Free Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult Page A

miracle: most recipients could only tolerate a heart for ten or fifteen years before complications ensued, or there was outright rejection. Still, as Dr. Wu said, fifteen years from now, we might be able to buy a heart off a shelf and have it installed at Best Buy … the idea was to keep Claire alive long enough to let medical innovation catch up to her.
    This morning, the beeper we carried at all times had gone off.
We have a heart
, Dr. Wu had said when I called.
I’ll meet you at the hospital
.
    For the past six hours, Claire had been poked, pricked, scrubbed, and prepped so that the minute the miracle organ arrived in its little Igloo cooler, she could go straight into surgery. This was the moment I’d waited for, and dreaded, her whole life.
    What if … I could not even let myself say the words.
    Instead, I reached for Claire’s hand and threaded our fingers together.
Paper and scissors
, I thought.
We are between a rock and a hard place.
I looked at the fan of her angel hair on the pillow, the faint blue cast of her skin, the fairy-light bones of a girl whose body was still too much for her to handle. Sometimes, when I looked at her, I didn’t see her at all; instead, I pretended that she was—
    “What do you think she’s like?”
    I blinked, startled. “Who?”
    “The girl. The one who died.”
    “Claire,” I said. “Let’s not talk about this.”
    “Why not? Don’t you think we should know all about her if she’s going to be a part of me?”
    I touched my hand to her head. “We don’t even know it’s a girl.”
    “Of course it’s a girl,” Claire said. “It would be totally gross to have a boy’s heart.”
    “I don’t think that’s a qualification for a match.”
    She shuddered. “It
should
be.” Claire struggled to push herself upright so that she was sitting higher in the hos pital bed. “Do you think I’ll be different?”
    I leaned down and kissed her. “You,” I pronounced, “will wake up and still be the same kid who cannot be bothered to clean her room or walk Dudley or turn out the lights when she goes downstairs.”
    That’s what I said to Claire, anyway. But all I heard were the first four words:
You will wake up.
    A nurse came into the room. “We just got word that the harvest’s begun,” she said. “We should have more information shortly; Dr. Wu’s on the phone with the team that’s on-site.”
    After she left, Claire and I sat in silence. Suddenly, this was real—the surgeons were going to open up Claire’s chest, stop her heart, and sew in a new one. We had both heard numerous doctors explain the risks and the rewards; we knew how infrequently pediatric donors came about. Claire shrank down in the bed, her covers sliding up to her nose. “If I die,” Claire said, “do you think I’ll get to be a saint?”
    “You won’t die.”
    “Yeah, I will. And so will you. I just might do it a little sooner.”
    I couldn’t help it; I felt tears welling up in my eyes. I wiped them on the edge of the hospital sheets. Claire fisted her hand in my hair, the way she used to when she was little. “I bet I’d like it,” Claire said. “Being a saint.”
    Claire had her nose in a book constantly, and recently, her Joan of Arc fascination had bloomed into all things martyred.
    “You aren’t going to be a saint.”
    “You don’t know that for sure,” Claire said.
    “You’re not Catholic, for one thing. And besides, they all died horrible deaths.”
    “That’s not always true. You can be killed while you’re being good, and that counts. St. Maria Goretti was my age when she fought off a guy who was raping her and was killed and
she
got to be one.”
    “That’s atrocious,” I said.
    “St. Barbara had her eyeballs cut out. And did you know there’s a patron saint of heart patients? John of God?”
    “The question is, why do
you
know there’s a patron saint of heart patients?”
    “Duh,” Claire said. “I
read
about it. It’s all you let me do.” She