Paige is chewing the Styrofoam edge of a coffee cup. Nicholas has not seen her take a sip yet, and she’s been holding it for a half hour. She stares straight ahead at the doors that lead to the operating suites, as if she expects an answer, a magical ticker-tape billboard.
Nicholas had wanted to be in the operating room, but it was"›‹¡€† against medical ethics. He was too close to the situation, and honestly he didn’t know how he would react. He would renounce his salary and his title, just to get back the detachment about surgery that he had only yesterday. What had Paige said after the bypass? He was incredible. Good at fixing. And yet he couldn’t do a damn thing to help Max.
When Nicholas was standing over a bypass patient whom he hardly knew, it was very easy to put life and death into black-and-white terms. When a patient died on the table, he was upset but he did not take it personally. He couldn’t. Doctors learn early that death is only a part of life. But parents shouldn’t have to.
What are the chances of a six-month-old making it through intestinal surgery? Nicholas racks his brain, but he can’t come up with the statistics. He does not even know the doctor operating in there. He’s never heard of the damn guy. It strikes Nicholas that he and every other surgeon live a lie: The surgeon is not God, he is not omnipotent. He cannot create life at all; he can only keep it going. And even that is touch and go.
Nicholas stares at Paige. She has done what I can never do, Nicholas thinks. She has given birth.
Paige has put down the Styrofoam cup and suddenly stands. “I’m going to get some more coffee,” she announces. “Do you need anything?”
Nicholas stares at her. “You haven’t touched the coffee you just bought.”
Paige crosses her arms and rakes her fingernails into her skin, leaving raw red lines that she doesn’t notice at all. “It’s cold,” she says, “way too cold.”
A collection of nurses walks by. They are dressed in simple white uniforms but wear felt ears in their hair, and their faces are made up with whiskers and fur. They stop to talk to the devil. He is some kind of physician, a red cape whirling over his blue scrubs. He has a forked tail and a shiny goatee and a hot chili pepper clipped to his stethoscope. Paige looks at Nicholas, and for a second Nicholas’s mind goes blank. Then he remembers that it is Halloween. “Some of the people dress up,” he explains. “It cheers up the kids in pediatrics.” Like Max, he thinks, but he does not say it.
Paige tries to smile, but only half her mouth turns up. “Well,” she says. “Coffee.” But she doesn’t move. Then, like the demolition of a building, she begins to crumble from the top down. Her head sinks and then her shoulders droop and her face sags into her hands. By the time her knees give way beneath her, Nicholas is standing, ready to catch her before she falls. He settles her into one of the stiff canvas seats. “This is all my fault,” she says.
“This isn’t your fault,” Nicholas says. “This could have happened to any kid.”
Paige doesn’t seem to have heard him. “It was the best way to get even,” she whispers, “but He should have hurt me instead.”
“Who?” Nicholas says, irritated. Maybe there is someone responsible. Maybe there is someone he can blame. “Who are you talking about?”
Paige looks at him as if he is crazy. “God,” she says.
When he had changed Max’s diaper and seen the blood, he didn’t even stop to think. He bundled Max in a blanket and ran out the door without a diaper bag, without his wallet. But he hadn’t driven straight to the hospital; he’d gone to his parents. Instinctively, he had come for Paige. When it came right down to it, it didn’t matter why Paige had left him, it didn’t matter why she had returned. It didn’t matter that for eight years she’d kept a secret from him he felt he had every right to know. What mattered was that she was Max’s mother. That was their truth, and that was their starting point to reconnect. At the very least, they had that connection. They would always have that connection.
If Max was all right.
Nicholas looks at Paige, crying softly into her hands, and knows that there are many things that depend on the success of this operation. “Hey,” he says. “Hey, Paige. Honey. Let me get you that coffee.”
He walks down the hall, passing goblins and hoboes and Raggedy Anns, and he whistles to keep out the roaring sound of the silence.
They should have come out to report on the progress. It has been so long that the sun has gone down. Nicholas doesn’t notice until he goes outside to stretch his legs. On the street he hears the catcalls of trick-or-treaters and steps on crushed jewel-colored candy. This hospital is like an artificial world. Walk inside and lose all track of time, all sense of reality.
Paige appears at the door. She waves her hands frantically, as if she is drowning. “Come inside,” she mouths against the glass.
She grabs at Nicholas’s arm when he gets through the doorway. “Dr. Cahill said it went okay,” she says, searching his face for answers. “That’s good, isn’t it? He wouldn’t hold anything back from me?”
Nicholas narrows his eyes, wondering where the hell Cahill could have gone so fast. Then he sees him writing notes at the nurses’ station around the corner. He runs down the hall and spins the surgeon around by the shoulder. Nicholas does not say a word.
“I think Max is going to be fine,” Cahill says. “We tried to manually manipulate the intestines, but we wound up having to do an actual resection of the bowel. The next twenty-four hours will be critical, as expected for such a young child. But I’d say the prognosis is excellent.”
Nicholas nods. “He’s in recovery?”
“For a while. I’ll check him in ICU, and if all is well we’ll move him up to pediatrics.” Cahill shrugs, as if this case is just like any other. “You might want to get some sleep, Dr. Prescott. The baby is sedated; he’s going to sleep for a while. You, on the other hand, look like hell.”
Nicholas runs a hand through his hair and rubs his palm over his unshaven jaw. He wt s¡€†onders who bothered to call off his surgery this morning; he forgot it entirely. He is so tired that time is passing in strange chunks. Cahill disappears, and suddenly Paige is standing beside him. “Can we go?” she asks. “I want to see him.”
That is what shocks Nicholas into clarity. “You don’t want to go,” he says. He has seen babies in the recovery room, stitches snaked over half their swollen bodies, their eyelids blue and transparent. Somehow they always look like victims. “Wait awhile,” Nicholas urges. “We’ll go up as soon as he’s in pediatrics.”
Paige pulls away from Nicholas’s grasp and stands squarely in front of him, eyes flashing. “You listen to me,” she says, her voice hard and low. “I’ve waited an entire day to find out if my son was going to live or die. I don’t care if he’s still bleeding all over the place. You get me to him, Nicholas. He needs to know that I’m here.”
Nicholas opens his mouth to say that Max, unconscious, will not know if she is in the recovery room or in Peoria. But he stops himself. He’s never been unconscious, so what does he know? “Come with me,” he says. “They usually don’t let you in, but I think I can pull strings.”
As they make their way to the recovery room, a string of children in pajamas parades through the hall, wearing papier-mâché masks of foxes and geisha girls and Batman. They are led by a nurse whom Nicholas has seen once before; he thinks she baby-sat for Max what seems like years ago. They are singing “Camptown Races,” and when they see Paige and Nicholas they break out of their line and puddle in a crowd around them. “Trick or treat,” they chant, “trick or treat. Give me something good to eat.”