Unstricken by even the faintest twinge of nausea, he roamed freely throughout the ship. No one stopped him. Indeed, the crew seemed to enjoy his presence. He would visit Koubichev in the engine room, and in that noisy hell of grinding pistons and diesel fumes, the two of them played chess. Sometimes, Yakov even won. When he got hungry, Yakov would wander into the galley where Lubi, the cook, would offer him tea and beet soup and medivnyk, the fragrant spiced honey cake from his native Ukraine. Lubi never said much. “More?” and “Enough, eh?” was the extent of his conversation. The food he served was eloquence enough. Then there was the dusty cargo hold to explore, and the radio room with its dials and knobs, and the deck with its tarp-covered lifeboats to hide in. The only place he could not wander was the far aft section. He could not find any passage to get in there.
His favorite place of all was the bridge. Captain Dibrov and the navigator would greet Yakov with indulgent smiles and allow him to sit at the chart table. There he’d trace with the index finger of his one hand the course they had already sailed. From the port of Riga, down the Baltic Sea, through the channel past Malmö and Copenhagen, around the top of Denmark, and across the North Sea with its stepping stones of oil platforms with names like Montrose and Forties and Piper. The North Sea was bigger than he’d imagined. It was not just a little puddle of blue, the way it seemed on the chart. It was two days of water. And soon, the navigator told him, they’d be crossing an even bigger sea, the Atlantic Ocean.
“They won’t live that long,” Yakov predicted.
“Who won’t?”
“Nadiya and the other boys.”
“Of course they will,” said the navigator. “Everyone gets sick in the North Sea. After a while their stomachs settle. It has to do with the inner ear.”
“What does the ear have to do with the stomach?”
“It senses motion. Too much motion makes it confused.”
“How?”
“I don’t really understand it. But that’s how it works.”
“I’m not sick. Is there something different about my inner ear?”
“You must be a born sailor.”
Yakov looked down at the stump of his left arm and shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
The navigator smiled. “You have a good brain. Brains are far more important. You will need them, where you’re going.”
“Why?”
“In America, if you’re clever, you can become rich. You want to be rich, don’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
Both the navigator and the captain laughed.
“Maybe the boy doesn’t have any brains after all,” said the captain.
Yakov looked at them without smiling.
“It was just a joke,” said the navigator.
“I know.”
“Why don’t you ever laugh, boy? I never see you laugh.”
“I never feel like it.”
The captain snorted. “Lucky little bastard’s going to some rich family in America. And he doesn’t feel like laughing? What’s wrong with him?”
Yakov shrugged and looked back at the chart. “I don’t cry, either.”
Aleksei was curled up on the lower bunk, clutching Shu-Shu to his chest. He was startled awake as Yakov sat down on the mattress.
“Aren’t you ever going to get up?” asked Yakov.
Aleksei closed his eyes. “I’m sick.”
“Lubi made lamb dumplings for supper. I ate nine of them.”
“Don’t talk about it.”
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“Of course I’m hungry. But I’m too sick to eat.”
Yakov sighed and looked around the cabin. There were eight bunk beds in the room, and six of them were occupied by boys too ill to play. Yakov had already visited the adjoining quarters and found the other boys equally incapacitated. Would it be this way all across the Atlantic?
“It’s all because of your inner ear,” said Yakov.
“What are you talking about?” moaned Aleksei.
“Your ear. It’s making your stomach sick.”
“My ears are fine.”
“You’ve been sick four days now. You’ve got to get up and eat.”
“Oh, leave me alone.”
Yakov grabbed Shu-Shu and yanked it away.
“Give him back!” wailed Aleksei.
“Come and get him.”
“Just give him back!”
“First you get up. Come on.” Yakov scurried away from the bunk as Aleksei made a futile swipe for the stuffed dog. “You’ll feel better if you’re out of bed.”
Aleksei sat up. For a moment he huddled at the edge of his mattress, his head swaying with every tilt of the ship. Suddenly he clapped his hand to his mouth, lurched to his feet, and scrambled across the cabin. He vomited into the sink. Groaning, he crawled back into his bunk.
Solemnly, Yakov handed back Shu-Shu.
Aleksei hugged the stuffed dog against his chest. “I told you I was sick. Now go away.”
Yakov left the boys’ quarters and wandered into the corridor. At Nadiya’s stateroom door, he knocked. There was no answer. He moved on to Gregor’s stateroom and knocked again.
“Who is it?” came a growl.
“It’s me. Yakov. Are you still sick as well?”
“Get the fuck away from my door.”
Yakov left. He wandered around the ship for a while, but Lubi had retired for the night. The captain and the navigator were too busy to talk to him. As usual, Yakov was on his own.
He went down to visit Koubichev in the engine room.
They set up the chessboard. Yakov drew the first move, pawn to king four.
“Have you ever been to America?” Yakov asked over the rumble of the pistons.
“Twice,” said Koubichev, moving his queen’s pawn forward.
“Did you like it there?”
“Wouldn’t know. They always order us confined to quarters as soon as we get into port. I never see a fucking thing.”
“Why does the captain order this?”
“The captain doesn’t. It’s those people in the aft cabin.”
