State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [144]
Marina put the scope in her ears, ran the drum across Dr. Swenson’s belly, trying one spot and then another and then another.
“There’s nothing there,” Dr. Swenson said.
“No,” Marina said. She took her blood pressure then and then took it again to make sure her reading was correct. “One seventy-two over one fifteen.”
Dr. Swenson nodded. “I have preeclampsia. There is no Pitocin. There is a syrup the locals use to bring about labor in these circumstances, a boiled-down extract of crickets or some such thing but for the time being I am finished with my own human experimentation. I don’t think I’d survive labor anyway. So the bad news is you will have to do the section and the good news is you won’t have to wait two months to do it. Mr. Fox will leave tomorrow with the proof he needs that the drug is viable, and that in itself will buy us a great deal of time. If you could stay here just a little while after the surgery to make sure there are no complications I would appreciate it. Later I’ll have Easter and the Saturns take you back to Manaus in the pontoon. Can you do that?”
“I can put you on that boat in the morning and we can go to a real hospital with real medicine and a sterile surgical room and an anesthesiologist. I’m not going to operate on you with a syringe full of Ketamine.”
Dr. Swenson waved her hand. “Don’t be ridiculous. We have bags of Versed for special occasions.”
There were things to say about that but Marina let them go. “These are serious circumstances. I know it isn’t what you want but you have got to think like a medical doctor and not an ethnobotanist. If you go with Milton and Mr. Fox you’ll be there in half the time. You could be there tonight, which, considering your blood pressure, is what you should be doing anyway. You’d never put this off if it were someone else.”
“Listen to what I’m saying the first time, Dr. Singh. I don’t have the energy to keep repeating myself. I’m not going anywhere tonight, so if I die before you have the chance to save me the onus will be completely my own. You can’t have Mr. Fox take me to the hospital. Then all of his dreams will be shattered and subsequently my dreams will be shattered as well. I will not sacrifice a potential malaria vaccine for a hospital bed in Manaus. I am asking you to do this surgery as a way of saving myself from having Alan Saturn do it. I don’t know that I have asked you for so much in the past that you would find this single request something you are unable to grant.”
Marina waited, considering the horror of it all. In the end she could do no better than a nod of the head.
“There is of course every reason to think that this will kill me in the end.” She opened her eyes and looked at Marina. “It’s difficult to say if this is an outcome of the drug or the circumstances of age. Whether or not I am finished remains to be seen, but I want you to know that the drug is finished, at least the fertility aspect. Mr. Fox can go and cry in his cups. With a little luck we’ll be able to keep that news from him for a few more years while he finances a malaria vaccine.”
Marina shook her head. She wrote it off to the circumstances. In a couple of months when all of this was behind her Dr. Swenson would feel differently. “You shouldn’t say that. You’ve worked on it for too many years to let it go.”
“And how shall we test it further? I’ve been eating this bark for years. I’ve seen my own menstruation return at sixty. I’ve lived through the pimples and the cramps and I will tell you there was nothing there to enjoy. I did not need to see that aspect of my youth again.”
“That’s why they have NHV, normal healthy volunteers. No one expects that you should do all of this yourself.”
“We would have to find a great many childless seventy-three-year-old women who were willing to be impregnated in order to evaluate safety. Chances are we would kill the lion’s share of them in the course of the drug trials.”
“Chances are,” Marina said. She brushed down the insane wires of Dr. Swenson’s hair with her hand.
“Don’t be tender, Dr. Singh. We’re fine