Harvesting The Heart Part 14

Tomorrow he'd find a way to keep Max at the hospital with him. If he showed up at the OR with a baby on his shoulder, someone someone would give him a hand. He couldn't think about it now. His head was pounding, and he was so dizzy he could barely stand. would give him a hand. He couldn't think about it now. His head was pounding, and he was so dizzy he could barely stand.

He stashed two bottles in the refrigerator and took the third to Max. Except he couldn't find Max. He'd left him in the high chair, but suddenly he was gone. "Max," Nicholas called. "Where'd you go, buddy?" He walked out of the kitchen and ran up the stairs, so wiped out he half expected his son to be standing at the bathroom sink, shaving, or in the nursery getting dressed for a date. Then he heard the cries.

It had never occurred to him that Max couldn't sit up well enough to go into a high chair. What the h.e.l.l was the thing doing in the kitchen, then? Max had slipped down in the seat until his head was wedged under the plastic tray. Nicholas tugged at the tray, unsure which latch would release it, and finally pulled hard enough to dislodge the whole front section. He tossed it across the room. As soon as he picked up his son, the baby quieted, but Nicholas couldn't help noticing the red welted pattern pressed into Max's cheek by the screws and grooves of the high chair.

"I only left him for half a second," Nicholas muttered, and in the back of his mind he heard Paige's soft, clear words: That's all it takes. That's all it takes. Nicholas hiked the baby higher on his shoulder, hearing Max's m.u.f.fled sigh. He thought about the nosebleed and the way Paige's voice shook when she told Nicholas about it. Half a second. Nicholas hiked the baby higher on his shoulder, hearing Max's m.u.f.fled sigh. He thought about the nosebleed and the way Paige's voice shook when she told Nicholas about it. Half a second.

He took the baby into the bedroom and fed him the bottle in the dark. Max fell asleep almost immediately. When Nicholas realized that the baby's lips had stopped moving, he pulled away the bottle and adjusted Max so that he was cradled in his arms. Nicholas knew that if he stood up to bring Max to his crib, he'd wake up. He had a vision of Paige nursing Max in bed and falling asleep. You don't want him to get used to sleeping here, You don't want him to get used to sleeping here, he'd told her. he'd told her. You don't want to create bad habits. You don't want to create bad habits. And she'd stumble into the nursery, holding her breath so the baby wouldn't wake. And she'd stumble into the nursery, holding her breath so the baby wouldn't wake.

Nicholas unb.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt with one hand and settled a pillow under the arm that held Max. He closed his eyes. He was bone tired; he felt worse after taking care of Max than he did after performing open-heart surgery. There were similarities: both required quick thinking, both required intense concentration. But he was good at one, and as for the other, well, he didn't have a clue.

This was all Paige's fault. If it was her idea of some stupid little lesson, she wasn't going to get away with it. Nicholas didn't care if he never saw Paige again. Not after she'd pulled this stunt.

Out of nowhere, he remembered being eleven years old, his lip split by a bully in a playground fight. He had lain on the ground until the other kids left, but he would not let them see him cry. Later, when he'd told his parents about it, his mother had held her hand against his cheek and smiled at him.

He would not let Paige see him cry, or complain, or be in any way inconvenienced. Two could play the same game. And he'd do what he did to that bully-he'd ignored him so completely in the days following the fight that other children began to follow Nicholas's lead, and in the end the boy had come to Nicholas and apologized, hoping he'd win back his friends.

Of course, that was a kids' compet.i.tion. This was his life. What Paige had done was somewhere beyond forgiveness.

Nicholas expected to toss and turn, racked by black thoughts of his wife. But he was asleep before he reached the pillow. He did not remember, the next morning, how quickly sleep had come. He did not remember the dream he had of his first Christmas with Paige, when she'd given him the children's game Operation! and they'd played for hours. He did not remember the coldest part of the night, when out of pure instinct Nicholas had pulled his son closer and given him his heat.

chapter 21

Paige.

