Harvesting the Heart (57 page)

"The
surgery was fine," Nicholas said, picking at a tray of olives
and cocktail onions that Imelda had set out for Astrid hours before.
"I'm just here to check in because I know I'll be late. I want
to be there when Fogerty wakes up." He stuffed three olives into
his mouth and spit the pimentos into a napkin. "And what was
that trash you were telling Max?"

"Fairy
tales," Astrid said, unsnapping Max's outfit and pulling free
the tapes of the diaper. "You remember them, I'm sure." She
swabbed Max's backside and handed Nicholas the dirty bundle to
dispose of. "They all have happy endings."

When
Alistair Fogerty awoke from a groggy sleep in surgical ICU, the first
words he uttered were, "Get Prescott."

Nicholas
was paged. Since he had been expecting this summons, he was at
Fogerty's bedside in minutes. "You bastard," Alistair said
to him, straining to shift his weight. "What have you done to
me?"

Nicholas
grinned at him. "A very tidy quadruple bypass," he said.
"Some of my best work."

"Then
how come I feel like I have an eighteen-wheeler on my chest?"
Fogerty tossed against the pillows. "God," he said. "I've
been listening to patients tell me that for years, and I never really
believed them. Maybe we should all go through open heart, like
psychiatrists have to be analyzed. A humbling experience."

His
eyes began to close, and Nicholas stood up. Joan Fogerty was waiting
at the door. He crossed to speak to her, to tell her that all the
preliminary signs were very good. She had been crying; Nicholas could
tell by the raccoon rings of mascara under her eyes. She sat beside
her husband and spoke softly, words Nicholas could not hear.

"Nicholas,"
Fogerty whispered, his voice barely audible above the steady blip of
the cardiac monitor. "Take care of my patients, and don't fuck
with my desk."

Nicholas
smiled and walked out of the room. He took several steps down the
hall before he realized what Alistair had been telling him: that he
was now the acting chief of cardiothoracic surgery at Mass General.
Without realizing it, he took the elevator to the floor where
Fogerty's office was located, and he turned the unlocked door.
Nothing had changed. The files were still piled high, their coded
edges bright like confetti. The sun fell across the forbidding swivel
chair, and Nicholas was almost certain he could see Alistair's
impression on the soft leather.

He
walked to the chair and sat down, placing his hands on the

arms
as he had seen Fogerty do so many times. He turned to face the window
but closed his eyes to the light. He didn't even hear Elliot Saget,
Mass General's chief of surgery, enter. "And the seat isn't even
cold yet," Saget said sarcastically.

Nicholas
whipped around and stood up, sending the chair flying into the
radiator behind. "I'm sorry," he said. "I was just
down checking on Alistair—"

Saget
held up a hand. "I'm only here to make it official. Fogerty's on
six months leave. You're the acting director of cardiothoracic. We'll
let you know what kind of meetings and committees we'll be cluttering
your evenings with, and I'll get your name on the door." He
turned to leave and then paused at the threshold of the door to
smile. "We've known about your skills for a long time, Nicholas.
You've got quite a reputation for spit and fire. If you're the one
who gave Alistair his heart trouble, then God help me," he said,
and he walked out.

Nicholas
sank back into Alistair's leather wing chair—
bis
leather
wing chair—and wheeled himself in circles like a little kid.
Then he put his feet down and soberly organized the papers on the
desk into neat, symmetric piles, not bothering to read the pages, not
yet. He picked up the phone and dialed for an outside line, but
realized he had no one to call. His mother was taking Max to a
petting zoo, his father was still at work, and Paige, well, he didn't
know where she was at all. He leaned back and watched the billowed
smoke blowing from Mass General toward Boston. He wondered why, after
years of wanting to stand at the very top, he felt so goddamned
empty.

^chapter
3
1

Paige

my
mother said there was no connection, but I knew that
Donegal
colicked because she had broken her ankle. It hadn't been his feed
or water; those had been consistent. There hadn't been any
severe temperature changes that could have caused it. But then my
mother had been tossed from Elmo over a jump, right into the blue
wall. She had landed a certain way and was now wearing a cast. I
thought Donegal's colic was a sort of sympathy pain.

My
mother, who had been told not to move by the doctor who'd set her
ankle, hopped the whole way from the house to the barn on her
crutches. "How is he?" she said, falling to her knees in
the stall and running her hands over Donegal's neck.

He
was lying down, thrashing back and forth, and he kept looking
back at his sides. My mother pulled up his lip and looked at his
gums. "He's a little pale," she conceded. "Call the
vet."

Josh
walked to the phone, and I sat by my mother. "Go back to bed,"
I told her. "Josh and I can take care of this."

"Like
hell you can," my mother said. "Don't tell me what to do."
She sighed and rubbed her face against her shirt sleeve. "In the
chest on the table up there you'll find a syringe of Banamine,"
she said. "Would you get it for me?"

I
stood up, clenching my jaw. I only wanted to help her, and she wasn't
doing herself any good hobbling around a sick horse that was flailing
all over the place and likely to hit her. "I hope to God he
hasn't got a twisted gut," she murmured. "I don't know
where I'll get the money for an operation."

