Harvesting the Heart (60 page)

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."

"St,
operacidn."
The
man makes a jagged line across his stomach. He bobs his head,
smiling.

I
shake my head and try to remember the
Sesame
Street
Spanish
I'd heard when I turned it on for Max.
"Uno,"
I
say, holding my hand close to the floor. I move it up an inch.
"Dos."
I
move it again.
"Tres,
cuatro . . .
operation?"

The
man claps his hands.
"St,
si, operacidn."
He
holds up three fingers.
"Tres,"
he
says.

"Gracias,"
I
murmur, and I jam my finger repeatedly into the elevator call button,
as if this might make it come faster.

Sure
enough, the operating rooms are on three, and as the elevator doors
part I get a glimpse of Nicholas rushing by, now in his blue scrubs.
Everything on him is covered, except for his face, but I would have
been able to spot him from a distance simply by the stately manner of
his walk. He looks over my head at a wall clock, then he disappears
behind a double panel of doors.

"If
you're a relative," a voice says behind me, "you'll have to
go to the waiting room." I turn to see a pretty, petite nurse in
a crisp white uniform. "Only patients are allowed in here,"
she says.

"Oh,"
I say. "I must have gotten lost." I give a quick smile and
then ask her if Dr. Prescott has arrived yet.

Nodding,
she takes my elbow, as if she knows this is a ploy and wants me out
immediately. "Dr. Prescott is always ten minutes early,"
she says. "We set our watches by him." She stands beside
the elevator with me. "I'll tell him you were here," she
says. "I'm sure he'll come to see you when the operation is
over."

"No!"
I say, a little too loud. "You don't have to tell him
anything." For the past half hour, I've had the upper hand.
I'm where I want to be, and Nicholas doesn't know.'I
like
being
anonymous and watching him. After all, I've never really seen him
work, and maybe this is part of the reason I felt compelled to follow
him to the hospital. Another hour or two, and I'll come into the
open. But not now, not yet. I'm still learning.

I
look at the nurse, considering a string of different excuses. I knot
my hands together in front of me. "I
...
I don't want him to be distracted."

"Of
course," she says, and she propels me into the yawning mouth of
the elevator.

When
Nicholas comes back up to his office, he is still wearing scrubs, but
they are dark with sweat, pressed against his back and under his
arms. He unlocks his door and leaves it open, and I creep from my
hiding spot behind a row of sleeping wheelchairs to sit on the floor
beside the doorway. "Mrs. Rosenstein," Nicholas is saying,
"this is Dr. Prescott."

His
voice makes my stomach flip. "I'm calling to let you know that
the procedure went well. We did four grafts, as expected, and he came
off the bypass machine nicely. Everything is going just fine, and he
should be waking up in a few hours." I listen to the calm
currents running under his words and wonder if he uses that tone to
put Max to sleep. I remember Nicholas telling me about making
postoperative phone calls when he was a beginning resident. "I
never say 'How are you,' because I know damn well how they are. How
else could you be if you've been sitting next to the phone for six
hours, waiting to hear if your husband is alive or dead?"

I
lose Nicholas for a little while after that, because he meets with
some residents and fellows in a small room where there is nowhere for
me to hide. I am impressed. He hasn't stopped yet. Everywhere he goes
in the hospital, people know his name, and nurses fall over each
other to hand him charts and schedules before he even thinks to ask.
I wonder if that is because he is a surgeon or because he is
Nicholas.