My mother's clothes didn't fit. They were too long in the waist and tight at the chest. They were made for someone taller and thinner. When my father brought up the old trunk filled with my mother's things, I had held each musty sc.r.a.p of silk and cotton as if I were touching her own hand. I pulled on a yellow halter top and seersucker walking shorts, and then I peeked into the mirror. Reflected back was the same face I'd always seen. This surprised me. By now my mother and I had grown so similar in my mind, I believed in some ways I had become become her. her.

When I came back down to the kitchen, my father was sitting at the table. "This is all I have, Paige," he said, holding up the wedding photo I knew so well. It had sat on the night table beside my father's bed my whole life. In it, my father was looking at my mother, holding her hand tightly. My mother was smiling, but her eyes betrayed her. I had spent years looking at that photo, trying to figure out what my mother's eyes reminded me of. When I was fifteen, it had come to me. A racc.o.o.n trapped by headlights, the minute before the car strikes.

"Dad," I said, running my finger over his younger image, "what about her other stuff? Her birth certificate and her wedding ring, old photos, things like that?"

"She took them. It isn't as if she died, you know. She planned leavin', right on down to the last detail."

I poured myself a cup of coffee and offered some to him. He shook his head. My father moved uncomfortably in his chair; he did not like the topic of my mother. He hadn't wanted me to look for her-that much was clear-but when he saw how stubborn I was about it, he said he'd do what he could for me. Still, when I asked him questions, he wouldn't look up at me. It was almost as if after all these years he blamed himself.

"Were you happy?" I said quietly. Twenty years was a long time, and I had been only five. Maybe there had been arguments I hadn't heard behind sealed bedroom doors, or a physical blow that had been regretted even as it found its mark.

"I was very happy," my father said. "I never would have guessed May was goin' to leave us."

The coffee I'd been drinking seemed suddenly too bitter to finish. I poured it down the sink. "Dad," I said, "how come you never tried to find her?"

My father stood up and walked to the window. "When I was very little and we were livin' in Ireland, my own father used to cut the fields three times each summer for haying. He had an old tractor, and he'd start on the edge of one field, circlin' tighter and tighter in a spiral until he got almost dead center. Then my sisters and I would run into the gra.s.s that still stood and we'd chase out the cottontails that had been pushed to the middle by the tractor. They'd come out in a flurry, the lot of them, jumpin' faster than we could run. Once -I think it was the summer before we came over here-I caught one by the tail. I told my da I was going to keep it like a pet, and he got very serious and told me that wouldn't be fair to the rabbit, since G.o.d hadn't made it for that purpose. But I built a hutch and gave it hay and water and carrots. The next day it was dead, lyin' on its side. My father came up beside me and said that some things were just meant to stay free." He turned around and faced me, his eyes brilliant and dark. "That," he said, "is why I never went lookin' for your mother."

I swallowed. I imagined what it would be like to hold a b.u.t.terfly in your hands, something bejeweled and treasured, and to know that despite your devotion it was dying by degrees. "Twenty years," I whispered. "You must hate her so much."

"Aye." My father stood and grasped my hands. "At least as much as I love her."

My father told me that my mother was born Maisie Marie Renault, in Biloxi, Mississippi. Her father had tried to be a farmer, but most of his land was swamp, so he never made much money. He died in a combine accident that was heavily questioned by the insurance company, and when she was widowed, Maisie's mother sold the farm and put the money in the bank. She went to Wisconsin and worked for a dairy. Maisie began calling herself May when she was fifteen. She finished high school and got a job in a department store called Hersey's, right on Main Street in Sheboygan. She had stolen her mother's emergency money from the crock pot, bought herself a linen dress and alligator pumps, then told the personnel director at Hersey's that she was twenty-one and had just graduated from the University of Wisconsin. Impressed by her cool demeanor and her smart outfit, they put her in charge of the makeup department. She learned how to apply blusher and foundation, how to make eyebrows where there were none, how to make moles disappear. She became an expert in the art of deception.

May wanted her mother to move to California. Years of leading the cows to the milking machines had chapped her mother's hands and permanently bent her back. May brought home pictures of Los Angeles, where lemons could grow in your backyard and where there wasn't any snow. Her mother refused to go. And so at least three times a year, May would start to run away.