“What people? I’ve never seen them.”
“No one ever does.”
“Then how do you know they’re there?”
“Ask Lubi. He cooks for them. Someone’s eating the food he sends up. Now are you going to move a piece or what?”
With great concentration, Yakov advanced another pawn. “Why don’t you just leave the ship when we get there?” he asked.
“Why would I?”
“To stay in America and get rich.”
Koubichev grunted. “They pay me enough. I can’t complain.”
“How much do they pay you?”
“You’re too nosy.”
“Is it a lot?”
“It’s more than I used to make. More than a lot of men make. And just to go back and forth, back and forth across this damned Atlantic.”
Yakov moved out his queen. “So it’s a good job? To be a ship’s engineer?”
“That’s a stupid move, bringing out your queen. Why did you make it?”
“I’m trying new things out. Should I be a ship’s engineer some day?”
“No.”
“But you get paid a lot.”
“It’s only because I work for the Sigayev Company. They pay very well.”
“Why?”
“I keep my mouth shut.”
“Why?”
“How the hell should I know?” Koubichev reached across the board. “My knight takes your queen. See, I told you it was a stupid move.”
“It was an experiment,” said Yakov.
“Well, I hope you learned something from it.”
A few days later, on the bridge, Yakov asked the navigator: “What’s the Sigayev Company?”
The navigator shot him a look of surprise. “How did you hear that name?”
“Koubichev told me.”
“He shouldn’t have.”
“So y
ou don’t talk about it either,” said Yakov.
“That’s right.”
For a moment, Yakov didn’t say anything. He watched the navigator fuss with his electronics equipment. There was a small screen where little numbers kept flashing, and the navigator would write the numbers in a book, then look in his chart.
“Where are we?” asked Yakov.
“Here.” The navigator pointed to a tiny X on the chart. It was in the middle of the ocean.
“How do you know?”
“By the numbers. I read them on the screen. The latitude and longitude. See?”
“You have to be very clever to be a navigator, don’t you?”
“Not so clever, really.” The man was moving two plastic rulers across the chart now. They were connected by hinges, and he’d clack them together as he slid them to the compass rose at the edge of the chart.
“Are you doing something illegal?” asked Yakov.
“What?”
“Is that why you’re not supposed to talk about it?”
The navigator sighed. “My only responsibility is to guide this ship from Riga to Boston and back to Riga.”
“Do you always carry orphans?”
“No. Usually we carry cargo. Crates. I don’t ask what’s in them. I don’t ask questions, period.”
“So you could be doing something illegal.”
The navigator laughed. “You are a little devil, aren’t you?” He began to write again in his notebook, recording numbers in neat columns.
The boy watched him for a while in silence. Then he said, “Do you think anyone will adopt me?”
“Of course someone will.”
“Even with this?” Yakov raised his stump of an arm.
The navigator looked at him, and Yakov recognized the flicker of pity in the man’s eyes. “I know for a fact someone will adopt you,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“Someone’s paid for your passage, haven’t they? Arranged for your papers.”
“I’ve never seen my papers. Have you?”
“It’s none of my business. My only job is to get this ship to Boston.” He waved Yakov aside. “Why don’t you go back to the other boys? Go on.”
“They’re still not feeling well.”
“Well, go play somewhere else.”
Reluctantly Yakov left the bridge and went out on deck. He was the only one there. He stood by the rail and stared down at the water splintering before the bow. He thought of the fish swimming somewhere below in their gray and turbid world, and suddenly he found he couldn’t breathe; the image of swirling water was suffocating. Yet he didn’t move. He stayed at the rail, gripping it with his one hand, letting the panicky thoughts of cold, deep water wash through him. Fear was something he had not felt in a very long time.
He was feeling it now.
8
She had had the same dream two nights in a row. The nurses told her it was because of all the medications she’d been taking. The methylprednisolone and the cyclosporine and the pain pills. The chemicals were scrambling her brain. And after days of hospitalization, of course she’d be having bad dreams. Everyone did. It was nothing to worry about. The dreams would, eventually, fade away.
But that morning, as Nina Voss lay in her ICU bed, the tears fresh in her eyes, she knew the dream would not go away, would never go away. It was part of her now. Just as this heart was part of her.
Softly, she touched her hand to the bandages on her chest. It had been two days since the operation, and though the soreness was just starting to ease, it still awakened her at night, a reminder of the gift she’d received. It was a good, strong heart. She had known that within a day of the surgery. During the long months of her illness, she’d forgotten what it was like to have a strong heart. To walk without gasping for air. To feel the blood pump, warm and vital, to her muscles. To look down at her own fingers and marvel at the rosy flush of her capillaries. She had lived so long waiting for death, accepting death, that life itself had become foreign to her. But now she could see it in her own hands. Could feel it in her fingertips.
And in the beating of this new heart.
It did not yet feel as if it belonged to her. Perhaps it never would.
As a child, she would often inherit her older sister’s clothing, Caroline’s good wool sweaters, her scarcely worn party dresses. Although the garments had unquestionably passed to Nina’s ownership, she had never stopped thinking of them as her sister’s. In her mind, they would always be Caroline’s dresses, Caroline’s skirts.
