Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [231]
In medical school in Edinburgh, he lost himself in his studies, finding a stability and a sanctity missing before. He had no need to lift his head from his books, no desire to go anywhere but for classes or demonstrations. When his eyes tired, he went diffidently to the infirmary, hoping no one would throw him out. He got to know a house officer here, a senior student there, and before long, and well before his class had reached the clinical years, he was being pointed to interesting patients.
The hospital porter nicknamed him “the Lurker,” and Thomas didn't mind. In the organized chaos of the hospital, in the labyrinth of corridors, in the stink and confinement of its walls, he found both order and refuge; he found home. Misery and suffering were his closest kin.
A drunk named Jones looked eerily like his father; Thomas realized it was the waxy complexion, the swollen parotids, the loss of the outer third of the eyebrows, and the puffy eyelids of alcoholism that gave both men a leonine appearance. Now that he was trained to see, he put together the other clues he recalled: red palms, the starburst of capillaries on cheek and neck, the womanly breasts, and the absence of armpit hair. His father had cirrhosis. Perhaps that was the “punky” thing that Ross had been too polite to mention.
IT WAS SLEETING on a bitter cold evening in the Founders’ Library when the final piece came together, and when it did, Thomas slammed his book shut, alarming Mrs. Pincus, the librarian. The young man, who practically lived in the study carrel farthest from the fireplace, suddenly ran out into the spitting snow, hatless and distraught.
Thomas negotiated the long corridor leading to his room in the pitch-dark. Walking in the dark was something his father could not have done. The signals coming up from Thomas's toe and ankle and knee told him where he was in space, but in Justifus Stone those messages had been blocked in his spinal cord. His father's stamping, crashing gait, always worse at night when he no longer could see where his feet were planted—that was from syphilis of the spinal cord, or tabes dorsalis. No child should possess such knowledge of a parent.
The meandering conversation, the boastful tales at the dinner table, the delusions of grandeur—that was syphilis of the brain, not just the spinal cord.
Once in his room, Thomas stripped before the wardrobe mirror. With a second handheld mirror he examined every inch of his skin. No syphilids. No gumma on his skin. He listened to his heart but heard nothing unusual. He'd been spared congenital syphilis. But then he realized that his fear was absurd because congenital syphilis had to come through the placenta to him, it had to come from his mother. Absurd for him to worry. What his mother had was tuberculosis. Pure as the Virgin, his mother could never have had….
He cried out suddenly, the anguish of a child whose final illusion is stripped away. He understood at last.
It had been under his nose all this time. Tuberculosis didn't cause aneurysms like the one that killed her, but syphilis did. “Mother. Poor Mother,” he cried, grieving for her all over again. His father had murdered Hilda with his unbridled lust. She might have recovered from her TB, but she probably never knew she had syphilis until that aneurysm blossomed and began eroding painfully through the breastbone when she was at the sanatorium. Ross would have told her what it was. She knew. By that point neither salvarsan nor even penicillin, had it been available, would have been of any use.
WHEN THOMAS STONE BOUGHT his own cadaver in his final year of medical school, it was unheard-of, but did not surprise anyone. He was planning a second complete dissection, searching for mastery of the human body.
“Is Stone around?” was a common question in the casualty room, because he was the medical student who was more constant than Hogan or the other porters, always willing to stitch up a laceration, or