The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine
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Carpet
(continued)
Vinay Kamat
2kamat@charter.net
On those days that I did visit I could see that he had grown angrier. His physical condition did not change much over the first year but he was easily frustrated. Over time he expressed his anger with me, for not being there, for not helping my mother enough. It was reason enough for me to leave for another month and that is what I did sometimes. In my mother’s eyes I could do no wrong. My absence was always explained by my unbelievable work ethic. She always told me to keep working hard in school. Don’t worry about home -- that was her job.
I came to visit her on Mother’s Day a little over a year after his stroke. My father was lying quietly on the couch in the living room when I arrived. He and I had not been talking much over the last few weeks but that day he asked if I could help him to his bed. He had lost more weight in the last month maybe ten pounds. My mother’s back ached and she could not help him. He looked so small that morning I told him I would carry him to the bedroom. With my arms looped under his back and knees, I did just that for the first and last time in my life. I laid him in his bed and asked him if I could bring him anything else. He replied he would simply rest awhile. I left for school and an hour later my mother called me panic-stricken that he had stopped breathing. I had her call 911 and rushed over to find him dead. She told me that she had tried CPR but he would not respond. I imagined her alone in that bedroom trying to revive her husband of twenty-two years.
Dr. Al, whom I had not seen in a year, attended his funeral. He asked me how my studies were progressing and asked if I had considered medical school after college. After all my mother’s affairs were in order I met with him at his office which remained unchanged. He offered me a position assisting in a colleague’s laboratory working on developing a mouse model to study Alzheimer’s disease. I would be a volunteer he stressed but it would open doors for me in the future. As a freshman student I was thrilled to participate in the work. I stuck with the research working diligently every summer and in the fall of my junior year I was privileged to co-author a paper which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. This accomplishment, almost unheard of for a college student, virtually assured my spot at the University of Minnesota Medical School.
I continued to work with the lab as a medical student and Dr. Al, who was tremendously proud of my undertakings, asked for autographed copies of the journal articles we would publish. After completing medical school I remained at the University to begin an internship then residency in the field of Neurology. Dr. Al, naturally, encouraged then applauded this decision. After finishing my internship last year, I began teaching review classes for the Medical College Admission Test through a local private company. Originally it was a way to earn some extra money in the evenings but it turned out to be much more fortuitous.
My future wife sat attentively listening to my lecture in the first row of my first class. In an uncharacteristic display of courage, I looked her up on the class roster and asked her if she needed any other help in preparing for the test. She seemed a little surprised by the call and informed me that she was debating between medicine and business and was now leaning toward the latter. I apologized for driving her out of the field in just one lecture explaining that most students leave the discipline after two of my classes. She laughed politely and I used the opportunity to ask if I could see her again. She consented and then almost one year later we were married. In the end she did abandon the idea of medicine settling for a degree in finance. My wife is completing her MBA but loves to explore antique stores between her studies and my schedule. She and my mother have become very close. It was my wife who helped furnish the condominium in which Mom now resides.
This year I officially became a resident in the Department of Neurology. Although money was tight, my wife and I decided it was time to purchase our own home. The instant I saw this one, I told her we should make an offer. The real estate agent called it ‘eggplant’ but the carpet looked more like a light plum to me. It was beautiful and stretched through every room save the kitchen and breakfast nook. The house had been prepared for our showing and it was perfectly vacuumed in every room.
Now on many Wednesday nights I make it over to Dr. Al’s house for the dinner with the grand rounds speaker. I start by the pool and have a drink served to me then sit at the dining room table and listen to his stories some of which I have heard before. I figure after eight years I can’t expect a new anecdote with every visit. Tonight my wife and I returned from the annual Christmas Party at his house. We stayed only long enough for her to sip non-alcoholic eggnog then made our way back to our new subdivision while the snow began to dust outside.
She turns to me now, still asleep. As she rotates from her left side, her pregnant belly rises off the bed. It’s a boy. We found out last week through a white-knuckled grasp in the obstetrician’s office. We wept as our son did his peculiar dance through electronic snow on the ultrasound screen. To the delight of my wife, my mother told us she would like to stay with us a few weeks once he is born. So in addition to preparing the nursery I have set up a small guest room with a glider so she can rock her grandson to sleep.
As preposterous as it may sound when I look back on my life it has been carpet that has prognosticated my future. From the cinnamon one on our family room as a child, the disagreeable one in the apartment to the fine Turkish rug under my feet as I sit in Dr. Al’s dining room, carpets have foreshadowed my immediate future. I chose this house so that my son will crawl, toddle and walk on its flawless violet surface. So that I can sit with him, read to him and teach him lessons I have learned. My father told me that after the game ends the kings and pawns end up in the same box. I will work hard because I know that, during the game, pawns are the most expendable. The pulse in my ears sometimes deepens when I lament that my father will never see his grandson. But I have resolved to stay healthy so that my son will know me until he has children of his own and so that he will never have to walk on anything worse than perfect carpet.
Published: April 24, 2005