Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [225]
“Did it ever happen in Ethiopia?”
He shook his head. “I think it was because I knew I was the only choice the patient had. There were no other options. Two other surgeons in the whole city. Here there are so many surgeons.”
“Or maybe those lives weren't as valuable. Natives, right? Who cares? The alternative was death anyway, so why worry? Just like you come and take organs from our patients at Our Lady.”
He flinched. I sensed that no one ever talked to him in this manner. We hadn't agreed to any rules. If he didn't like it, he could just leave. He had come to Our Lady. This wasn't Mecca.
He clamped his lips together. “I don't expect you to understand,” he said.
I knew he wasn't talking about his surgical anxieties.
He patted his pockets. He didn't find what he was looking for. So he just sat there and blinked, waiting for more punishment.
He slumped down in the chair. He had crossed his legs, and hooked his free foot under the calf of the other, like a twisted vine. “You see … Mar-ion—” He wasn't used to saying my name. “I … It is not as if everything can be explained by logic.”
Now he uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “I can't give you a neat explanation about why … I did what I did, because I don't understand it myself. Even after all these years …”
Which “it” was he talking about? I had my daggers lined up, and my lances and mace ready just behind them. I thought of all kinds of clever things to say: Save your breath. Or, I understand all'right. You took the path less traveled. You bailed out. What else is there to understand? But perhaps he meant the “it” of impregnating my mother.
“Ghosh said you didn't know how it happened. That it was a mystery to you.”
“Yes!” he said, relieved, but then I sensed he was blushing. “He said that? Yes, it was.”
“Like Joseph? Clueless about Mary and the baby? Babies, in your case.”
“… Yes.” He crossed his legs.
“Maybe you don't think you are my father.”
“No, it's not that. I am your father. I—”
“No, you're not! Ghosh was my father. He raised me. He taught me everything from riding a bike to hitting a square drive off the back foot. He gave me my love for medicine. He raised me and Shiva. I am here because of Ghosh. A greater man never lived.”
I had baited the trap, lured him in. But I was the one who snapped.
“ ‘Lived’ … ?” he said, leaning forward, the foot no longer wagging.
“Ghosh is dead.”
His features turned leaden, then pale.
I let him ruminate on that. I'm sure he wanted to know how, why, but he couldn't ask. The news had stopped him cold, saddened him, I could see. Good. I was touched. But I wasn't done kicking him. I was impressed that he took it, waited for more.
“So you are off the hook,” I said. “I had a father.”
He sighed. “I don't expect you to understand,” he said again.
“Tell me anyway.”
“Where shall I start?”
“ ‘Begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end,’ the King said, very gravely, ‘then stop.’ Do you know who said that?”
I was enjoying myself. The famous Thomas Stone being grilled, getting screwed, getting a dose of his own medicine. Sure, he could rattle off the branches of the external carotid artery, or the boundaries of the foramen of Winslow, but did he know his Lewis Carroll? Did he know his Alice in Wonderland?
He surprised me with his answer. It was wrong but it was right.
“Ghosh,” he said, and the air went out of his lungs.
CHAPTER 45
A Matter of Time
WHEN THOMAS STONE WAS A CHILD, he asked the—the gardener—where little boys came from. The ma-alt, a dark man with muddy eyes and acid breath from the previous night's arrack, said, “You came with the evening tide, of course! I found you. You were succulent and pink with one long fin and no scales. Such fish they say only exist in Ceylon, but there you were. I almost ate you, but I wasn't hungry. I cut off the fin with this very sickle and brought you to your