I
sat on the other side of Donegal while my mother gave him the shot.
We both stroked him until he quieted. After a half hour, Donegal
suddenly neighed and wriggled his legs beneath him and shuddered
to his feet. My mother scooted out of the way on her hands, into a
urine-soaked pile of hay, but she didn't seem to care. "That's
my boy," she said, beckoning Josh to help her stand.

Dr.
Heineman, the traveling vet, arrived with a pickup truck stocked with
two treasure chests full of medicine and supplies. "He's looking
good, Lily," he said, checking Donegal's temperature. "
'Course, you look like hell. Whaddya do to your foot?"

"I
didn't do it," my mother said. "It was Elmo."

Josh
and I held Donegal in the center aisle of the barn as the vet put a
twitch on his nose—a metal clothespin-like thing—and
then, when he was distracted by that pain, threaded a thick plastic
catheter down his nostril and into his throat. Dr. Heineman waved his
nose over the free end and smiled. "Smells like fresh green
grass," he said, and my mother sighed, relieved. "I think
he's going to be just fine, but I'll give him a little oil just in
case." He began to pump mineral oil from a plastic gallon tub
through the tube, blowing the last bit down with his own mouth. Then
he unthreaded the catheter, letting loose phlegm splatter at
Donegal's feet. He patted the horse's neck and told Josh to lead him
back into the stall. "Watch him for the next twenty-four hours,"
he said, and then he turned to me. "And it couldn't hurt to
watch her as well."

My
mother waved him away, but he was laughing. "You tried out that
cast yet, Lily?" he said, walking down the barn's aisle. "Does
it fit into your stirrup?"

My
mother leaned against my side and watched the vet go. "I can't
believe I pay him," she said.

I
walked slowly with my mother back to the house, getting her to
promise she'd at least stay on the couch downstairs if I sat in the
barn with Donegal. While Josh did the afternoon chores, I ran back
and forth between the stable and the house. When Donegal slept, I
helped my mother do crossword puzzles. We turned on the TV and
watched daytime soaps, trying to figure out the story lines. I cooked
dinner and tied a plastic bag around my mother's foot when she wanted
to bathe, and then I tucked her into bed.

I
woke up suddenly, breathless, at midnight, realizing that of all
nights, tonight I had forgotten to do a ten o'clock check. How did my
mother remember all these things? I ran down the stairs and threw the
door open. I raced the whole way to the barn in my bare feet. I
switched on the light and panted, catching my breath as I walked down
the stalls. Aurora and Andy, Eddy and Elmo, Jean-Claude and Tony and
Burt. All the horses were sitting, their legs folded neatly beneath
them. They were in varying states of consciousness, but none startled
at my appearance. The last stall in the barn was Donegal's. I took a
deep breath, thinking I would never forgive myself if anything had
happened to him. I could never make something like that up to my
mother. I held my hands against the chain-link door. Curled against
the belly of the snoring horse was my mother, fast asleep, her cast
gleaming in the slanted square of moonlight, her fingers twitching
in the wake of a dream.

"Now
remember," my mother said, balancing precariously on her
crutches at the gate to the field, "he hasn't been turned out in
two days. We're going to ease into this; we're not going to run him
ragged. Understand?"

I
nodded, looking down at her from what seemed like a tremendous
height when in fact I was only on Donegal. I was terrified. I kept
remembering what my mother had said two months before, that even an
inexperienced rider could sit on Donegal and look good. But he had
been sick, and I had never galloped across an open field, and the
only horse I'd ridden was twenty years older than this one and knew
the routine better than I did.

My
mother reached up and squeezed my ankle. She adjusted the stirrup so
it rested further up by my toes. "Don't worry," she said.
"I wouldn't have asked you to ride him if I didn't think you
could do it." She hallooed and slapped Donegal's hind leg, and I
sat level in the saddle as he cantered off.

I
couldn't see Donegal's legs for the tall grass, but I could feel his
strength between my thighs. The more I gave him the reins, the
gentler the rhythm of his run became. I fully expected that I was
going to take off, that he would step on the lowest clouds and carry
me over the swollen blue peaks of the mountains.

I
leaned in toward Donegal's neck, hearing my mother's voice in my mind
from that very first day: "Never lean forward unless you're
planning to gallop." I had never galloped, not really, unless
you counted a pony's quick strides at a canter. But Donegal shifted
into a faster run, so smooth that I barely lifted in the saddle.

I
sat very still and closed my eyes, letting the horse take the lead. I
tuned in to the pounding sound of Donegal's hooves and the matching
beat of my own pulse. I opened my eyes just in time to see the brook.

I
hadn't known there was another stream, one that ran across this
field, but then again I'd never ridden in it, never even walked all
the way across it. As Donegal approached the stream he tensed the
muscles in his hindquarters. I released my hands to slide up his
neck, adding leg to help him off the ground. We soared over the
water, and although it couldn't have been more than half a second, I
could have sworn I saw each glistening rock, each rush and surge of
current.

I
pulled back on the reins, and Donegal tossed his head, breathing
heavily. He stopped at the fence a few feet away from the brook and
turned toward the spot where we had left my mother as if he knew he
had been putting on a show all along.

At
first I could not hear it over the tumble of water and the gossip of
the robins, but then the sound came: slow, growing louder, until even
Donegal became perfectly quiet and pricked up his ears. I patted his
neck and praised him, all the while listening to the proud beat of my
mother's clapping.