Harvesting the Heart (56 page)

Robert
Prescott was on his hands and knees on the Aubusson rug, rubbing
Perrier into a round yellow spot that was part vomit and part sweet
potatoes. Now that Max could sit up by himself—at least for a
few minutes—he was more likely to spit up whatever he'd last
eaten or drunk.

Robert
had tried using his baby-sitting time to go over patient files for
the next morning, but Max had a habit of pulling them off the couch
and wrinkling the papers into his palms. He had gummed one manila
binder so thoroughly it fell apart in Robert's hands.

"Ah,"
he said, sitting back on his heels to survey his work. "I don't
think it looks any different from the rosettes." He frowned at
his grandson. "You haven't done any more of that, have you?"

Max
squealed to be picked up—that was his latest thing, that and a
razz sound that sprayed everything within three feet. Robert thought
he had lifted his arms too, but that might have been wishful
thinking. According to Dr. Spock, whom he'd been rereading in
between patients, that didn't come until the sixth month.

"Let's
see," he said, holding Max like a football under his arm. He
looked around the little parlor, redecorated as a substitute nursery/
playroom, and found what he had been looking for, an old
stethoscope. Max liked to suck on the rubber tubes and to hold
the cold metal base against his gums, swollen from teething. Robert
stood up and passed the toy to Max, but Max dropped it and puckered
his lips, getting ready to cry. "Drastic measures," he
said, wheeling Max in a circle over his head. He switched on a
Sesame
Street
cassette
he'd bought at the bookstore and started to do a jaunty tango over
the clutter of toys on the floor. Max laughed—a wonderful
sound, really, Robert thought—every time they whipped around at
the corner.

Robert
heard the jingle of keys in the door and jumped over the walker so
that he could push the Stop button on the tape deck. He slipped Max
into the Sassy Seat that was balanced on the edge of the low walnut
coffee table and handed him a colander and a plastic mixing spoon.
Max stuck the spoon in his mouth and then dropped it on the floor.
"Don't say anything that might give me away," Robert
warned, leaning close to Max, who grabbed his grandfather's finger
and pulled it into his mouth.

Astrid
walked into the room, to find Robert thumbing through a patient file
and Max sitting quietly with a colander on his head. "Everything's
all right?" she asked, sliding her pocketbook onto the nearest
chair.

"Mmm,"
Robert said. He noticed that the file he was supposed to be reading
was upside down. "Not a peep out of him the whole time."

When
the hospital grapevine made it known that Fogerty had collapsed while
doing an aortic valve replacement, Nicholas postponed his afternoon
rounds and went straight to his chief's office. Alistair had been
sitting with his feet propped up on the radiator, facing out the
window toward the stacks and bricks of the hospital's incinerator. He
was absentmindedly breaking the spiked leaves off his spider plant.
"I've been thinking," he said, not bothering to turn
around. "Hawaii. Or maybe New Zealand, if I can stand the
flight." He swiv-eled in the wide leather chair. "Do call
out the eighth-grade English teachers. Definition of
irony:
getting
into a car accident while you're putting on your seat belt. Or the
cardiac surgeon discovering he needs a quadruple bypass."

Nicholas
sank down into the chair that sat across from the desk. "What?"
he murmured.

Alistair
smiled at him, and Nicholas suddenly realized how very old he seemed.
He didn't know Alistair at all, out of this context. He didn't know
if he golfed, or if he took his Scotch neat; he didn't know if he had
cried at his son's graduation or his daughter's wedding.
Nicholas wondered if anyone knew Alistair that well; if, for that
matter, anyone knew
him,
either.
"Dave Goldman ran the tests," Fogerty said. "I
want you to do the surgery." Nicholas swallowed. "I—"

Fogerty
held up a hand. "Before you humble yourself, Nicholas, keep in
mind that I'd rather do it myself. But since I can't and since you're
the only other asshole I trust in this entire organization, I wonder
if you might pencil me into your busy schedule."

"Monday,"
Nicholas said. "First thing."

Fogerty
sighed and leaned his head against the chair. "Damn right,"
he said. "I've seen you in the afternoon; you're sloppy."
He ran his thumbs over the armrests of the chair, worn smooth by the
habit. "You'll take on as many of my patients as you can,"
he said. "There will have to be a leave of absence."

Nicholas
stood. "Consider it done."

He
watched as Alistair Fogerty turned his chair to the window again,
charting the rise and fall of the chimney smoke. His echo was limply
a whisper. "Done," he said.

Astrid
and Robert Prescott sat on the floor of their dining room under the
magnificent cherry table that, with all the leaves in place, could
seat twenty. Max seemed to like it under there, as if it were some
kind of natural cave that deserved exploration. Spread in front of
his chubby feet was an array of eight-by-ten glossies, laminated so
that his saliva wouldn't stain the surfaces. Astrid pointed to the
smiling picture of Max himself. "Max," she said, and
the baby turned toward her voice. "Ayee," he said,
drooling.

"Close
enough." She patted his shoulder and pointed to the picture
of Nicholas. "Daddy. Daddy."

Robert
Prescott straightened abruptly and slammed his head on the underside
of the table. "Shit," he said, and Astrid poked him with an
elbow.