And whose heart are you? she thought, her hand gently touching her chest.
At noon, Victor came to sit by her bed.
“I had the dream again,” she told him. “The one about the boy. It was so clear to me this time! When I woke up, I couldn’t stop crying.”
“It’s the steroids, darling,” said Victor. “They warned you about that side effect.”
“I think it means something. Don’t you see? I have this part of him inside me. A part that’s still alive. I can feel him . . .”
“That nurse should never have told you it was a boy’s.”
“I asked her.”
“Still, she shouldn’t have told you. It does no one any good to release that information. Not you. Not the boy.”
“No,” she said softly. “Not the boy. But the family—if there’s a family—”
“I’m sure they don’t wish to be reminded. Think about it, Nina. It’s a strictly confidential process. There’s a reason for it.”
“Would it be so bad? To send the family a thank-you letter? It would be completely anonymous. Just a simple—”
“No, Nina. Absolutely not.”
Nina sank back quietly on the pillows. She was being foolish again. Victor was right. Victor was always right.
“You’re looking wonderful today, darling,” he said. “Have you been up in a chair yet?”
“Twice,” said Nina. Suddenly the room seemed very, very cold to her. She looked away and shivered.
* * *
Pete was sitting in a chair by Abby’s bed, looking at her. He wore his blue Cub Scout uniform, the one with all the little patches sewn on the sleeves and the plastic beads dangling from the breast pocket, one bead for each achievement. He was not wearing his cap. Where is his cap? she wondered. And then she remembered that it was lost, that she and her sisters had searched and searched the roadside but had not found it anywhere near the mangled remains of his bicycle.
He had not visited in a long time, not since the night she’d left for college. When he did visit, it was always the same. He would sit looking at her, not speaking.
She said, “Where have you been, Pete? Why did you come if you’re not going to say anything?”
He just sat watching her, his eyes silent, his lips unmoving. The collar of his blue shirt was starched and stiff, just the way their mother had pressed it for the burial. He turned and looked toward another room. A musical note seemed to be calling to him; he was starting to shimmer, like water that has been stirred.
She said, “What did you come to tell me?”
The waters were churning now, beaten to a froth by all those musical notes. Another bell-like jangle led to total disintegration. There was only darkness.
And the ringing telephone.
Abby reached for the receiver. “DiMatteo,” she said.
“This is the SICU. I think maybe you’d better come down.”
“What’s happening?”
“It’s Mrs. Voss in Bed Fifteen. The transplant. She’s running a fever, thirty-eight point six.”
“What about her other vitals?”
“BP’s a hundred over seventy. Pulse is ninety-six.”
“I’ll be there.” Abby hung up and switched on the lamp. It was two A.M. The chair by her bed was empty. No Pete. Groaning, she climbed out of bed and stumbled across the room to the sink, where she splashed cold water on her face. Its temperature didn’t even register. She felt the water as t
hough through anesthesia. Wake up, wake up, she told herself. You have to know what the hell you’re doing. A postop fever. A three-day-old transplant. First step, check the wound. Examine the lungs, the abdomen. Order a chest X ray and cultures.
And keep your cool.
She couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. Not now, and certainly not with this patient.
Every morning for the past three days, she’d walked into Bayside not knowing if she still had a job. And every afternoon at five o’clock she’d heaved a sigh of relief that she’d survived another twenty-four hours. With each day that passed, the crisis seemed a little dimmer and Parr’s threats more remote. She knew she had Wettig on her side, and Mark as well. With their help maybe—just maybe—she’d keep her job. She didn’t want to give Parr any reason to question her performance as a doctor, so she’d been especially meticulous at work, had checked and rechecked every lab result, every physical finding. And she’d been careful to steer clear of Nina Voss’s hospital room. Another angry encounter with Victor Voss was the last thing she needed.
But now Nina Voss was running a fever and Abby was the resident on the spot. She couldn’t avoid this; she had a job to do.
She pulled on her tennis shoes and left the on-call room.
Late at night, a hospital is a surreal place. Hallways stretch empty, the lights are too bright, and through tired eyes, all those white walls seem to curve and sway like moving tunnels. She was weaving through one of those tunnels now, her body still numb, her brain still struggling to function. Only her heart had fully responded to the crisis; it was pounding.
She turned a corner, into the SICU.
The lights were dimmed for the night—modern technology’s concession to the diurnal needs of human patients. In the gloom of the nurses’ station, the electrical patterns of sixteen patients’ hearts traced across sixteen screens. A glance at Screen 15 confirmed that Mrs. Voss’s pulse was running fast. A rate of 100.
The monitor nurse picked up the ringing telephone, then said: “Dr. Levi’s on the line. He wants to talk to the on-call resident.”
“I’ll take it,” said Abby, reaching for the receiver. “Hello, Dr. Levi? This is Abby DiMatteo.”
There was a silence. “You’re on call tonight?” he said, and she heard a distinct note of dismay in his voice. She understood at once the reason for it. Abby was the last person he wanted to lay hands on Nina Voss. But tonight there was no alternative; she was the senior resident on call.
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