Harvesting the Heart

of the line. The sharp edge of his voice made Nicholas take a step backward. “Six o’clock, Nicholas. In my office.” And he hung up.

By the time Nicholas drove back to the hospital, he had a splitting headache. He had forgotten to bring a pacifier, and Max had yelled the entire way. He trudged up the stairs to the fifth floor, the administrative wing, because the elevator from the parking garage was broken. Fogerty was in his office, systematically spitting into the spider plants that edged his window. “Nicholas,” he said, “and, of course, Max. How could I forget? Everywhere Dr. Prescott goes, the little Prescott isn’t far behind.”

Nicholas continued to look at the potted plant that Alistair had been leaning over. “Oh,” Fogerty said, dismissing his actions with a wave of his hand. “It’s nothing. For unexplained reasons, my office flora react favorably to sadism.” He stared at Nicholas with the predatory eyes of a hawk. “What we are here to talk about, however, is not me, Nicholas, but you.”

Nicholas had not known what he was going to say until that moment. But before Alistair could open his mouth about the hospital not being a day care facility to meet Nicholas’s whims, he sat in a chair and settled Max more comfortably on his lap. He didn’t give a damn about what Alistair had to tell him. The son of a bitch didn’t have a heart. “I’m glad you wanted to see me, Alistair,” he said, “since I’ll be taking a leave of absence.”

“A what?” Fogerty stood and moved closer to Nicholas. Max giggled and reached out his hand toward the pen in Fogerty’s lab coat pocket.

“A week should do it. I can have Joyce reschedule my planned surgeries; I’ll double up the next week if I have to. And the emergencies can be handled by the residents. What’s-his-name, that little skunky one with the black eyes-Wollachek-he’s decent. I won’t expect pay, of course. And”-Nicholas smiled-“I’ll come back better than ever.”

“Without the infant,” Fogerty added.

Nicholas bounced Max on his knee. “Without the infant.”

Saying it all out loud lifted a tremendous pressure from Nicholas’s chest. He had no idea what he’d do in the span of a week, but surely he could find a nanny or a full-time sitter to stay in the house. At the very least, he could figure Max out-which cry meant he was hungry and which meant he was tired; how to keep his undershirts from riding up to his armpits; how to open the portable stroller. Nicholas knew he was grinning like an idiot, and he didn’t give a damn. For the first time in three days, he felt on top of the world.

Fogerty’s mouth contorted into a black, wiry line. “This will not reflect well upon your record,” he said. “I had expected more from you.”

I had expected more from you. The words brought back the image of his father, standing over him like an impenetrable basilisk and holding out a prep school physics exam bearing the only grade lower than an A that Nicholas had received in his whole life.

Nicholas grabbed Max’s leg so tightly that the baby started to cry. “I’m not a goddamned machine, Alistair,” he yelled. “I can’t do it all.” He tossed the diaper bag over his shoulder and walked to the threshold of the office. ALISTAIR FOGERTY, it said on the door. DIRECTOR, CARDIOTHORACIC SURGERY. Maybe Nicholas’s name would never make it to that door, but that wasn’t going to change his mind. You couldn’t put the cart before the horse. “I’ll see you,” he said quietly, “in a week.”

Nicholas sat in the park, surrounded by mothers. It was the third day he’d come, and he was triumphant. Not only had he discovered how to open the portable sidn?€†troller; he’d figured out a way to hook on the diaper bag so that even when he lifted Max out, it wouldn’t tip over. Max was too little to go into the sandbox with the other kids, but he seemed to like the sturdy infant swings. Nikki, a pretty blond woman with legs that went on forever, smiled up at him. “And how’s our little Max doing today?” she said.

Nicholas didn’t understand why Paige wasn’t like these three women. They all met in the park at the same time and talked ani matedly about stretch marks and sales on diapers and the latest gastrointestinal viruses running through the day care centers. Two of them were on maternity leave, and one was staying home with the kids until they went to school. Nicholas was fascinated by them. They could see with the backs of their heads, knowing by instinct when their kid had swatted another in the face. They could pick out their own child’s cry from a dozen others. They effortlessly juggled bottles and jackets and bibs, and their babies’ pacifiers never fell to the dirt. These were skills, Nicholas believed, that he could never learn in a million years.

