Ghana Must Go (8 page)

“I am afraid we have to let you go.”

Silence, the length of the table.

So long.

An oval-shaped table with squat-rounded armchairs that looked like they spun, like the Cups ride at fairs. With half-circle armrests and leather upholstery, red with brass studs, and the hospital trustees. A room in the hospital he’d never before seen on the uppermost floors where the offices were, but familiar at once from a lifetime of interviews: med school, scholarship, residency, fellowship, mortgage, loan.

A Room of Judgment.

With the requisite, oppressive Room of Judgment decor: polished wood, Persian rug, unread books with red spines (maximum number, countless books, dark red books no one read), heavy drapes through which dribbled in bright, hopeless light, swirls of color, feasting colors, plums, mustards, and wines. And white faces. The odd woman. An Asian woman.

Who spoke.

“Having reviewed all the details of Mrs. Cabot’s appendectomy and of the complaint that the Cabots lodged against you therewith, this body believes that, though a phenomenal surgeon, you failed . . .”

But Kweku couldn’t hear her.

•   •   •

He could hear only Fola—at twenty-three years old, with her law school acceptance letter framed on the wall, with a full ride to Georgetown and Olu in utero—say, “One dream’s enough for the both of us.” She would follow him to Baltimore and postpone studying law and give birth to their baby with not a penny to their name and sell flowers on the sidewalk and take showers in a kitchen so that one of them could realize his dream. Twenty years exactly from that to this moment, the whole thing erected on the foundation of a dream: “general surgeon without equal,” Ghanaian Carson and the rest of it, Boy-child, good at science, Makes Good—and he had. He had seen the thing through, the whole kit and caboodle: the accolades, the piano lessons, the sprawling brick house, the staggering prep school tuition, the calling “Bye!” every morning at a quarter past seven in scrubs and white coat. He had held up his end of the bargain: his success for her sacrifice, two words that they never said aloud. Never
success
, because what were its units of measurement (U.S. dollars? Framed diplomas?) and what quantity was enough? And never
sacrifice
, for it always sounded hostile when she said it and absurd when he attempted, like he didn’t know the half. The whole thing was standing on the sand of this bargain, but they never dared broach it after “One dream’s enough.” When they fought they fought around it, about the diapers or the dishes or the dinner parties with colleagues (part of his job, waste of her time). But they knew. Or
he
knew: that her sacrifice was endless. And as the Sacrifice was endless, so must be the Success.

He would see the thing through—if he could, and he prayed so, he blushed to admit that it was what he wanted most, to be worthy of the Pan-Nigerian Princess as they’d called her, that sophisticated escapee from the ’67 war with the bell-bottom jeans and the gap in her teeth, so much smarter and sexier than everyone else, even him, at little Lincoln, a princess among plebs—not by having succeeded but by
being
a success. To be worthy of Fola, to make it worth it for Fola, he had to keep being Successful.

•   •   •

So quite literally couldn’t process the words that came next, if there
were
words that followed “you failed.”

•   •   •

Then eleven months arguing that he hadn’t, in court, hadn’t failed, had been fired without cause. Which he had. She’d waited too long to be rushed to the hospital, where they’d taken too long to decide to proceed. Seventy-seven-year-old smoker with a ruptured appendix and a bloodstream infection, days old. Not a chance. Jane “Ginny” Cabot—patron of research sciences, socialite, wife, mother, grandmother, alcoholic, and friend—would be dead before morning, whether in a bed at Beth Israel or in bed on Beacon Hill, the higher thread count. The only reason Kweku had even attempted the appendectomy was because the Cabots had called the president of the hospital, a family friend, to suggest very politely that in light of their donation surely a last-ditch operation wasn’t too much to ask? It wasn’t. And they wanted the very best surgeon. The president found Kweku as he was leaving to go home.

The Cabots looked at Kweku, then back at the president. “A word,” they said politely, then moved into the hall. Kip Cabot, losing his hearing, spoke too loudly for the acoustics. “But he’s a—”

“Very fine surgeon. The finest we have.”

The Cabot family physician, smug, a general practitioner (on retainer, a kept doctor, tanned, salt-and-pepper hair), stayed with Kweku in the office while Kip continued in the hallway. “And where did you do your ‘training’?” Air quotes.

“In the jungle, on beasts,” Kweku answered genteelly. “Chimpanzees taught. Great instructors. Who knew?”

The deliberators returned from the hall at that moment, everyone flushed to varied shades of unnatural pink—but resolute. Whatever else he was, Kweku was fit to operate. Someone thumped him on the shoulder. Kweku addressed himself to Kip. “In my professional opinion, sir, it’s too late for surgery. But the longer I stand here the more useless I become.”

The Cabots didn’t want his professional opinion.

They wanted him to go and scrub in.

•   •   •

Hours, bloody business, trying to save the woman’s life, with the president there observing from the gallery upstairs (apologetic, so embarrassed, “I gave my word to the Cabots”), but a masterful operation as per usual. His best. Clean, cut, find, pluck, sew, snip. Wipe blood from face. Until a weary nurse called it—time of death three
A.M
.—and he left, walked out, got into his car, let out his breath.

He still doesn’t know how he drove himself home. The next thing he remembers is waking up, clothed, in the sitting room of all rooms with the Johnnie Walker Gold and his slippers sort of dangling from the tops of his toes and the smell of kiwi-strawberry inexplicably in the air and the sense that something somewhere had changed.

•   •   •

Then eleven months pretending that it hadn’t.