"Your
language," she snapped. "That's
not
the
first word I want to hear from him." She picked up the portrait
of Paige she had shot from a distance, the one Nicholas had balked at
the first day he'd left

Max.
"This is your mommy," she said, running her fingertips over
Paige's delicate features. "Mommy." "Muh," Max
said.

Astrid
turned to Robert, her mouth wide. "You did hear that, didn't
you? Muh?"

Robert
nodded. "It could have been gas."

Astrid
scooped the baby into her arms and kissed the folds of his neck.
"You, my love, are a genius. Don't listen to your dotty old
grandfather."

"Nicholas
would pitch a fit if he knew you were showing him Paige's picture,
you know," Robert said. He stood and straightened, rubbing the
small of his back. "I'm too damn old for this," he said.
"Nicholas should have had Max ten years ago, when I could really
enjoy him." He held out his arms for Max, so that Astrid could
pull herself up. She gathered together the photos. "Max isn't
all yours, Astrid," he said. "You really should get
Nicholas's go-ahead."

Astrid
pulled the baby back into her arms. Max pressed his lips to her neck
and made razzing sounds. She slid him into the high chair that sat at
the head of the table. "If we'd always done what Nicholas
wanted," she said, "he'd have been a teenage vegetarian
with a crew cut who bungee-jumped from hot-air balloons."

Robert
opened two jars of baby food, pear-pineapple and plums, and sniffed
at them to see which might taste better. "You have a point,"
he said.

Nicholas
had planned to do the entire operation, with the exception of
the vein harvest, from start to finish, out of deference to
Alistair. He knew that if the positions were reversed, he would
want it that way. But by the time he had threaded the ribs with wire,
he was unsteady on his feet. He had been concentrating too hard too
long. The placement of the veins had been perfect. The sutures he'd
made around Alistair's heart were microscopically minute. He just
couldn't do any more.

"You
can close," he said, nodding to the resident who had been
assisting him. "And you'd better do the best goddamned job of
your surgical career." He regretted the words as soon as he'd
said them, seeing the slight tremor in the girl's fingers. He leaned
down below the sterile drapes that hid Alistair's face. There was a
lot he had planned to say, but just seeing him there with the life
temporarily drained out of him reminded Nicholas too much of his own
mortality. He held his wrist against Alistair's cheek, careful not to
mark him with his own blood. He felt the tingle coming back to
Fogerty's skin as the unobstructed heart began to do its work again.
Satisfied, he left the room with all the dignity Fogerty had told him
he would one day command.

Robert
didn't like it when Astrid took Max into the darkroom. "Too many
wires," he said, "too many toxic chemicals. God only knows
what gets into his system in there." But Astrid wasn't stupid.
Max couldn't crawl yet, so there was no danger of his getting into
the stop bath or the fixer. She didn't do any developing when he was
around; she just scanned contact sheets for the prints she'd make
later. If she placed him just right, on a big striped beach towel, he
was perfectly content to play with his chunky plastic shapes and the
electronic ball that made farm animal noises.

"Once
upon a time," Astrid said, telling the story over her shoulder,
"there was a girl named Cinderella, who hadn't lived the most
charmed life but had the good fortune to meet a man who had. The kind
of man, by the way, you're going to grow up to be." She leaned
down and handed him a rubber triangle he'd inadvertently tossed away.
"You're going to open doors for girls and pay for their dinners
and do all the chivalrous things men used to do before they slacked
off under the excuse of equal rights."

Astrid
circled a tiny square with her red grease pen. "This one's
good," she murmured. "Anyway, Max, as I was saying . . .
oh, yes, Cinderella. Well, someone else will probably tell you the
story at a later date, so I'm just going to skip ahead a little. You
see, a book doesn't always end at the final page." She squatted
down until she was sitting across from Max, and then she took his
hands in her own, kissing the tips of his stubby wet fingers.

"Cinderella
had liked the idea of living in a castle, and she was actually rather
good at being a princess until one day she started to think about
what she might be doing if she hadn't gotten married to the handsome
prince. All her old friends were kicking up their heels at banquet
halls and entering Pillsbury Bake-Offs and dating Chippendale's
dancers. So she took one of the royal horses and traveled to the far
ends of the earth, taking photographs with this camera she'd gotten
from a peddler in exchange for her crown."

The
baby hiccuped, and Astrid pulled him to a standing position. "No,
really," she said, "it wasn't a rip-off. After all, it was
a Nikon. Meanwhile, the prince was doing everything he could to get
her out of his mind, because he was the laughingstock of the royal
community for not being able to keep a leash on his wife. He went
hunting three times a day and organized a croquet tournament and even
took up taxidermy, but staying busy all the time still couldn't
occupy his thoughts. So—"

Max
waddled forward, supported by Astrid's hands, just as Nicholas
appeared at the darkroom's curtain. "I don't like when you take
him in here," he said, reaching for Max. "What if you turn
your back?"

"I
don't," Astrid said. "How was your surgery?"

Nicholas
hoisted Max onto his shoulder and smelled his bottom. "Jeez,"
he said. "When did Grandma change you last?"

Standing,
Astrid frowned at her son and plucked Max off his shoulder. "It
only takes him a minute," she said, walking past Nicholas
from her darkroom into the muted light of the Blue Room.