Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [51]
Both infants were tiny, three pounds at best. Clearly less than full term. A month premature, perhaps more. Neither infant cried.
Distracted now by heavy oozing from Sister Mary Joseph Praise's soggy, friable uterus, Hema turned back from infants to the mother.
“What is her BP?” Hema asked, peering over the drapes, first at Nurse Asqual, and then at Sister Mary Joseph Praise's face. The anesthetist, the whites of her eyes showing like saucers, shook her head. Beautiful Sister Mary Joseph Praise's face now looked bloated and lifeless. “More blood! For God's sake. Pour it in!” Hema shouted.
As she toiled in the now deflated cavity of the belly, Hemlatha remembered that when she'd handed over the second baby to the probationer, she had been surprised to find the probationer still standing there, holding the first, a blank look on her face. But Hema had no time to worry about that. Once the babies were out, her duty as an obstetrician was to turn completely to Sister Mary Joseph Praise; her duty was to the mother.
CHAPTER 10
Dance of Shiva
WE TWO UNNAMED BABIES, newly arrived, were without breath. If most newborns meet life outside the womb with a V V shrill, piercing wail, ours was the saddest of all songs: the still-born's song of silence. Our arms weren't clamped to our breasts; our hands did not make fists. Instead, we were limp and floppy like two wounded flounders.
The legend of our birth is this: identical twins born of a nun who died in childbirth, father unknown, possibly yet inconceivably Thomas Stone. The legend grew, ripened with age, and, in the retelling, new details came to light. But looking back after fifty years, I see that there are still particulars missing.
After labor stalled, I dragged my brother back into the womb and out of harm's way as lances and spears came at him through our only natural exit. The attack ceased. Then I remember—and I believe I do—the muffled voices, the tugging and sawing outside. As the rescuers neared us, I recall the blinding glare and strong fingers pulling at me. The shattering of the darkness and the silence, the deafening racket outside was so great that I almost missed the moment when we were physically separated, when the cord connecting my head to Shiva's fell away. The shock of that parting lingers. Even now, what I think about the most isn't that I lay there without breathing, immobile in the copper basin, born to the world, yet not alive—instead, I recall only the parting from Shiva. But, to return to the legend:
The probationer unloaded the two stillborns into a copper basin used to hold placentas. She carried the basin to the window. She made a notation in the delivery chart: Japanese twins connected by the head but now disconnected. In her eagerness to be useful, she completely forgot her ABC's: Airway, Breathing, and Circulation. Instead, she thought of what she had read the previous night about jaundice of the newborn and the helpful role of sunlight. Shed memorized that passage. She wished she had read about Japanese twins (the word “Siamese” eluded her) or asphyxiated babies, but the fact was she hadn't; shed read about jaundice. But then, as she set the basin down, she realized that for sunlight to work, the babies had to be alive, which these weren't. Her sorrow and shame made her confusion worse. She turned away.
The twins lay face-to-face, feeling the basin's galvanic touch against their skin. In the chart the probationer used the words “white asphyxia” to describe their deathly pallor.
The sun, which had stage-lit the room moments before, now honed in on the basin.
The copper glowed orange. Its molecules became agitated. Its prana rose into the infants’ translucent skin and passed into their doughy flesh.
HEMLATHA DISSECTED the broad ligaments, then clamped the uter ine arteries,