Page 196 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 185

Dr. Rosen, a round-bellied man with a plump face and small,
even teeth, spoke with a faint Eastern European accent, some-
thing remotely Slavic. He had a passion for trains—his office was
littered with books about the history of railroads, model locomo-
tives, paintings of trains trundling on tracks through green hills

and over bridges. A sign above his desk read, LIFE IS A TRAIN. GET
ON BOARD.
He laid out the plan for us. I’d get checked first. “Men are easy,”
he said, fingers tapping on his mahogany desk. “A man’s plumbing
is like his mind: simple, very few surprises. You ladies, on the other
hand . . . well, God put a lot of thought into making you.” I won-
dered if he fed that bit about the plumbing to all of his couples.
“Lucky us,” Soraya said.
Dr. Rosen laughed. It fell a few notches short of genuine. He
gave me a lab slip and a plastic jar, handed Soraya a request for
some routine blood tests. We shook hands. “Welcome aboard,” he
said, as he showed us out.

I passed with flying colors.
The next few months were a blur of tests on Soraya: Basal
body temperatures, blood tests for every conceivable hormone,
urine tests, something called a “Cervical Mucus Test,” ultra-
sounds, more blood tests, and more urine tests. Soraya underwent
a procedure called a hysteroscopy—Dr. Rosen inserted a tele-
scope into Soraya’s uterus and took a look around. He found
nothing. “The plumbing’s clear,” he announced, snapping off his
latex gloves. I wished he’d stop calling it that—we weren’t bath-
rooms. When the tests were over, he explained that he couldn’t
explain why we couldn’t have kids. And, apparently, that wasn’t so
unusual. It was called “Unexplained Infertility.”