Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult Page B

together,
experiences blending at the edges. Sometimes he'd be remembering an
orthopedic patient at the Brigham, but he'd picture the decor of the
orthopedic floor at Massachusetts General. He'd started his rotations
with internal medicine; then came a month of psychiatry, eight
weeks of general surgery, a month of radiology, twelve weeks of
obstetrics/gynecology and pediatrics, and so on. He had forgotten
about seasons for a while, shuttling from discipline to discipline
and hospital to hospital like a foster child.
    He'd
decided on cardiac surgery—a long haul. The match had placed
him at his first-choice hospital, Mass General. It was a large place,
impersonal and disorganized and unfriendly. In cardiothoracic
surgery, the attendings were a brilliant group of men and women. They
were opinionated and impulsive; they wore pristine white lab coats
over their cool, efficient demeanors. Nicholas loved it. Even during
his postgraduate year one, he'd observe the easy motions of general
surgery, waiting to be rotated back to the cardiac unit, where he'd
marvel at Alistair Fogerty performing open-heart operations. Nicholas
would stand for six hours at a time, listening to the thin ring of
metal instruments on trays and the rustle of his own breath against
his blue mask, watching life being put on hold and then recalled.
    "Nicholas."
At the sound of his name, he turned to see Kim Westin, a pretty woman
who'd been in his graduating class and was now in her third year of
residency in internal medicine. "How's it going?" She came
closer and squeezed his arm, propelling him down the hall in the
direction he'd been walking.
    "Hey,"
Nicholas said. "You don't have anything to eat, do you?"
    Kim
shook her head. "No, and I've got to run up to five, but I
wanted to see you. Serena's back."
    Serena
was a patient they'd shared during their final year of rotations
at Harvard. She was thirty-nine and she was black and she had
AIDS—which, four years earlier, had still been rare. She'd come
and gone in the hospital over the years, but Kim, in internal
medicine, had more contact with her than Nicholas. Nicholas did
not ask Kim what Serena's status was. "I'll go by," he
said. "What's the room?"
    After
Kim had disappeared, Nicholas went upstairs to round his new cardiac
patients. That was the hardest part about being a resident in general
surgery—the constant changes from department to department.
Nicholas had swung through urology, neurosurgery, emergency
room, anesthesia. He'd done a stint in transplants, and one in
orthopedics, and one in plastic surgery and burns. Still, coming back
to cardiac was better than the others; cardiac surgery felt like
home. And indeed Nicholas had been rotated through cardiothoracic
more than was normal for a third-year, because he had made it clear
to Alistair Fogerty that one day he was going to have his job.
    Fogerty
was exactly what Nicholas had pictured a cardiac surgeon to be like:
tall, fit, in his late fifties, with piercing blue eyes and a
handshake that could cripple. He was a hospital "untouchable,"
his reputation having evolved into a surgical gold standard. There
had once been a scandal about him—something involving a candy
striper—but the rumors were squelched and there had been no
divorce and that was that.
    Fogerty
had been Nicholas's attending physician during his internship,
and one day last year Nicholas had gone to him in his office and told
him his plans. "Listen," he'd said, even though his throat
had been dry and his palms had been quivering. "I want to cut
through the bullshit, Alistair. You know and I know I'm the best
surgical resident you've got here, and I want to specialize in
cardiothoracic. I know what I can do for you and for the
hospital. I want to know what you can do for me."
    For
a long moment, Alistair Fogerty had sat on the edge of his mahogany
desk, riffling through a patient's file. When he finally lifted his
head, his eyes were dark and angry,