Jodi Picoult - Harvesting the Heart

Just as I am wondering why I have never seen Nicholas work during the eight years we’ve been married, he is paged over the loudspeaker. He murmurs something to the resident and bolts up the nearest staircase. The resident leaves Oliver Rosenstein’s room and walks off in the other direction. Because I don’t know where to go, I stay where I am, at the open doorway to the room.

“Uhh,” I hear, and Oliver Rosenstein stirs.

I bite my lower lip, not certain what to do, when a nurse breezes past me into the room. She leans close to Oliver and adjusts several tubes and wires and catheters. “You’re doing fine,” she soothes, and then she pats his yellow, veined hand. “I’m going to page your doctor for you.” She leaves as briskly as she entered, and because of that I am the only person who hears Oliver Rosenstein’s first postsurgical words. “It isn’t easy,” he says, barely audible, “not easy to go through this… It’s real, real hard.” He rolls his head from side to side, as if he is looking for something, and then he sees me and smiles. “Ellie,” he says, his voice a rough sandpaper snap. He clearly thinks I am someone else. “I’m here, kine ahora,” he says. “For a WASP, that Prescott is a mensch.”

It is another hour before I find Nicholas again, and that is only by accident. I am wandering around the post-op floor, when Nicholas blusters out of the elevator. He is reading a file and eating a Hostess cupcake. A nurse laughs at him as he passes the central desk. “You gonna be the next cardiac surgeon around these parts with blocked arteries,” she scolds, and Nicholas tosses her the second cupcake, still packaged.

“If you don’t tell anyone,” he says, “this is yours.”

I marvel at this man, whom everyone seems to know, who seems so controlled and so calm. Nicholas, who could not tell you where I keep the peanut butter in his own kitchen, is completely in his element at this hospital. It hits like an unexpected slap: This is really Nicholas’s home. These people are really Nicholas’s family. This doctor, whom everyone seems to need for a signature or a quiet word or an answer, does not need anyone else, especially me.

Nicholas stuffs the chart he has been reading into the box glued to the door of room 445. He enters and smiles at a young resident in a white coat, her hands jammed in her pockets. “Dr. Adams tells me you’re all set for tomorrow,” he says to the patient, pulling up a chair next to the bed. I scoot to the other side of the doorway so that I can peek in, unseen. The patient is a man about my father’s age, with the same round face and faraway look in his eyes. “Let me tell you what we’re going to do, since I don’t think you’re going to remember much of it,” Nicholas says.

I cannot really hear him, but little drifts of dialogue float out to me, words like oxygenation, mammary arteries, intubate. The patient does not seem to be listening. He is staring at Nicholas with his mouth slightly open, as if Nicholas is Jesus Himself.

Nicholas asks the man if he has any questions. “Yes,” the patient says hesitantly. “Will I know you tomorrow?”

“You might,” Nicholas says, “but you’re going to be groggy by the time you see me. I’ll check in when you’re up in the afternoon.”

“Dr. Prescott,” the patient says, “in case I’m too doped up to tell you-thanks.”

I do not hear Nicholas respond to the patient, so I don’t have time to retreat before he comes out the door. He barrels into me, apologizes, and then notices whom he has r1em¡€†un into. With a narrowed look, he grabs my upper arm and starts to pull me down the hall. “Julie,” he says to the resident who has been in the room with him, “I’ll see you after you round.” Then he curses through his clenched teeth and drags me into a tiny room off the side of the hall, where patients can get ice chips and orange juice. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

My breath catches in my throat, and for the life of me I cannot answer. Nicholas squeezes my arm so hard that I know he is leaving behind a bruise. “I-I-”

“You what?” Nicholas seethes.

“I didn’t mean to bother you,” I say. “I just want to talk to you.” I start to tremble and wonder what I will say if Nicholas takes me up on my offer.

“If you don’t get the hell out of here,” Nicholas says, “I’ll have security throw you out on your ass.” He releases my arm as if he’s been touching a leper. “I told you not to come back,” he says. “What else do I have to do to show you I mean it?”

I lift my chin and pretend I haven’t heard anything he’s said. “Congratulations,” I say, “on your promotion.”

Nicholas stares at me. “You’re crazy,” he says, and then he walks down the hall without turning back.

I watch him until his white coat is a blur against a distant wall. I wonder why he cannot see the similarity between me and his patients, whom he keeps from dying of broken hearts.

At the Prescotts’ Brookline mansion, I sit for seven minutes in the car. I let my breath heat up the interior and wonder if there is an etiquette for begging mercy. Finally, driven by an image of Max, I push myself up the slate path and rap on the door with the heavy brass lion knocker. I am expecting Imelda, the short, plump maid, but instead Astrid herself-and my son-opens the door.

I’m immediately struck by the contrast between Astrid and my own mother. There are the simple things-Ascrid’s silk and pearls as compared to my mother’s flannel shirts and chaps; Astrid’s antiques set against my mother’s stables. Astrid thrives on her fame; my mother goes to great lengths to protect her identity. But on the other hand, Astrid and my mother are both strong; they are both proud to a fault. They have both fought the system that bound them, and recreated themselves. And from the look of things, Astrid-like my mother-is beginning to admit to her mistakes.

Astrid doesn’t say anything. She looks at me-no, actually she looks into me, as if she is sizing me up for the best lighting and direction and angle. Max is balanced on her hip. He watches me with eyes that the color blue must have been named for. His hair is matted with sweat on the side of his head, and a crinkled line from a sheet is imprinted on his cheek.

Max has changed so much in just three months.

Max is the image of Nicholas.

He figures out that I am a stranger, and he burrows his face in Astrid’s blouse, rubbing his nose back and forth on the ribbing.

Astrid makes no move to give him to me, but she also doesn’t shut the door in my face. To make sure of this, I take a tiny step forward. “Astrid,” I say, and then I shake my head. “Mom.”

As if the word has triggered a memory, which I know is impossible, Max lifts his face. He tilts his head, as his grandmother did at first, and then he reaches out one balled fist. “Mama,” he says, and the fingers of the fist open one by one like a flower, stretching and coming to rest on my cheek.

His touch-it’s not what I’ve expected, what I’ve dreamed. It is warm and dry and gentle and brushes like a lover. My tears slip down between his fingers, and he pulls his hand away. He puts it back into his mouth, drinking in my sorrow, my regrets.

Astrid Prescott hands Max to me so that his arms wrap around my neck and his warm, solid form presses the length of my chest. “Paige,” she says, not at all surprised to see me. She steps back so that I can enter her home. “Whatever took you so long?”