Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [185]
SHIVA AND I HAD the same blood group as Ghosh. With Adam's help, I'd been stockpiling my blood for this moment. Now, Shiva gave his. But blood was no longer sufficient, and it had caused a dangerous iron overload. Ghosh's platelets weren't working; he was oozing from his gums as well as losing blood in his bowel. He became progressively weaker.
Ghosh didn't want to move to the hospital. Soon the anemia left him short of breath, and he could no longer lie flat. We moved him from his marital bed of more than twenty years to his favorite armchair in the living room, his legs up on the footstool.
Quietly, systematically, he sought time with everyone he loved. He sent for Babu, Adid, Evangeline, and Mrs. Reddy and the other bridge players; I heard them laughing and reminiscing, though it wasn't all laughter. His cricket team surprised him when they arrived dressed in their whites to honor their captain. They regaled him with exaggerated stories of his past exploits.
Then it reached the point that he was breathing oxygen through a face mask that sat loosely over his chin. It was my turn to have the conversation with Ghosh. I'd been dreading the moment, resisting its implication.
“You're avoiding me, Marion,” he said. “We must start. We can't finish unless we start, right?”
I would never have predicted what he'd say next.
“I don't want you to feel responsible for the entire family. Hema is very capable. Matron, even though she is getting old, is tough and resourceful. I am saying this to you because I want you to take your medi cal career to great heights. Don't feel bound by duty to Shiva or Hema or Matron to stay here. Or to Genet,” he added, frowning slightly as he mentioned her name. He leaned forward to grab my hand, to make sure I understood how serious he was. “I wanted to go to America so badly. All these years I've read Harrisons and the other textbooks … and the things they do, the tests they order … it's like reading fiction, you know? Money's no object. A menu without prices. But if you get there, it won't be fiction. It'll be true.” His eyes turned dreamy as he imagined what it was like.
“We stopped you from going, didn't we? Me and Shiva. Our birth?”
“Don't be silly. Can you imagine me giving up this?” he said sweeping his hand to indicate family, Missing, the home he'd made out of a bungalow. “I've been blessed. My genius was to know long ago that money alone wouldn't make me happy. Or maybe that's my excuse for not leaving you a huge fortune! I certainly could have made more money if that had been my goal. But one thing I won't have is regrets. My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize that no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.
“Of course, you and I have seen countless deaths among the poor. Their only regret surely is being born poor, suffering from birth to death. You know, in the Book of Job, Job says to God, ‘You should've taken me straight from the womb to the tomb! Why the in-between part, why life, if it was just to suffer?’ Something like that. For the poor, death is at least the end of suffering.” He laughed as if he liked what he just said. His fingers automatically went up to his pajama pocket, then to the back of his ear searching for a pen, because the old Ghosh would have jotted that down. But there was no pen and no more need to write anything down.
“I haven't suffered. Well,