Jodi Picoult - Harvesting the Heart

Max cried all the time. Nicholas wondered how Paige could stand it, the constant shrieking right in her ear. She didn’t even seem to notice, but these days Paige wasn’t noticing much of anything. Last night, Nicholas had found her standing in the dark of the nursery, staring at Max in his wicker bassinet. He watched from the doorway, feeling a knot come into his throat at the sight of his wife and his son. When he came forward, his footsteps hushed on the carpet, he touched Paige’s shoulder. She turned to him, and he was shocked by the look in her eyes. There was no tenderness, no love, and no longing. Her gaze was riddled with questions, as if she simply didn’t understand what Max was doing there at all.

Nicholas had been at the hospital for twenty consecutive hours, and he was exhausted. Driving home, he had pictured three things over and over in his mind: his Shower Massage, a steaming plate of fettuccine, his bed. He pulled into the driveway and stepped out of the car, already hearing through sealed doors and windows the high-pitched screams of his son. At that one sound, all the spring left his body. He moved sluggishly onto the porch, reluctant to enter his own house.

Paige stood in the center of the kitchen, balancing Max on her shoulder, a Nuk pacifier in her hand and the telephone tucked beneath one ear. “No,” she was saying, “you don’t understand. I don’t want daily delivery of the Glod hMassain be. No. We can’t afford it.” Nicholas slipped behind her and lifted the baby from her shoulder. She could not see Nicholas, but she did not instinctively resist him when he took her child. Max hiccuped and vomited over the back of Nicholas’s shirt.

Paige set the telephone into its cradle. She stared up at Nicholas as if he were fashioned of gold. She was still wearing her nightgown. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Nicholas understood the clinical explanations for postpartum blues, and he tried to remember the best course of treatment. It was all hormonal, he knew that, but surely a little praise would help speed it along and would bring back the Paige he used to know. “I don’t know how you do it,” he said, smiling at her.

Paige looked at her feet. “Well, I’m obviously not doing it right,” she said. “He won’t stop crying. He can’t ever get enough to eat, and I’m so tired, I just don’t know what to try next.” On cue, Max began to wail. Paige straightened her spine, and a quick glimmer in her eyes told Nicholas how hard she was working simply to keep on her feet. She smiled stiffly and said, over Max’s cries, “And how was your day?”

Nicholas looked around the kitchen. On the table were baby gifts from his colleagues, some unwrapped; paper and ribbons were strewn across the floor. A breast pump ringed with milk sat on the counter beside an open tub of yogurt. Three books on child care were propped up against dirty glasses, open to the sections on “Crying” and “The First Weeks.” Stuffed into the unused playpen were the dress shirts he needed brought to the laundry. Nicholas glanced at Paige. There would be no fettuccine.

“Listen,” he said. “How about you lie down for an hour or two and I’ll take care of the baby?”

Paige sank back against the wall. “Oh,” she said, “would you really?”

Nicholas nodded, pushing her toward the bedroom with his free hand. “What do I have to do with him?” he asked.

Paige turned around, poised on the edge of the doorway. She raised her eyebrows, then she threw back her head and laughed.

Fogerty had called Nicholas into his office two days after Paige gave birth. He offered a gift that Joan had picked out-a baby monitor-which Nicholas thanked him for, in spite of the fact that it was a ridiculous present. But how could Fogerty have realized that in a house as small as his, Max’s shattering cries could be heard anywhere? “Sit down,” Fogerty said, an atypical courtesy. “If I’m not mistaken, it’s more rest than you’ve had in a while.”

Nicholas had fallen gratefully into the leather wing chair, running his hands over the smooth worn arms. Fogerty paced the length of his office and finally perched on a corner of his desk. “I wasn’t much older than you when we had Alexander,” Fogerty said. “But I didn’t have quite so much responsibility riding on my shoulders. I can’t do it all over again, but you have the chance to do it right the first time.”

“Do what?”he ¡€ do Nicholas asked, tired of Fogerty and his obtuse riddles.

“Separate yourself,” Fogerty said. “Don’t lose sight of the fact that people outside your home are also depending on you, on your stamina, on your ability. Don’t let yourself be compromised.”

Nicholas had left the office and gone directly to Brigham and Women’s, to visit Paige and Max. He had held his son, and felt the gentle swell of the baby’s chest with each breath, and marveled at the fact that he had helped create a living, thinking thing. He had believed Fogerty was a sanctimonious old fool, until the night when Paige and Max came home. Then he had slept with a pillow wrapped over his head, trying to block out Max’s cries, his noisy suckling, even the rustle of Paige getting in and out of bed to tend to him. “Come on, Paige,” he demanded after being awakened for the third time. “I’ve got a triple bypass at seven in the morning!”

But in spite of Fogerty’s cautions, Nicholas knew his wife was falling apart. He had always seen her as such a model of strength-working two jobs to pay his way through Harvard, scrounging together money to make the endless interest payments, and, before that, leaving her life behind to start again in Cambridge. It was hard to believe that something as tiny as a newborn child could throw Paige for a loop.

“Okay, buddy,” Nicholas said, taking a howling Max to the couch. “Do you want to play?” He held up a rattle that protruded from between two cushions and shook it in front of his son. Max didn’t seem to see it. He kicked his legs and waved his small red hands. Nicholas bounced the baby up and down on his knee. “Let’s try something else,” he said. He picked up the television remote and flipped through the channels. The whir of color seemed to calm Max down, and he settled like a sleeping puppy in the hollow of Nicholas’s chest.

Nicholas smiled. This wasn’t so hard after all.

He slipped his hand under Max’s legs and scooped the baby up, carrying him upstairs to the nursery. Silently, Nicholas moved past the closed door of the master bedroom. If he put Max down now, he could probably take a shower before the baby woke again.

The minute Max’s head touched the soft bassinet mattress, he began to scream. “Shit,” Nicholas said, grabbing the baby roughly. He rocked him against his chest, holding Max’s ear against his heart. “There,” he said. “You’re okay.”

Nicholas took Max to the changing table and surveyed the arrangement of Pampers and A &D and cornstarch powder. He un-snapped the terry-cloth sleeper and pulled the edges of the tape from the corners of the diaper with a loud rasp. Max started to scream again, his face turning round and tomato red, and Nicholas began to hurry. He lifted the diaper, but when he saw a stream of urine arch from the raw, newly circumcised penis, he slapped the pad back in place. He took deep breaths, plugging an ear with one hand and holding Max’s squirming body with the other. Then he slipped the old diaper away and put the new one on, knowing it was too low in the back but not caring enough to fix it.