by Jodi Picoult
My first instinct had been to clean up. But if I did that, Nicholas would know I had been inside, and I didn't want him yelling again. So I made my way to the bedroom and pulled a pair of khaki pants and a green cotton sweater out of my closet. After a quick shower, I put them on and threw my dirty clothes into the bathroom hamper.
When I thought I heard a noise, I ran out of the bathroom, stopping only in the nursery to get a quick scent of Max--soiled diapers and baby powder and sweet milky skin. I slipped out the back door just in case, but I didn't see anybody. With my hair still wet, I drove to Mass General and inquired about staff child care, but they told me there was no facility on the hospital grounds. "Good Lord," I said to the receptionist at the information desk. "Nicholas has him in a day care center." I laughed out loud then, thinking about how ridiculous this had all turned out. If Nicholas had agreed to consider day care before the baby was born, I wouldn't have been home all day with him. I would have been taking classes, maybe drawing again--I would have been doing something for myself. If I hadn't been home with Max, I might never have needed to get away.
I wasn't about to search through the Boston phone book for day care centers, so I had gone home and resigned myself to the fact that I'd lost a day. Then Nicholas showed up and told me again to get the hell off his lawn. But late last night, he had come outside. He wasn't angry, at least not as angry as he had been. He stepped down to the porch, sitting so close that I could have touched him. He was wearing a robe I had not seen before. As I watched him, I pretended that we were different, that it was years ago, and we were eating bagels and chive cream cheese and reading the real estate listings of the Sunday Globe. For a moment, just a moment, something passed behind the shadows in his eyes. I could not be sure, but I thought it took the shape of understanding.
That's why today I am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to follow Nicholas to the ends of the earth. He's late--it's past seven o'clock--and I'm already in the car. I have moved out of the driveway and parked down the block, because I want him to think I have disappeared. When he drives away I am going to tail him, like in the movies, always keeping a couple of cars between us.
He walks out the front door with Max tucked beneath his arm like a Federal Express package, and I start the engine. I unroll my window and stare, just in case Nicholas does anything I can use as a clue. I hold my breath as he locks the door, saunters to his car, and settles Max into the car seat. It's a different car seat now, facing forward, instead of the little bucket that faced the back. On the plastic bar across the car seat is a circus of plastic animals, each holding a different jingling bell. Max giggles when Nicholas buckles him in, and he grabs a yellow rubber ball that hangs from an elephant's nose. "Dada," he says--I swear I can hear it--and I smile at my baby's first word.
Nicholas looks over the top of the car before he slips into his seat, and I know he is trying to find me. I have an unobstructed view of him: his glinting black hair and his sky-colored eyes. It has been quite a while since I've really looked at him; I have been making up images from a composite of memories. Nicholas really is the most handsome man I have ever seen; time and distance haven't changed that. It isn't his features as much as their contrast; it isn't his face as much as his ease and his presence. When he puts the car in gear and begins to drive down the block, I count, whispering out loud. "One Mississippi, two Mississippi," I say. I make it to five, and then I start to follow him.
As I expected, Nicholas doesn't take the turn to Mass General. He takes a route that I recognize from somewhere but that I can't quite place. It is only when I hide my car in a driveway three houses down from Nicholas's parents' house that I realize what has happened while I've been away.
I can see Astrid only from a distance. Her shirt is a blue splotch against the wood door. Nicholas holds out the baby to her, and I feel my own arms ache. He says a few words, and then he walks back to the car.
I have a choice: I can follow Nicholas to wherever he's going next, or I can wait until he leaves and hope that I have the advantage of surprise and try to get Astrid Prescott to let me hold my baby, which I want more than anything. I see Nicholas start the car. Astrid closes the heavy front door. Without thinking about what I am doing, I pull out of the neighbor's driveway and follow Nicholas.