She would take all her money out of the bank and pack her bag with only the most important things and put on what she called her traveling outfit: a halter top and tight white shorts. She bought bus tickets and railroad tickets and went to Madison, Springfield, even Chicago. At the end of the day she always turned around and went back home. She'd redeposit her money in the bank and unpack her suitcase and wait for her mother to return from work. As if it had all been just a lark, she'd tell her mother where she'd gone. And her mother would say, Chicago. Now, that's farther than you went the last time. Chicago. Now, that's farther than you went the last time.

It was on one of these excursions to Chicago that she met my father in a diner. Maybe she'd never finished her journey because she just needed an extra push. Well, that's what my father gave her. She used to tell the neighbors that the day she laid eyes on Patrick O'Toole, she knew she was looking at her destiny. Of course she never mentioned if that was good or bad.

She married my father three months after she met him at the diner, and they moved into the little row house I would grow up in. That was 1966. She took up smoking and became addicted to the color TV they had bought with the money they got at their wedding. She watched The Beverly Hillbillies The Beverly Hillbillies and and That Girl That Girl and told my father repeatedly that her calling was to be a script writer. She practiced, writing comic routines on the backs of the brown paper grocery bags when she'd unpacked the week's food. She told my father that one day she was going to hit it big. and told my father repeatedly that her calling was to be a script writer. She practiced, writing comic routines on the backs of the brown paper grocery bags when she'd unpacked the week's food. She told my father that one day she was going to hit it big.

Because she thought she had to start somewhere, she took a job at the Tribune, Tribune, writing the obituaries. When she found out that year that she was pregnant, she insisted on keeping the job, saying she'd go back after she had her maternity leave, because they needed the money. writing the obituaries. When she found out that year that she was pregnant, she insisted on keeping the job, saying she'd go back after she had her maternity leave, because they needed the money.

She took me to the office with her three times a week, and the other two days I was watched by our next-door neighbor, an old woman who smelled of camphor. My father said May was good as a mother, but she never talked to me like I was a baby or did baby things like play patty-cake or hide-and-seek. When I was only nine months old, my father had come home to find me sitting at the threshold of the front door, wearing a diaper and a string of pearls, my eyes and lips colored with violet eye shadow and rouge. My mother had come running out of the living room, laughing. "Doesn't she look perfect, Patrick?" she'd said, and when my father shook his head, all the life had gone out of her eyes. Things like that happened often when I was a baby. My father said she was trying to make me grow up faster so she'd have a good, close friend.

May left us without saying goodbye on May 24, 1972. My father said that what bothered him most about my mother's disappearance was that he hadn't seen it coming. He'd been married to her for six years, and he'd known so many details: the order in which she removed her makeup at night, the salad dressings she hated, the s.h.i.+fting color of her eyes when she needed to be held. But she had completely surprised him. For a while he bought the Los Angeles papers at an international newsstand, thinking she would certainly show up in Hollywood writing sitcoms and he'd get wind of it. But as the years went on, he began to suspect this: Surely anyone who could vanish without a trace could have been lying all those years. My father believed that the whole time they were married, she'd been getting together a plan. He resolved that if she ever did come back he wouldn't let her in, because he had been wounded beyond repair. Unfortunately, he still found himself wondering from time to time if she was alive, if she was all right. It was not that he expected to find word of her anymore; he had lost his faith in love. After all, it had been twenty years. If she appeared on his doorstep, she'd have been no more than a stranger.

My father came into my bedroom that night when the stars were starting to lose themselves in the yawn of the morning. "You're awake, aren't you," he said, his brogue thick from a lack of sleep.

"You knew I would be," I said. He sat down, and I took his hand in my own and looked up at him. Sometimes I could not believe all he had done for me. He had tried so hard.

"What will you do when you find her?" he said.

I sat up, pulling the covers with me. "I may not ever get that far," I said. "It's been twenty years."

"Oh, you'll find her, all right," he said. "That's the way it should be." My father was a great believer in Fate, which he had twisted to mean Divine Wisdom. As far as he was concerned, if G.o.d meant for me to find May Renault, I would find her. "When you do find her, though, you shouldn't be tellin' her things she doesn't need to know." I stared at him, unsure of what he meant. "It's too late, Paige," he said.

