Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [19]
Sister Mary Joseph Praise barely registered his touch. Her cheek was hot against his. He lifted the sheet. A generous swelling of her belly met his eyes.
It was an axiom of his that any swelling in a woman's abdomen was a pregnancy until proven otherwise. But his mind overrode that thought, refusing to consider it—this was a nun, after all. Instead he came to a snap diagnosis of bowel obstruction … or free fluid in the peritoneal cavity … or hemorrhagic pancreatitis … some sort of abdominal catastrophe …
Maneuvering through the door frame, then trying not to bump her feet on the banister, his sobs changing to grunts of effort, he carried her out from her quarters, and then down the path to the operating theater. She felt heavier to Stone than she had a right to be.
There was a question the chief examiner had posed to him when he appeared for the Royal College of Surgeons viva voce after passing his written examinations in Edinburgh: “What first-aid treatment in shock is administered by ear?” His answer “Words of comfort!” had won the day. But now, in place of reassuring and soothing words that would have been humane and therapeutic, Stone yelled for help at the top of his voice.
His shouts, taken up by the keeper of the virgins, brought everyone including Gebrew the watchman, who came running from the front gate, along with Koochooloo and two other unnamed dogs at her heels.
The sight of the blubbering, helpless Stone shocked Matron just as much as the sight of Sister Mary Joseph Praise's terrible state.
Lord, he's done it again, was Matron's first thought.
It was a well-kept secret that Stone had on three or four occasions since his arrival at Missing gone on a drunken binge. For a man who rarely drank, who loved his work, who found sleep a distraction, who had to be reminded to go to bed, these episodes were mystifying. They came with the suddenness of influenza and the terror of possession. The first patient on the morning list would be on the table, ready to be put under, but there'd be no sign of Stone. When they went looking for him the first time they found a babbling, disheveled white man, pacing in his quarters. During these episodes he did not sleep or eat, slipping out in the dead of night to replenish his supplies of rum. On the last occasion this creature had climbed the tree outside its window and perched there for hours, muttering like a cross hen. A fall from that height would have cracked its skull. Matron, when she had seen those bloodshot, mongoose eyes staring down at her, fled, leaving Sister Mary Joseph Praise and Ghosh to keep vigil and to try to talk him down, get him to eat, to stop drinking.
As abruptly as it started, in two days, no more than three, the spell would be over, and after a very long sleep Stone would be back at work as if nothing had happened, never making any reference to how he'd inconvenienced the hospital, the memory of it erased. No one ever brought it up to him because the other Stone, the one who rarely drank, would have been hurt and insulted by such inquiry or accusation. The other Stone was as productive as three full-time surgeons, and so these episodes were a small price to pay
Matron came closer. Stone's eyes were not bloodshot and he didn't reek of spirits. No, he was unhinged by Sister Mary Joseph Praise's condition, and rightly so. As Matron turned her attention from Stone to Sister Mary Joseph Praise, she nevertheless felt a ghost of satisfaction: at last the man had bared his soul, displayed his feelings for his assistant.
Matron ignored Stone's ramblings about volvulus or ileus or pancreatitis or tuberculous peritonitis. “Let's go to the theater,” she said,