Change of Heart - Jodi Picoult by Jodi Picoult

Author:Jodi Picoult
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Repentance, Medical, tissues, General, etc, Crime, Fiction, Transplantation of organs, Murderers
ISBN: 9781741757613
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2014-11-28T08:00:00+00:00

At this hour, the vigilant masses outside the prison were tucked into their sleeping bags and tents, underneath the artificial day created by the enormous spotlights that flooded the front of the building. I had to be buzzed in; when I entered the receiving area, CO Smythe was waiting for me. “What happened?”

“No one knows,” the officer said. “It was Inmate DuFresne who alerted us again. We couldn’t see what happened on the security cameras.”

We entered the infirmary. In a distant, dark corner of the room, Shay was propped up in a bed, a nurse beside him. He held a cup of juice that he sipped through a straw; his other hand was cuffed to the bed’s railing. There were wires coming out from beneath his medical johnny. “How is he?” I asked.

“He’ll live,” the nurse said, and then, realizing her mistake, blushed fiercely. “We hooked him up to monitor his heart. So far, so good.”

I sat down on a chair beside Shay and looked up at Smythe and the nurse. “Can we have a minute?”

“That’s about all you’ve got,” the nurse said. “We just gave him something to knock him out.”

They moved to the far side of the room, and I leaned closer to Shay. “Are you okay?”

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

“Oh, try me,” I said.

He glanced over to make sure no one else was listening. “I was just watching TV, you know? This documentary on how they make movie theater candy, like Dots and Milk Duds. And I started to get tired, so I went to turn it off. But before I could push the button, all the light in the television, it shot into me like electricity. I mean, I could feel those things inside my blood moving around, what are they called again, corporals?”

“Corpuscles.”

“Yeah, right, those. I hate that word. Did you ever see that Star Trek where those aliens are sucking the salt out of everything? I always thought they should be called corpuscles. You say the word, and it sounds like you’re eating a lemon …”

“Shay. You were talking about the light.”

“Oh, right, yeah. Well, it was like I started boiling inside, and my eyes, they were going to jelly, and I tried to call out but my teeth were wired shut and then I woke up in here, feeling like I’d been sucked dry.” He looked up at me. “By a corpuscle.”

“The nurse said it was a seizure. Do you remember anything else?”

“I remember what I was thinking,” Shay said. “This was what it would feel like.”

“What?”

“Dying.”

I took a deep breath. “Remember when you were little, a kid—and you’d fall asleep in the car? And someone would carry you out and put you into bed, so that when you woke up in the morning, you knew automatically you were home again? That’s what I think it’s like to die.”

“That would be good,” Shay said, his voice deeper, groggy. “It’ll be nice to know what home looks like.”

A phrase I’d read

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