Then I realized that maybe for the past two days I had been harboring a rosy image of my father, my mother, and me all living again under this roof in Chicago. My father was letting me know that wouldn't happen, not on his end. And I knew that it couldn't happen on my end, either. Even if my mother packed her bags and followed me home, my home was no longer Chicago. My home was miles away, with a very different man.

"Dad," I said, pus.h.i.+ng away the thought, "tell me a story again." I had not heard my father's stories in years, not since I was fourteen and decided I was too old to thrill to the exploits of muscled Black Irish folk heroes possessing wit and ingenuity.

My father smiled at my request. "I suppose you'll be wantin' a love story," he said, and I laughed.

"There aren't any," I said. "There are only love stories gone wrong." The Irish had a story for every infidelity. Cuchulainn-the Irish equivalent to Hercules-was married but seduced every maiden in Ireland. Angus, the handsome G.o.d of love, was the son of Dagda -king of the G.o.ds-and a mistress, Boann, while her husband was away. Deirdre, forced to marry the old king Conchobhar to avoid a prophecy of nationwide sorrow, eloped instead with a handsome young warrior named Naoise to Scotland. When messengers tracked and found the lovers, Conchobhar had Naoise killed and commanded Deirdre to marry him. She never smiled again, and eventually she dashed her brains out on a rock.

I knew all these stories and their embellishments well enough to tell them to myself, but all of a sudden I wanted to be tucked under the covers in my childhood bedroom, listening to the tumbling brogue of my father's voice as he sang me the stories of his homeland. I settled under my blankets and closed my eyes. "Tell me the story of Dechtire," I whispered.

My father placed his cool hand on my forehead. "'Twas always your favorite," he said. He lifted his chin and stared out at the sun coming over the edge of the buildings across the street. "Well, Cuchulainn was no ordinary Irishman, and he had no ordinary birth. His mother was a beautiful woman named Dechtire, with hair as bright as king's gold and eyes greener than rich Irish rye. She was married to an Ulster chieftain, but she was too beautiful to escape the notice of the G.o.ds. And so one day she was turned into a bird, an even more beautiful creature than she had been before. She had feathers white as snow and wore a wreath braided from the pink clouds of mornin'; only her eyes were that same emerald green. She flew with fifty of her handmaidens to an enchanted palace on a lush isle in the sky, and there she sat, surrounded by her women, rufflin' and settlin' her wings.

"So nervous she was at first that she did not notice that she had been changed back into the beautiful woman she had been; nor did she notice the sun G.o.d, Lugh, standing before her and fillin' up her sky. When she turned her head and looked at him, at the rays of light spillin' from him in a bright halo, she immediately fell in love. She lived there with Lugh for many years, and there she bore him a son-Cuchulainn himself-but she eventually took her boy and went back home."

I opened my eyes, because this was the part I liked best, and even before my father said it, I realized for the first time as an adult why this story had always held such power for me.

"Dechtire's chieftain husband, who had spent years starin' into the sky and just waitin', welcomed her back, because after all, you never really stop lovin' someone, now, and he raised Cuchulainn as his own."

In all the years I had been listening, I had pictured my mother as Dechtire and myself as Cuchulainn, victims of Fate living together on a magical glittering isle. And yet I had also seen the wisdom of the waiting Ulster chieftain. I had never stopped thinking that maybe one day my mother was coming back to us too.

My father finished and patted my hand. "I've missed you, Paige," he said. He stood up then and left. I blinked at the pale ceiling. I wondered what it was like to have the best of both worlds. I wondered what it might be like to feel the smooth tiles of the sun G.o.d's palace beneath my running feet, to grow up in his afterglow.

Armed with the wedding photo and all of my mother's history, I waved goodbye to my father and got into my car. I waited until he disappeared behind the peach door curtain, and then I sank my head against the wheel. Now what was I going to do?

I wanted to find a detective, someone who wouldn't laugh at me for picking up a missing persons search twenty years after the fact. I wanted to find someone who wouldn't charge me too much. But I didn't have the slightest idea where to look.

