A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

It turned out that Einat, who hugged and kissed her father with a certain hesitation, had just arrived from the United States, and her brother had met her at the airport. As she turned to her mother, who came up to hug her, she caught sight of me and waved. I shook my finger at her in mock reprimand. “You sleep at our house and leave without even saying good-bye?” She blushed, laughing and apologetic, and then explained to her parents how rushed she had been during her short stopover in London. I felt surrounded by warmth. In the room crowded with the Lazars’ family and friends, I felt as if I were planted deeply among them. The unexpected reconciliation with Professor Levine added to my joy. But I didn’t have much time to bask in these good feelings, for everyone was in a hurry to go somewhere except Einat, especially the rather sad and alienated son, who kept his distance from me. He had to get back to his base, and his mother had to drive him to the bus station and then rush home to prepare herself for another night at the hospital with her husband. Now she stood next to his bed to say good-bye and make various arrangements, and as she patted her hair lightly into place and asked him what to take home and what to bring back with her, I noticed that his hand, still blue from the hematoma caused by the infusion needles, was groping for hers, which was stroking his hair, both in order to stop her from caressing him in public and to draw it to his chest, perhaps to hint at a new, nagging pain which he was loath to trouble his doctor friends with.

And so we all parted from the administrative director except for Einat, who looked exhausted from the flight but insisted on believing, according to the biological clock inside her, that it was still morning. We went out into the corridor, where a clear and wonderful light poured through the big ninth-floor windows directly from the sea, streaming toward us over the roofs of the houses — the soft, pink autumn light of the afternoon hours, when the whole hospital was taken over by the visitors who crowded the elevators and flooded the rooms of the wards, who used the flowers, the fruit, the evening papers, and the boxes of chocolate which they strewed about them to banish the medical staff with their instruments and medications and instill new hope into the hearts of the sick people huddling beneath their blankets. Although Dori had her son on one side of her and her husband’s secretary on the other, I still hoped that I would be able to snatch a word or two with her in private, but I was prevented from doing so by Hishin. I had sensed that he wanted to talk to me in Lazar’s room, as if the information I had gathered and expounded to him and Levine on the balcony about the irregularities in the EKG had led him to believe that I had succeeded in finding a new lead to the wayward heart of Lazar, which apparently had him worried as well. Perhaps he even regretted letting me go so easily. In any case, he signaled me to wait for him, went over to the nurses’ station, and held a short telephone conversation with the head nurse of his department, who in spite of his pleas refused to let him off an operation that had already been postponed from the morning. Then he turned to me and asked me in a friendly way if I was going home before my shift. I looked at my watch. It was half-past four, and my shift began in two hours’ time. If I’d still had my motorcycle I wouldn’t have hesitated to go home in order to take a shower and rest before the long night ahead of me, and especially to call my parents again. But crawling along in the Tel Aviv evening traffic and finding parking for the car was another matter. “In that case,” he said firmly, as if he were still my patron, “come and keep me company in an operation that won’t take long but can’t be postponed any longer. Lazar tells me that in the hospital in London they let you operate as much as you wanted to. The English apparently like cutting up their patients slowly and delicately.” He winked at me and laughed loudly. I laughed too, not only because of the friendliness he had displayed toward me since my return from London but because of the feeling of victory and self-esteem that had filled me ever since the sudden reconciliation with Professor Levine. Who knows, I said to myself, the wild thought popping into my mind, perhaps Amnon was right and one day I will be the head of a department here, or perhaps even the director of the hospital. Thus, wrapped in premonitions of greatness, which sometimes carried me away, I generously agreed to begin my night’s work then, in that clear and rosy hour of the afternoon, and followed Hishin down to the surgical wing. I took the last green shirt and trousers left on the cart, and while the anesthetist began the preparations for the “takeoff” of a very young woman who looked at us sadly and accusingly, I succeeded in persuading the switchboard operator to give me an outside line to call my parents. They had been trying to get in touch with me to tell me about a call from Michaela, who had phoned that morning from Glasgow, where she had spent the night at my aunt’s with Stephanie on their way to the Isle of Skye. It was surprising and annoying to know that while we were all steeped in worries and cares, Michaela found the time to go off on a jaunt to Scotland and visit the places my mother had known as a child. I asked them about Shivi, and they said that she had vomited twice in the morning and they had called in old Dr. Cohen, the pediatrician who had taken care of me, and he had examined her and prescribed some medication but mainly reassured them. They read the name of the drug to me over the phone and asked my permission to give it to Shivi. Although she was apparently feeling better, it was obvious that they were nervous and wished that I would come and get her.

I promised that I would drive to Jerusalem first thing in the morning, as soon as my night shift was over. As I entered the changing room, I saw Dr. Vardi, my short and sturdy rival-friend, standing in a blood-soaked green uniform, with the mask still tied around his neck emphasizing the burning seriousness of his eyes as he looked at us. Hishin asked him about the operation that had just been concluded, and Vardi began to answer with his usual compulsive thoroughness, until Hishin seemed sorry that he had asked. He appeared distracted and troubled, as if his mind were somewhere else. “Do you want me to assist you?” asked Vardi, who seemed upset by my sudden presence at the side of his patron. “No, there’s no need. You’ve done enough today, you can go home,” said Hishin, and laid his hand on my shoulder. “I’ve got Benjy here, as both a former surgeon and a present anesthetist, and as a friend, and that’s quite enough.” We went into the operating room, washed our hands, put on gloves and masks, and suddenly he asked me if I could manage the anesthesia alone. I answered confidently in the affirmative, although formally speaking I was not yet supposed to be the only anesthetist present at an operation. He told the anesthetist that he could go, after getting some necessary information from him, and turned to the white stomach of the woman, which as always gave rise to tender feelings of compassion in me. With a swift and precise movement he cut a thin, firm line from her navel to her pubic hair, which for a moment seemed on fire in the ray of light filtering through the round porthole in the door. Although the bypass operation I had witnessed a week before by far surpassed the abdominal surgery now being performed by Professor Hishin, who suddenly seemed a little like a butcher, in its medical-technological complexity and even its aestheticism it was impossible not to admire his precision and skill, and also the human warmth and intimacy of his long fingers as they felt their way among the tissues opening up in front of him, not only to see but also to sense what needed to be done.