the body is a place of pain, then that makes it difficult to stay there. So, I suppose, your mother wanted to leave.”
Jeannette nodded. She reached across the gap to touch his arm, and inhaled as though to speak. Then she pulled back, and rubbed her hands.
“I will let you alone, of course. You are studying.”
“You don’t need to,” said Midhat. “I want to help, I told you so.”
“I know you did,” she said, rising. “I don’t know why I’m fixed on this, I shouldn’t be. You must think I’m … I don’t know. I’ll see you later then, I suppose.”
On one of his visits to the university hospital, Midhat had taken part in the observation of a patient suffering from a stomach ailment. The patient was a teenage boy whose abdomen was distended and painful, resulting in some vomiting and loss of appetite.
The boy’s ears were pointed and pale. The four students stood against the wall by the door while Docteur Brion spoke to him. Seated on the bed, shoes off, dressed in a hospital gown, he looked past the doctor at them lined up with their notepads, wearing black robes; his eyes were wide, chin loose, thin legs bent open from the hip and trousers hanging, while Docteur Brion spoke to him in a bright voice. Brion examined the boy’s tongue and the four students hovered behind. The tongue looked angry and raw. His bloated stomach was sensitive to pressure. Brion instructed the boy to push his head forward for the soft-rubber stomach tube, and to open his mouth while he, Brion, directed the tube down the throat. He asked the boy to swallow.
“This attempt at swallowing will first cause the pharyngeal muscles to grasp the tube … and then as they relax it may be pushed downwards until the stomach is reached—in the average individual a distance of about sixteen inches from the line of the teeth.”
The boy’s eyes widened further. He gagged, and his bent knees convulsed.
“Good, well done. Now, the attempts at retching will usually cause the contents of the stomach to come up through the tube. And … here they come.”
A trickle as the liquid came up through the tube and poured out the other end into a glass receptacle. It was thin and yellowish, with mealy grey lumps and a few strands of bile.
“If the contents do not come up at once,” said Brion, pulling the tube up out of the boy’s gullet while the boy rasped, “the patient should be told to strain as if making an effort to pass stool. Or, alternatively”—he reached for a rubber bulb the same red as the tube—“one may aspirate the stomach contents by attaching this to the extremity of the tube, compressing it and gradually, very important that it be gradual, allowing it to expand.”
He slowly compressed and expanded the rubber bulb. The boy’s mouth hung open. A globe of spittle dangled from his lower lip.
What they discovered when they strained and examined the liquid was a low level of hydrochloric acid and a great deal of mucus. Brion’s diagnosis was chronic gastritis. Such a diagnosis always required further tests for lactic acid and the Boas-Oppler bacillus, which were symptoms of cancer. Accordingly, Brion reached for a bottle of Gram’s solution from a shelf, and using a pipette added some of the filtered contents to a small container of the solution. The solution turned bright blue: the Boas-Oppler bacillus was present.
The boy stared over at Midhat and his colleagues while all this was going on, until the solution turned its shocking colour. Docteur Brion trembled uncharacteristically—perhaps he had not expected the test to come up positive, perhaps he would otherwise have chosen to conduct the test in private—and for a moment seemed not to know to whom he should pronounce the diagnosis. They could all see the evidence, however, and although the boy might not know precisely the rule that the Boas-Oppler bacillus stains blue with Gram’s solution, it seemed somehow so obviously a sign of alarm, the solution now the rich hue of a low sky gathering at the meridian.
“Carcinoma of the stomach,” said Brion. “You’ll have to see the surgeon this afternoon.”
For the first time, the boy spoke. “But I have to get back to work.” His voice was unexpectedly high-pitched.
The boy stayed in Midhat’s mind for days afterwards, and on his next visit to the hospital he sought out Docteur Brion to ask after the status of the carcinoma. Distracted then by