That nothing had changed.

Getting out of bed every morning, leaving the house (scrubs, coat, briefcase) like the Singaporean protagonist in that movie he never saw but always discussed as if he’d seen it, having read all the reviews, it being fashionable among surgeons to see Asian-language films. According to the reviews, the man is fired from his bank but, too ashamed to tell his family, still pretends to go to work: getting up, suiting up, going to sit in local parks to scan job ads.

Like that.

But no parks.

He’d leave, drive to Kleinman & Kleinman for an update, long-term park, then cross the bridge to Harvard Law School on foot. Once there, he’d flash his plainly fraudulent alumni ID card—care of Marty’s black classmate and doubles partner Aaron Falls—to the plainly underpaid Latino law library security guard whose accent produced the daily joke, “Good morning, Mr. False.”

In the stacks until two o’clock researching cases: wrongful dismissal, discrimination, malpractice. Break for lunch. Then more reading, until evening, when he’d cross back to Boston, the river liquid gold in the gloaming.

Now Marty, too, was letting him go.

He started the car.

But had nowhere to go.

He started to laugh. He had nowhere to go. He laughed harder. Had nowhere to
pretend
to be going. He was clean out of money. He was defeated. He was delirious. He was driving for some minutes before he realized he was driving. Driving, he discovered, as if these hands were not his, as if this foot were not his, to the hospital.

•   •   •

A word.

A word with Dr. Yuki, Dr. Michiko “Michelle” Yuki, who had patronized from her Mad Tea Party cup. “This body believes . . .” she the mouth of the body. Tiny mouth. Monotonic, multisyllable words. Former gymnast. Five foot zero with an asymmetric pageboy and the four-piece Harvard Box Set: B.A., M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A. He’d been to her house for a dinner in Cambridge. She was married to an attorney, a colleague of Marty’s. The dinner was to celebrate her promotion to vice president. There were slippers in the foyer, he had noticed. Lovely home. The husband was a monstrosity, all curse words and bluster, piss drunk before the hors d’oeuvres had lapped the room once, but the room was so elegant, all woods and wind orchids, calligraphy scrolls cascading down the walls. Lacquer bowls.

A word with Dr. Yuki.

Or a question. Just the one. What he’d been wanting to ask and to ask to her face (or to half of her face: a good 50 percent was missing behind the shiny half-curtain of her asymmetric bob). Simply: how was she sleeping? Dr. Yuki the surgeon? Not the M.B.A., the adminstrator. The do-no-harm doctor. For the other one, the aspirant, the suit? Fair enough. Agent Yuki had her bottom line, her shareholders to please. One of Boston’s richest families, one of the hospital’s biggest donors, “the stakes were too high,” as per Marty, not to act. The family had demanded that someone be held accountable. “These things sometimes happen” was not accounting enough. So in a back room over a weekend—a Room of Judgment but with cocktails—it was decided that the surgeon would be fired. Would that work? Would that appease the Cabots? Yes, thank you, it would, please. Fair enough, Agent Yuki.

But Dr. Yuki?

She
knew.

She
knew what it took, to scrub in, to say, “scalpel,” to saw through the stomach with sharp sterile steel.
She
knew the great pride that he took in this terror, the joy—not just he but their whole prideful tribe.
She
knew that the procedure had been flawlessly executed.
She
knew, Dr. Yuki, and nevertheless when she spoke, it was to fire a good surgeon to appease a strong family, to say that he’d failed to “account for the risks.”

Though no doctor (but one) would agree with her assessment. Though her boss, the hospital president, had watched the surgery himself, that final insult-added-to-injury that almost cost them the lawsuit and would have were the judge not Ginny’s cousin.

Almost.

In the end it didn’t matter. The machine was in motion. It ate all the letters, the petitions, the appeals, colleagues arguing his case, that he’d done all he could, that they couldn’t have done better. To no avail. There was doubt. Dr. Putnam “Putty” Gardener—trusted Cabot family doctor, widowed Kip’s DKE frater, Boston Brahmin, racist, golfer—was insistent that the surgeon had (a) failed to appreciate and (b) failed to communicate the risks.

And that was that.

•   •   •

Now the surgeon wanted a word with the hospital vice president, to ask her to her face was she sleeping through the night? And so found himself parking (at some remove, out of habit), walking casually through the lobby, just as calm as could be, the Jamaican security guard Ernie smiling warmly as he entered—always happy to see the doctor (one) who knew his first name, who said “Good morning, Mr. Ernie” on arriving every morning and “My best to the kids” on departing every night, instead of blowing by blindly without greeting, without
seeing
him, as if the guards were inanimate, were lobby decor—then riding up in the elevator, alone, to the offices, here pausing for a breath to hear the uppermost-hush—and onward, down the hallway in his scrubs and white coat, knocking once before barging in her door.

By the time they were dragging him back through the lobby, eyes bloodshot from shouting, a madman in scrubs, he’d forgotten entirely about the Museum of Fine Art class and Kehinde three train stops away.

So almost choked to find the child now appearing in the lobby having waited thirty minutes for his father to turn up before figuring that his father had gotten tied up in the surgery so he’d foot it to the hospital and wait there instead. Until this very moment Kweku would’ve bet money that her younger son couldn’t have said where he worked—not the name of the hospital, one of several in the vicinity, nor the location of the entrance hall—but here Kehinde was: appearing calmly in the lobby at precisely the same moment two men dragged a madman across it.

•   •   •