Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [126]
She pulled out a strange, stunted version of a stethoscope—a feto-scope. The bell of the stethoscope had a U-shaped metal bracket on which she could rest her forehead, and then use the weight of her head to press the bell into the skin, leaving her hands free to stabilize the belly. She held up a finger like a conductor signaling for quiet. Conversation stopped, and the patients on the stretchers and the throng around the door held their breaths, till Hema raised up and said, “Galloping like a stallion!” A score of voices added, “Praise the saints!” Hema didn't offer to let us listen.
She got down to business. “With this hand I cup the baby's head. My other hand I put here where the baby's bottom is—how do I know?” She looked at Shiva as if his question was impertinent. Then she laughed. “Do you know how many thousands of babies I've felt this way, my son? I don't have to think. The head is this coconutlike hardness. The bottom is softer, not as distinct. My hands give me a picture,” she said, outlining a shape in the air above the exposed belly. “The baby's back is to me. Now watch.” She set her feet, then using firm and steady pressure of her cupped hands, she pushed the head one way, the butt the other way, while also pushing her hands toward each other as if to keep the baby curled up. Something in the way her thumbs were aligned with the rest of her fingers, all held close together, reminded me of her Bharatnatyam dance gestures. “There! You see? An initial resistance, a stickiness, then it gives, and the baby tumbles over.” I saw nothing. “Well, of course you didn't see. The baby's floating in water. Once I start the turn, the baby finishes the last quarter turn by itself. Now it's not a breech baby. It's a head presentation. Normal.” She listened to the fetal heart again to be sure it was still strong.
In no time, Hema, possessed of the same bustling energy with which she dealt cards or drilled us on our spelling, was done. Only one baby refused to somersault.
“For all I know, this clinic could be the biggest waste of time. Ghosh wants me to do a study to see how many babies float back to where they were after version. You know how he talks. ‘The unexamined practice is not worth practicing.’ “ She snorted, remembering something else. “I had a friend when I was a child, a neighbor boy by the name of Velu. He kept chickens. Now and then a hen would cluck in a peculiar way, and Velu knew, don't ask me how, that it meant an egg was stuck in a transverse position. He would reach in and turn it to vertical. The chicken stopped clucking, and the egg would pop out. Velu was obnoxious at your age. But I remember his trick with the chicken now, and I wonder if I underestimated him.”
I didn't say a word for fear of breaking the spell. It was so rare to hear her think aloud like this.
“Between you and me, boys, I have no desire to publish a paper that might put me out of this business. I enjoy Version Clinic.”
“Me, too,” Shiva said.
“Whether it is India or here, the ladies are all the same,” Hema said, gazing at the women milling around. No one had left. They waited for the tea, bread, and vitamin pill that would follow the clinic. They grinned back at Hema with sisterly affection—no, with adoration. “Look at them! All happy and radiant. In a few weeks, when labor starts, they'll be yelling, screaming, cursing their husbands. They'll turn into she-devils. You won't recognize them. But now they're like angels.” She sighed. “A woman is never more a woman than in this state.”
The problems of the city and the country had disappeared, at least for me and Shiva. How fortunate we were to have Hema and Ghosh as parents. What was there to fear?
“Ma,” Shiva said, “Ghosh says pregnancy is a sexually transmitted disease.”
“He says it knowing you will repeat it to me. That rascal. He shouldn't be telling you such things.”
“Can you show us where the baby comes out?” Shiva said. I knew he was utterly serious, and I also knew that with those words hed broken the spell. I was furious with him. Kids need