As I drove down the street, Saint Christopher's loomed on my left. I had not been into a church in eight years; Max hadn't even been baptized. This had surprised Nicholas at the time. "I thought you were just a lapsed Catholic," he said, and I told him I no longer believed in G.o.d. "Well," he had said, raising his eyebrows. "For once we see eye to eye."

I parked the car and pulled myself up the smooth stone steps of the church. Several older women were in the left aisle, waiting for a confessional to become vacant. As the minutes pa.s.sed, the curtains drew back one at a time, spitting out sinners who had yet to cleanse their souls.

I walked down the central aisle of the church, the one I'd always believed I'd walk down as a bride. I sat in the first pew. The stained gla.s.s cast a rippled puddle at my feet, the dappled image of John the Baptist. I frowned at it, wondering how I had seen only the splendor of the blues and greens when I was growing up, how I never noticed that the window really blocked out the sun.

I had given up my religion, just as I told Nicholas, but that didn't mean it had given up on me. It was a two-way street: just because I chose not to pray to Jesus and the Virgin Mary didn't mean they were going to let me go without a fight. So even though I didn't attend Ma.s.s, even though I hadn't been to confession in almost a decade, G.o.d was still following me. I could feel Him like a whisper at my shoulder, telling me it wasn't as easy as I thought to renounce my faith. I could hear Him smiling gently when, in moments of crisis-like Max's nosebleed-I automatically called out to Him. It only made me angrier to know that no matter how forcefully I pushed Him out of my head, I had little choice in the matter. He was still charting my course; He was still pulling the strings.

I knelt, thinking I should look the part, but I did not let prayers form on my lips. Almost directly in front of me was the statue of the Virgin I'd wreathed as May Queen.

The mother of Christ. There aren't that many blessed women in Catholicism, so when I was a child she was my idol. I always prayed to her. And like every other little Catholic girl, I figured that if I was perfectly good for the twelve or so years left in my childhood, I'd grow up to be just like her. Once on Halloween I had even dressed up as her, wearing a blue mantle and a heavy cross, but n.o.body knew who I was supposed to be. I imagined Mary to be very peaceful and very beautiful-after all, G.o.d had chosen her to bear His son. But the thing I loved best about her was that her place in heaven was guaranteed simply because she'd been the mother of someone very special, and sometimes I'd borrow her from Jesus, pretending that she was sitting on the edge of my bed at night, asking me what I'd done in school that day.

I seemed to know so much about mothers in the abstract. I remembered when I had learned during a social studies unit in fifth grade that baby monkeys, given the choice, picked terry-cloth figures to cling to, rather than wire ones. Once, in a doctor's waiting room, I had read of coyotes, who howl if their cubs get lost, knowing they will find their way home by the signal. I wondered if Max would be able to find safety in my voice. I wondered if after all these years I'd be able to pick out my mother's.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a familiar priest heading toward the altar. I did not want to be recognized and shamed into penance. I ducked my head and pushed past him in the aisle, s.h.i.+vering as my shoulder caught the strength of his faith.

I drove away from Saint Christopher's to the place where I knew I'd have to go before I left to find my mother. Even as I approached the Mobil station, I could see him from a distance. Jake was handing a credit card back to a b.u.t.toned-down lawyer type, taking care not to brush his blackened hand against his customer's. The man drove away in his Fiat, leaving a s.p.a.ce for me.

Jake did not move as I pulled my car up beside the unleaded tank and got out. "h.e.l.lo," I said. He clenched and then unclenched his fingers. He was wearing a wedding band, and this made my stomach burn, even though I was wearing one too. It was all right for me to go on, but I somehow had expected Jake to be just the way he had been when I left.

I swallowed and put on my brightest smile. "Well," I said, "I can tell you're overwhelmed to see me."

Jake spoke then, his voice running and low as I had remembered it. "I didn't know you were back," he said.

"I didn't know I was coming." I took a step away from him, s.h.i.+elding my eyes from the sun. The facade of the garage had been updated with fresh paint and a sign that said, "Jake Flanagan, Proprietor." I turned back to Jake.

"He died," Jake said quietly, "three years ago."

The air between us was humming, but I kept my distance. "I'm sorry," I said. "No one told me."

Jake looked at the car, which was dusty from its long drive. "How much do you want?" he said, lifting the nozzle from its cradle.

