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-wire fencing. I was told to sign in on a clipboard and to take off my jacket before I went through the metal detector.
'Wait here,' the officer said, and he left me sitting in a small anteroom.
There was an inmate mopping the floor who did not make eye contact with me. He was wearing white tennis shoes that squelched every time he stepped forward. I watched his hands on the mop and wondered if they'd been part of a murder, a rape, a robbery.
There was a reason I didn't become a criminal defense attorney: this setting freaked me out. I had been to the county jail to meet with clients, but those were small-potatoes crimes: picketing outside a rally for a political candidate, flag burning, civil disobedience. None of my clients had ever killed anyone before, much less a child and a police officer. I found myself considering what it would be like to be locked in here forever.
What if my dress clothes and day clothes and pajamas were all the same orange scrubs? What if I was told when to shower, when to eat, when to go to bed? Given that my career was about maintaining personal freedoms, it was hard to imagine a world where they'd all been stripped away.
As I watched the inmate mop beneath a bank of seats, I wondered what would be the hardest luxury to leave behind. There were the trivial things: losing chocolate practically qualified as cruel and unusual punishment;
I couldn't sacrifice my contact lenses; I'd sooner die than relinquish the Ouidad Climate Control gel that kept my hair from becoming a frizzy rat's nest. But what about the rest-missing the dizzying choice of all the cereals in the grocery store aisle, for example? Not being able to receive a phone call? Granted, it had been so long since I was intimate with a man that I had spiderwebs between my legs, but what would it be like to give up being touched casually, even a handshake?
I bet I'd even miss fighting with my mother.
Suddenly a pair of boots appeared on the floor before me. 'You're out of luck. He's got his spiritual advisor with him,' the officer said. 'Bourne's pretty popular today.'
'That's fine,' I bluffed. 'The spiritual advisor can join us during our meeting.' I saw the slightest flicker of uncertainty on the face of the officer.
Not allowing an inmate to see his attorney was a big no-no, and I was planning to capitalize on that.
The officer shrugged and led me down a hallway. He nodded to a man in a control booth, and a door scraped open. We stepped into a small metal midroom, and I sucked in my breath as the steel door slid home. 'I'm a little claustrophobic,' I said.
The officer smiled. 'Too bad.'
The inner door buzzed, and we entered the prison. 'It's quiet in here,' I remarked.
'That's because it's a good day.' He handed me a flak jacket and goggles and waited for me to put them on. For one brief moment, I panicked-what if a man's jacket like this didn't zip shut on me? How embarrassing would that be? But there were Velcro straps and it wasn't an issue, and as soon as I was outfitted, the door to a long tier opened.
'Have fun,' the officer said, and that was when I realized I was supposed to go in alone.
Well. I wasn't going to convince Shay Bourne I was brave enough to save his life if I couldn't muster the courage to walk through that door.
There were whoops and catcalls. Leave it to me to find my only appreciative audience in the maximum-security tier of the state prison.
'Baby, you here for me?' one guy said, and another pulled down his scrubs so that I could see his boxer shorts, as if I'd been waiting for that kind of peep show all my life. I kept my eyes focused on the priest who was standing outside one of the cells.
I should have introduced myself. I should have explained why I had lied my way into this prison. But I was so flustered that nothing came out the way it should have. 'Shay Bourne?' I said. 'I know a way that you can donate your organs.'
The priest frowned at me. 'Who are you?'
'His lawyer.'
He turned to Shay. 'I thought you said you didn't have a lawyer.'
Shay tilted his head. He looked at me as if he were sifting through the grains of my thoughts, separating the wheat from the chaff. 'Let her talk,' he said.
My streak of bravery widened after that: leaving the priest with Shay, I went back to the officers and demanded a private attorney-client conference room. I explained that legally, they had to provide one and that due to the nature of our conversation, the priest should be allowed into the meeting. Then the priest and I were taken into a small cubicle from one side, while Shay was escorted through a different entrance by two officers.
When the door was closed, he backed up to it, slipping his hands through the trap to have his handcuffs removed.
'All right,' the priest said. 'What's going on?'
I ignored him and faced Shay. 'My name is Maggie Bloom. I'm an attorney for the ACLU, and I think I know a way to save you from being executed.'
'Thanks,' he said, 'but that's not what I'm looking for.'
I stared at him. 'What?'
'I don't need you to save all of me. Only my heart.'
' I... I don't understand,' I said slowly.
'What Shay means,' the priest said, 'is that he's resigned to his execution.
He just wants to be an organ donor, afterward.'
'Who are you, exactly?' I asked.
'Father Michael Wright.'
'And you're his spiritual advisor?'
'Yes.'
'Since when?'
'Since ten minutes before you became his lawyer,' the priest said.
I turned back to Shay. 'Tell me what you want.'
'To give my heart to Claire Nealon.'
Who the hell was Claire Nealon? 'Does she want your heart?'
I looked at Shay, and then I looked at Michael, and I realized that I had just asked the one question no one had considered up till this point.
'I don't know if she wants it,' Shay said, 'but she needs it.'
'Well, has anyone talked to her?' I turned to Father Michael. 'Isn't that your job?'
'Look,' the priest said, 'the state has to execute him by lethal injection.
And if that happens, organ donation isn't viable.'
'Not necessarily,' I said slowly.
A lawyer can't care more about the case than the client does. If I couldn't convince Shay to enter a courtroom hoping for his life to be spared, then it would be foolish for me to take this on. However, if his mission to donate his heart dovetailed with mine-to strike down the death penalty-then why not use the same loophole law to get what we both wanted? I could fight for him to die on his own terms-donate his organs-and in the process, raise enough awareness about the death penalty to make more people take a stand against it.
I glanced up at my new client and smiled.
M I C HAEL
The crazy woman who'd barged in on our little pastoral counseling session was now promising Shay Bourne happy endings she could not deliver. 'I need to do a little research,' she explained. I'm going to come back to see you in a few days.'
