Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [260]
Hema looked skeptical.
“And praying, madam,” Vinu added. “The sisters have a prayer chain going around the clock for two days now. Honestly, we need that kind of a miracle.”
Shiva had quietly followed every word from where he lay.
Hema stood looking down at my unconscious form, stroking my hand and shaking her head.
Vinu convinced the two of them to retire to a room readied for them in the house-staff building; he'd even arranged for a light dinner of cha-patti and dal. Hema was too tired to argue.
THE NEXT MORNING, Hema appeared in an orange sari, looking rested, yet as if she had aged a few years in the course of the night.
Thomas Stone was exactly where she had left him. He looked past her in the doorway, as if expecting Shiva, but Shiva wasn't there.
She stood by my bed again, anxious to see me in daylight. The previous night she'd found it all too unreal, as if it were not me on the bed but some extension of all the noisy machinery which had taken the form of flesh. But now she could see me, see the rise and fall of my chest, the puffiness of my eyes, my lips contorted by the breathing tube. It was real. She couldn't help herself, and began to weep silently, forgetting Thomas Stone was there, or not caring one way or the other. She was only conscious of him when he tentatively offered a handkerchief. She snatched it from him, as if he'd been slow to offer it.
“It feels as if this is happening because of me,” Hema said. She blew her nose. “I know that sounds selfish, but to lose Ghosh, then to see Marion like this … You don't understand, it feels as if I have failed them all, that I let this befall Marion.”
Had she turned, she might have seen Thomas Stone stir, seen him rub his knuckles against his temples, as if trying to erase himself. He spoke, his voice hoarse. “You … you and Ghosh never failed them. I did. I failed all of you.”
There it was, Hema must have thought; it was both the sorry and the thank-you that was so long overdue, and the funny thing was that at this moment, she didn't care. It no longer mattered. She didn't even look his way.
SHIVA ENTERED, and if he saw Thomas Stone, he didn't acknowledge his presence. He had eyes only for me, his brother.
“Where were you?” Hema said. “Did you sleep at all?”
“In the library upstairs. I took a nap there.” Shiva surveyed me, then he studied the settings on the ventilator, and then the labels on the fluid-containing bags hanging over my bed.
“There is one thing I didn't ask Vinu,” Hema said to Stone. “How did Marion get hepatitis B?”
Thomas shook his head as if to say he did not know. But since she wasn't looking his way, he had to speak. “It … was probably during surgery. Nicking himself. It's an occupational hazard for surgeons.”
“It can also be acquired by sexual intercourse,” Shiva said, addressing Thomas Stone. Thomas Stone stammered assent. Hema glared at Shiva, one hand on her hip. She didn't get a chance to speak, because Shiva had more to say: “Genet was at Marion's house, Ma. She showed up there six weeks ago. She was sick. She stayed for two nights and then disappeared.”
“Genet … ?” Hema said.
“There are two people in the waiting room you need to meet. One is an Ethiopian lady, Tsige. She used to live opposite Missing. Ghosh took care of her infant years ago. Marion met her again in Boston. The other is Mr. Holmes—he is Marion's neighbor. They want to speak to you.”
BY MIDMORNING, Hema knew the whole story. Genet had been ill with TB. But Appleby had his hands on the prison health records and they showed what we had not known before: Genet was also a silent carrier of hepatitis B. She contracted it (or so the prison doctor postulated) from an improperly sterilized needle or a transfusion or a tattoo when she was in the field in Eritrea; she could also have acquired it sexually. Genet had bled readily when we slept together, and I had been generously exposed to her blood and thereby to the virus. The incubation period of hepatitis