I stared at him blankly. He unscrewed the cap. "Oh, the car," I said. "Fill it."

Jake nodded and started the pump. He leaned against the hot metal door, and I watched his hands, restrained in their strength. Grease had settled into the creases in his palms, the way it used to. "What are you doing now?" he asked. "Still drawing?"

I smiled at the ground. "I'm an escape artist," I said.

"Like Houdini?"

"Yeah," I said, "but the knots and cuffs are stronger."

Jake didn't look at me when the pump switched off. He held out his hand, and I gave him my credit card.

I had expected the familiar physical jolt that had always flared between us when our fingers touched. But nothing happened. Nothing at all. I wasn't looking for pa.s.sion, and I knew I wasn't in love with Jake. I was married to Nicholas. I was where I was supposed to be. But somehow I expected there to be a little something left from before. I looked into Jake's face, and his aqua eyes were cool and reserved. Yes, he seemed to be saying, between us, it is over. between us, it is over.

When he came back a minute later, he asked if I'd come into the office for a moment. My heart caught; maybe he was going to say something to me or let down his guard. But he took me to the machine that validated credit cards. My American Express card had been rejected. "That's impossible," I murmured, and I handed him a Visa. "Try this."

The same thing happened. Without asking Jake's permission, I picked up the telephone and dialed the emergency 800 number on the back of my credit card. The operator informed me that Nicholas Prescott had voided his old Visa card and that a new one, with a new number, was being sent to his address. I put the receiver down on the counter and shook my head. "My husband," I said. "He just cut me off."

I mentally ran through the amount of cash I had left, the chances of my checks being accepted out-of-state. What if I didn't have enough to find my mother? What if I could could find her but then was too broke to get to her? Suddenly Jake's arm was around my shoulders. He led me to a worn orange plastic window seat. "I'm gonna move your car," he said. "I'll be right back." I closed my eyes and slipped into the familiar feeling. This time, I told myself, Jake would be able to rescue me. find her but then was too broke to get to her? Suddenly Jake's arm was around my shoulders. He led me to a worn orange plastic window seat. "I'm gonna move your car," he said. "I'll be right back." I closed my eyes and slipped into the familiar feeling. This time, I told myself, Jake would be able to rescue me.

When he came back he sat beside me. There was gray in his hair now, just at the temples, and it still hung over his eyes and curled at the edges of his ears. He lifted my chin, and in his touch I felt that easy camaraderie I had felt when I was his favorite little sister. "So, Paige O'Toole," he said, "what brings you back to Chicago?"

As he drew the outline I filled in with chiseled images and stories the past eight years of my life. I had just told him about Max falling off the couch and getting a nosebleed, when the gla.s.s door jingled and a young woman came in. She had dark, exotic skin and eyes that tilted up. She was wearing a tie-died cotton jumper, and she carried a big bag of Fritos in her left hand. "Dinner!" she sang, and then she saw Jake sitting with me. "Oh." She smiled. "I can wait out back."

Jake stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. He put his arm around the woman's shoulders. "Paige," he said, "this is my wife, Ellen."

Ellen's dark eyes opened wider at the sound of my name. I waited a second, expecting a flare of jealousy to streak her smile. But she just took a step forward and held out her hand. "After all these years of hearing about you, it's nice to finally meet you," she said, and I could see it in her gaze-she was being honest. She slipped her arm around Jake's waist and squeezed lightly, hooking her thumb into the belt loop of his jeans. "How about I leave the Fritos," she said. "I'll catch up with you at home." And as easily as she'd interrupted, she disappeared.

When she left the small gla.s.s business office, taking with her the halo of energy that hovered around her, the air seemed to be sucked away as well. "Ellen and I have been married for five years," Jake said, staring after her. "She knows about everything. We can't-" His voice tripped, and then he started again. "We haven't been able to have any kids yet." I turned away; I did not trust myself to meet his eyes. "I love her," he said softly, watching her drive onto Franklin.

"I know."

Jake squatted down on the floor in front of me. He picked up my left hand and rubbed his thumb over my wedding band, leaving a stripe of grease that he did not try to erase. "Tell me why he cut off your charge cards," he said.

