Cutting for Stone

angles, coming to a point in a lancet shaped chin, as if it had all been carved out of a single square of granite. His hair was parted on the right, a furrow that originated in boyhood with every follicle tamed by the comb to know exactly which direction it was to tilt. The top was cut unevenly, as if after saying, “A short back and sides,” he'd risen from the chair when that was accomplished, despite the barber's protests. It was the kind of obstinate, determined face that with a spyglass held to the eye and a ponytail wouldn't have been out of place on the deck of an English man-of-war. Except, of course, for the tears rolling freely down the cheeks.

And from that tear-stained face, a voice emerged: “What about Mary?” startling everyone because it had been silent for so long. The measured syllables had the quality of a slow fuse.

“I'm sorry, Thomas. It is too late,” said Hemlatha as she suctioned the infant's pharynx, then pushed air into the baby's lungs, her movements speedy and almost frantic. The irritation with Stone was gone from her voice, and pity had taken its place. She stole a glance at him over her shoulder.

A wrenching noise emerged from Stone's mouth, the cry of an unsound mind. Hed been a passive observer and a worthless assistant ever since Hema's arrival. Now he leaped forward and grabbed a scalpel from the tray. He placed a hand on Sister Mary Joseph Praise's chest. Hemlatha thought of restraining him and then decided it wasn't prudent to approach a man wielding a knife.

Stone lifted Sister Mary Joseph Praise's breast. The motto of those pioneers of resuscitation, the Royal Humane Society, resounded in his ears: Lateat scintillula forsan—a small spark may perhaps be hidden.

He pushed the breast up and out of the way, and under his knife a red gash appeared between the fourth and fifth ribs. He drew the knife over the wound again, and yet again till he was through muscle. If he was clumsy earlier, his movements now were those of a man incapable of tentative strokes. He cut the cartilages that connected the two ribs to the breastbone. He spread the ribs and watched in disbelief as his ungloved hand slid out of sight and into the still warm cavity of her chest. The spongy lung he pushed away. And there, under his fingers like a dead fish in a wicker basket, was Sister Mary Joseph Praise's heart. He squeezed, surprised at its size, barely able to encircle it. Meanwhile, he exhorted the nurse anesthetist to keep pushing air into her lungs, not to stop.

His right hand was buried within her thorax, but his eyes were on Sister Mary's engorged left breast, which he held out of the way with his left hand. The breast felt firm, unlike the slippery, soft heart. He saw blotchy blue shadows creep into her face, a hue that her brown skin shouldn't have been capable of. Her abdomen had collapsed, its surface crinkled like an airless balloon, its two halves splayed open like a book whose spine had given way.

“God? God? God?” Stone cried with every squeeze, calling on a God he had renounced once and didn't believe in. But Sister Mary believed, rising before dawn to pray, and lingering in prayer at night before she slept. Every beat of her life and each day of her calendar had been filled with God events, and no morsel of food entered her mouth without God's blessing. Make your life something beautiful for God. If Thomas Stone never understood it, he respected it, because it was the same quality she brought to the operating theater, and to the textbook she'd helped him with. That was why he called out God's name now, because if there was a God, God bloody well owed His devoted servant, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a miracle. Otherwise, God was the shameless fraud Stone had always found Him to be. “If you want me to believe, God, I'll give you another chance.”

The theater doors swung open.

All eyes turned to the figure that entered.

But it was only wide-eyed Gebrew, priest, servant of God, and watchman. The covered bowl he carried held the injera and wot, and their scent was added to that of placenta, blood, amniotic fluid, and meco-nium. Gebrew had hesitated to come into this sanctum sanctorum. He held the food container in front of him, unsure if it were the ingredient that might save the day. His eyes almost popped out of their sockets when he saw, on the altar of this hallowed place, Sister Mary Joseph Praise opened like a sacrificial lamb with Stone's hand in her chest. He started to shake. He put the food on the floor, squatted down against a wall, pulled out his beads, and swayed in prayer.

