Harvesting the Heart (52 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 swiveled 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 simply 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.