clutching a violin case. The cattle rancher who received the heart of a sixteen-year-old vegetarian, and could not eat meat again without getting violently ill.
Then there was the twenty-year-old organ donor who wrote music in his spare time. A year after he died, his parents found a
CD of a love song he'd recorded, about losing his heart to a girl named Andi. His recipient, a twenty-year-old girl, was named
Andrea. When the boy's parents played the song for her, she could complete the chorus, without ever having heard it.
Most of these stories were benign-a strange coincidence, an intriguing twist. Except for one: a little boy received the heart of another boy who'd been murdered. He began to have nightmares about the man who killed his donor-with details about the clothing the man wore, how he'd abducted the boy, where the murder weapon had been stashed. Using this evidence, the police caught the killer.
If Claire received Shay Bourne's heart, it would be bad enough if she were to harbor thoughts of murder. But what would absolutely wreck me was if, with that heart in her, she had to feel her own father and sister being killed.
In that case, better to have no heart at all.
Maggie
Today, I decided, I was going to do everything right. It was Sunday, and I didn't have to go to work. Instead, I got up and unearthed my One Minute
Workout video (which was not nearly as slacker as it sounds-you could add minutes to your own liking, and no one was here to notice if I chose the four-minute option over the more grueling eight-minute one). I picked Focus on Abs, instead of the easier Upper Arm. I sorted my recyclables and flossed and shaved my legs in the shower. Downstairs, I cleaned Olivers cage and let him have the run of the living room while I made myself scrambled egg whites for breakfast.
With wheat germ.
Well. I lasted forty-seven minutes, anyway, before I had to break out the Oreos that I hid in the box with my skinny jeans, a last-ditch attempt at utter guilt before I ripped open the package and indulged.
I gave Oliver an Oreo, too, and was starting my third cookie when the doorbell rang.
As soon as I saw the bright pink T-shirt of the man standing on the porch, with the words JOYOUS FOR JESUS printed boldly across it, I knew this was my punishment for falling off the wagon into the snack foods.
'If you're not gone in the next ten seconds, I'm calling 911,' I said.
He grinned at me, a big platinum orthodontically enhanced grin.
'I'm not a stranger,' he said. 'I'm a friend you haven't met yet.'
I rolled my eyes. 'Why don't we just cut to the chase-you give me the pamphlets, I politely refuse to talk to you, and then I close the door and throw them in the trash.'
He held out his hand. 'I'm Tom.'
'You're leaving,' I corrected.
'I used to be bitter, too. I'd go to work in the mornings and come home to an empty house and eat half a can of soup and wonder why I had even been put on this earth. I thought I had no one, but myself-'
'And then you offered Jesus the rest of your soup,' I finished. 'Look,
I'm an atheist.'
'It's not too late to find your faith.'
'What you really mean is that it's not too late for me to find your faith,'
I answered, scooping up Oliver as he made a mad dash for the open door.
'You know what I believe? That religion served its historical purpose-it was a set of laws to live by, before we had a justice system. But even when it starts out with the best of intentions, things get screwed up, don't they? A group bands together because they believe the same things, and then somehow that gets perverted so that anyone who doesn't believe those things is wrong. Honestly, even if there was a religion founded on the principle of doing good for other people, or helping them with their personal rights, like I do every day, I wouldn't join... because it would still be a religion'
I had rendered Tom speechless. This was probably the most heated debate he'd had in months; mostly, he'd have doors closed in his face.
Inside my house, the phone began to ring.
Tom pushed a pamphlet into my hand and beat a hasty retreat off my porch. As I closed the door behind him I glanced down at the cover.
GOD + YOU = oo
'If there's any math to religion,' I muttered, 'it's division.' I slipped the pamphlet onto the liner of newspaper beneath Oliver's cage as I hurried to the phone, which was on the verge of rolling over to the answering machine. 'Hello?'
The voice was unfamiliar, halting. 'Is Maggie Bloom there?'
'Speaking.' I geared up for a zinger to put a telemarketer in her place for disturbing me on a Sunday morning.
As it turned out, she wasn't a telemarketer. She was a nurse at Concord
Hospital, and she was calling because I had been listed as Shay
Bourne's emergency contact, and an emergency had occurred.
Lucius
You would not have believed it possible, but when CO Smythe came back to life, things actually got worse.
The remaining officers had to give statements to the warden about the stabbing. We were kept in lockdown, and the next day a team of officers who did not normally work on I-tier were brought in on duty. They started our one-hour rotations on the exercise yard and the shower, and Pogie was the first to go.
I hadn't showered since the stabbing, although the COs had given both
Shay and me a fresh set of scrubs. We had gotten Smythe's blood on us, and a quick wash in our cell basins didn't go very far to making me feel clean. While we were waiting for our turns in the shower, Alma showed up to give us both blood tests. They tested anyone who came in contact with an inmate's blood, and since that included CO Smythe, his blood apparently was only one step removed from questionable. Shay was moved in handcuffs, ankle cuffs, and a belly chain to a holding room outside the tier, where Alma was waiting.
In the middle of all this, Pogie slipped in the shower. He lay there, moaning about his back. Two more COs dragged in the backboard and handcuffed Pogie to it, then carried him to a gurney so he could be transported all the way to Medical. But because they were not used to I-tier, and because COs are supposed to follow us, not lead, they did not realize that Shay was already being brought back to the tier at the same time
Pogie was going out.
Tragedies happen in a split second in prison; that's all it took for Pogie to use the handcuff key he'd hidden to free himself, jump off the backboard, grab it, and slam it into Shay's skull, so that he flew face-first into the brick wall.
'Weiss machtr Pogie yelled- White pridel- which was how I realized
Crash-from where he was still being kept in solitary-had used his connections to order a hit on Shay in retaliation for ratting him out and giving his hype kit to the COs. Sully's attack on CO Smythe had just been collateral damage, meant to shake up the staffing on our tier so that part two of the plan could be carried out. And Pogie-a probate-had jumped at the chance to earn his bones by carrying out a murder sanctioned by the Aryan Brotherhood.
Six hours after this fiasco, Alma returned to finish drawing my blood. I was taken to the holding cell and found her still shaken by what had happened, although she would not tell me anything-except that Shay had been taken to the hospital.
When I saw something silver winking at me, I waited until Alma drew the needle from my arm. Then I put my head down between my knees.
'You all right, sugar?' Alma asked.
