Page 170 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 159

convulsions out of him. Talk them into leaving my Baba alone. I
felt a wetness on my knees. Saw Baba’s bladder had let go. Shhh,
Baba jan, I’m here. Your son is right here.

The doctor, white-bearded and perfectly bald, pulled me
out of the room. “I want to go over your father’s CAT scans with
you,” he said. He put the films up on a viewing box in the hall-
way and pointed with the eraser end of his pencil to the pictures
of Baba’s cancer, like a cop showing mug shots of the killer to the
victim’s family. Baba’s brain on those pictures looked like cross
sections of a big walnut, riddled with tennis ball–shaped gray
things.
“As you can see, the cancer’s metastasized,” he said. “He’ll
have to take steroids to reduce the swelling in his brain and anti-
seizure medications. And I’d recommend palliative radiation. Do
you know what that means?”
I said I did. I’d become conversant in cancer talk.
“All right, then,” he said. He checked his beeper. “I have to go,
but you can have me paged if you have any questions.”
“Thank you.”
I spent the night sitting on a chair next to Baba’s bed.

The next morning, the waiting room down the hall was
jammed with Afghans. The butcher from Newark. An engineer
who’d worked with Baba on his orphanage. They filed in and paid
Baba their respects in hushed tones. Wished him a swift recovery.
Baba was awake then, groggy and tired, but awake.
Midmorning, General Taheri and his wife came. Soraya fol-