Page 121 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

With my respects,

Roshana

He answers Amra, thanks her, writes that he is sorry to hear about the
flooding. He hopes the rains will abate. He tells her that he will discuss Roshi
with his chief this week. Below that he writes:

Salaam, Roshi jan:

Thank you for your kind message. It made me very happy to hear
from you. I too think about you a lot. I have told my family all about
you and they are very eager to meet you, especially my sons, Zabi jan
and Lemar jan, who ask a lot of questions about you. We all look
forward to your arrival. I send you my love,

Kaka Idris

He logs off and goes to bed.

On Monday, a pile of phone messages greets him when he enters his
office. Prescription-refill requests spill from a basket, awaiting his approval. He
has over one hundred and sixty e-mails to sift through, and his voice mail is full.
He peruses his schedule on the computer and is dismayed to see overbooks
—squeezes, as the doctors call them—inserted into his time slots all week.

Worse, he will see the dreaded Mrs. Rasmussen that afternoon, a particularly
unpleasant, confrontational woman with years of vague symptoms that respond
to no treatment. The thought of facing her hostile neediness makes him break
into a sweat. And last, one of the voice mails is from his chief, Joan Schaeffer,
who tells him that a patient he had diagnosed with pneumonia just before his trip
to Kabul turned out to have congestive heart failure instead. The case will be
used next week for Peer Review, a monthly video conference watched by all the
facilities during which mistakes by physicians, who remain anonymous, are used
to illustrate learning points. The anonymity doesn’t go very far, Idris knows. At
least half the people in the room will know the culprit.
He feels the onset of a headache.