Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online

I’ve huffed spray deodorant; I’ve smoked dried banana peels rolled up in a page of the Bible. But this was like none of those. This was honest-to-God wine.
    I laughed. But before long I began to sob, tears running down my face for what I had lost, for what was now literally coursing through my fingers. You can only miss something you remember having, and it had been so long since creature comforts had been part of my ordinary life. I filled a plastic mug with wine and drank it down; I did this over and over again until it became easier to forget the fact that all extraordinary things must come to an end—a lesson I could have lectured on, given my history.
    By now, the COs realized that there had been some snafu with the plumbing. Two of them came onto the tier, fuming, and paused in front of my cell. “You,” Whitaker commanded. “Cuffs.”
    I went through the rigmarole of having my wrists bound through the open trap so that when Whitaker had my door buzzed open I could be secured by Smythe while he investigated. I watched over my shoulder as Whitaker touched a pinky to the stream of wine and held it up to his tongue. “Lucius,” he said, “what is this?”
    “At first I thought it was a cabernet, Officer,” I said. “But now I’m leaning toward a cheap merlot.”
    “The water comes from the town reservoir,” Smythe said. “Inmates can’t mess with that.”
    “Maybe it’s a miracle,” Crash sang. “You know all about miracles, don’t you, Officer Bible-thumper?”
    My cell door was closed and my hands freed. Whitaker stood on the catwalk in front of our cells. “Who did this?” he asked, but nobody was listening. “Who’s responsible?”
    “Who cares?” Crash replied.
    “So help me, if one of you doesn’t fess up, I’ll have maintenance turn off your water for the next week,” Whitaker threatened.
    Crash laughed. “The ACLU needs a poster child, Whit.”
    As the COs stormed off the tier, we were all laughing. Things that weren’t humorous became funny; I didn’t even mind listening to Crash. At some point, the wine trickled and dried up, but by then, Pogie had already passed out cold, Texas and Joey were singing “Danny Boy” in harmony, and I was fading fast. In fact, the last thing I remember is Shay asking Calloway what he was going to name his bird, and Calloway’s answer: Batman the Robin. And Calloway challenging Shay to a chugging contest, but Shay saying he would sit that one out. That actually, he didn’t drink.
     
    For two days after the water on I-tier had turned into wine, a steady stream of plumbers, scientists, and prison administrators visited our cells. Apparently, we were the only unit within the prison where this had happened, and the only reason anyone in power even believed it was because when our cells were tossed, the COs confiscated the shampoo bottles and milk containers and even plastic bags that we had all innovatively used to store some extra wine before it had run dry; and because swabs taken in the pipes revealed a matching substance. Although nobody would officially give us the results of the lab testing, rumor had it that the liquid in question was definitely not tap water.
    Our exercise and shower privileges were revoked for a week, as if this had been our fault in the first place, and forty-three hours passed before I was allowed a visit from the prison nurse, Alma, who smelled of lemons and linen; and who had a massive coiled tower of braided hair that, I imagined, required architectural intervention in order for her to sleep. Normally, she cametwice a day to bring me a card full of pills as bright and big as dragonflies. She also spread cream on inmates’ fungal foot infections, checked teeth that had been rotted out by crystal meth, and did anything else that didn’t require a visit to the infirmary. I admit to faking illness several times so that Alma would take my temperature or blood pressure. Sometimes, she was the only person who touched me