Harvesting the Heart Read online

  My first instinct had been to clean up. But if I did that, Nicholas would know I had been inside, and I didn't want him yelling again. So I made my way to the bedroom and pulled a pair of khaki pants and a green cotton sweater out of my closet. After a quick shower, I put them on and threw my dirty clothes into the bathroom hamper.

  When I thought I heard a noise, I ran out of the bathroom, stopping only in the nursery to get a quick scent of Max--soiled diapers and baby powder and sweet milky skin. I slipped out the back door just in case, but I didn't see anybody. With my hair still wet, I drove to Mass General and inquired about staff child care, but they told me there was no facility on the hospital grounds. "Good Lord," I said to the receptionist at the information desk. "Nicholas has him in a day care center." I laughed out loud then, thinking about how ridiculous this had all turned out. If Nicholas had agreed to consider day care before the baby was born, I wouldn't have been home all day with him. I would have been taking classes, maybe drawing again--I would have been doing something for myself. If I hadn't been home with Max, I might never have needed to get away.

  I wasn't about to search through the Boston phone book for day care centers, so I had gone home and resigned myself to the fact that I'd lost a day. Then Nicholas showed up and told me again to get the hell off his lawn. But late last night, he had come outside. He wasn't angry, at least not as angry as he had been. He stepped down to the porch, sitting so close that I could have touched him. He was wearing a robe I had not seen before. As I watched him, I pretended that we were different, that it was years ago, and we were eating bagels and chive cream cheese and reading the real estate listings of the Sunday Globe. For a moment, just a moment, something passed behind the shadows in his eyes. I could not be sure, but I thought it took the shape of understanding.

  That's why today I am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to follow Nicholas to the ends of the earth. He's late--it's past seven o'clock--and I'm already in the car. I have moved out of the driveway and parked down the block, because I want him to think I have disappeared. When he drives away I am going to tail him, like in the movies, always keeping a couple of cars between us.

  He walks out the front door with Max tucked beneath his arm like a Federal Express package, and I start the engine. I unroll my window and stare, just in case Nicholas does anything I can use as a clue. I hold my breath as he locks the door, saunters to his car, and settles Max into the car seat. It's a different car seat now, facing forward, instead of the little bucket that faced the back. On the plastic bar across the car seat is a circus of plastic animals, each holding a different jingling bell. Max giggles when Nicholas buckles him in, and he grabs a yellow rubber ball that hangs from an elephant's nose. "Dada," he says--I swear I can hear it--and I smile at my baby's first word.

  Nicholas looks over the top of the car before he slips into his seat, and I know he is trying to find me. I have an unobstructed view of him: his glinting black hair and his sky-colored eyes. It has been quite a while since I've really looked at him; I have been making up images from a composite of memories. Nicholas really is the most handsome man I have ever seen; time and distance haven't changed that. It isn't his features as much as their contrast; it isn't his face as much as his ease and his presence. When he puts the car in gear and begins to drive down the block, I count, whispering out loud. "One Mississippi, two Mississippi," I say. I make it to five, and then I start to follow him.

  As I expected, Nicholas doesn't take the turn to Mass General. He takes a route that I recognize from somewhere but that I can't quite place. It is only when I hide my car in a driveway three houses down from Nicholas's parents' house that I realize what has happened while I've been away.

  I can see Astrid only from a distance. Her shirt is a blue splotch against the wood door. Nicholas holds out the baby to her, and I feel my own arms ache. He says a few words, and then he walks back to the car.

  I have a choice: I can follow Nicholas to wherever he's going next, or I can wait until he leaves and hope that I have the advantage of surprise and try to get Astrid Prescott to let me hold my baby, which I want more than anything. I see Nicholas start the car. Astrid closes the heavy front door. Without thinking about what I am doing, I pull out of the neighbor's driveway and follow Nicholas.

  I realize then that I would have come back to Massachusetts no matter what. It has to do with more than Max, with more than my mother, with more than obligation. Even if there were no baby, I would have returned because of Nicholas. Because of Nicholas. I'm in love with Nicholas. In spite of the fact that he is no longer the man I married; in spite of the fact that he spends more time with patients than with me; in spite of the fact that I have never been and never will be the kind of wife he should have had. A long time ago, he dazzled me; he saved me. And out of every other woman in the world, Nicholas chose me. We may have changed over the years, but these are the kinds of feelings that last. I know they're still there in him, somewhere. Maybe the part of his heart that he's using now to hate me used to be the part that loves.

  Suddenly I am impatient. I want to find Nicholas immediately, tell him what I now know. I want to grab him by the collar and kiss my memory into his bloodstream. I want to tell him I am sorry. I want to hear him set me free.

  I lean my hand out the window as I drive, cupping the firm knob of air that I can't see. I laugh out loud at my discovery: I had been restless for so long that, like an idiot, I ran for miles and miles just to realize that what I really wanted was right here.

  Nicholas parks in the Mass General garage, the uppermost level, and I park four spaces away from him. I think about the police shows I've seen on TV as I hide behind the concrete pylons, keeping my distance in case Nicholas decides to turn around. I start to sweat, wondering how I'll be able to keep him from noticing me on an elevator, but Nicholas takes the stairs. He goes down one level into the hospital building and walks down a hall that does not even remotely resemble a surgical floor. There is blue commercial carpeting and a line of wooden doors with the names of doctors spread across them on brass plaques. At one point, when he turns to fit a key into a lock, I pull myself into a doorway. "May I help you?" a voice says behind the half-open door, and I feel the blood drain out of my face, even as I curl my way back into the hall.

  Nicholas has closed the door behind himself. I walk up to it and

  read the plaque. dr. nicholas j. prescott, acting chief of cardiothoracic surgery. When did that happen? I lean against the frame of the smooth varnished door and rub my fingers over the recessed letters of Nicholas's name. I would have liked to be here for that, and even as I think this, I am wondering what the circumstances were. I see Alistair Fogerty, pants pillowed around his ankles, in a compromising position with a nurse in the supply closet. Maybe he is sick, or even dead. What else would make that pompous old goat give up his position?

  The twitch of the doorknob startles me. I turn to the bulletin board and pretend to be engrossed in an article about endorphins. Nicholas walks past without noticing me. He has taken off his jacket and is wearing his white lab coat. He stops at an empty circular desk near the elevator bank and riffles through a clipboard's papers.

  When he disappears behind the doors of the elevator, I panic. This is a big hospital, and the chances of my finding him again are next to nothing. But I must have followed him here for a reason, whatever it might be, and I'm not ready to give up yet. I press my fingers to my temples, thinking of Sherlock Holmes and Nancy Drew, of clues. How did Nicholas spend his day? Where would a doctor be likely to go? I try to run through my mind snippets of conversation we've had when he mentioned places in the hospital, even specific floors. Nicholas could have gone to the patient rooms, the laboratory, the lockers. Or he could be headed where a cardiac surgeon should be headed.

  "Excuse me," I say quietly to a janitor emptying a trash container. "No hablo ingles." The man shrugs.

  I try again. "Operation," I say. "I'm looking for the operations."

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