Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [45]
Stone set the stool upright just as Hemlatha eased down onto it. The key bunch Hema had fished out to open her house was now tucked into the waist of her sari, and it jingled as she settled herself. Under the theater lights the diamond in her nose sparkled. Strands of loose hair fell over her ears and in front of her eyes; through pursed lips she blew these wayward locks aside. She squared her shoulders, squared them to the horror and the unloveliness of what was before her. In that gesture she slipped off the mantle of the traveler and put on that of the obstetrician. The task ahead, however difficult, dangerous, or unpleasant, was hers and hers alone.
Hema felt herself gasping for air. Her lungs would need a week to acclimatize. Shed come from sea level in Madras to an operating room 8,202 feet above sea level, not counting the stool on which she sat. Her nostrils flared with each inhalation, like a thoroughbred after the quarter mile.
But her breathlessness came also from what was before her eyes. Gebrew hadn't lost his mind or imbibed too much talla; hed been telling the truth. The everyday miracle of conception had taken place in the one place it should not have: in Sister Mary Joseph Praise's womb. Yes, Sister Mary Joseph Praise was pregnant, had been for months before Hema left for India! And not just pregnant, but now in extremis. And the father?
Who else? She glanced at Stone's gray face.
But why not? she thought. Why should I be surprised? “The incidence of cancer of the cervix,” she remembered her professor saying, “is highest in prostitutes, and almost zero in nuns. Why almost zero and not zero? Because nuns are not born nuns! Because not all nuns were chaste before they became nuns! Because not all nuns are celibate!” That's neither here nor there, Hema admonished herself, while she thrust her hands into gloves that Matron produced.
The probationer recorded in the chart the arrival of Dr. Hemlatha. She chastised herself for not thinking of the gloves.
Hemlatha spread her own legs. Her feet were swollen from the long flight. She flexed her toes against the straps of her sandals and pawed the ground to get good purchase on the bloody floor. With the fingers of her left hand she spread the labia. Then, with a motion made simple by countless repetitions, her right hand pulled down on the posterior rim, opening the birth canal to view.
“Rama, Rama, this is a bloody Stone Age utensil,” Hemlatha shouted as she carefully disengaged first one half and then the other half of the skull crusher, slipping them over and then off the baby's ears. When the bloody instrument was free, she looked at it with distaste and flung it aside.
Matron felt relief. Whatever happened, at least now a real obstetrician was in charge. She couldn't help but note how Hemlatha and Stone had reversed roles: Hema was now the shouter and the flinger.
Matron offered the history that Sister Mary Joseph Praise had been in severe pain, great spasms of it, and then the pains had suddenly ceased and she'd seemed almost lucid, talking … but now she had deteriorated again.
“My God,” Hema said, knowing that in nature pains don't cease till a baby is out, “it sounds like a uterine rupture.” It would explain all the blood on the floor. Placenta previa—a placenta plastered over the exit to the womb—was another possibility. Neither possibility was good. “When did you stop hearing the fetal heart sounds?” No one replied.
“Pressure?”
“Sixty by palpation,” the nurse anesthetist said, after a pause, as if she expected someone else to volunteer the number that she was responsible for.
Hema peered around Sister Mary Joseph Praise's swollen belly to fix Nurse Asqual with a withering look. “Are you waiting for it to get to zero before you breathe for her? Put in a tracheal tube. Connect it to the hand bellows. If she wakes, give her some intravenous pethidine. Tell me when you're done. Where's Ghosh? Have you sent for him?” Nurse Asqual busied herself, grateful for step-by-step instruction because