Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [53]
THE BREATHING TWIN gazed out from the copper vessel. Its puffy newborn eyes surveyed the room, trying to make sense of its surroundings.
There stood the man everyone took to be the father, a tall, sinewy white man, looking lost in his own theater. The father's hands were preternaturally pale from the talc that lingered on them after he'd stripped off his gloves. His fingers were clasped together in a posture shared by surgeons, priests, and penitents. His blue eyes were set deep in the orbits under a ledge of a brow which could make him look intense, but on this day made him look dull. From the shadows sprung the great ax blade of a nose, a nose that was sharp, in keeping with his profession. His lips were thin and straight as if drawn with a ruler. Indeed, the face was all straight lines and sharp angles, coming to a point in a lancet shaped chin, as if it had all been carved out of a single square of granite. His hair was parted on the right, a furrow that originated in boyhood with every follicle tamed by the comb to know exactly which direction it was to tilt. The top was cut unevenly, as if after saying, “A short back and sides,” he'd risen from the chair when that was accomplished, despite the barber's protests. It was the kind of obstinate, determined face that with a spyglass held to the eye and a ponytail wouldn't have been out of place on the deck of an English man-of-war. Except, of course, for the tears rolling freely down the cheeks.
And from that tear-stained face, a voice emerged: “What about Mary?” startling everyone because it had been silent for so long. The measured syllables had the quality of a slow fuse.
“I'm sorry, Thomas. It is too late,” said Hemlatha as she suctioned the infant's pharynx, then pushed air into the baby's lungs, her movements speedy and almost frantic. The irritation with Stone was gone from her voice, and pity had taken its place. She stole a glance at him over her shoulder.
A wrenching noise emerged from Stone's mouth, the cry of an unsound mind. Hed been a passive observer and a worthless assistant ever since Hema's arrival. Now he leaped forward and grabbed a scalpel from the tray. He placed a hand on Sister Mary Joseph Praise's chest. Hemlatha thought of restraining him and then decided it wasn't prudent to approach a man wielding a knife.
Stone lifted Sister Mary Joseph Praise's breast. The motto of those pioneers of resuscitation, the Royal Humane Society, resounded in his ears: Lateat scintillula forsan—a small spark may perhaps be hidden.
He pushed the breast up and out of the way, and under his knife a red gash appeared between the fourth and fifth ribs. He drew the knife over the wound again, and yet again till he was through muscle. If he was clumsy earlier, his movements now were those of a man incapable of tentative strokes. He cut the cartilages that connected the two ribs to the breastbone. He spread the ribs and watched in disbelief as his ungloved hand slid out of sight and into the still warm cavity of her chest. The spongy lung he pushed away. And there, under his fingers like a dead fish in a wicker basket, was Sister Mary Joseph Praise's heart. He squeezed, surprised at its size, barely able to encircle it. Meanwhile, he exhorted the nurse anesthetist to keep pushing air into her lungs, not to stop.
His right hand was buried within her thorax, but his eyes were on Sister Mary's engorged left breast, which he held out of the way with his left hand. The breast felt firm, unlike the slippery, soft heart. He saw blotchy blue shadows creep into her face, a hue that her brown skin shouldn't have been capable of. Her abdomen had collapsed, its surface crinkled like an airless balloon, its two halves splayed open like a book whose spine had given way.
“God? God? God?” Stone cried with every squeeze, calling on a God he had renounced once and didn't believe in. But Sister Mary believed,