Abraham Verghese - Cutting for Stone

Ghosh scooped Genet in his arms, and she let out an unearthly moan as he lifted her off the bed. “The car,” Ghosh said, and Almaz ran ahead to get the door. Hema followed. I lingered for a second in the doorway on the threshold of Genet's home. My nanny sat just the way she had when we came in. I thought of the day she'd taken a razor to scarify Genet's face and how her expression had been defiant, proud. But now, I saw shame and fear.

As I ran to join them in the car, Hema spun on her heel and thrust her face in mine. “I think you had something to do with this, Marion. I'm not a fool!”

She got in the car and slammed the door. They pulled away with Almaz cradling Genet in the back, Ghosh driving. I ran down our drive, cut behind the toolshed and across the field, and caught up with them as they took her into Casualty.

They poured fluids and antibiotics into Genet's veins. Then Hema took her to Operating Theater 3 for a more careful examination. When Hema came out, she was shaken but more composed, and quietly furious. She didn't seem to care if I heard her report to Ghosh and Matron. “Can you imagine Rosina paid to slice off the child's clitoris? Not just clitoris but also the labia minora and then sew the edges together with sewing thread! Good God, can you imagine the pain? I cut the sutures out. It is hugely infected. Now it's up to God.”

Genet was wheeled to the single room reserved for VIPs. I remembered Ghosh telling me it was the room that General Mebratu had occupied after emergency surgery, shortly after we were born.

I sat on a chair by her bed. At one point, Genet squeezed my hand, whether consciously or reflexively I couldn't be sure. I held it.

Hema sat across from me in an armchair, her elbows on her knees, head in her hands. We had nothing to say to each other. I was as angry with Hema as she was with me.

At one point, Hema lifted her head up and said, “The people who did this should all go to jail.” It wasn't the first time she'd had to rescue a woman in Genet's situation. She was probably one of the world's experts in treating botched and infected female circumcisions. But now her face was clamped down in a bitterness I'd never seen before.

It was evening when Genet opened her eyes. She saw me, and she tried to say something. I asked her if she wanted water, and she nodded. I guided a straw to her mouth. She looked around to see if there was anyone else in the room.

“I'm sorry, Marion,” she whispered, her eyes swimming with tears.

“Don't talk,” I said. “It's all right.” It wasn't, but that's what came to my mouth.

“I … should have waited,” she said.

Why didn't you, I wanted to say. I didn't get any of the pleasure, the honor of being your first lover, but I'm getting all the blame.

She moaned when she tried to move, licking her lips. I gave her more water.

“My mother thinks it was you.” Her voice was weak.

I nodded, but said nothing.

“When I told her it was Shiva,” Genet said, “she slapped me. She kicked me and called me a liar. She didn't believe me. She thinks Shiva is a virgin.” She tried to laugh, but grimaced and then coughed. When she could speak, she said, “Listen, I made my mother promise not to tell Hema.”

I couldn't resist a sarcastic snicker. “Well, don't worry. She will tell Hema. She's probably telling her right now.”

“No. She won't,” Genet said. “That was our deal.”

“What do you mean?”

“I agreed to let her do this to me, if she wouldn't … say anything. She's to keep quiet. Not a word to Hema. Not one word. And no more shouting at you.”

I slumped back on hearing this. Genet allowed a strange woman to cut her privates with an unsterilized blade, and it was all to protect me? So now I was to blame for the circumcision? It was so absurd that I wanted to laugh, but I found I couldn't: the guilt had settled on me as if it knew that was its home and it would be welcome.

Shiva came in the evening, his face pale and drawn. “Here, sit here,” I said before he could open his mouth. I didn't trust myself near him and I needed a break. “Stay with her till I come back. Hold her hand. She gets restless when I let go.” There was nothing else I could say to him, now. I was beyond anger, and he was beyond sorrow.

GENET'S FEVER RAGED for three days. I sat by her bed day and night. Hema, Ghosh, and Matron were in and out all the time.

On the third day, Genet stopped making any urine. Ghosh was very worried, drawing blood himself, then Shiva or I would run to the lab, help W.W. line up our reagents and tubes and measure the blood urea nitrogen level: high, and getting higher.

Genet was never completely unconscious, just sleepy, confused at times, often moaning, and at one point horribly thirsty. She called for her mother once, but Rosina wasn't there. Almaz told me Rosina wouldn't leave her room, which was probably a good thing. The atmo sphere in the hospital room was tense enough without the prospect of Hema attacking Rosina.

On the sixth day, Genet's kidneys began to produce urine, and then they produced it in huge amounts, filling up the catheter bag. Ghosh doubled and tripled her intravenous fluid rates, and encouraged her to drink to keep up with the loss. “Hopefully this means her kidneys are recovering,” Ghosh said. “They just aren't able to concentrate the urine too well.”

One morning, when I woke up in the chair and saw her face, the texture of the skin, the relaxation around the brow, I knew she was going to make it. She was skinny to begin with, and now the illness had consumed her, burned her down to just bones. Her color was returning; the sword that hung over her had lifted away. My shoulders began to unknot.

That afternoon I went to my room in Ghosh's quarters, and I fell into a black sleep. It was only when I woke up that I turned my attention to Shiva. Did he understand how he shattered my dreams? Did he see how he hurt Genet, hurt us all? I wanted to get through to him. The trouble was that I couldn't think of any other way than to pummel him with my fists until he felt the same degree of pain he had caused in me. I hated my brother. No one could stop me.

No one but Genet.

When she told me about her deal with Rosina, how she had agreed to be circumcised if Rosina said nothing to Hema, Genet hadn't finished what she had to say. Later that first night, she struggled to consciousness to ask something of me. She had made me swear to it. “Marion,” she said, “punish me, but not Shiva. Attack me and cast me away, but leave Shiva alone.”

“Why? I can't do that. Why spare him? “

“Marion, I made Shiva do what he did with me that night. I asked him.” Her words were like kidney punches. “You know how Shiva is different … how he thinks in another way? Believe me, if I hadn't asked him, he would have read his book and I wouldn't be here.”

Reluctantly, on that first night, I had given Genet my word that I wouldn't confront Shiva. I did so mainly because that night had looked as if it might well have been her last.

I never told Hema what had really happened, leaving her to imagine whatever it was she thought I had done.

Why, you might ask, did I keep my word? Why did I not change my mind when I saw that Genet would survive? Why didn't I tell Hema the truth? You see, I'd learned something about myself and about Genet during her battle to stay alive. I'd come so close to losing her, and it helped me understand that despite everything, I didn't want her to die. I might never forgive her. But I still loved her.

WHEN SHE WAS DISCHARGED from the hospital, I carried Genet from the car to the house. No one objected, and if they had I would have stood my ground. My unceasing vigil at Genet's bedside had earned a grudging acknowledgment from Hema; she didn't dare deny me.