Cutting for Stone

Ghosh wiped it down with alcohol before setting it up in Hema's bedroom. No sooner had he stepped back to admire it than Almaz walked around it three times making thew-thew sounds, stopping short of actually spitting. “To ward off the evil eye,” she explained in Amharic, wiping her lip with the back of her forearm.

“Remind me never to invite you into the operating theater,” Ghosh said in English. “Hema?” he said, hoping she would weigh in. “Antisepsis? Lister? Pasteur? Are you no longer a believer?”

“You forget I am postpartum, man,” she said. “Warding off spirits is much more important.”

The twins lay swaddled next to each other like larvae, sharing the incubator, their skulls covered with monkey caps and only their wizened, newborn faces showing. No matter how far apart Hema put them, when she came to them again, they would be in a V, their heads touching, facing each other, just as they had been in the womb.

SOME NIGHTS as he took his shift by the sleeping infant, exhausted, fighting sleep, he talked to himself. “Why are you here? Would she do this for you?” The old resentments made his jaw tighten. “You silly bugger, you allowed yourself to succumb to her spell again?” Why did he lack the willpower to say what must be said?

He told himself that once the infant, this Shiva, was over its breathing problem, he would leave. Knowing Hema, when she no longer had to rely on him, things would be back to where they had always been. Since Harris's visit, it was unclear if the Houston Baptists would continue their support. Matron wouldn't give her opinion.

For two weeks he and Hema kept a vigil over Shiva, getting help in the daytime, but reserving the night for themselves. They had finished Middlemarch in a week and it had given them plenty to discuss. He picked Zola's Three Cities Trilogy: Paris next, and that they both found absorbing. Shiva's episodes of apnea decreased from more than twenty a day to two a day and then ceased. They extended their vigil into a third week, just to be on the safe side.

Hema's sofa was too small for a man of Ghosh's proportions, and seeing him scrunched up there, she felt grateful to him and conscious of his sacrifice. It would have surprised her to know how much he relished occupying the space that she'd just vacated, and covering himself with a blanket still scented with her dreams. The jingling of Shiva's ankle bracelet filtered into his sleep, and one night he dreamed that Hema was dancing for him. Naked. It was so vivid, so real, that the next morning, he hurried to Cook's Travel, waited till they opened, and canceled his ticket to America. He did it before he had any coffee—or a chance to second-guess himself.

MATRON WAS INCREASINGLY STOOPED, her face more weathered in the aftermath of Sister Mary Joseph Praise's death. She spent her evenings at Hema's—everybody did—but she didn't protest when Ghosh and Hema sent her back to her quarters by eight, accompanied by Koochooloo. That dog had become protective of Matron, and since the other two nameless dogs often followed Koochooloo, Matron had an entourage with her.

Two weeks after they buried Sister, Gebrew saw a barefoot coolie walk by with his right arm in a long cast, the elbow straight at his side. Worse still, the man was so sleepy he staggered and was in danger of breaking his head, not to mention his other arm. Gebrew felt terrible because it was he who had directed the coolie to the Russian hospital when he showed up at Missing with a fracture. The Russian doctors loved injecting barbiturates no matter what ailed you, and since their patients loved the needle, no one left the Russian hospital unsedated. Gebrew knew from his years at Missing that a broken forearm had to be cast in a neutral and functional position, with the elbow flexed to ninety degrees, the forearm midway between pronation and supination, even though he knew none of those terms. He escorted the unsteady coolie to the casualty room where, after Ghosh looked at the X-ray, the orderlies reapplied the cast. At that moment, though none of them quite realized it, Missing officially reopened for business.

Hema refused to leave the infants. She claimed she was no longer a doctor, but a mother. She was the kind of mother who was fearful for her children, who loved being with them and was unwilling to part from them. The two mamithus—Stone's Rosina and Ghosh's Almaz—took turns sleeping on a mattress in her kitchen, and were ready to help.

With Stone gone or dead, and Hema a full-time mother, once the gates opened, the burden on Ghosh was huge. Matron hired Bachelli to run the morning outpatient clinics where the great majority of Missing's patients were seen. This allowed Ghosh the freedom to operate when he could, and to concentrate on the patients admitted to the hospital.

SIX WEEKS AFTER Sister Mary Joseph Praise's death, the gravestone arrived, hauled up by donkey cart. Hema and Ghosh went to see it levered into place. The mason had carved a Coptic cross on the stone. Below it he had etched letters he copied from the paper Matron had given him:

Matron arrived, short of breath and agitated. The three of them stood there, studying the strange lettering. The mason looked on, hoping for a commendation. Matron let out a sigh of exasperation.

“I don't suppose he can do much about that now,” Matron said, and gave the man a nod. He gathered his crowbars and gunnysacks and led his animal away.

“I was thinking,” Hema said, her voice hoarse. “That inscription should read, ‘Died at the hands of a surgeon. Now safe in the arms of Jesus.’ “

“Hema!” Matron protested. “Custody of the tongue.”

“No, really,” Hema said. “A rich man's faults are covered with money, but a surgeon's faults are covered with earth.”

“Sister Mary Joseph Praise is covered in the soil of the land she came to love,” Matron said, hoping to put a stop to this kind of talk.

“Put there by a surgeon,” said Hema who had to have the last word.

“Who has now left the country,” Matron said.

They turned to look at her, mouths open.

Matron said, apologetically, “I got a call from the British Consulate. That's why I was late. From what I can piece together, Stone went to the Kenyan border, then to Nairobi, don't ask me how. He's in bad shape. Drink, I presume. The man was crazed.”

“He's not hurt or anything?” Ghosh said.

“As best as I can tell he's in one piece. I made a trunk call to Mr. Elihu Harris just now. Yes, I got Harris involved. They have a big mission in Kenya. If he sobers up, Harris thinks Stone could work there. Or if he doesn't want that, Eli can arrange for him to go to America.”

“But what about his books, and his things?” Ghosh said. “Should we send them on to him?”

“I imagine he'll write for his books and specimens once he is settled,” Matron said.

The news both annoyed and pleased Hema. It meant Stone had abandoned the children, and that he'd given up any claims on them. She wished he'd signed a paper to that effect. She still felt uneasy. A man who made his name at Missing, whose lover was buried at Missing, and whose children were being raised at Missing, might not be able to cut the Missing cord that easily. “The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole,” Hema said.

“He's no serpent,” Ghosh said sharply, contradicting Hema. She was too astonished to reply. “He is my friend,” Ghosh continued in a tone that dared anyone to disagree. “Let's not forget what a valuable colleague he was all these years, the great service he gave to Missing, the lives he saved. He's no serpent.” He spun on his heels and walked off.

Ghosh's words pricked Hema's conscience. She couldn't assume that he was to feel everything she felt. Not if she cared for him. Ghosh was his own man, had been all along.

She gazed at Ghosh's receding back and was frightened. She'd never worried particularly about Ghosh's feelings, but now, at the graveside, she felt like a young girl who, while drawing water at the well, meets a handsome stranger—a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—but she ruins it by saying the wrong thing.

16. Bride for a Year