Stone redoubled his efforts. “I demand a miracle and I want it right now,” he said, his body rocking back and forth. He kept it up even when the heart had turned mushy in his hand, and he was shouting now. “The bloody loaves and fishes … Lazarus … the lepers … Moses and the Red Sea …” Gebrew's chanting in ancient Geez matched Stone, call and response, as if Gebrew were translating because in this hemisphere God didn't know English.

Stone looked up to the ceiling, prepared for the tiles to part and for an angel to intercede where surgeons and priests had failed. All he saw was a black spider hanging down from its web, with its compound eyes taking in the scene of human misery below. Stone's shoulders slumped, and though his hand was still in Sister Mary's thorax, he was now merely caressing her heart, no longer squeezing. His chest heaved, tears falling onto the body of Sister Mary Joseph Praise. His head fell forward so it rested on his arms, which rested on Sister's chest. No one dared approach. They were transfixed by the sight of their surgeon so defeated, so destroyed.

AT LONG LAST he looked up, seeing as if for the first time the green tile going halfway up the wall, the swinging green door to the autoclave room, the glass instrument case, the bloody uterus with its necklace of hemostats lying in the green towel, the blue-black placenta right next to it on the specimen table, and the jade- colored ground-glass windows through which sunlight filtered. How did these things dare to exist if Mary did not?

That was when his eyes fell on the twins, no longer in their copper throne; that was when he saw the orange halo of light that surrounded the two boys. Somehow both children were alive, bright-eyed, one of them seeming to study him, the second one now as pink as the first.

“Oh no, no, no,” he said in a pitiful voice. “No. That was not the miracle I asked for!” When he withdrew his hand from Mary's body it made a gurgling sound. He left the theater.

He came back with a long broom. He brushed the spider off the ceiling, and then, with his heel, he ground it into the tile.

Matron understood he was intent on blasphemy; in case the arachnid was God, he was killing God.

“Thomas,” Hemlatha said, using his first name, which sounded strange on her tongue in Operating Theater 3, because they were always formal here. By this time both babies were in Hema's arms, wiped off and suctioned and swaddled in receiving blankets. The one in whose skull Stone had tried to drill a hole had aspirated some amniotic fluid but now seemed recovered; there was a big pressure dressing in place over the head wound. The other child showed only the stump of the flesh-bridge that had connected him to his brother, a stump now tied off with umbilical cord suture.

Hemlatha had established that the boys could move their limbs, neither of them was cockeyed, and they seemed to hear and to see. “Thomas,” she said, approaching, but he cringed. He turned away. He would not look.

This man she thought she knew well, seven years a colleague, now stood bent as if hed been gutted.

That, she said to herself, is visceral pain. As angry as shed been with him, the depth of his grief and his shame moved her. All these years, she thought, it should have been clear to us that he and Sister were a perfect match; maybe if wed encouraged them it could have been something more. How often did I see Sister assisting him in surgery, working on his manuscripts, taking notes for him in the outpatient department? Why did I assume that was all there was to it? I should have reached over and smacked him at my dinner table. I should have shouted at him, Don't be blind. See what you have in this woman! See how she loves you. Propose to her! Marry her. Get her to discard her habit, renege on her vows. It's clear her first vow is to you. But no, Thomas, I didn't do it because we all assumed that you were incapable of anything more. Who knew that this much feeling was hidden in your heart? I see it now. Yes, now we have these two as proof of what was in your hearts.

The two bundles in her arms propelled her forward, because they were, after all, his, and even as she thought that, she was still fighting her own disbelief. Surely he wouldn't try to deny that fact. She couldn't back away from this moment; she had to force the issue—who else could speak for these children? Stone was a fool who lost the one woman in the world fated for him. But now he had gained two sons. And Missing would rally round these infants. He'd have lots of help.

She moved closer.

“What shall we name these babies?” She could sense the uncertainty in her voice.