Page 122 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

He falls woefully behind schedule that morning. An asthma patient walks in

without an appointment and needs respiratory treatments and close monitoring of
his peak flows and oxygen saturation. A middle-aged executive, whom Idris last
saw three years before, comes in with an evolving anterior myocardial
infarction. Idris cannot start lunch until halfway through the noon hour. In the
conference room where the doctors eat, he takes harried bites of a dry turkey
sandwich as he tries to catch up with notes. He answers the same questions from
his colleagues. Was Kabul safe? What do Afghans there think of the U.S.
presence? He gives economical, clipped replies, his mind on Mrs. Rasmussen,
on voice mails that need answering, refills he has yet to approve, the three
squeezes in his schedule that afternoon, the upcoming Peer Review, the
contractors sawing and drilling and banging nails back at the house. Talking
about Afghanistan—and he is astonished at how quickly and imperceptibly this
has happened—suddenly feels like discussing a recently watched, emotionally
drenching film whose effects are beginning to wane.

The week proves one of the hardest of his professional career. Though he had
meant to, he doesn’t find the time to talk to Joan Schaeffer about Roshi. A foul
mood takes hold of him all week. He is short with the boys at home, annoyed
with the workers streaming in and out of his house and all the noise. His sleep
pattern has yet to return to normal. He receives two more e-mails from Amra,
more updates on the conditions in Kabul. Rabia Balkhi, the women’s hospital,
has reopened. Karzai’s cabinet will allow cable television networks to broadcast
programs, challenging the Islamic hard-liners who had opposed it. In a postscript
at the end of the second e-mail, she says that Roshi has become withdrawn since
he left, and asks again whether he has spoken to his chief. He steps away from
the keyboard. He returns to it later, ashamed of how Amra’s note had irritated
him, how tempted he had been, for just a moment, to answer her, in capital

letters, I WILL. IN DUE TIME.
…

“I hope that went okay for you.”
Joan Schaeffer sits behind her desk, hands laced in her lap. She is a woman of
cheerful energy, with a full face and coarse white hair. She peers at him over the
narrow reading glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. “You understand the
point was not to impugn you.”

“Yes, of course,” Idris says. “I understand.”
“And don’t feel bad. It could happen to any of us. CHF and pneumonia on X-