The theater doors swung open.
All eyes turned to the figure that entered.
But it was only wide-eyed Gebrew, priest, servant of God, and watchman. The covered bowl he carried held the injera and wot, and their scent was added to that of placenta, blood, amniotic fluid, and meco-nium. Gebrew had hesitated to come into this sanctum sanctorum. He held the food container in front of him, unsure if it were the ingredient that might save the day. His eyes almost popped out of their sockets when he saw, on the altar of this hallowed place, Sister Mary Joseph Praise opened like a sacrificial lamb with Stone's hand in her chest. He started to shake. He put the food on the floor, squatted down against a wall, pulled out his beads, and swayed in prayer.
Stone redoubled his efforts. “I demand a miracle and I want it right now,” he said, his body rocking back and forth. He kept it up even when the heart had turned mushy in his hand, and he was shouting now. “The bloody loaves and fishes … Lazarus … the lepers … Moses and the Red Sea …” Gebrew's chanting in ancient Geez matched Stone, call and response, as if Gebrew were translating because in this hemisphere God didn't know English.
Stone looked up to the ceiling, prepared for the tiles to part and for an angel to intercede where surgeons and priests had failed. All he saw was a black spider hanging down from its web, with its compound eyes taking in the scene of human misery below. Stone's shoulders slumped, and though his hand was still in Sister Mary's thorax, he was now merely caressing her heart, no longer squeezing. His chest heaved, tears falling onto the body of Sister Mary Joseph Praise. His head fell forward so it rested on his arms, which rested on Sister's chest. No one dared approach. They were transfixed by the sight of their surgeon so defeated, so destroyed.
AT LONG LAST he looked up, seeing as if for the first time the green tile going halfway up the wall, the swinging green door to the autoclave room, the glass instrument case, the bloody uterus with its necklace of hemostats lying in the green towel, the blue-black placenta right next to it on the specimen table, and the jade-colored ground-glass windows through which sunlight filtered. How did these things dare to exist if Mary did not?
That was when his eyes fell on the twins, no longer in their copper throne; that was when he saw the orange halo of light that surrounded the two boys. Somehow both children were alive, bright-eyed, one of them seeming to study him, the second one now as pink as the first.
“Oh no, no, no,” he said in a pitiful voice. “No. That was not the miracle I asked for!” When he withdrew his hand from Mary's body it made a gurgling sound. He left the theater.
He came back with a long broom. He brushed the spider off the ceiling, and then, with his heel, he ground it into the tile.
Matron understood he was intent on blasphemy; in case the arachnid was God, he was killing God.
“Thomas,” Hemlatha said, using his first name, which sounded strange on her tongue in Operating Theater 3, because they were always formal here. By this time both babies were in Hema's arms, wiped off and suctioned and swaddled in receiving blankets. The one in whose skull Stone had tried to drill a hole had aspirated some amniotic fluid but now seemed recovered; there was a big pressure dressing in place over the head wound. The other child showed only the stump of the flesh-bridge that had connected him to his brother, a stump now tied off with umbilical cord suture.
Hemlatha had established that the boys could move their limbs, neither of them was cockeyed, and they seemed to hear and to see. “Thomas,” she said, approaching, but he cringed. He turned away. He would not look.
This man she thought she knew well, seven years a colleague, now stood bent as if hed been gutted.
That, she said to herself, is visceral pain. As angry as shed been with him, the depth of his grief and his shame moved her. All these years, she thought, it should have been clear to us that he and Sister were a perfect match; maybe if wed encouraged them it could have been something more. How often did I see Sister assisting him in surgery, working on his manuscripts, taking notes for him in the outpatient department? Why did I assume that was all there was to it? I should have reached over and smacked him at my dinner table. I should have shouted at him, Don't be blind. See what you have in this woman! See how she loves you. Propose to her! Marry her. Get her to discard her habit, renege on her vows. It's clear her first vow is to you. But no, Thomas, I didn't do it because we all assumed that you were incapable of anything more. Who knew that this much feeling was hidden in your heart? I see it now. Yes, now we have these two as proof of what was in your hearts.
The two bundles in her arms propelled her forward, because they were, after all, his, and even as she thought that, she was still fighting her own disbelief. Surely he wouldn't try to deny that fact. She couldn't back away from this moment; she had to force the issue—who else could speak for these children? Stone was a fool who lost the one woman in the world fated for him. But now he had gained two sons. And Missing would rally round these infants. He'd have lots of help.
She moved closer.
“What shall we name these babies?” She could sense the uncertainty in her voice.
He appeared not to hear. After a pause, she repeated the question.
Stone thrust his chin at her, as if to say she could name them whatever she wanted. “Please get them out of my sight,” he said very softly.
He kept his back turned on the infants to gaze once more at Sister Mary Joseph Praise. Which was why he missed the way his words fell on Hema like hot oil; he didn't see the flames of anger shooting out of her eyes. Hema would misread his intentions, and he hers.
Stone wanted to run away, but not from the children or from responsibility. It was the mystery, the impossibility of their existence that made him turn his back on the infants. He could only think of Sister Mary Joseph Praise. He could only think of how she'd concealed this pregnancy, waiting, who knows for what. In response to Hema's question, it would have been a simple thing for Stone to say, Why ask me? I know no more than you do about this. Except for the certainty that sat like a spike in his gut that it was somehow his doing, even though he had no recollection how or where or when.
Sister Mary Joseph Praise lay lifeless and unburdened of the two lives she had carried, as if that had been her sole earthly purpose. Matron had pulled down Sister Mary Joseph Praise's eyelids, but they would not stay closed. The half-mast eyelids, the unseeing gaze, hammered in the reality of her death.
Stone took one last look. He wanted to remember her not as Sister, not as his assistant, but as the woman he should have declared his love for, the woman he should have cared for, the woman he should have wed. He wanted the ghoulish image of her corpse burned into his brain. He had negotiated his way through life by work, and work, and more work. It was the only arena in which he felt complete and the only thing he had to give Sister Mary Joseph Praise. But at this moment work had failed him.
The sight of her wounds shamed him. Thered be no healing, no scars to form, harden, and fade on her body. He would bear the scar, he would carry it from the room. Hed known only one way of being, and it cost him. But he would have been willing to change for her had she only asked. He would have. If only she could have known. What did it matter now?
He turned to leave again, glancing around as if to seal in his memory this place in which hed polished and elevated his art, this place that hed furnished to suit his needs and that he thought was his real home. He took it all in because he knew hed never ever return. He was surprised to find Hema still standing behind him, and again the sight of the bundles she carried made him recoil.