Part 11 (1/2)

It wasn't until I was twelve that I was allowed to skip a Sunday Ma.s.s to tag along with my grandfather. My grandmother sent me off with a bag lunch and an old baseball hat to keep the sun off my face. ”Maybe you can talk some sense into him,” she said. I had heard enough sermons to understand what happened to those who didn't truly believe, so I climbed into his little aluminum boat and waited until we had stopped underneath the reaching arm of a willow tree along the sh.o.r.eline. He took out a fly rod and handed it to me, and then started casting with his own ancient bamboo rod.

One two three, one two three. There was a rhythm to fly-fis.h.i.+ng, like a ballroom dance. I waited until we had both unspooled the long tongue of line over the lake, until the flies that my grandfather laboriously tied in his bas.e.m.e.nt had lightly come to rest on the surface. ”Grandpa,” I asked, ”you don't want to go to h.e.l.l, do you?”

”Aw, Christ,” he had answered. ”Did your grandmother put you up to this?”

”No,” I lied. ”I just don't understand why you never go to Ma.s.s with us.”

”I have my own Ma.s.s,” he had said. ”I don't need some guy in a collar and a dress telling me what I should and shouldn't believe.”

Maybe if I'd been older, or smarter, I would have left it alone at that. Instead, I squinted into the sun, up at my grandfather. ”But you got married by a priest.”

He sighed. ”Yeah, and I even went to parochial school, like you.”

”What made you stop?”

Before he could answer, I felt that tug on my line that always felt like Christmas, the moment before you opened the biggest box under the tree. I reeled in, fighting the whistle and snap of the fish on the other end, certain that I'd never caught anything quite like this before. Finally, it burst out of the water, as if it were being born again.

”A salmon!” my grandfather crowed. ”Ten pounds, easy ... imagine all the ladders it had to climb to make its way back here from the ocean to sp.a.w.n.” He held the fish aloft, grinning. ”I haven't seen one in this lake since the sixties!”

I looked down at the fish, still on my line, thras.h.i.+ng in splendor. It was silver and gold and crimson all at once.

My grandfather held the salmon, stilling it enough to unhook the fly, and set the fish back into the lake. We watched the flag of its tail, the ruddy back as it swam away. ”Who says that if you want to find G.o.d on a Sunday morning, you ought to be looking in church?” my grandfather murmured.

For a long time after that, I believed my grandfather had it right: G.o.d was in the details. But that was before I learned that the requirements of a true believer included Ma.s.s every Sunday and holy day of obligation, receiving the Eucharist, reconciliation once a year, giving money to the poor, observing Lent. Or in other words-just because you say you're Catholic, if you don't walk the walk, you're not.

Back when I was at seminary, I imagined I heard my grandfather's voice: I thought G.o.d was supposed to love you unconditionally. Those sure sound like a lot of conditions to me. I thought G.o.d was supposed to love you unconditionally. Those sure sound like a lot of conditions to me.

The truth is, I stopped listening.

By the time I left the prison, the crowd outside had doubled in size. There were the ill, the feeble, the old and the hungry, but there was also a small cadre of nuns from a convent up in Maine, and a choir singing ”Holy Holy Holy.” I was surprised at how hearsay about a so-called miracle could produce so many converts, so quickly.

”You see?” I heard a woman say, pointing to me. ”Even Father Michael's here.”

She was a paris.h.i.+oner, and her son had cystic fibrosis. He was here, too, in a wheelchair being pushed by his father.

”Is it true, then?” the man asked. ”Can this guy really work miracles?”

”G.o.d can,” I said, heading that question off at the pa.s.s. I put my hand on the boy's forehead. ”Dear St. John of G.o.d, patron saint of those who are ill, I ask for your intercession that the Lord will have mercy on this child and return him to health. I ask this in Jesus's name.” can,” I said, heading that question off at the pa.s.s. I put my hand on the boy's forehead. ”Dear St. John of G.o.d, patron saint of those who are ill, I ask for your intercession that the Lord will have mercy on this child and return him to health. I ask this in Jesus's name.”

Not Shay Bourne's, I thought. Shay Bourne's, I thought.

”Amen,” the parents murmured.

”If you'll excuse me,” I said, turning away.

The chances of Shay Bourne being Jesus were about as likely as me being G.o.d. These people, these falsely faithful, didn't know Shay Bourne-they'd never met met Shay Bourne. They were imposing the face of our Savior on a man with a tendency to talk to himself; a man whose hands had been covered with the blood of two innocent people. They were confusing show-mans.h.i.+p and inexplicable events with divinity. A miracle was a miracle only until it could be proved otherwise. Shay Bourne. They were imposing the face of our Savior on a man with a tendency to talk to himself; a man whose hands had been covered with the blood of two innocent people. They were confusing show-mans.h.i.+p and inexplicable events with divinity. A miracle was a miracle only until it could be proved otherwise.

I started pus.h.i.+ng through the mob, moving in the opposite direction, away from the prison gates, a man on a mission. Maggie Bloom wasn't the only one who could do research.

Maggie

In retrospect, it would have been much simpler to place a phone call to a medical professional who might lecture me on the ins and outs of organ donation. 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 battles.h.i.+p-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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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-gla.s.s window because my girlfriend was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g 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 battles.h.i.+p again. ”The patient's 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 sc.r.a.ped shut in prison. ”It's my abdomen. Sharp pains.”