Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [186]
“Shiva will thrive with Hema. Hema needs him to keep her occupied. Hema's instinct will be to retreat to India. She'll make a lot of noise about that. It won't happen. Shiva will refuse. So she'll stay here in Addis. What I am saying is that it's not your worry. You understand?”
I nodded, without much conviction.
“I do have one small regret,” Ghosh said. “But it's something you can help me with. It has to do with your father.”
“You're the only father I've ever had,” I said quickly. “I wish Thomas Stone had this leukemia instead of you. I wouldn't care one bit if he died!”
He waited before answering, swallowing hard. “Marion, it means everything to me that you consider me your father. I couldn't be prouder of you, of who you've become. But I bring up Thomas Stone for selfish reasons. As I said, it's one of my regrets.
“You see, I was as close a friend to your father as he was capable of having. You have to picture how it was then, Marion. He was the only other male physician here at Missing. We were so different, nothing in common, or so I thought, when I met him. But I found that he loved medicine in the same sort of way that I love medicine. He was dedicated. His passion for medicine … it was as if he came from another planet, my planet. We had a special bond.”
His eyes drifted off to the window, perhaps recalling those times. I waited. Eventually he turned to me and squeezed my hand.
“Marion, your father was deeply wounded by something, God knows what. His parents died when he was a child. We never talked about things like that. But here, working alongside Sister Mary Joseph Praise, all of us working together, he was sheltered. He was as happy as such a man can be. I felt protective of him. He knew surgery well, but he had no understanding of life.”
“You mean he was like Shiva?”
He paused to consider this. “No. Very different. Shiva's content! Look at him. Shiva has no need for friendship or social support or approval—Shiva lives in this moment. Thomas Stone wasn't like that; he had all the needs the rest of us have. But he was scared. He denied himself his needs, and he denied himself his past.”
“Scared of what?” I found all this hard to swallow. “Matron told me once that he threw instruments when he got upset. She said he had a temper, that he was fearless.”
“Oh, fearless in surgery, I suppose. But even that might not be true. A good surgeon must be fearful and he was a good surgeon, the best, never foolhardy, and appropriately fearful. Well … a few lapses of judgment, but then he was human. But when it came to relationships he was … terrified. He was frightened that if he got close to anyone they'd hurt him. Or perhaps he'd hurt them.”
I was resisting this construction of Stone that was so different from what I'd made up all these years. Finally, I asked, “What do you want from me?”
“Now that my time is coming, Marion … I want to let Thomas Stone know that whatever happened I always considered myself his friend.”
“Why don't you write to him?”
“I can't. I never could. Hema hasn't forgiven him for leaving. She was happy he left—she wanted you two from the moment you were born. But still, she wouldn't forgive him for leaving. And then, once he left, she was terrified—always—that he might come back and claim you. I had to promise her, swear to her, that I wouldn't write him or communicate with him in any form.” He looked at me, and said with quiet pride, “I kept my word, Marion.”
“Good. I'm glad.”
I'd harbored such curiosity about Thomas Stone when I was younger. I had fantasized about his return. Now I resisted Ghosh, and I wasn't quite sure why.
Ghosh went on, “But I fully expected Stone to contact me. I was disappointed as the years went on that he didn't. Marion, he is filled with shame and he assumes that I have no desire to see him. That I hate him.”
“How do you know?”
“I've no way of knowing this for sure. I suspect