I was trying very hard to follow along. 'You mean he'd break his neck and stop breathing?'
'Right.'
'So then he's brain-dead?'
A couple at the next table glanced at me, and I realized I'd been talking too loudly. That some people didn't like to mix death with dinner.
'Well, not quite. It takes some time for anoxic changes to the brain to result in a loss of reflexes... which is how you test for brain-stem function.
The problem is that you can't leave your man hanging for a great period of time, or his heart will stop, and that disqualifies him as a donor.'
'So what has to happen?'
'The state needs to agree that the fact that respiration's ceased is enough to justify taking the body down from the noose on likely suspi cion of death, then intubate him so that the heart is protected, and then test for brain death.'
'Intubating him isn't the same as resuscitating him, then?'
'No. It's the equivalent of someone brain-dead being on a ventilator.
It preserves the organs, but there won't be any brain function once that spinal cord is severed and hypoxia sets in, no matter how much oxygen you pump into his system.'
I nodded. 'So how do you determine brain death?'
'There are multiple ways. You can do a physical exam first-check to make sure there are no corneal reflexes, no spontaneous respirations, no gag reflex-and then repeat it twelve hours later. But since time is of the essence, I'd recommend a transcranial Doppler test, which uses ultrasound to measure blood flow through the carotid arteries at the base of the brain. If there's no blood flow for ten minutes, you can legally declare brain death.'
I imagined Shay Bourne-who could barely string together a coherent sentence, who bit his fingernails to the quick-being led to a gallows.
I pictured the noose being drawn tight around his neck and felt the hair stand up on the back of my own.
'It's brutal,' I said softly, and put down my fork.
Christian was quiet for a moment. 'I was a resident in Philadelphia the first time I had to tell a mother her child had died. He was the victim of a gang shooting-eight years old. He'd gone to the corner store to get a quart of milk, and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I will never forget the look in her eyes when I told her we weren't able to save her son. When a child is killed, two people die, I think. The only difference is that his mother still had to suffer a heartbeat.' He looked up at me. 'It will be brutal for Mr. Bourne. But it was brutal for June Nealon first.'
I sat back in my chair. This, then, was the catch. You meet a welleducated, intensely gorgeous, charming Oxford-educated man, and he turns out to be so right-wing he's nearly pointed backward. 'Then you're in favor of capital punishment?' I asked, trying to keep my voice level.
'I think it's easy to take the moral high road when it's all theory,'
Christian said. 'As a physician, do I think it's right to kill someone? No.
But then again, I don't have children yet. And I'd be lying if I said that when I do, this issue will still seem crystal clear to me.'
I didn't have children yet, either; at the rate I was going, I might never have them. And the only time I'd seen June Nealon, face-to-face, we'd been at the restorative justice meeting and she had been so filled with righteous anger that I found it hard to look at her. I didn't know what it felt like to carry a child underneath my heart for nine months, to feel my body give way to make room for hers. I didn't know what it felt like to hold an infant and rock her to sleep, to find a lullaby in her breathing. But I knew what it was like to be the daughter.
My mother and I hadn't always argued. I could still remember wishing that I was as glamorous as she was- trying on her highheeled shoes, pulling her sheer satin slips up to my armpits as if they were strapless dresses, diving into the wondrous mystery of her makeup bag. She had, at one point, been the person I wanted to grow up to be.
It was so damn hard to find love in this world, to locate someone who could make you feel that there was a reason you'd been put on this earth. A child, I imagined, was the purest form of that. A child was the love you didn't have to look for, didn't have to prove anything to, didn't have to worry about losing.
Which is why, when it happened, it hurt so badly.
Suddenly, I wanted to call my mother. I wanted to call June Nealon. I was on my first date since the dinosaurs had roamed the planet, a date that was really just a business dinner, and I felt like bursting into tears.
'Maggie?' Christian leaned forward. 'Are you all right?' And then he put his hand on top of mine.
Arrest all spontaneous respiration, he had said.
The waiter appeared at the side of the table. 'I hope you've left room for dessert.'
I had nothing but room; my appetizer had been a crab cake the size of my thumbnail. But I could feel the warmth of Christian's skin on mine, and it was like heat at the tip of a candle-only a matter of time before the rest of me melted, too. 'Oh, I couldn't,' I said. 'I'm stuffed.'
'Right,' Christian said, and he slipped his hand away from mine. 'I guess just the bill, then.'
Something had changed in his features-and there was a chill to his voice that hadn't been there a moment before. 'What's the matter?' I asked. He shook his head, dismissive, but I knew what it was: the death penalty 'You think I'm on the wrong side.'
'I don't think there are sides,' Christian said, 'but that's not it.'
'Then what did I do wrong?'
The waiter sidled over with the bill, tucked into a leather folder.
Christian reached for it. 'My last steady girlfriend was a principal dancer for the Boston Ballet.'
'Oh,' I said feebly. 'She must have been...' Beautiful. Graceful. Skinny.
Everything I wasn't.
'Every time we went out for a meal I felt like some sort of... glutton
... because I had an appetite, and she never ate a damn thing. I suppose
I thought-well, hoped -that you'd be different.'
'But I love chocolate,' I blurted out. 'And apple fritters and pumpkin pie and mousse and tiramisu and I probably would have eaten everything on this menu if I didn't think it would make me look like a pig. I was trying to be...' My voice trailed off.
'... what you thought I was looking for?'
I focused my attention on the napkin on my lap. Leave it to me to ruin a date that wasn't even really one.
'What if all I was looking for,' Christian asked, 'was you?'
I lifted my head slowly as Christian summoned back our waiter. 'Tell us about dessert,' he said.
'We have a creme brulee, a fresh blueberry tart, warm peach puff pastries with homemade ice cream and caramel sauce, and my personal favorite,' the waiter said. 'Chocolate French toast with a thin pecan crust, served with mint ice cream, and our own raspberry sauce.'
'What shall we try?' Christian asked.
I turned to the waiter. 'Maybe we could skip back to the main course first,' I said, and smiled.
'This is my simple religion.
There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy.
Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.'
- HIS HOLINESS THE 14TH DALAI LAMA
June
As it turned out, in spite of the deathbed promises, I didn't tell
Claire about her potential new heart when she first awakened after the episode that had brought us back to this hospital. Instead,
I made a hundred excuses: When she wasn't running a temperature.
When she had a little more energy. When we knew for sure that a judge was going to allow the donation to happen. The longer I put off the conversation, the more I was able to convince myself that Claire would have