I realize then that I would have come back to Massachusetts no matter what. It has to do with more than Max, with more than my mother, with more than obligation. Even if there were no baby, I would have returned because of Nicholas. Because of Nicholas. I'm in love with Nicholas. In spite of the fact that he is no longer the man I married; in spite of the fact that he spends more time with patients than with me; in spite of the fact that I have never been and never will be the kind of wife he should have had. A long time ago, he dazzled me; he saved me. And out of every other woman in the world, Nicholas chose me. We may have changed over the years, but these are the kinds of feelings that last. I know they're still there in him, somewhere. Maybe the part of his heart that he's using now to hate me used to be the part that loves.
Suddenly I am impatient. I want to find Nicholas immediately, tell him what I now know. I want to grab him by the collar and kiss my memory into his bloodstream. I want to tell him I am sorry. I want to hear him set me free.
I lean my hand out the window as I drive, cupping the firm knob of air that I can't see. I laugh out loud at my discovery: I had been restless for so long that, like an idiot, I ran for miles and miles just to realize that what I really wanted was right here.
Nicholas parks in the Mass General garage, the uppermost level, and I park four spaces away from him. I think about the police shows I've seen on TV as I hide behind the concrete pylons, keeping my distance in case Nicholas decides to turn around. I start to sweat, wondering how I'll be able to keep him from noticing me on an elevator, but Nicholas takes the stairs. He goes down one level into the hospital building and walks down a hall that does not even remotely resemble a surgical floor. There is blue commercial carpeting and a line of wooden doors with the names of doctors spread across them on brass plaques. At one point, when he turns to fit a key into a lock, I pull myself into a doorway. "May I help you?" a voice says behind the half-open door, and I feel the blood drain out of my face, even as I curl my way back into the hall.
Nicholas has closed the door behind himself. I walk up to it and
read the plaque. dr. nicholas j. prescott, acting chief of cardiothoracic surgery. When did that happen? I lean against the frame of the smooth varnished door and rub my fingers over the recessed letters of Nicholas's name. I would have liked to be here for that, and even as I think this, I am wondering what the circumstances were. I see Alistair Fogerty, pants pillowed around his ankles, in a compromising position with a nurse in the supply closet. Maybe he is sick, or even dead. What else would make that pompous old goat give up his position?
The twitch of the doorknob startles me. I turn to the bulletin board and pretend to be engrossed in an article about endorphins. Nicholas walks past without noticing me. He has taken off his jacket and is wearing his white lab coat. He stops at an empty circular desk near the elevator bank and riffles through a clipboard's papers.
When he disappears behind the doors of the elevator, I panic. This is a big hospital, and the chances of my finding him again are next to nothing. But I must have followed him here for a reason, whatever it might be, and I'm not ready to give up yet. I press my fingers to my temples, thinking of Sherlock Holmes and Nancy Drew, of clues. How did Nicholas spend his day? Where would a doctor be likely to go? I try to run through my mind snippets of conversation we've had when he mentioned places in the hospital, even specific floors. Nicholas could have gone to the patient rooms, the laboratory, the lockers. Or he could be headed where a cardiac surgeon should be headed.
"Excuse me," I say quietly to a janitor emptying a trash container. "No hablo ingles." The man shrugs.
I try again. "Operation," I say. "I'm looking for the operations."
"
St, operacidn." The man makes a jagged line across his stomach. He bobs his head, smiling.
I shake my head and try to remember the Sesame Street Spanish I'd heard when I turned it on for Max. "Uno," I say, holding my hand close to the floor. I move it up an inch. "Dos." I move it again. "Tres, cuatro . . . operation?"
The man claps his hands. "St, si, operacidn." He holds up three fingers. "Tres," he says.
"Gracias," I murmur, and I jam my finger repeatedly into the elevator call button, as if this might make it come faster.
Sure enough, the operating rooms are on three, and as the elevator doors part I get a glimpse of Nicholas rushing by, now in his blue scrubs. Everything on him is covered, except for his face, but I would have been able to spot him from a distance simply by the stately manner of his walk. He looks over my head at a wall clock, then he disappears behind a double panel of doors.
