Cutting for Stone

There was a chair beyond my bed. He walked forward quickly like a blind man who'd risk bumping into something rather than seem hesitant or ask for help. He sat down hard.

I didn't think he could see my face. I studied his. As his eyes adjusted, he looked at my possessions. I had more things than he did. If you didn't count books. I saw him linger on the framed print of the Ecstasy of St. Teresa—he must have recognized at once where that came from. Oh yes, and the finger in the jar. He knew he was in the right room.

The minutes passed. It was ten at night.

“Mind if I smoke?” he said at last.

“You don't smoke.” I hadn't picked up the smell of cigarettes in his condo. Just his scent, which my nostrils registered again.

“I do now … When did you start?”

His nose was pretty good. I took my time answering.

“Since coming here. It's a prerequisite for surgical training. Go ahead.”

He fumbled in his shirt pocket and brought out two cigarettes. I thought of Ali and his little souk, the only place I knew where you could buy loose smokes. In America you bought them in cartons or by the truckload.

He held a cigarette out to me. I stared at it. He was about to withdraw his hand when I took it. He flicked his lighter and stood to meet me as I swung my feet over the side of the bed.

His fingers shielded the fire, a nine-fingered sepulchre. I bowed to the flame and drew till my tip glowed.

Thank you, Father.

I sat back on the bed. He found an old Styrofoam cup in arm's reach. I took a thoughtful draw, passing judgment on his cigarette. It was a Rothmans, a throwback to his Ethiopia days, or, lest I forget, his British days. Rothmans was also what we puffed at Our Lady, courtesy of B. C. Gandhi, who got cartons at deep discount from Canal Street.

The smoke made sinuous shapes in the shaft of light leaking past the bathroom door. I remembered our kitchen at Missing and how the dust motes dancing in the morning rays formed their own galaxy. When I was a child, that sight had hinted at the wonderful and frightening complexity of the universe, of how the closer one looked the more one saw revealed, and one's imagination was the only limit.

“I don't expect you to understand,” he said, and for a moment I thought he was talking about the dust motes. The sound of his voice irritated me. Who gave him permission to speak? In my room?

“Then let's not talk about it.”

More silence.

He cracked first. “How do you like surgery?”

Did I really want to answer him? By answering, was I conceding something? I had to think about this for a few minutes. Let him sweat.

“How do I like surgery? Hmmm … I am lucky to have Deepak. He takes great pains with me. The basics, good habits. I think it is so important …” I clammed up then. I felt I had said too much. I detected in my tone a need for his approval, his affirmation—that was the last thing I wanted. I thought of Ghosh who became an accidental surgeon because of Stone's departure. He had no one to teach him. Ah, Ghosh! Ghosh's dying wish was that—

“I know some of the people Deepak trained with,” Stone said, interrupting my train of thought. Ghosh's message to him could wait. This wasn't the time. I wasn't in the mood.

“Oh, really?”

“I made inquiries about him. You are lucky.”

“But Deepak isn't lucky. He is going to get screwed all over again. In fact, we all are.”

“Maybe not,” he said.

I didn't pursue this. No favors, please. I wanted nothing from him. He squirmed in his chair, but not from discomfort. It was what he was holding back, waiting for me to ask. I would not give him the pleasure.

“I had a Deepak in my life,” he said. “All it takes is one. Mine was a Dr. Braithwaite. A stickler for the right way. I appreciate him more now than I did then. Despite him, after all these years, I find it extraordinarily difficult to …”

The words had dried up on his tongue. This was such an effort, a physical trial for him to converse. He wasn't a man who ever spoke like this, I didn't think. Sharing his inner thoughts wasn't something he had practiced. Not even with himself. I gave him lots of time.

“What? You find it extraordinarily difficult to … what?”

I should have just told him to leave. Here I was conversing, helping him along.

“I find it difficult to operate. Particularly elective surgery. I have anxieties.” He spoke slowly, drawing out his words. “No one knows. Even if I'm doing a hernia or a hydrocele … in fact the simpler the operation, the more likely this is to happen … I have to look up the surgical anatomy, go over all the steps in an operative book, even though after all these years I don't need to. I'm terrified I will forget. Or that my mind will go blank … Sometimes I throw up in the lounge. I feel sick, dizzy. It has never stopped. It made me consider giving up surgery. It's worse if it's someone I know, a hospital employee brings his mother …”

I thought of the surgical anatomy atlas I had seen in his condominium, a big folio book, and next to it an operative anatomy atlas, both open on his desk as if they were the last things he looked at before he left his apartment.

“What about the day I … the day of your morbidity and mortality conference?”

“Exactly. Early that morning I had to do a simple breast lump excision, and if the biopsy was positive, then a mastectomy and auxiliary node dissection. I've done hundreds of them. Maybe more. But this was one of our nurses. Someone putting faith in me.”

“So what happened?”

“I walked into the theater, feeling as if I were about to faint. No one knows, of course. The mask helps. But as soon as I make the incision, it all vanishes. Then it feels silly to have been so anxious. Ridiculous. It'll never happen again, I tell myself. But it does.”

“Did it ever happen in Ethiopia?”

He shook his head. “I think it was because I knew I was the only choice the patient had. There were no other options. Two other surgeons in the whole city. Here there are so many surgeons.”

“Or maybe those lives weren't as valuable. Natives, right? Who cares? The alternative was death anyway, so why worry? Just like you come and take organs from our patients at Our Lady.”

He flinched. I sensed that no one ever talked to him in this manner. We hadn't agreed to any rules. If he didn't like it, he could just leave. He had come to Our Lady. This wasn't Mecca.

He clamped his lips together. “I don't expect you to understand,” he said.

I knew he wasn't talking about his surgical anxieties.

He patted his pockets. He didn't find what he was looking for. So he just sat there and blinked, waiting for more punishment.

He slumped down in the chair. He had crossed his legs, and hooked his free foot under the calf of the other, like a twisted vine. “You see … Mar-ion—” He wasn't used to saying my name. “I … It is not as if everything can be explained by logic.”

Now he uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “I can't give you a neat explanation about why … I did what I did, because I don't understand it myself. Even after all these years …”

Which “it” was he talking about? I had my daggers lined up, and my lances and mace ready just behind them. I thought of all kinds of clever things to say: Save your breath. Or, I understand all'right. You took the path less traveled. You bailed out. What else is there to understand? But perhaps he meant the “it” of impregnating my mother.

“Ghosh said you didn't know how it happened. That it was a mystery to you.”

“Yes!” he said, relieved, but then I sensed he was blushing. “He said that? Yes, it was.”

“Like Joseph? Clueless about Mary and the baby? Babies, in your case.”

“… Yes.” He crossed his legs.