Harvesting the Heart (67 page)

Her
hair has fallen over her face, and her nose is running; her shoulders
are shaking with the effort to stop crying. She is a mess. "Mama,"
Max says, reaching out to her. Nicholas turns him away and watches
Paige swipe the back of her hand across her eyes. He tells himself it
can't turn out any other way, not with what he knows now; but he
quite literally feels his chest burn, swollen tissue irreparably
staked, as his heart begins to break.

Nicholas
grimaces and shakes his head. He slips inside the car, fastening Max
into his seat and then turning the ignition. He tries to trace the
sequence, but he cannot figure out how they have made

it
to this point—the place where you cannot go back. Paige hasn't
moved an inch. He cannot hear her voice over the purr of the engine,
but he knows that she is telling him she loves him, she loves Max.

"I
can't help that," he says, and he drives away without letting
himself look back.

chapter
37

Paige

When
I come down to breakfast in the morning, I am
carrying
my overnight bag. "I want to thank you for
your
hospitality," I say stiffly, "but I think I'm going to be
leaving today."

Astrid
and Robert look at each other, and it is Astrid who speaks first.
"Where are you going?" she asks.

This
question, the one I have been expecting, still throws me for a loop.
"I don't know," I say. "I guess back to my mother's."

"Paige,"
Astrid says gently, "if Nicholas wants a divorce, he'll find you
even in North Carolina."

When
I do not say anything, Astrid stands up and folds her arms around me.
She holds me even though I do not hold her back. She is thinner than
I expected, almost brittle. "I can't change your mind?" she
says.

"No,"
I murmur, "you can't."

She
pulls away, keeping me at arm's length. "I won't let you leave
without something to eat," she says, already moving toward the
kitchen. "Imelda!"

She
leaves me alone with Robert, who of all the people in this household
makes me most uncomfortable. It isn't that he's been rude or even
unkind; he has offered his house to me, he goes out of his way to
compliment my appearance when I come down to dinner, he saves me the
Living section of the
Globe
before
Imelda clips the recipes. I suppose the problem is mine, not
his. I suppose some things —like forgiveness—take time.

Robert
folds his morning paper and motions for me to sit next to him. "What
was the name of that colicky horse?" he says out of nowhere.

"Donegal."
I smooth my napkin across my lap. "But he's fine now. Or he was
when I left."

Robert
nods. "Mmm. Incredible how they bounce back."

I
raise my eyebrows, now understanding where this conversation is
headed. "Sometimes they die," I point out.

"Well,
yes, of course," Robert says, spreading cream cheese on a
muffin. "But not the good ones. Never the good ones."

"You
hope
not,"
I say.

Robert
jabs the muffin toward me, making his point. "Exactly."
Suddenly he reaches across the table and covers my wrist with his
free hand. His touch, unexpected, is cool and steady, just like
Nicholas's. "You're making it very easy for him to forget about
you, Paige. I'd think twice about that."

At
that moment Nicholas strides into the dining room, carrying Max.
"Where the hell is everybody?" he says. "I'm late."

He
slips Max into the high chair beside Robert and makes a point of not
looking at me. Astrid walks in with a tray of toast and fruit and
bagels. "Nicholas!" she says, as if last night never
happened. "You'll stay for breakfast?"

Nicholas
glares at me. "You already have company," he says.

I
stand up and watch Max bang the edge of Robert's plate with a
sterling-silver spoon. Max has Nicholas's aristocratic face but most
definitely my eyes. You can see it in his restlessness. He's always
looking at the one place he cannot see. You can tell he will be a
fighter.

Max
sees me and smiles, and it makes his whole body glow. "I was
just going," I say. With a quick look at Robert, I walk out the
door, leaving my overnight bag behind.

The
volunteer lounge at Mass General is little more than a closet, tucked
behind the ambulatory care waiting rooms. While I am waiting for
Harriet Miles, the secretary, to find me an application form, I stare
over her shoulder at the hall and wait to catch a glimpse of
Nicholas.

I
do not want to do this, but I see no other choice. If I'm going to
make Nicholas change his mind about a divorce, I have to show him
what he'll be missing. I can't do that when the only way I see him is
by chance or in passing at his parents', so I'll have to spend all my
time where he does—at the hospital. Unfortunately, I'm not
qualified for most of the positions that would throw me together with
him, so I try to convince myself that I've wanted to volunteer at the
hospital all along but haven't had the time. Still, I know this isn't
true. I hate the sight of blood; I don't like that antiseptic cloud
of illness that you always smell in a hospital's halls. I wouldn't be
here if I could think of any other way to cross Nicholas's path
several times a day.

Harriet
Miles is about four feet ten inches tall and almost as wide. She has
to step on a little stool, fashioned in the shape of a strawberry, to
reach the top drawer of the filing cabinet. "We don't have as
many adult volunteers as we'd like," she says. "Most of the
kids rotate through for a year or so just to beef up their college
applications." She closes her eyes and stuffs her hand into a
stack of papers and comes up with the right one. "Ah," she
says, "success."

