Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [28]
“Yes, we know,” the father said.
They squeezed in next to her on the bench. The boy didn't cry; he only whimpered. His face was pale—he was in shock—and he clung to her, his cheek against her bosom.
Trust me, I'm a doctor. She thought it ironic that these would be her last words.
Through the porthole Hemlatha saw the white crests getting closer, looking less and less like lace on a blue cloth. She had always assumed that she would have years to sort out the meaning of life. Now, it seemed she would only have a few seconds, and in that realization came her epiphany.
As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled. She was ashamed that such a simple insight should have eluded her all these years. Make something beautiful of your life. Wasn't that the adage Sister Mary Joseph Praise lived by? Hema's second thought was that she, deliverer of countless babies, she who'd rejected the kind of marriage her parents wanted for her, she who felt there were too many children in the world and felt no pressure to add to that number, understood for the first time that having a child was about cheating death. Children were the foot wedged in the closing door, the glimmer of hope that in reincarnation there would be some house to go to, even if one came back as a dog, or a mouse, or a flea that lived on the bodies of men. If, as Matron and Sister Mary Joseph Praise believed, there was a raising of the dead, then a child would be sure to see that its parents were awakened. Provided, of course, the child didn't die with you in a plane crash.
Make something beautiful of your life—this whimpering little fellow with his shiny eyes and long eyelashes, his oversize head and the puppy-dog scent of his unruly hair … he was about the most beautiful thing one could make.
Her fellow passengers looked as terrified as she felt. Only the Armenian shook his head at her, and smiled as if to say, This isn't what you think it is.
What an idiot, Hema thought.
An older Armenian—his father perhaps—was impassive, staring straight ahead. The older man had looked morose on boarding and his mood now was no better, and no worse. Hema found herself amazed that she should notice such trivial details at a time like this when, instead of deconstructing faces, she should be bracing for the moment of impact.
As the sea rushed up to meet the plane, she thought of Ghosh. She was shocked when a flood of tender feelings for him overcame her, as if he were about to die in a plane crash, as if his grand adventure in medicine and his carefree days were ending and with it any chance of his achieving the thing he wanted most: to marry Hema.
CHAPTER 4
The Five-F Rule
YOUR PATIENT, DR. STONE,” Matron said again, vacating the stool between Sister Mary Joseph Praise's legs. Seeing his face, she wondered if he was about to throw something.
Thomas Stone was an occasional flinger of instruments, though never in front of Matron. It was rare that Sister Mary Joseph Praise ever handed him the wrong implement, but from time to time, a hemostat failed to release with light counterpressure, or a Metzenbaum didn't cut at its tip. He had good aim; one spot on the wall of Operating Theater 3, just above the light switch and perilously close to the glass instrument cabinet, was his usual target.
No one but Sister Mary Joseph Praise took it personally—she would be crestfallen, even though she tested every instrument before she put it in the autoclave. Matron insisted the throwing was a good thing. “Feed him a ratchetless hemostat from time to time,” she said to Sister Mary Joseph Praise. “Otherwise he'll keep it bottled up till it comes oozing out of his ears and we'll have a right mess then.”
The plaster above the light switch had stellate pits and scratches as if a firecracker had gone off there. The strike on the wall occurred after the word “COMPLETELY” and before the word “USELESS!” left his mouth. Once in a great