Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult Page A

had not adjusted to the lack of
light. I took very tiny steps, because I did not know where I was
going, and I held my hands in front of me like a blind man. I walked
for what felt like hours, but I could not find those puffins, or the
sliver of silver daylight near the door, or even the places where I
had already been. My heart swelled up into my throat. I knew the way
you know these things that I was going to scream or to cry or to sink
to my knees and become invisible forever. For some reason I was not
surprised when, in total darkness, my fingers found the comforting
shape of May, who

turned
back into my mother, and she wrapped her arms around me. I never
understood how she wound up in front of me, since I'd left her with
the penguins and I hadn't seen her pass. My mother's hair fell like a
dark curtain over my eyes and tickled my nose. Her breath echoed
against my cheek. Black shadows wrapped around us like an artificial
night, but my mother's voice seemed solid, like something I could
grab for support. "I thought I'd never find you," my mother
said, words I held on to and breathed like a litany for the rest of
my life.

chapter 6
    Nicholas
    Nicholas
was having a hell of a week. One of his patients had died on the
table during a gallbladder removal. He'd had to tell a
thirty-six-year-old woman that the tumor in her breast was
malignant. Today his surgical rotation had changed; he was back in
cardiothoracic, which meant a whole new list of patients and
treatments. He'd been at the hospital since five in the morning and
had missed lunch because of afternoon conferences; he still hadn't
written up notes on his rounds; and if all that wasn't enough of a
bitch, he was the resident on call and would be for thirty-six
hours.
    He'd
been summoned to the emergency room with one of his interns—a
third-year Harvard student named Gary who was green around the gills
and reminded Nicholas nothing of himself. Gary had cleaned and
quickly prepped the patient, a forty-year-old woman with superficial
head and face wounds that were bleeding profusely. She

had
been assaulted, most likely by her husband. Nicholas let Gary
continue, supervising his actions, his touches. As Gary sewed up the
lacerations on her face, the patient began to scream. "Fuck
you," she yelled. "Don't you touch my face." Gary's
hands began to shake, and finally Nicholas swore under his breath and
told Gary to get the hell out. He finished the job himself, as the
woman cursed him out from beneath the sterile drapes. "Goddamned
fucking pig asshole," she shouted. "Get the fuck away from
me."
    Nicholas
found Gary sitting on a stained cube sofa in one of Mass General's
emergency room lounges. He'd drawn his knees up and was doubled over
like a fetus. When he saw Nicholas coming toward him, he jumped to
his feet, and Nicholas sighed. Gary was terrified of Nicholas; of
doing anything wrong; of, really, being the surgeon he hoped to be.
"I'm sorry," he murmured. "I shouldn't have let her
get to me."
    "No,"
Nicholas said evenly, "you shouldn't have." He thought of
telling Gary everything that had gone wrong for himself today. See,
he'd say, all that, and
I'm still standing up, doing my job. Sometimes you just have to keep
pushing, he'd say. But in the end he did not say anything to his
intern. Gary would figure it out eventually, and Nicholas didn't
really want to recount his own failures to a subordinate. He
turned away from Gary, a dismissal, feeling every bit the arrogant
son of a bitch that he was reputed to be.
    For
years now, Nicholas had not gauged time by its usual measures.
Months and days meant little; hours were things you logged onto a
patient's fact sheet. He saw his life passing in blocks, in places
where he spent his days and in medical specialties where he filled
his mind with details. At first, at Harvard, he'd counted off the
semesters by their courses: histology, neurophysiology, anatomy,
pathology. His last two years of rotations had run