She
settles back on her chair, which I could swear has a booster seat on
it, but I am too embarrassed to lean over and check. "Now,
Paige, have you had any medical training or been a volunteer at
another hospital?"

"No,"
I say, hoping this won't keep them from accepting me.

"That's
not a problem," Harriet says smoothly. "You'll attend one
of our orientation sessions, and you can start working right after
that—"

"No,"
I stammer. "I have to start
today."
When
Harriet stares at me, unnerved, I settle into the chair and clench my
hands at my sides.
Careful,
I
think.
Say
what she wants to hear.
"I
mean, I really
want
to
start today. I'll do anything. It doesn't have to involve medical
stuff."

Harriet
licks the tip of her pencil and begins to fill in my application
form. She doesn't blink when I give my last name, but then again, I
suppose there are a lot of Prescotts in Boston. I give Robert and
Astrid's address instead of my own, and just for kicks I fake my
birth date, making myself three years older. I tell her I can work
six days a week, and she looks at me as if I am a saint.

"I
can put you in admitting," she says, frowning at a schedule on
the wall. "You won't be able to do paperwork, but you can
shuttle the patients up to their rooms in wheelchairs." She taps
the pencil on the blotter. "Or you can work the book cart,"
she suggests, "on the patient floors."

Neither
of which, I realize, will place me where I need to go. "I have a
request," I say. "I'd like to be near Dr. Prescott, the
cardiac surgeon."

Harriet
laughs and pats my hand. "Yes, he's a favorite, isn't he? Those
eyes! I think he's the reason for half the graffiti in the candy
stripers' bathroom. Everyone wants to be near Dr. Prescott."

"You
don't understand," I say. "He's my husband."

Harriet
scans the application sheet and points to my last name. "So he
is," she says.

I
lick my lips and lean forward. I offer a quick, silent prayer that in
this war between Nicholas and myself, no one else will be hurt. Then
I smile and lie as I never have before. "You know, his hours are
pretty awful. We never get a chance to see each other." I wink
at Harriet conspiratorially. "I thought I'd do this as a kind of
anniversary present. Try to be near him and all. I figured if I
could get assigned close to him every day, kind of be his personal
volunteer, he'd be happier, and then he'd be a better surgeon, and
then everyone would win."

"What
a romantic idea." Harriet sighs. "Wouldn't it be wonderful
if all the other doctors' wives came in as volunteers?"

I
give her a steady, sober look. I have never been on a conversational
basis with those women, but if that is my penance I will swear to
carry it out on penalty of death. Today I'd promise Harriet Miles the
moon. "I'll do everything I can," I say.

Even
as she smiles at me, Harriet Miles's eyes are melting. "I wish I
was crazy in love," she says, and she picks up the telephone to
dial an inside number. "Let's see what we can do."

Astrid
finds me sitting in the backyard under a peach tree, drawing.
"What is it?" she asks, and I tell her I don't know. Right
now it is just a collection of lines and curves; it will eventually
form into something I recognize. I'm drawing because it is
therapeutic. Nicholas almost didn't notice me today—even after
I had helped wheel the stretcher with his recovering patient from
surgical ICU to a semipri-vate room, followed him with the book cart
as he made his rounds, and stood behind him in the lunch line at the
cafeteria. When he did finally recognize me as I refilled a water
pitcher in the room of the patient he'd be operating on tomorrow, it
was only because he had knocked against me and spilled water all over
the front of my pale-pink volunteer pinafore. "I'm so sorry,"
he said, glancing at the stains on my lap and my chest. Then he
looked at my face. Terrified, I didn't say a word. And although I
expected Nicholas to storm out of the room and call for the chief of
staff, he only raised his eyebrows and laughed.

"Sometimes
I just draw," I say to Astrid, hoping that's enough of an
explanation.

"Sometimes
I just shoot," she says. I look up, startled. "A
camera,"
she
adds. She leans against the trunk of a tree and turns her face to the
sun. I take in the firm set of her chin, the silver sweep of hair,
the courage that hovers about her like expensive perfume. I wonder if
there is anything in the world that Astrid Prescott would not be able
to do if she set her mind to it.

"It
would have been nice to have an artist in the family earlier,"
she says. "I always felt honor bound to pass along my talents."
She laughs. "The photographic ones, anyway." She opens her
eyes and smiles at me. "Nicholas was a nightmare with a camera.
He never got the hang of f-stops, and he routinely overexposed his
prints. He had the skill for photography, but he never had the
patience."

"My
mother was an artist," I blurt out, and then I freeze, my hand
paused inches above my sketch pad. My first volunteered personal
admission. Astrid moves closer to me, knowing that this unexpected
chink in my armor is the first step toward getting inside. "She
was a good artist," I say as carelessly as I can manage,
thinking of the mural of horses in Chicago and then in Carolina. "But
she fancied herself a writer instead."