Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [204]
“That's how much they pay us?”
“Us?They don't pay us a fucking cent! That's how much they make. They come, cut, and take, show us the middle finger, and ride off in their whirlybird leaving us on our camels. Next time you hear the helicopter, come see what masters of medicine, the sahibs, look like.”
I had seen them more than once, their white coats emblazoned with vivid university logos on breast and shoulder, and the same icons on ice chests, on the igloos on wheels, and even on the helicopter. I saw in their faces the same variety of fatigue that I experienced, but theirs somehow seemed more noble.
DR. RONALDO CROSSED and uncrossed his arms, looking at the clock, then the door, for any sign of Popsy. I draped the sterile towels to outline a perfect rectangle, the portal to Hugh Walters Jr.'s abdomen.
Mr. Walters, a graying gentleman, showed up in our emergency room the week before. That particular night, stretchers spilled out of the ER's trauma bays into hallways. Alcohol had leached out of the lungs, out of skin pores, out of the secretions of enough men and women to make the place smell like a cocktail lounge. There were two inebriated men vomiting blood, competing to see who could be louder. When Mr. Walters arrived, also vomiting blood, I unfairly assumed he was one of their kin, related through alcohol and cirrhosis. I assumed that his bleeding came from wormlike varicose veins blooming in his stomach from the scarring in the liver. Over the course of the next twenty-four hours, I slipped a gastroscope down each bleeder's throat and peered into the stomach. Unlike the other two, Mr. Walters had none of the angry redness of alcoholic gastritis, and no bleeding varicose veins to suggest cirrhosis. What he did have was a large oozing gastric ulcer. I took biopsies through the scope.
A few hours after the endoscopy Mr. Walters, in a quiet dignified voice, again assured me that alcohol had never crossed his lips, and this time I believed him. He was a man of the cloth. He taught junior high school for a living. I chastised myself for lumping him in with the other two stomach bleeders. We started intense therapy to heal his ulcer.
Mr. Walters, I found, knew about my birth land. “When Kennedy died, I watched that funeral on TV. Your Emperor Haile Selassie came all the way. He was the shortest man there. But also the biggest man there. The only Emperor. The only Emperor. He was in the first row of dignitaries walking behind that coffin. He made me proud to be bl-ack.” When Mr. Walters said the word, he gave it a weight and a heft.
Mr. Walters read the New York Times every day. That and a Bible were a constant at his bedside. “I could never afford college. Just Bible school. I tell my students, ‘If you read this newspaper every day for a year, you'll have the vocabulary of a Ph.D. and you will know more than any college graduate. I guarantee you.’ “
“Do they listen?”
He held up a finger. “Every year one does,” he said, grinning. “But that one makes it worthwhile. Even Jesus only did twelve. I try to get one a year.”
Despite antacids and H2 blockers, Mr. Walters s ulcer was still bleeding. His stools remained the consistency and color of tar, a sure sign of blood being acted on by stomach acid. Five days after his admission, our troop had gathered at his bed during evening sign-out rounds.
Deepak Jesudass, our Chief Resident, sat on the edge of Mr. Walters s bed. “Mr. Walters, we have to operate tomorrow. Your ulcer is still bleeding. It isn't showing signs of stopping.” He sketched out on a piece of paper what a partial gastrectomy would look like—removal of the acid-producing area of his stomach. I admired Deepak's quiet careful manner, his way of being with patients that made them feel they were the focus of all his attention and that there was nowhere else he had to be.