Page 355 - The Kite Runner

TWENTY-FIVE

They won’t let me in.
I see them wheel him through a set of double doors and I fol-
low. I burst through the doors, the smell of iodine and peroxide
hits me, but all I have time to see is two men wearing surgical caps
and a woman in green huddling over a gurney. A white sheet spills
over the side of the gurney and brushes against grimy checkered
tiles. A pair of small, bloody feet poke out from under the sheet
and I see that the big toenail on the left foot is chipped. Then a
tall, thickset man in blue presses his palm against my chest and
he’s pushing me back out through the doors, his wedding band
cold on my skin. I shove forward and I curse him, but he says you
cannot be here, he says it in English, his voice polite but firm.
“You must wait,” he says, leading me back to the waiting area, and
now the double doors swing shut behind him with a sigh and all I
see is the top of the men’s surgical caps through the doors’ narrow
rectangular windows.
He leaves me in a wide, windowless corridor crammed with