State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [133]
“Then you’ll go to Manaus.”
“A woman my age can’t go to the hospital to have a baby. There would be too many questions.”
“I would have to think a woman your age couldn’t avoid going to the hospital.” Marina looked at Dr. Swenson and seeing that she wasn’t listening began again. “Even if I was going to be here, and trust me, I’m not, you don’t know what kind of complications you might have. You’re breaking ground here, you can’t just expect to have the baby on your desk. You just saw me perform my first surgery in over thirteen years. That hardly qualifies me to deal with anything that could come up.”
“But you could. I saw you work. At some point I realized I should have made better plans for this inevitability but now you’re here. You’re a surgeon, Dr. Singh, and all the pharmacology in the world isn’t going to change that.” She shook her head. “Pharmacology should be reserved for doctors who have no interpersonal skills or doctors with uncontrolled tremors who are prone to making mistakes. You never did tell me why you changed your course of study.”
Some members of the crowd around them had begun to sing and some others to tap their tongues against their palates, making a noise of cheerful wailing. The children cleared the path ahead like a pack of hungry goats, snatching up every leaf and twig, ripping out vines, knocking down spider webs with a stick, until the trail was as neat as anything found in a national park. “You never told me why you changed yours,” Marina said.
“I had no choice. I saw the work that needed to be done and I had to do it myself. You can’t draw the world a map to this place and have everyone come running in, trampling the Rapps, killing off the martinets, displacing the tribe. By the time they understood what they were doing, it would all be dead. The conditions for this particular ecosystem have yet to be replicated. Eventually, yes, but for the time being if it is going to happen it’s going to happen here. For years my study was strictly academic. I wanted to record the role of Martins in fertility. I had no desire to synthesize a compound. I’ve never believed the women of the world are entitled to leave every one of their options open for a lifetime. I believe it less now that I am pregnant. Give me your hand, Dr. Singh, this leg is killing me. Yes. We can walk a little slower than the rest of them.” With that the Lakashi, who had at times an uncanny ability to understand English, cut their pace in half. “But when I discovered the link to malaria all of that changed. No scientist could be on the threshold of a vaccination for malaria and not make an attempt at it. I’ve been very careful about the people I’ve brought here. They are all extremely committed, respectful. I wouldn’t have any of them take out my appendix, but as far as the drug’s development is concerned they have made remarkable progress.”
“How do you know it works?”
Dr. Swenson used her free hand to pat her stomach. “In the same way I know the fertility aspects work. I test them. I’ve been regularly exposing myself to malaria for more than thirty years now and I’ve never had it. Dr. Nkomo, Dr. Budi, both of the Saturns, we all have regular exposures. I’ve exposed the Lakashi. I can show you all the data. It’s the combination of the Martin bark and the purple martinets. We know it now. It’s just a matter of replicating it.”
“And what about Vogel?” Marina asked.
“Vogel pays for it. I would have said I had been careful in choosing Vogel as well, but Mr. Fox has grown too restless for me. He isn’t interested in what can be accomplished. He only wants to see where the money’s gone. Not that I think some other company would have been better. They all claim to support science without any real understanding of what science entails. Dr. Rapp spent half of his life