Jodi Picoult - Harvesting the Heart

I can feel Him before I raise my head. He is standing inches behind me. When I see Him, haloed by my pure white faith, it suddenly makes sense. He calls my name, and I fall right into the arms of the man who, I know, has always been my savior.

“ P aige,” Nicholas says, and she turns around slowly. Her shadow, stretching ten skinny feet in front of her, approaches him first. Then she comes forward and falls right against him.

For a moment Nicholas does not know what to do. His arms, acting on their own, fold around her. He buries his face in her hair. It is fragrant and warm and jumps at the ends, as if there are live sparks. He is amazed that after all this time, she fits so well.

The only way he can get her to walk is by bracing her against his side, one arm locked around her shoulders. He is really just dragging her. Paige’s eyes are open, and she seems to be looking at Nicholas but not seeing him. Her lips move, and when Nicholas leans close enough he can hear the hot whisper of her breath. He thinks she is saying a prayer.

The streets of Boston are dotted with costumed clusters of people-Elvira and the Lone Ranger and PLO terrorists and Marie Antoinette. A tall man dressed as a scarecrow hooks his arm into Paige’s free one and starts to skip, pulling Paige and Nicholas off to the left. “Follow the yellow brick road,” he sings at the top of his lungs, until Nicholas shrugs him off. Sputtering lamps cast shadows that creep down the alleys on the backs of dead October leaves. Nich olas can smell winter.

When he reaches the parking garage at Mass General, he picks Paige up in his arms and carries her to his car. He sets her down on her feet while he slides Max’s car seat over to one side, pushing a little terry-cloth clown rattle and a sticky pacifier. Then he helps Paige into the back seat, laying her on her side and covering her with his jacket. As he pulls the collar up under her neck, she grabs his hand and holds it with the strength of a vise. She is staring over his shoulder, and that’s when she begins to scream.

Nicholas turns around and comes face-to-face with Death. Standing beside the door is an impossibly tall person in the flowing black robes of the Grim Reaper. His eyes are hidden in the folds of his hood, and the point of his tinfoil scythe just grazes Nicholas’s shoulder. “Get out of here,” Nicholas says, and then he shouts the words. He pushes at the cloak, which seems as insubstantial as ink. Paige stops screaming and sits up, struggling to get out. Nicholas closes her door and pulls himself into the car. He drives past the gaping face into the tangled streets of Boston, toward the sanctuary of his home.

“Paige,” Nicholas says. She doesn’t answer. He peeks into the rearview mirror, and her eyes stare wide. “Paige,” he says again, louder. “Max is going to be fine. He’s going to be fine.”

He watches her eyes as he says this, and he thinks he can see a glimmer of recogshaneral finition, but that might just be the murky light in the car. He wonders what pharmacies are open in Cambridge, what he could prescribe that might snap Paige out of this. Normally he’d suggest Valium, but Paige is calm now. Too calm, really. He wants to see her scratching and crying out again. He wants to see a sign of life.

When he pulls into the driveway, Paige sits up. Nicholas helps her out of the car and starts to walk up the steps of the porch, expecting her to follow. But as he puts the key into the lock of the front door, he realizes that Paige is not standing beside him. He sees her walking across the front lawn to the blue hydrangeas, the place where she slept when she was camping outside the house. She lies down on the grass, melting the early frost with the heat of her skin.

“No,” Nicholas says, moving toward her. “Come inside, Paige.” He reaches out his hand. “Come with me.”

At first she doesn’t budge, but then Nicholas notices her fingers twitching where they lay at her sides. He realizes this is a case where he will have to go more than halfway. He kneels on the cold ground and pulls Paige into a sitting position, then up to her feet. As he leads her into the house, he looks back beneath the blue hydrangeas. The spot where Paige’s body was lying is as clearly defined as a chalked murder outline. Her silhouette is obscenely green against the frost, as if she has left in her wake an artificial spring.

Nicholas leads her into the house, grinding wet mud into the light carpeting. As he peels off Paige’s coat and towels her hair dry with a clean dishcloth, he looks over the smudged footprints and decides he likes them; they make him feel as if he knows where he’s been. He tosses Paige’s coat onto the floor, and then her damp shirt and her jeans. He watches each piece of clothing fall like a bright jewel against the sickly palette of the rug.

Nicholas is so fascinated by the splashes of color blooming across the living room that he does not notice Paige at first. She shivers in front of him, wearing only her underwear. When Nicholas turns to her, he is amazed by the contrasts of color: the tanned line of Paige’s neck against the milky skin of her chest; the severe imprint of a birthmark against the whiteness of her belly. If Paige notices his scrutiny, she says nothing. Her eyes stay lowered, and her hands rub up and down her crossed arms. “Say something to me,” Nicholas urges. “Say anything.”

If she is really in shock, the last thing she should be doing is to stand half naked in the middle of a cold room. Nicholas thinks about bundling her in the old wedding-ring quilt they keep somewhere in the damn house, but he has no idea which closet it’s in. He puts his arms around her, and the chill of her skin shudders down his own spine.

Nicholas leads her upstairs to the bathroom. He closes the door and runs the hottest water into the tub, letting the steam cloud the mirrors. When the water fills the tub halfway, he unhooks Paige’s bra and slips off her underpants. He helps her into the tub and watches her teeth chatter and the mist rise around her. He stares beneath the ripple of the water at the stretch marks on her hips, now painted an airy silver, as if giving birth is really nothing more than a distant memory.

Automatically, Nicholas picks up the ghtÁ€†dinosaur-print washcloth and begins to soap Paige as he does Max. He starts with her feet, leaning half into the tub to clean between the toes and to massage the arches. He moves up her legs, sliding the washcloth behind her knees and over her thighs. He rubs her arms and her stomach and the shoulder-blade hollows of her back. He uses the buoyancy of the water to lift her, slipping the washcloth over her bottom and through her legs. He washes her breasts and sees the nipples tighten. He takes the Tupperware cup he keeps on the bathtub ledge and pours clean water over Paige’s hair, tilting her head back as the dark-red strands grow sleek and black.

Nicholas wrings out the washcloth and hangs it up to dry. The water is still running in the tub, the level rising. As Paige starts to move, water splashes onto his shirt and in his lap. She reaches forward and makes a low, throaty sound, stretching her hand toward Max’s rubber duck. Her fingers close over the yellow head, the orange bill. “Oh, God,” she says, turning to Nicholas. “Oh, my God.”

It happens very quickly-Paige lurches out of the tub and Nich olas rises up to meet her. She wraps her arms around his neck and clutches at the fabric of his shirt until it pulls over his head. All the time he is kissing her forehead, her cheeks, her neck. His fingertips circle her breasts as her hands struggle to unbuckle and unzip. When they are both naked, Nicholas leans over Paige on the white tile and gently brushes her lips. To his surprise, she locks her fingers into his hair, kissing him greedily and refusing to free him.