But it could take a week for a busy doctor to call me back, and my route home from the prison skirted the grounds of the Concord hospital, and I was still buzzing with righteous legal fervor. These are the only grounds I can offer for why I decided to stop in the emergency room. The faster I could speak to an expert, the faster I could start building Shay's case.
However, the triage nurse-a large graying woman who looked like a battleship-compressed her mouth into a flat line when I asked to talk to a doctor. 'What's the problem?' she asked.
'I've got a few questions-'
'So does everyone else in that waiting room, but you'll still have to explain the nature of the illness to me.'
'Oh, I'm not sick...'
She glanced around me. 'Then where's the patient?'
'At the state prison.'
The nurse shook her head. 'The patient has to be present for registration.'
I found that hard to believe. Surely someone knocked unconscious in a car accident wasn't left waiting in the hall until he came to and could recite his Blue Cross group number.
'We're busy,' the nurse said. 'When the patient arrives, sign in again.'
'But I'm a lawyer-'
'Then sue me,' the nurse replied.
I walked back to the waiting room and sat down next to a college-age boy with a bloody washcloth wrapped around his hand. 'I did that once,'
I said. 'Cutting a bagel.'
He turned to me. 'I put my hand through a plate-glass window because my girlfriend was screwing my roommate.'
A nurse appeared. 'Whit Romano?' she said, and the boy stood up.
'Good luck with that,' I called after him, and I speared my fingers through my hair, thinking hard. Leaving a message with the nurse didn't guarantee a doctor would see it anytime in the next millennium-I had to find another way in.
Five minutes later I was standing in front of the battleship again.
'The patients arrived?' she asked.
'Well. Yes. It's me.'
She put down her pen. 'You're sick now. You weren't sick before.'
I shrugged. 'I'm thinking appendicitis...'
The nurse pursed her lips. 'You know you'll be charged a hundred and fifty dollars for an emergency room visit, even a fabricated one.'
'You mean insurance doesn't-'
'Nope.'
I thought of Shay, of the sound the steel doors made when they scraped shut in prison. 'It's my abdomen. Sharp pains.'
'Which side?'
'My left...?' The nurse narrowed her eyes. 'I meant my other left.'
'Take a seat,' she said.
I settled in the waiting room again and read two issues of People nearly as old as I was before being called into an exam room. A nurse- younger, wearing pink scrubs-took my blood pressure and temperature.
She wrote down my health history, while I mentally reviewed whether you could be brought up on criminal charges for falsifying your own medical records.
I was lying on the exam table, staring at a Where's Waldo? poster on the ceiling, when the doctor came in.
'Ms. Bloom?' he said.
Okay, I'm just going to come out and say it-he was stunning. He had black hair and eyes the color of the blueberries that grew in my parents' garden-almost purple in a certain light, and translucent the next moment.
He could have sliced me wide open with his smile. He was wearing a white coat and a denim collared shirt with a tie that had Barbie dolls all over it.
He probably had a real live one of those at home, too-a 38-22-36 fiancee who had double-majored in law and medicine, or astrophysics and political science.
Our whole relationship was over, and I hadn't even said a word to him.
'You are Ms. Bloom?'
How had I not noticed that British accent? 'Yes,' I said, wishing I was anyone but.
'I'm Dr. Gallagher,' he said, sitting down on a stool. 'Why don't you tell me what's been going on?'
'Well,' I began. 'Actually, I'm fine.'
'For the record, appendicitis rates as pretty ill.'
III. I loved that. I bet he said things like flat and loo and lift, too.
'Let's just check you out,' he said. He stood and hooked his stethoscope into his ears, then settled it under my shirt. I couldn't remember the last time a guy had slipped his hand under my shirt. 'Just breathe,' he said.
Yeah, right.
'Really,' I said. 'I'm not sick.'
'If you could just lie back...?'
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.'