I tilted back my head and thought about the days when Jake would be getting ready for a date with another girl; all the nights I had eaten with his family and pretended that I really belonged and spun such complicated tales about my mother's death that I sometimes wrote them down just to keep track. I remembered Terence Flanagan's buckled grin as he pinched his wife's backside while she served the potatoes. I remembered Jake coming to me after midnight, to dance in the moonlit kitchen. I thought of Jake's arms around me as he carried me to my bedroom, still bleeding from the loss of a life. I thought of his face coming in and out of my pain; of the impossible ties he cut to say goodbye. "I've run away," I whispered to Jake, "again."

chapter 22

Nicholas "This is the deal," Nicholas said, juggling Max on his hip and the diaper bag on his shoulder. "I'll pay you whatever you ask. I'll do everything in my power to get you off the next two graveyard s.h.i.+fts. But you've got to watch my kid."

LaMyrna Ratchet, the nurse on duty in orthopedics, twisted a strawberry-blond curl around her finger. "I don't know, Dr. Prescott," she said. "I could get in a s.h.i.+tload of trouble for this."

Nicholas gave her his most winning smile. He was watching the heavy clock above her head, which said that even if he left right now he'd be fifteen minutes late to surgery. "I'm trusting you with my son, LaMyrna," he said. "I've got to go. I've got a patient waiting. I'll bet you can figure something out."

LaMyrna chewed on a fingernail and finally reached out for Max, who grabbed at her c.o.ke-bottle gla.s.ses and her stringy hair. "He doesn't cry, does he?" she called after Nicholas, who was running down the hall.

"Oh, no," Nicholas yelled over his shoulder. "Not a bit."

Nicholas had arrived at the hospital at five in the morning, a half hour earlier than usual. He'd actually had the pleasure of waking up his son, who had awakened him three times during the night to drink and to be changed. Max, still half asleep, had fussed the whole time Nicholas tried to jam him into a fuzzy yellow playsuit. "Yeah, well," he'd said, "how do you you like it?" like it?"

Nicholas had expected to put Max in whatever sort of staff day care the hospital had, but there was was no d.a.m.n program on site. If Nicholas wanted to use Ma.s.s General's child care facility, he'd have to drive to f.u.c.king no d.a.m.n program on site. If Nicholas wanted to use Ma.s.s General's child care facility, he'd have to drive to f.u.c.king Charlestown, Charlestown, and-as if that weren't inconvenient enough-it didn't open until 6:30 A.M., when Nicholas would already be scrubbing for surgery. He'd asked the OR nurses to watch Max, but they had looked at him as though he had two heads. They couldn't, they said, not when at least six times a day there was no one behind the desk because of short staffing. They suggested the general patient floors, but the only nurses on the early s.h.i.+ft were bleary from being up all night, and Nicholas didn't quite trust them. So he'd headed up to the orthopedics floor, and he'd found LaMyrna, a homely girl with a good heart whom he remembered from his interns.h.i.+p. and-as if that weren't inconvenient enough-it didn't open until 6:30 A.M., when Nicholas would already be scrubbing for surgery. He'd asked the OR nurses to watch Max, but they had looked at him as though he had two heads. They couldn't, they said, not when at least six times a day there was no one behind the desk because of short staffing. They suggested the general patient floors, but the only nurses on the early s.h.i.+ft were bleary from being up all night, and Nicholas didn't quite trust them. So he'd headed up to the orthopedics floor, and he'd found LaMyrna, a homely girl with a good heart whom he remembered from his interns.h.i.+p.

"Dr. Prescott," he heard, and he whipped around. He'd missed the door to the operating suite, that's how exhausted he was. The nurse held the swinging door for him. He turned on the steaming water in the industrial sinks, scouring under his fingernails until the pads of his fingers were pink and raw. When he pushed his way backward into the operating suite, he saw that everyone else had been waiting.

Fogerty leaned closer to the unconscious patient. "Mr. Brennan," he said, "it seems Dr. Prescott has decided to grace us with his presence after all." He turned toward Nicholas and then toward the door. "What," he said, "no stroller? No Porta-Crib?"