Free Monday Mornings: A Novel by Sanjay Gupta Page B

their volume. On Sunday morning, Park usually had the elevator to himself.
    There was another thing Park liked about Sunday mornings. More often than not, he was the senior surgeon at the hospital. For a few quiet hours, he was king of Chelsea General. He knew this was a trivial thing. There was no real power in being the senior surgeon there, and Park realized the distinction was simply a statistical artifact, an error in perception, a product of his desire to work Sunday mornings while other attending physicians for religious or other reasons chose to take the day off. Technically, he could fire people if he wanted when he was the senior surgeon, and he had done it a few times. Of course, they always laughed it off because they would all be reinstated on Monday. Still, on Sundays Park walked the polished halls of Chelsea General with a magisterial stride.
    This Sunday morning was better than most: Park had scheduled an elective deep brain stimulation. The patient’s name was Ruth Hostetler. She came from a town Park had never heard of near the Michigan-Ohio state line. Getting her to agree to undergo the operation on a Sunday took a little doing, but her husband convinced her that God would be on their side on the Sabbath.
    Ruth was thirty-five, and for the previous two and a half years she had suffered from an uncontrollable tremor. Her hands shook so violently that she could not write or drive a car. Eating was a challenge, and Ruth had dropped almost forty pounds. She was plump when the tremors started. She had shed many pounds since. She passed through her ideal weight and now looked gaunt, almost haunted.
    Ruth wore cotton print dresses and had a well-scrubbed girlish look. She looked to Park like an actress on a soap commercial or playing the part of a pioneer woman of the American West. The couple had come to Park two weeks earlier on a referral from a Pakistani doctor who had trained under Park and was now working as a general practitioner on a J-1 visa in an underserved area in rural Ohio.
    Seated across from Park in his office at the time, Levi had kept his hands folded in his lap; Ruth’s flopped like bony fish pulled from some brackish backwater. The couple had asked Park if the tremors were a sign from God. Was Ruth being punished for something they had done? Park shook his head and dismissed the question with a wave of the hand. Park had once forbidden a family from praying in the waiting room. He had stormed in and said in loud, choppy English in front of a crowd, “If it is God you are looking for, He will be in Operating Room Three with your loved one, and right now He feels like He is being second-guessed.”
    “God has nothing to do with this. It’s your brain that’s punishing you,” Park told the couple, smiling at his own joke. The Hostetlers did not return the smile.
    “Doctor, we know God works in mysterious ways and has a purpose for all He does,” Levi Hostetler said. “We believe we were sent to you for a reason. Maybe so you could hear the Word. Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, Doctor?”
    Park didn’t hesitate one second. He stood up and started ushering the couple to the door.
    “This is a hospital, not a church,” he muttered loudly in his choppy English. “I don’t believe in God. I believe in science. I believe in data. Outcomes. Facts.” He let the word linger, while giving the couple a hard stare. “When you want to talk about these things, you tell Dr. Khan and he can make another appointment.”
    Ruth stopped just outside Park’s office. She did not want to leave.
    “You want facts. I had a glass of wine the other day. My MeeMa told me to drink it. Said it would relieve the stress. I don’t normally partake in alcohol. It’s against the Word. But you know what? For the first time in a year, those tremors went away.”
    Park had been about to close the door on this annoying couple. Now he stopped. This case was interesting all of a sudden.
    “You