State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [114]
“It’s a miracle the thing didn’t bite one of them. I’ll be seeing those fangs for the rest of my life.”
Dr. Swenson shook her head. “Teeth,” she said, “not fangs. I’m told the bite is extremely painful and it’s a monstrous business getting the head disengaged, but it isn’t a poisonous snake. What that snake was doing to Easter was a much more serious business than biting.”
Marina turned her head to face her mentor. “What about his liver, his spleen? If we were home I could take him for a CT.”
“If you were home he wouldn’t have been squeezed by an anaconda. He would have been hit by an SUV while riding his bike. His odds were better against the snake.”
“What?”
“It’s dangerous here, you don’t need to tell me that, but it’s more dangerous there. This is where he understands things, he knows how to get along. Maybe he’s cracked some ribs, but you watch him, he’ll be fine. Dr. Eckman had ideas about taking Easter home with him. He felt if the hearing loss were nerve-based he might benefit from a cochlear implant, but you can’t change people like that. You can’t make a hearing boy out of a deaf boy, and you can’t turn everyone you meet into an American. Easter isn’t a souvenir anyway, a little something you pocket on your way out to remind you of your time in South America. You kept your head, Dr. Singh, you saved his life. I commend you for this. But if you think the reward for saving the boy’s life is keeping the boy, then I must tell you this is not the case. A simple thank you will have to suffice. He is not available.”
It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Marina to tell Dr. Swenson that she had no idea what she was talking about, when what Dr. Swenson was saying was perfectly clear, she had simply put it into words before Marina had made it a complete thought, the same way she would answer the questions on Grand Rounds the split second before Marina had them formulated in her mind. Marina was in fact moments from coming to the conclusion that the thing to do would be to take Easter home with her, that it was what Anders had wanted, that it was what she wanted, that in some bizarre way this was the child of their union, the product of the seven years Anders and Marina spent together in a cramped lab. Easter was her compensation for what she had lost. Dr. Swenson had simply seen it before Marina, and in seeing it, she cut her off at the pass. “It was horrible,” Marina said weakly, wanting at least some sympathy for what she was being asked to forfeit. She meant the snake.
“I’m sure it was.” Dr. Swenson put her hand against the boy’s forehead, checking for fever, and then dipped two fingers into his neck to count his pulse. “Did you ever want children of your own, Dr. Singh?”
And there she was again, anticipating the next emotion, following Marina’s train of thought backwards: I cannot keep this child. I should have had a child. She wondered if she were particularly transparent or if Dr. Swenson just had a special knack for reading her. “There was a time,” Marina said. She could not make peace with the stench of the snake. She was amazed that Dr. Swenson hadn’t commented on that.
“And that time has passed?”
Marina shrugged. It was a peculiar kind of therapy, lying flat out with the child you had only now realized you wanted while being asked if you had wanted a child. “I’m forty-two. I seriously doubt my life will change so much in the next year or two that it would be possible.” She was no longer sure about what she wanted from Mr. Fox, and hers was not an age for indecision.
“There will be nothing but time, don’t you understand? That’s what the Lakashi are offering. If I can have a child at seventy-three, then why shouldn’t you have one at forty-three, forty-five? I’ll tell you the truth, Dr. Singh, what I have discovered about these trees is not what I expected. It will not be what your pharmaceutical company expects. It is something much greater, much more ambitious than