Page 164 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 153

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“What’s wrong?” Baba said. He was taking an elderly
woman’s money for a rocking horse.
“Nothing,” I said. I sat down on an old TV set. Then I told him
anyway.
“Akh, Amir,” he sighed.
As it turned out, I didn’t get to brood too much over what had
happened.
Because later that week, Baba caught a cold.

It started with a hacking cough and the sniffles. He
got over the sniffles, but the cough persisted. He’d hack into his
handkerchief, stow it in his pocket. I kept after him to get it
checked, but he’d wave me away. He hated doctors and hospitals.
To my knowledge, the only time Baba had ever gone to a doctor
was the time he’d caught malaria in India.
Then, two weeks later, I caught him coughing a wad of blood-
stained phlegm into the toilet.
“How long have you been doing that?” I said.
“What’s for dinner?” he said.
“I’m taking you to the doctor.”
Even though Baba was a manager at the gas station, the owner
hadn’t offered him health insurance, and Baba, in his reckless-
ness, hadn’t insisted. So I took him to the county hospital in San
Jose. The sallow, puffy-eyed doctor who saw us introduced himself
as a second-year resident. “He looks younger than you and sicker
than me,” Baba grumbled. The resident sent us down for a chest X
ray. When the nurse called us back in, the resident was filling out
a form.