"If you're a relative," a voice says behind me, "you'll have to go to the waiting room." I turn to see a pretty, petite nurse in a crisp white uniform. "Only patients are allowed in here," she says.
"Oh," I say. "I must have gotten lost." I give a quick smile and then ask her if Dr. Prescott has arrived yet.
Nodding, she takes my elbow, as if she knows this is a ploy and wants me out immediately. "Dr. Prescott is always ten minutes early," she says. "We set our watches by him." She stands beside the elevator with me. "I'll tell him you were here," she says. "I'm sure he'll come to see you when the operation is over."
"No!" I say, a little too loud. "You don't have to tell him anything." For the past half hour, I've had the upper hand. I'm where I want to be, and Nicholas doesn't know.'I like being anonymous and watching him. After all, I've never really seen him work, and maybe this is part of the reason I felt compelled to follow him to the hospital. Another hour or two, and I'll come into the open. But not now, not yet. I'm still learning.
I look at the nurse, considering a string of different excuses. I knot my hands together in front of me. "I ... I don't want him to be distracted."
"Of course," she says, and she propels me into the yawning mouth of the elevator.
When Nicholas comes back up to his office, he is still wearing scrubs, but they are dark with sweat, pressed against his back and under his arms. He unlocks his door and leaves it open, and I creep from my hiding spot behind a row of sleeping wheelchairs to sit on the floor beside the doorway. "Mrs. Rosenstein," Nicholas is saying, "this is Dr. Prescott."
His voice makes my stomach flip. "I'm calling to let you know that the procedure went well. We did four grafts, as expected, and he came off the bypass machine nicely. Everything is going just fine, and he should be waking up in a few hours." I listen to the calm currents running under his words and wonder if he uses that tone to put Max to sleep. I remember Nicholas telling me about making postoperative phone calls when he was a beginning resident. "I never say 'How are you,' because I know damn well how they are. How else could you be if you've been sitting next to the phone for six hours, waiting to hear if your husband is alive or dead?"
I lose Nicholas for a little while after that, because he meets with some residents and fellows in a small room where there is nowhere for me to hide. I am impressed. He hasn't stopped yet. Everywhere he goes in the hospital, people know his name, and nurses fall over each other to hand him charts and schedules before he even thinks to ask. I wonder if that is because he is a surgeon or because he is Nicholas.
When I see Nicholas again, he is with a younger man, probably a resident, walking through the halls of surgical ICU. I knew he'd make a swing through here, even if he was planning to head to other floors first, because he'd have to check on that morning's patient. His name is Oliver Rosenstein, and he is sleeping peacefully, breathing in time with the steady beats of the heart monitor. "We make patients sicker than they are when they come to us," Nicholas is saying to the resident. "We elect to make them sicker in hopes that they'll be better in the long run. That's part of why you're put up on a pedestal. If you trust your car to a mechanic, you look for someone who's good. If you trust your life to a surgeon, you look for someone who's God." The resident laughs and looks up at Nicholas, and it is clear that he thinks Nicholas is as mythic as they come.
Just as I am wondering why I have never seen Nicholas work during the eight years we've been married, he is paged over the loudspeaker. He murmurs something to the resident and bolts up the nearest staircase. The resident leaves Oliver Rosenstein's room and walks off in the other direction. Because I don't know where to go, I stay where I am, at the open doorway to the room.
"Uhh," I hear, and Oliver Rosenstein stirs.
I bite my lower lip, not certain what to do, when a nurse breezes past me into the room. She leans close to Oliver and adjusts several tubes and wires and catheters. "You're doing fine," she soothes, and then she pats his yellow, veined hand. "I'm going to page your doctor for you." She leaves as briskly as she entered, and because of that I am the only person who hears Oliver Rosenstein's first postsurgical words. "It isn't easy," he says, barely audible, "not easy to go through this. . . . It's real, real hard." He rolls his head from side to side, as if he is looking for something, and then he sees me and smiles. "Ellie," he says, his voice a rough sandpaper snap. He clearly thinks I am someone else. "I'm here, kine ahora," he says. "For a WASP, that Prescott is a mensch."
