Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [240]
It was more than he could digest.
“Rosina and Genet …,” I began. “Suffice it to say, I had an hour to get out of town. As I was leaving, climbing over Missing's wall, I said my good-byes to Hema, Matron, Gebrew, Almaz, and to Shiva, my brother …” I stopped. I had hit a roadblock. “Shiva, your other son … ?”
Stone swallowed. This was proving impossible. And yet he needed to know, particularly if it was painful.
“My son …,” he said, trying out the word.
“Your son. You want to see what he looks like?” He nodded, expecting me to pull out a wallet. “Look at that mirror behind you.”
He hesitated as if this might be a joke, a trick. But he turned, and our eyes met in the mirror, startling me, because it was suddenly more intimate than I'd expected. “Shiva and I are mirror images.”
“What is he like?” he asked without turning around.
I sighed. I shook my head. I dropped my gaze. He turned back to me.
“Shiva is … very different. A genius, I would say. But not in the usual way. Impatient with school. He'd never answer an exam question in a way that might make him pass, not because he didn't know … He has never understood the need to subscribe to convention. But he knows more medicine, certainly more gynecology than I do. He works with Hema doing fistula work. He's a brilliant surgeon. Trained, but by Hema. No medical school.” None of this would have been difficult for Stone to discover on his own had he been interested. He was interested now.
“I was very close to Shiva when we were little boys.”
Stone's eyes were unblinking. I couldn't tell him the details of what had happened since. I had told no one. Only Genet and Shiva knew the truth.
“He and Genet did something to hurt me that I cannot forgive …”
“Something related to the hijacking?”
“No, no. It happened long before. Anyway, I was and still am very angry with him. But he is my brother—my twin—and so when I had one hour to leave the city, when the time came to say good-bye to Shiva— well, it was very painful for both of us.” Suddenly I found myself fighting for composure. It was terribly important for me not to cry in front of Thomas Stone. I pinched the inside of my thigh. “As I was saying good-bye to Shiva, he handed me two books. One was his Gray's Anat omy. That was his most valued possession. He dragged it around like a blanket.
“And the second was your book, with that bookmark inside. I didn't know how he got it, or how long he had it. I didn't even know you had written a book. The book was hardly opened. I don't think Shiva ever read it, certainly not like he devoured his Gray's. He probably saw and read the bookmark. But you have to know Shiva. He wouldn't be curious about the bookmark or the letter she referred to. Shiva lives in the now. I don't know just how he got the book or why he wanted to give it to me.”
Stone remained silent, his gaze on the empty basket between us, as if it stood in for all that was unknown about his past, our past. His look of pain was so intense, it pierced me. “I can ask him,” I offered. I wanted to know just as much as Thomas Stone did. “I will ask him,” I said.
Thomas Stone was a world away. When he lifted his gaze, I understood the depths of his sorrow; I saw it in a darkening of his iris, even though that delicate structure should not change color. I could see that the almost mystical aura of this legendary surgeon—the single-mindedness, the dedication, the skill—was mere surface. The surgical persona was something he had crafted to protect himself. But what he had created was a prison. Anytime he strayed from the professional to the personal, he knew what to expect: pain.
When he spoke, his voice sounded tired, old. “And