The first day he’d brought Max, he had been sitting alone on a chipped green bench, watching the women across the way spoon sand over the bare legs of the toddlers. Judy had spoken to him first. “We don’t get many dads,” she had said. “And never on weekdays.”

“I’m on vacation,” Nicholas had replied uncomfortably. Max then let forth a burp that shook his entire body, and everyone laughed.

That first day, Judy and Nikki and Fay had set him straight about day care and nanny services. “You can’t buy good help these days,” Fay had said. “A British nanny-and that’s the one you want-they take six months to a year to get. And even so, didn’t you see Donahue? The ones with the highest references could still drop your kid on the head or abuse her or God knows what.”

Judy, who was going back to work in a month, had found a day care center when she was six months pregnant. “And even then,” she had said, “I was only on a waiting list.”

And so Nicholas’s week was almost up, and he still didn’t know what to do with the baby when Monday came. On the other hand, it had been worth it-these women had taught him more about his own son in the span of three days than he had ever hoped to know. When Nicholas went home from the park, he almost felt as if he was in control.

Nicholas pushed Max higher on the swing, but he was whining. He’d been crabby for the past three days. “I called your baby-sitter,” he told Nikki, “but she’s got a summer job as a counselor and said she can’t sit for me until the end of August, when camp lets out.”

“Well, I’ll keep asking around for you,” Nikki said. “I bet you can find somebody.” Her little girl, a thirteen- month-old with wispy strawberry-blond bangs, fell on her face in the sandbox and came up crying. “Oh, Jessica.” Nikki sighed. “You’ve got to figure out this walking thing.”

He liked Nikki best. She was funny and smart, and she made being a mother seem as easy as chewing gum. Nicholas pulled Max out of the swing and sat down on the edge of the sandbox, letting Max squish the sand through his toes. Max looked up at Judy and began to scream. Shent.?€† held out her hands. “Let me,” she said.

Nicholas nodded, secretly thrilled. He was amazed when people asked to hold the baby. He would have given him to a complete stranger, the way he’d been acting these past few days; that’s how big a relief it was to see him in someone else’s arms. Nicholas traced his initials in the soft, cool sand and, from the corner of his eye, watched Max perched over Judy’s shoulder.

“I fed him cereal for the first time yesterday,” Nicholas said. “I did it the way you said, mostly formula, but he kept pushing out his tongue like he couldn’t figure out what a spoon was. And no matter what you told me, he did not sleep through the night.”

Fay smiled. “Wait till he’s having more than a teaspoon a day,” she said. “Then come back so I can say, ‘I told you so.’ ”

Judy walked toward them, still bouncing Max. “You know, Nich olas, you’ve really come along. Hell, if you were my husband, I’d kiss your feet. Imagine having someone who could take care of the kids and not ask every three minutes why they’re crying.” She leaned close to Nicholas and batted her eyelashes, smiling. “You give me a sign, and I’ll get a divorce lawyer.”

Nicholas smiled, and the women fell quiet, watching their children overturn plastic buckets and build free-form castles. “Tell me if this bothers you,” Nikki said hesitantly. “I mean, we haven’t really known you very long, and we barely know anything about you, but I have this friend who’s divorced, with a kid. and I was wondering if sometime you might… you know…

“I’m married.” The words came so quickly to Nicholas’s lips that they surprised him more than the mothers. Fay, Judy, and Nikki exchanged a look. “My wife… she isn’t around.”

Fay smoothed her hand over the edge of the sandbox. “We’re sorry to hear that,” she said, assuming the worst.

“She’s not dead,” Nicholas said. “She sort of left.”

Judy came to stand behind Fay. “She left?”

Nicholas nodded. “She took off about a week ago. She, well, she wasn’t very good at this-not like you all are-