It is another hour before I find Nicholas again, and that is only by accident. I am wandering around the post-op floor, when Nicholas blusters out of the elevator. He is reading a file and eating a Hostess cupcake. A nurse laughs at him as he passes the central desk. "You gonna be the next cardiac surgeon around these parts with blocked arteries," she scolds, and Nicholas tosses her the second cupcake, still packaged.
"If you don't tell anyone," he says, "this is yours."
I marvel at this man, whom everyone seems to know, who seems so controlled and so calm. Nicholas, who could not tell you where I keep the peanut butter in his own kitchen, is completely in his element at this hospital. It hits like an unexpected slap: This is really Nicholas's home. These people are really Nicholas's family. This doctor, whom everyone seems to need for a signature or a quiet word or an answer, does not need anyone else, especially me.
Nicholas stuffs the chart he has been reading into the box glued to the door of room 445. He enters and smiles at a young resident in a white coat, her hands jammed in her pockets. "Dr. Adams tells me you're all set for tomorrow," he says to the patient, pulling up a chair next to the bed. I scoot to the other side of the doorway so that I can peek in, unseen. The patient is a man about my father's age, with the same round face and faraway look in his eyes. "Let me tell you what we're going to do, since I don't think you're going to remember much of it," Nicholas says.
I cannot really hear him, but little drifts of dialogue float out to me, words like oxygenation, mammary arteries, intubate. The patient does not seem to be listening. He is staring at Nicholas with his mouth slightly open, as if Nicholas is Jesus Himself.
Nicholas asks the man if he has any questions. "Yes," the patient says hesitantly. "Will I know you tomorrow?"
"You might," Nicholas says, "but you're going to be groggy by the time you see me. I'll check in when you're up in the afternoon."
"Dr. Prescott," the patient says, "in case I'm too doped up to tell you--thanks."
I do not hear Nicholas respond to the patient, so I don't have time to retreat before he comes out the door. He barrels into me, apologizes, and then notices whom he has run into. With a narrowed look, he grabs my upper arm and starts to pull me down the hall. "Julie," he says to the resident who has been in the room with him, "I'll see you after you round." Then he curses through his clenched teeth and drags me into a tiny room off the side of the hall, where patients can get ice chips and orange juice. "What the hell do you think you're doing here?"
My breath catches in my throat, and for the life of me I cannot answer. Nicholas squeezes my arm so hard that I know he is leaving behind a bru
ise. "I--I--"
"You what?" Nicholas seethes.
"I didn't mean to bother you," I say. "I just want to talk to you." I start to tremble and wonder what I will say if Nicholas takes me up on my offer.
"If you don't get the hell out of here," Nicholas says, "I'll have security throw you out on your ass." He releases my arm as if he's been touching a leper. "I told you not to come back," he says. "What else do I have to do to show you I mean it?"
I lift my chin and pretend I haven't heard anything he's said. "Congratulations," I say, "on your promotion."
Nicholas stares at me. "You're crazy," he says, and then he walks down the hall without turning back.
I watch him until his white coat is a blur against a distant wall. I wonder why he cannot see the similarity between me and his patients, whom he keeps from dying of broken hearts.
At the Prescotts' Brookline mansion, I sit for seven minutes in the car. I let my breath heat up the interior and wonder if there is an etiquette for begging mercy. Finally, driven by an image of Max, I push myself up the slate path and rap on the door with the heavy brass lion knocker. I am expecting Imelda, the short, plump maid, but instead Astrid herself--and my son--opens the door.
I'm immediately struck by the contrast between Astrid and my own mother. There are the simple things--Astrid's silk and pearls as compared to my mother's flannel shirts and chaps; Astrid's antiques set against my mother's stables. Astrid thrives on her fame; my mother goes to great lengths to protect her identity. But on the other hand, Astrid and my mother are both strong; they are both proud to a fault. They have both fought the system that bound them, and recreated themselves. And from the look of things, Astrid--like my mother--is beginning to admit to her mistakes.
