Jodi Picoult - Harvesting the Heart

Astrid was the one to diagnose the cold. She had taken Max to the pediatrician because she thought he’d swallowed a willow pod-which was an entirely different story-and she wanted to know if it was poisonous. But when the doctor listened to his chest and heard the upper-respiratory rattle and hum, he’d prescribed PediaCare and rest.

Nicholas was miserable. He hated watching Max choke and sputter over his bottle, unable to drink since he couldn’t breathe through his nose. He had to rock him to sleep, a lousy habit, because Max couldn’t suck on a pacifier and if he cried himself to sleep he wound up soaked in mucus. Every day Nicholas called the doctor, a colleague at Mass General who’d been in his graduating class at Harvard. “Nick,” the guy said over and over, “no baby’s ever died of a cold.”

Nicholas carried Max, who was blessedly quiet, to the bathroom to check his weight. He placed Max on the cool tile and stood on the digital scale, getting a reading before he stepped back onto it holding Max. “You’re down a half pound,” Nicholas said, holding Max up to the mirror so he could see himself. He smiled, and the mucus in his nostrils ran into his mouth.

“This is disgusting,” Nicholas muttered to himself, tucking the baby under his arm and carrying him to the living room. It had been an endless day of carrying Max when he cried, cuddling him when he got frustrated and batted at his nose, washing his toys in case he could reinfect himself.

He propped Max up in front of the TV, letting him watch the evening news. “Tell me what the weather’s going to be like this weekend,” Nicholas said, walking upstairs. He needed to raise one end of the crib and to get the vaporizer going so that if, God willing, Max fell asleep, he could carry him into the dark nursery without waking him. He was bound to fall asleep. It was almost midnight, and Max hadn’t napped since morning.

He finished in the nursery and came back downstairs. He leaned over Max from behind. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Rain?”

Max reached up his hands. “Dada,” he said, and then he coughed.

Nicholas sighed and settled Max into the crook of his arm. “Let’s make a deal,” he said. “If yo. “ep. I, au go to sleep within twenty minutes I’ll tell Grandma you don’t have to eat apricots for the next five days.” He uncapped the bottle that had been leaking onto the couch and rubbed it against Max’s lips until his mouth opened like a foundling’s. Max could take three strong sucks before he had to break away and breathe. “You know what’s going to happen,” Nicholas said. “You’re going to get all better, and then I’m going to get sick. And I’ll give it back to you, and we’ll have this damn thing until Christmas.”

Nicholas watched the commentator talk about the consumer price index, the DJIA, and the latest unemployment figures. By the time the news was over, Max had fallen asleep. He was cradled in Nicholas’s arms like a little angel, his arms resting limp over his stomach. Nicholas held his breath and contorted his body, pushing himself up from the heels, then the calves, then the back, finally snapping his head up. He tiptoed up the stairs toward the nursery, and then the doorbell rang.

Max’s eyes flew open, and he started to scream. “Fuck,” Nicholas muttered, tossing the baby against his shoulder and jiggling him up and down until the crying slowed. The doorbell rang again. Nicholas headed back down the hall. “This better be an emergency,” he muttered. “A car crash on my front lawn, or a fire next door.”

He unlocked and pulled open the heavy oak door and came face-to-face with his wife.

At first Nicholas didn’t believe it. This didn’t really look like Paige, at least not as she had looked when she left. She was tanned and smiling, and her body was trim. “Hi,” she said, and he almost fell over just hearing the melody wrapped around her voice.

Max stopped crying, as if he knew she was there, and stretched out his hand. Nicholas took a step forward and extended his palm, trying to ascertain whether he would be reaching toward a vision, coming up with a handful of mist. His fingertips were inches away from her collarbone, and he could see the pulse at the base of her throat, when he snapped his wrist back and stepped away. The space between them became charged and heavy. What had he been thinking? If he touched her, it would start all over again. If he touched her, he wouldn’t be able to say what had been building inside him for three months; wouldn’t be able to give her her due.

“Nicholas,” Paige said, “give me five minutes.”

Nicholas clenched his teeth. It was all coming back now, the flood of anger he’d buried under his work and his care of Max. She couldn’t just step in as though she’d been on a getaway weekend and play the loving mother. As far as Nicholas was concerned, she didn’t have the right to be there anymore at all, “I gave you three months,” he said. “You can’t just breeze in and out of our lives at your pleasure, Paige. We’ve done fine without you.”

She wasn’t listening to him. She reached forward and touched her hand to the baby’s back, brushing the side of Nicholas’s thumb. He turned so that Max, asleep again on his shoulder, was out of reach. “Don’t touch him,” he said, his eyes flashing. “If you think I’m going to let you walk back in here and pick up where you left off, you’ve got another thing coming. You aren’t getting into this house, and you’re not getting within a hundred feet of this baby.”

If he decided to talk to Paige, if he let her see Max, it would be in his own sweet time, on his own agenda. Let her stew for a little while. Let her see what it was like to be powerless all of a sudden. Let her fall asleep fitfully, knowing she had absolutely no idea what tomorrow held in store.

Paige’s eyes filled with tears, and Nicholas schooled himself not to move a muscle. “You can’t do this,” she said thickly.

Nicholas stepped back far enough to grab the edge of the door. “Watch me,” he said, and he slammed it shut in his wife’s face.

The front door has grown larger overnight. Thicker, even. It is the biggest obstacle I’ve ever seen. And I should know. For hours at a time, I focus all my concentration on it, waiting for a miracle.

It would almost be funny, if it didn’t hurt so much. For four years I walked in and out of that door without giving it a second thought, and now-the first time I’ve really wanted to, the first time I’ve chosen to-I can’t. I keep thinking, Open sesame. I close my eyes and I picture the little hallway, the Chinese umbrella stand, the Persian runner. I’ve even tried praying. But it doesn’t change anything; Nicholas and Max are on one side, and I’m stuck on the other.

I smile when I can to my neighbors as they go by, but I am very busy. Such concentration takes all my energy. I repeat Nicholas’s name silently, and I picture him so vividly I almost believe I can conjure him-magic!-inches from where I sit. And still nothing happens. Well, I will wait forever, if it comes to that. I have made my decision. I want my husband to come back into my life. But I will settle for finding a chink in his armor, so that I can slip back into his life and prove that we can go back to normal.

I don’t find it strange that I would give my right arm to be inside the house, watching Max grow up before my eyes-doing, really, the things that made me so crazy three months ago. I’d just been going through the motions then, acting out a role that I couldn’t really remember being cast in. Now I’m back by my own free will. I want to spread chutney on Nicholas’s turkey sandwiches. I want to stretch socks over Max’s sunburned feet. I want to find all my art supplies and draw picture after picture with pastels and oils and hang them on the walls until every dull, pale corner of that house is throbbing with color. God, there is such a difference between living the life you are expected to live and living the life you want to live. I just realized it a little late, is all.