Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [224]
The smoke made sinuous shapes in the shaft of light leaking past the bathroom door. I remembered our kitchen at Missing and how the dust motes dancing in the morning rays formed their own galaxy. When I was a child, that sight had hinted at the wonderful and frightening complexity of the universe, of how the closer one looked the more one saw revealed, and one's imagination was the only limit.
“I don't expect you to understand,” he said, and for a moment I thought he was talking about the dust motes. The sound of his voice irritated me. Who gave him permission to speak? In my room?
“Then let's not talk about it.”
More silence.
He cracked first. “How do you like surgery?”
Did I really want to answer him? By answering, was I conceding something? I had to think about this for a few minutes. Let him sweat.
“How do I like surgery? Hmmm … I am lucky to have Deepak. He takes great pains with me. The basics, good habits. I think it is so important …” I clammed up then. I felt I had said too much. I detected in my tone a need for his approval, his affirmation—that was the last thing I wanted. I thought of Ghosh who became an accidental surgeon because of Stone's departure. He had no one to teach him. Ah, Ghosh! Ghosh's dying wish was that—
“I know some of the people Deepak trained with,” Stone said, interrupting my train of thought. Ghosh's message to him could wait. This wasn't the time. I wasn't in the mood.
“Oh, really?”
“I made inquiries about him. You are lucky.”
“But Deepak isn't lucky. He is going to get screwed all over again. In fact, we all are.”
“Maybe not,” he said.
I didn't pursue this. No favors, please. I wanted nothing from him. He squirmed in his chair, but not from discomfort. It was what he was holding back, waiting for me to ask. I would not give him the pleasure.
“I had a Deepak in my life,” he said. “All it takes is one. Mine was a Dr. Braithwaite. A stickler for the right way. I appreciate him more now than I did then. Despite him, after all these years, I find it extraordinarily difficult to …”
The words had dried up on his tongue. This was such an effort, a physical trial for him to converse. He wasn't a man who ever spoke like this, I didn't think. Sharing his inner thoughts wasn't something he had practiced. Not even with himself. I gave him lots of time.
“What? You find it extraordinarily difficult to … what?”
I should have just told him to leave. Here I was conversing, helping him along.
“I find it difficult to operate. Particularly elective surgery. I have anxieties.” He spoke slowly, drawing out his words. “No one knows. Even if I'm doing a hernia or a hydrocele … in fact the simpler the operation, the more likely this is to happen … I have to look up the surgical anatomy, go over all the steps in an operative book, even though after all these years I don't need to. I'm terrified I will forget. Or that my mind will go blank … Sometimes I throw up in the lounge. I feel sick, dizzy. It has never stopped. It made me consider giving up surgery. It's worse if it's someone I know, a hospital employee brings his mother …”
I thought of the surgical anatomy atlas I had seen in his condominium, a big folio book, and next to it an operative anatomy atlas, both open on his desk as if they were the last things he looked at before he left his apartment.
“What about the day I … the day of your morbidity and mortality conference?”
“Exactly. Early that morning I had to do a simple breast lump excision, and if the biopsy was positive, then a mastectomy and auxiliary node dissection. I've done hundreds of them. Maybe more. But this was one of our nurses. Someone putting faith in me.”
“So what happened?”
“I walked into the theater, feeling as if I were about to faint. No one