Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [94]
The sight of his great block of a head and his lips resting where no man had been before brought forth a rush of blood to her cheeks, her chest, and deep in her pelvis. One of his hands held her other breast, shock waves surging through her, while his other hand caressed her inner thighs. She found her hands responding in kind, pulling his head to her, reaching for his broad back, wanting him to swallow her whole. And now she felt something unmistakable and promising against her thighs. In that moment, witnessing his animal eagerness, she understood that shed forever lost him as a plaything, as a companion. He was no longer the Ghosh she toyed with, the Ghosh who existed only as a reaction to her own existence. She felt ashamed for not having seen him this way before, ashamed for presuming to know the nature of this pleasure and thereby denying herself and denying him all these years. She pulled him in, welcomed him—colleague, fellow physician, stranger, friend, and lover. She gasped in regret for all the evenings they'd sat across from each other, baiting each other and throwing barbs (though, now that she thought about it, she did most of the baiting and throwing) when they could have been engaged in this astonishing congress.
IN THE EARLY MORNING she awoke, fed and changed the children, and when they went back to sleep, she returned to Ghosh. They began again, and it was as if it were the first time, the sensations unique and unimaginable, the headboard slapping against the wall advertising their passion to Almaz and Rosina who were just arriving in the kitchen, but she didn't care. They slept, and only when they heard the cowbell and the calf cry did they rise.
Ghosh stopped Hema as she was about to leave the room.
“Is marrying me still a laughing matter?”
“What are you saying?”
“Hema, will you marry me?”
He was unprepared for her response, and later he wondered how she could have been so ready with an answer, one that would never have occurred to him.
“Yes, but only for a year.”
“What?”
“Face it. This situation with the children threw us together. I don't want you to feel obliged. I will marry you for a year. And then we are done.”
“But that is absurd,” Ghosh sputtered.
“We have the option to renew for another year. Or not.”
“I know what I want, Hema. I want this forever. I have always wanted it forever and ever. I know that at the end of the year I will want to renew.”
“Well you may know, my sweet man. But what if I don't? Now you have surgery scheduled this morning, no? Well, you can tell Matron that I'll start doing hysterectomies and other elective surgery again. And it's time you learned some gynecologic surgery, something other than just C-sections.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder as she departed, and the coyness in her smile and the mischief in her eyes and her arched eyebrows, and the steep tilt of her neck, were those of a dancer sending a signal without words. Her message silenced him. Instead of a year or a lifetime, suddenly he could only think of nightfall, and though it was only twelve hours away, it felt like an eternity.
PART THREE
I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art …
Hippocratic Oath
Theirs is the stoneless fruit of love Whose love is returned.
Tiruvalluvar, The Kural
CHAPTER 17
“Tizita”
IREMEMBER THE EARLY MORNINGS, sweeping into the kitchen in Ghosh's arms. He is counting under his breath, “One-two … onetwothree.” We twirl, dip, lunge. For the longest time I will think that dancing is his occupation.
We execute a turn before the stove and arrive at the rear door, where Ghosh works the lock and shoots back the bolt with a flourish.
Almaz and Rosina step in, quickly shutting the door against the cold, and against Koochooloo, who is wagging her tail, awaiting breakfast. Both mamithus are wrapped like mummies, only their eyes showing in a crescent gap. They