“One prenatal visit? Could you have let me see her for at least one prenatal visit? I'd have canceled my trip. Look at the soup we are in! Miracle, my foot. Completely avoidable … completely avoidable“ the last two words delivered like lashes.
Stone stood as if in front of the headmistress. Hema seemed to expect him to speak and so he stammered, “I didn't know!”
Hemlatha's jaw dropped. She stared at him. There was a part of her that was incredulous at the idea of Stone impregnating Sister Mary Joseph Praise—who could imagine that? But the cynicism of the obstetrician who has seen everything crept back in. “You're thinking virgin birth, Dr. Stone? Immaculate conception?” She came around the table. “In that case, guess what, Mr. Expedient Operator? This is better than the manger in Bethlehem. This virgin is having twins!” She paused to let it sink in. “For goodness’ sake, couldn't you have done a Cesarean section?” Her singsong intonation rose at the end, leaving the words “Cesarean section” hanging over Stone's head.
“Gloves and gown, quick!” Hemlatha shouted. “C-section tray here. Wake up, all of you! Do you not want to save her? Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” She repeated this in Amharic—“Tolo, tolo, tolo!”—in case English wasn't getting through.
The authority of her words kept them from retreating into the shock that had paralyzed them. “And you nurses standing around all starched and useless,” Hemlatha said, as she pulled on a sterile gown and donned fresh gloves (there wasn't time to wash), “couldn't you have said something to him? Matron?” Matron looked to the floor.
“How long ago did the fetal heart sounds stop? What was the fetal heart rate?”
“It happened too quickly. We—”
“Oh, shut up, Stone. One of you give me a straight answer. Otherwise all of you shut up. Pressure now?”
“Barely sixty.”
“Where's the blood? Am I dealing with deaf as well as dumb people? Answer me?”
The hospital had no blood bank, just a pint or two if one were lucky, kept in a refrigerator. Patients’ families were reluctant to give blood. Hema once pressed a husband to give blood for his wife, and he'd refused outright. When she suggested that his wife would surely give blood for him if the tables were turned, he said, “You don't know my wife. She's waiting for me to die to take my cows and property.” Time and again, she and Ghosh and Stone and Matron would donate their own blood and prevail on some of the nurses to do the same. At least once a year Ghosh would take his car and round up members of his cricket team to give blood.
“Has no one thought about blood?” Hema said again. “All of you who aren't needed here, go at once and give blood. This is one of our own, for God's sake. Go, now. No, not you Stone! Get gloved, man, for goodness’ sake. Make yourself useful. What was the fetal heart rate?”
The probationer kept her eyes focused on the chart, terrified at the idea of giving blood and not daring to look up. And she knew that no one had listened for a fetal heart. They'd been too preoccupied with the mother. The probationer drew a line through her “C-section indicated” entry, sensing that it reflected badly on Matron. It was no consolation to see Dr. Stone standing frozen, eyes downcast, like a dog who'd disobeyed its master, every instinct telling it to slink away but knowing that the slightest movement would only bring more punishment.
Hema saw that Sister Mary Joseph's Praise's face was losing all color, the eyelids lowered to quarter mast, the hooded gaze now unfocused, a look that was so often a precursor to death.
“Pressure?”
“Can't find it …”
“Doesn't matter, pour in blood, splash some iodine here, let's go!” With that she ripped open the sterile tray, grabbed the scalpel, and slashed through the skin—no time for sterility even—a vertical cut below the navel. Hema still couldn't believe what she was doing, or whom she was cutting.
She half expected Sister Mary Joseph Praise to sit up in protest.
Instead she heard the thud of a body falling and turned in time to see Matron crumpled on the floor.
8. Missing People
CUSTODY OF THE BODY” was the first thing out of Matron's mouth when she revived. She'd passed out for probably fewer than five seconds; everyone was in the same position, but now staring down at her. The probationer ran over to help. Despite Hema's protests, Matron clawed and kneed her way onto the anesthetist's stool, shouting, “I'm not leaving!” They were too busy to argue.
She sat near the board that tethered Sister Mary Joseph Praise's arm, blood finally running from a bottle into a vein. Matron reached for that hand, bending over it, studying Sister Mary Joseph Praise's fingers. She didn't want to look at what the doctors were doing, their red gloves reaching in Sister's belly. Matron still felt light-headed.
As she massaged Sister's fingers to still the shaking in her own, the words came to Matron unbidden: “Instruments of God.” Sister Mary Joseph Praise had beautiful fingers, slender and soft, each a delicate sculpture. Even at rest they spoke of fine motor skills. Matron's by contrast were doughy white, the knuckles large and red as if someone had taken a ruler to them; the knobby excrescencies on the fingers spoke of nothing but age and toil and the caustic soaps and scrubbings which were the first tools of her profession; the fire burst of wrinkles on her palms spoke of her love for the Ethiopian soil and her willingness to plant and weed and dig alongside Gebrew. He was guard, gardener, odd-job man, and priest, and he believed Matron had no business dirtying her hands.
Matron felt her body shaking. Lord, you can take me, she thought. But wait till they're done because I don't want to distract them again. How she longed for a cup of coffee made from their own plant grown on Missing soil. She loved the gritty feel of the stone-ground bean against her teeth, and the way it rolled down the throat like lead shot. The Italians had left behind their passion for macchiato and espresso so that every café in Addis served these beverages. Matron had no use for any of that. Missing coffee, brewed traditionally, that's what sustained her through the day, and what she needed right now.
Tears tracked down into the crevices at the angles of her mouth. One of my Cherished Own, she thought; the daughter I can never have, now with child … So many times at Missing, Matron had become privy to an unspeakable secret revealed by catastrophic illness. Impending death had a way of unexpectedly unearthing the past so that it came together with the present in an unholy coupling. But Lord, she cried out silently, You could have spared us this. Spared her!
As she stroked the younger woman's skin, Matron thought of the impulse that had made Sister Mary Joseph Praise choose to hide her body under a nun's habit or under scrub suit and mask. It hadn't worked; her covering exaggerated what little flesh was exposed. When a face was so lovely, lips so full, even a veil couldn't block its sensuality.
A few years after Sister Mary Joseph Praise's arrival, Matron thought that the two of them should give up the white habit. The Ethiopian government had closed down an American mission school in Debre Zeit for proselytizing. Matron was in the business of running a hospital, not converting souls; she decided it might be politically smart to forgo nun's habit. But when she'd seen Sister Mary Joseph Praise leaving Operating Theater 3 in a skirt and blouse, Matron wanted to run out and cover her with a sheet. W. W. Gonafer, Missing's laboratory technician, standing next to Matron, had also seen Sister Mary Joseph Praise walk by in mufti. He'd frozen like a setter pointing to quail, a flush creeping from his collar to the roots of his hair, as if lust were a companion fluid to blood. Matron had decided then that nuns at Missing should remain in habit.