “Get the fuck away from me!” He flailed against his handcuffs, yanking at the bonds so that his skin rubbed raw. The sound he made was wordless, primordial, the noise that had surely filled the world before there was order and light.

  A nurse came running in, along with the two officers who were standing outside. “What happened?” the nurse cried, as Shay continued to thrash, his head whipping from side to side on the pillow. The gauze in his nose bloomed with fresh blood.

  The nurse pushed a call button on the panel behind Shay’s head, and suddenly the room was filled with people. A doctor yelled at the officers to unlock his damn hands, but as soon as they did, Shay began swatting at everything he could reach. An aide plunged a hypodermic into his arm. “Get him out of here,” someone said, and an orderly pulled me out of the room; the last thing I saw was Shay going boneless, sliding away from the people who were desperately trying to save him.

  June

  Claire was standing in front of a full-length mirror, naked. Her chest was crisscrossed with black ribbon, like the lacing on a football. As I watched, she untied the bow, unraveled the ribbons, and peeled back both halves of her chest. She unhooked a tiny brass hinge on her rib cage and it sprang open.

  Inside, the heart was beating sure and strong, a clear sign that it wasn’t hers. Claire lifted a serving spoon and began to carve at the organ, trying to sever it from the veins and arteries. Her cheeks went pale; her eyes were the color of agony—but she managed to pull it free: a bloody, misshapen mass that she placed in my outstretched hand. “Take it back,” she said.

  I woke up from the nightmare, sweat-soaked, pulse racing. After speaking with Dr. Wu about organ compatibility, I’d realized he was right—what was at issue here was not where this heart came from, but whether it came at all.

  But I still hadn’t told Claire a donor heart had become available. We had yet to go through the legal proceedings, anyway—and although I told myself I didn’t want to get her hopes up until the judge ruled, another part of me realized that I just didn’t want to have to tell her the truth.

  After all, it was her chest that would be hosting this man’s heart.

  Even a long shower couldn’t get the nightmare of Claire out of my mind, and I realized that we had to have the conversation I had been so studiously avoiding. I dressed and hurried downstairs to find her eating a bowl of cereal on the couch and watching television. “The dog needs to go out,” she said absently.

  “Claire,” I said, “I have to talk to you.”

  “Let me just see the end of this show.”

  I glanced at the screen—it was Full House, and Claire had watched this episode so often that even I could have told you Jesse came home from Japan realizing being a rock star was not what it was cracked up to be.

  “You’ve seen it before,” I said, turning off the television.

  Her eyes flashed, and she used the remote to turn the show back on.

  Maybe it was a lack of sleep; maybe it was just the weight of the imminent future on my shoulders—for whatever reason, I snapped. I whirled around and yanked the cable feed out of the wall.

  “What is wrong with you?” Claire cried. “Why are you being such a bitch!”

  Both of us fell silent, stunned by Claire’s language. She’d never called me that before; she’d never really even argued with me. Take it back, I thought, and I remembered that image of Claire, holding out her heart.

  “Claire,” I said, backpedaling. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  I broke off as Claire’s eyes rolled back in her head.

  I’d seen this before—too often. The AICD in her chest was firing: when Claire’s heart skipped a beat, or several, it automatically defibrillated her. I caught her as she collapsed, settling her on the couch, waiting for her heart to restart, for Claire to come to.

  Except this time, she didn’t.

  * * *

  On the ambulance ride to the hospital, I counted all the reasons I hated myself: For picking a fight with Claire. For accepting Shay Bourne’s offer to donate his heart, without asking her first. For turning off Full House before the happy ending.

  Just stay with me, I begged silently, and you can watch TV twenty-four hours a day. I will watch it with you. Don’t give up, we’ve come so close.

  Although the EMTs had gotten Claire’s heart beating again by the time we reached the hospital, Dr. Wu had admitted her, with the unspoken agreement that this was her new home until a new heart arrived—or hers gave out. I watched him check Claire, who was fast asleep in the oceanic blue light of the darkened room. “June,” he said, “let’s talk outside.�€