Harvest

'I heard she was flying in from Rhode Island. That's what the nurses told me.'

'She and her husband live in Newport during the summer.'

'Who's her husband?'

'Some guy named Victor Voss. That's all I know about him, his name.'

She paused. 'How did Voss get his money?'

'Did I say anything about money?'

'A summer home in Newport? Give me a break, Mark.'

He still wouldn't look at her, still wouldn't lift his gaze from that glass of wine. So many times before, she'd look across a table at him and see all the things that had first attracted her. The direct gaze. The forty-one years of laugh lines. The quick smile. But tonight, he wasn't even looking at her.

She said, 'I didn't realize it was so easy to buy a heart.'

'You're jumping to conclusions.'

'Two patients need a heart. One is a poor, uninsured kid on the teaching service. The other has a summer home in Newport. So which one gets the prize? It's pretty obvious.'

He reached again for the wine bottle and poured himself another glass — his third. For a man who prided himself on his temperate lifestyle, he was drinking like a lush. 'Look,' he said. 'I spend all day in the hospital. The last thing I feel like doing is talking about it. So let's just drop the subject.'

They both fell silent. The subject of Karen Terrio's heart was like a blanket snuffing out the sparks of any other conversation. Maybe we've already said everything there is to say to each other, she thought. Maybe they'd reached that dismal phase of a relationship when their life stories had been told and the time had come to dredge up new material. We've been together only six months, and already the silences have started.

She said: 'That boy makes me think of Pete. Pete was a Red Sox fan.'

'Who?'

'My brother.'

Mark said nothing. He sat with shoulders hunched in obvious discomfort. He'd never been at ease with the subject of Pete. But then, death was not a comfortable subject for doctors. Every day we play a game of tag with that word, she thought. We say 'expired' or 'could not resuscitate' or 'terminal event'. But we seldom use that word: died.

'He was crazy about the Red Sox,' she said. 'He had all these baseball cards. He'd save his lunch money to buy them. And then he'd spend a fortune on little plastic covers to keep them safe. A five-cent cover for a one-cent piece of cardboard. I guess that's the logic of a ten-year-old for you.'

Mark took a sip of wine. He sat wrapped in his discomfort, insulated against her attempts at conversation.

The celebration dinner was a bust. They ate with scarcely another word between them.

Back in the house they shared in Cambridge, Mark retreated behind his stack of surgical journals. That was the way he always reacted to their disagreements — withdrawal. Damn it, she didn't mind a good, healthy fight. The DiMatteo family, with its three headstrong daughters and little Pete, had weathered more than its share of adolescent conflicts and sibling rivalries, but their love for each other had never been in doubt.

It was silence she couldn't stand.

In frustration she went into the kitchen and scrubbed the sink. I'm turning into my mother, she thought in disgust. I get angry and what do I do? I clean the kitchen. She wiped the stove top, then dismantled the burners and scrubbed those as well. She had the whole damn kitchen sparkling by the time she heard Mark finally head upstairs to the bedroom.

She followed him.

In darkness they lay side by side, not touching. His silence had rubbed off on her and she could think of no way to break through it without seeming like the needy one, the weak one. But she couldn't stand it any longer.

'I hate it when you do this,' she said.

'Please, Abby. I'm tired.'

'So am I.We're both tired. It seems like we're always tired. But I can't go to sleep this way. And neither can you.'

'All right. What do you want me to say?'

'Anything! I just want you to keep talking to me.'

'I don't see the point of talking things to death.'

'There are things I need to talk about.'

'Fine. I'm listening.'

'But you're doing it through a wall. I feel like I'm in confession. Talking through a grate to some guy I can't see.' She sighed and stared up at the darkness. She had the sudden, dizzying sensation that she was floating free, unattached. Unconnected. 'The boy's in MICU,' she said. 'He's only seventeen.'

Mark said nothing.

'He reminds me so much of my brother. Pete was a lot younger. But there's this sort of fake courage that all boys have. That Pete had.'

'It's not my decision alone,' he said. 'There are others involved. The whole transplant team. Aaron Levi, Bill Archer. Even Jeremiah Parr.'

'Why the hospital president?'

'Parr wants our statistics to look good. And all the research shows that outpatients are more likely to survive a transplant.'

'Without a transplant, Josh O' Day's not going to survive at all.'

'I know it's a tragedy. But that's life.'

She lay very still, stunned by his matter-of-fact tone.

He reached out to touch her hand. She pulled away.

'You could change their minds,' she said. 'You could talk them into--'

'It's too late. The team's decided.'

'What/s this team, anyway? God?'

There was a long silence. Quietly, Mark said: 'Be careful what you say, Abby.'

'You mean about the holy team?'

'The other night, at Archer's, we all meant what we said. In fact, Archer told me later that you're the best fellowship material he's seen in three years. But Archer's careful about which people he recruits, and I don't blame him. We need people who'll work with us. Not against us.'

'Even if I don't agree with the rest of you?'

'It's part of being on a team, Abby. We all have our points of view. But we make the decisions together. And we stick by them.' He reached out again to touch her hand. This time she didn't pull away. Neither did she return his squeeze. 'Come on, Abby,' he said softly. 'There are residents out there who'd kill for a transplant fellowship at Bayside. Here you're practically handed one on a platter. It is what you want, isn't it?'

'Of course it's what I want. It scares me how much I want it. The crazy thing is, I never knew I did, not until Archer raised the possibility…' She took a deep breath, released it in a long sigh. 'I hate the way I keep wanting more. Always wanting more. There's something that keeps pulling me and pulling me. First it was getting into college, then med school. Then a surgery residency. And now, it's this fellowship. It's moved so far from where I started. When I just wanted to be a doctor…'

'It's not enough any more. Is it?'

'No. I wish it was. But it isn't.'

'Then don't blow it, Abby. Please. For both our sakes.'

'You make it sound as if you're the one with everything to lose.'

'I'm the one who suggested your name. I told them you're the best choice they could make.' He looked at her. 'I still think so.'

For a moment they lay without talking, only their hands in contact. Then he reached over and caressed her hip. Not a real embrace, but an attempt at one.

It was enough. She let him take her into his arms.

The simultaneous squeal of half a dozen pocket pagers was followed by the curt announcement over the