Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghese

WE COME UNBIDDEN into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which, lest we forget, is the common lot. I grew up and I found my purpose and it was to become a physician. My intent wasn’t to save the world as much as to heal myself. Few doctors will admit this, certainly not young ones, but subconsciously, in entering the profession, we must believe that ministering to others will heal our woundedness. And it can. But it can also deepen the wound.

I squirmed. How easily Matron probed the gap between ambition and expediency. “Why must I do what is hardest?” “Because, Marion, you are an instrument of God. Don’t leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for ‘Three Blind Mice’ when you can play the ‘Gloria’?”

“No, not Bach’s ‘Gloria.’ Yours! Your ‘Gloria’ lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.” I was temperamentally better suited

They know that Marion Stone will be as involved after the surgery as before and during. They know I have no use for surgical aphorisms such as “When in doubt, cut it out” or “Why wait when you can operate” other than for how reliably they reveal the shallowest intellects in our field. My father, for whose skills as a surgeon I have the deepest respect, says, “The operation with the best outcome is the one you decide not to do.” Knowing when not to operate, knowing when I am in over my head, knowing when to call for the assistance of a surgeon of my father’s caliber—that kind of talent, that kind of “brilliance,” goes unheralded.

Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward. It is only when you stop and look to the rear that you see the corpse caught under your wheel.

We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We’ll leave much unfinished for the next generation.

Born in Africa, living in exile in America, then returning at last to Africa, I am proof that geography is destiny. Destiny has brought me back to the precise coordinates of my birth, to the very same operating theater where I was born. My gloved hands share the space above the table in Operating Theater 3 that my mother and father’s hands once occupied.

Her skills were so rare, so needed for the poorest of the poor, and even at times in the royal palace, that she felt valued. Wasn’t that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted?

The twins were breathing quietly; their fingers fanned over their cheeks. They belonged in her arms. How beautiful and horrible life is, Hema thought; too horrible to simply call tragic. Life is worse than tragic. Sister Mary, bride of Christ, now gone from the world into which she just brought two children.

what madness, so much worse than tragic! What to do except dance, dance, only dance … She was surprisingly graceful and light on her feet, the neck and head and shoulder gestures of Bharatnatyam automatic for her, eyebrows shooting up and down,

“God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by”—her voice broke as she thought of Sister Mary Joseph Praise—“by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don’t think God cares what doctrine we embrace.” The sight of that

Getachew Kassa’s slow version of “Tizita,”

In order to start to get rid of your slippers, you have to admit they are yours, and if you do, then they will get rid of themselves.” All these years and I hadn’t known this about Ghosh, about his father dying when he was young. He was like us, fatherless, but at least we had him. Perhaps he’d been worse off than we were. Ghosh sighed. “I hope one day you see this as clearly as I did in Kerchele. The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don’t. If you keep saying your slippers aren’t yours, then you’ll die searching, you’ll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.”

The hospital porter nicknamed him “the Lurker,” and Thomas didn’t mind. In the organized chaos of the hospital, in the labyrinth of corridors, in the stink and confinement of its walls, he found both order and refuge; he found home. Misery and suffering were his closest kin.

no more. When they take your living child away, you die, and the child growing inside you dies, too. All the things that matter are gone, and so I am dead.” There was a tiny part of me that wanted to say, You have me, Genet. But for once, I stopped to consider myself, to save myself.