Cutting for Stone Read Online Free PDF Page A

on this ill-fated voyage.
    When the supplies came, Stone went first to Sister Anjali. Making do with the crudest of antisepsis, with one scalpel stroke he exposed the greater saphenous vein where it ran just inside Sister Anjali's ankle. He threaded a needle into the collapsed vessel that should have been the width of a pencil. He secured the needle in place with ligatures, his hands a blur as he pushed one knot down over another. Despite the intravenous drip of Ringer's lactate and the sulfa, Anjali didn't make a drop of urine or show any signs of reviving. Later that evening, she died in a final dreadful paroxysm, as did two others, an old man and old woman, all within a few hours of one another. For Sister Mary Joseph Praise the deaths were stunning, and unforeseen. The euphoria she felt when Thomas Stone had risen and come to see Anjali had blinded her. She shivered uncontrollably.
    At twilight, Sister Mary Joseph Praise and Thomas Stone slipped the shrouded bodies over the rail, with no help from the superstitious crew who wouldn't even look their way.
    Sister Mary Joseph Praise was inconsolable, the brave front she'd put up shattering as her friend's body splashed into the water. Stone stood beside her, unsure of himself. His face was dark with anger and shame because he had not been able to save Sister Anjali.
    “How I envy her,” Sister Mary Joseph Praise said at last through tears, her fatigue and sleeplessness combining to release custody of her tongue. “She's with our Lord. Surely that is a better place than this.”
    Stone bit off a laugh. To him such a sentiment was a symptom of impending delirium. He took her by the arm and led her back to his room, lay her down on his bunk, and told her she was to rest, doctor's orders. He sat on the hammock and watched as life's only sure blessing—sleep—came to her, and then he hurried off to reexamine the crew and all passengers. Dr. Thomas Stone, surgeon, did not need sleep.
    TWO DAYS LATER, with no more new cases of fever, they were finally allowed off the Calangute. Thomas Stone sought out Sister Mary Joseph Praise before disembarking. He found her red-eyed in the cabin she'd shared with Sister Anjali. Her face and the rosary she clutched were wet. With a start he registered what he had failed to before: that she was extraordinarily beautiful, her eyes big and soulful and more expressive than eyes had a right to be. His face grew warm and his tongue wouldn't unstick itself from the floor of his mouth. He shifted his gaze to the floor, to her travel bag. When he finally spoke it was to say, “Typhus.” He'd looked in his books and given the matter a great deal of thought. Seeing her puzzlement, he said, “Indubitably typhus.” He had expected the word, the diagnosis, would make her feel better, but instead it seemed to fill her eyes with fresh tears. “Most likely typhus—of course a serum test could have confirmed it,” he stammered.
    He shuffled his feet, crossed and uncrossed his hands. “I don't know where you're going, Sister, but I'm heading to Addis Ababa … it's in Ethiopia,” he said, mumbling into his chin. “To a hospital … that would value your services if you were to come.” He looked at her and blushed again, because the fact was he knew nothing about the hospital he was going to or whether it could use her services, and because he felt those moist dark eyes could read his every thought.
    But it was her own thoughts that kept Sister Mary Joseph Praise silent. She remembered how shed prayed for him and for Anjali, and how God had answered just one of her prayers. Stone, risen like Lazarus, then brought his entire being into understanding the fever. Hed barged into the crew's quarters, run roughshod over the captain, and bullied and threatened. Doing the wrong thing, as Sister Mary Joseph Praise saw it, but in pursuit of the right thing. His fierce passion had been a revelation to her. At the medical college hospital in Madras where she