Free Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult

might
not have grown up the same way, but still, she'd left something behind.
She was a study in contrasts: as fragile as she seemed on the
outside, she still had the kind of confidence it took to make a clean
break. Nicholas realized that he had less courage in his whole body
than Paige had in her little finger.
    Paige
looked up from the anatomy book. "If I quizzed you, would you
know every little thing?"
    Nicholas
laughed. "No. Yes. Well, it depends on what you ask me." He
leaned forward. "But don't tell anyone, or I'll never get my
degree."
    Paige
sat up, cross-legged. "Take my medical history," she said.
"Isn't that good practice? Wouldn't that help you?"
    Nicholas
groaned. "I do it about a hundred times a day," he said. "I
could do it in my sleep." He rolled onto his back. "Name?
Age?
    Date
of birth? Place of birth? Do you smoke? Exercise? Do you or does
anyone in your family have a history of heart disease . . . diabetes
. . . breast cancer. Do you or does anyone in your family . . ."
He let his words trail off, and then he slid off the couch to sit
next to Paige. She was looking into her lap. "I'd have a little
problem with a medical history, I guess," she said. "If
it's my medical
history, why do you focus on everyone else in my family?"
    Nicholas
reached for her hand. "Tell me about your mother," he said.
    Paige
jumped to her feet and picked up her purse. "I've got to go,"
she said, but Nicholas grabbed her wrist before she could move away.
    "How
come every time I mention your mother you run away?"
    "How
come every time I'm with you you bring it up?" Paige stared down
at him and then tugged her wrist free. Her fingers slipped over
Nicholas's until their hands rested tip to tip. "It's no big
mystery, Nicholas," she said. "Did it ever occur to you
that I have nothing to tell?"
    The
dim light of Nicholas's green-shaded banker's lamp cast shadows
of him and of Paige on the opposite wall, images that were nothing
more than black and white and were magnified, ten feet tall. In the
shadow, where you couldn't see the faces, it almost looked as if
Paige had reached out her hand to help Nicholas up. It almost looked
as if she were the one supporting him.
    He
pulled her down to sit next to him, and she didn't really resist.
Then he cupped his hands together and fashioned a shadow alligator,
which began to eat its way across the wall. "Nicholas!"
Paige whispered, a smile running across her face. "Show me how
you do it!" Nicholas folded his hands over hers, twisting her
fingers gently and cupping her palms just so until a rabbit was
silhouetted across the room. "I've seen it done before,"
she said, "but no one ever showed me how."
    Nicholas
made a serpent, a dove, an Indian, a Labrador. With each new image,
Paige clapped, begged to be shown the position of the hands. Nicholas
couldn't remember the last time someone had got so excited about
shadow animals. He couldn't remember the last time he'd made them.
    She
couldn't get the beak right on the bald eagle. She had the head down
pat, and the little open knot for the eye, but Nicholas couldn't mold
her fingers just so for the hook in the beak. "I think your
hands are too small," he said.
    Paige
turned his hands over, tracing the life lines of his palms. "I
think yours are just right," she said.
    Nicholas
bent his head to her hands and kissed them, and Paige watched their
silhouette, mesmerized by the movement of his head and the sleek
outline of his nape and the spot where his shadow melted into hers.
Nicholas looked up at her, his eyes dark. "We never finished
your medical history," he said, and he slid his palms up her rib
cage.
    Paige
leaned her head into his shoulder and closed her eyes. "That's
because I don't have a history," she said.
    "We'll
skip that part," Nicholas murmured. He pressed his lips against
her throat. "Have you ever been hospitalized for major
surgery?" he said. "Say, a tonsillectomy?" He
kissed her neck, her shoulders, her abdomen.