theater in which he was born—the same place his mother and father both worked. Geography, he believes, is proof of destiny, and this is what has brought him back here. The sights and sounds are familiar and make him nostalgic for Shiva. The two of them slept in the same bed into their teens, and now every morning Marion wakes to the gift of a new day and wants to tell Shiva he owes this blessing to him. What Marion owes Shiva most, though, is to tell this story. It is a story Sister Mary Joseph Praise, their mother, did not tell. It is a story their “fearless father,” Thomas Stone, ran away from. Marion has had to piece the story together, and only its telling can heal the rift that separates him from his beloved twin brother. This is the kind of a wound not even a skilled surgeon can heal.

Chapter 1

On the same day, Sister Mary Joseph Praise and Sister Anjali receive their nursing pins and take their final vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience. Now they can be called “sister” both in the hospital and the convent. Almost immediately, these nineteen-year-old girls are sent as missionaries from India to Africa as the first members of the Madras Discalced Carmelite Mission to Africa. It is 1947, seven years before the twins are born.

Sister Mary Joseph Praise was raised on a chain of beautiful islands founded by Christians, but in high school she was moved by the passion of a “charismatic Carmelite nun” and abandoned that religious family tradition. Her parents were disappointed but would have been even more so if they had known she also became a nurse. On board the ship, she and Sister Anjali sequester themselves in their cabin and do their best to maintain the rites and rituals of the convent. On the sixth night, a portion of the deck splinters and buckles. On the ninth, night four passengers contract a fever—including Sister Anjali and one crew member. Sister Anjali is soon “raging in feverish delirium,” so Sister Mary Joseph Praise seeks out a young surgeon she met earlier. When she had stumbled on the wet metal stairs, he had grabbed her and easily righted her, though both were flustered by the unexpected intimacy. She had been struck then by his strength, but as she enters his cabin she discovers the young doctor is horribly sick.

She does not have much medical knowledge, but she can nurse and pray. After cleaning up the mess around him, Sister Mary Joseph Praise begins to nurse the man back to health. She realizes he has not been eating and wonders if one can die from seasickness. The young nun changes his sheets and clothing; she bathes the unconscious man as best she can. She sees on his body none of the spots that mark the fever in other passengers, but one side of his chest is partially concave because he is missing several ribs. She can feel his virtually unprotected heart as she washes him. His name is written in a surgical textbook beside his bed: Thomas Stone.

Sister Mary Joseph Praise spends her time ministering to the sick, and her life becomes quite simple. There are those who are sick with fever, those who are seasick, and those who are well. The seas are strong enough that none of those distinctions might matter soon, and one man even gets on his knees and asks her to forgive him of his sins. The crew ignores her pleas for help as both Dr. Stone’s and Sister Anjali’s conditions worsen. She finally finds a hammock, hangs it in his cabin, and slowly feeds his long body into it. Then she prays. Soon his color begins to return and he is able to hold down some water and then some broth. God has heard her prayers.

The “pale and unsteady” doctor goes with Sister Mary Joseph Praise to examine Sister Anjali. He is shocked at her poor condition and immediately and dispassionately strips her so he can study his patient. As the Sister watches the examination, she sees a man who was born to be a doctor. He studies the body as if it were a text to be read and learned from. He has obviously forgotten his own illness and even his surroundings, and for the first time Sister Mary Joseph Praise is not afraid for her friend. In this man’s presence, she feels that she has truly become a nurse. She never met a doctor like him. He concludes the fever and body markings are indicative of typhoid or some other kind of blood poising, though he dismisses his own expertise for coming from a mere surgeon.

Dr. Stone’s presence has calmed Sister Mary Joseph Praise as well as the sea. There is little the doctor can do for Sister Anjali, and certainly nothing on board with which to do it anyway, for the captain has none of the mandatory medical supplies on his ship. The doctor virtually takes over the ship, methodically examining, isolating, fumigating, and not sleeping. Sister Mary Joseph Praise never leaves his side. When the battered ship limps into the port of Aden a few days later, it is quarantined. Despite that, Dr. Stone demands medical supplies and gets them. He immediately treats Sister Anjali but it is too late. She and two others die that night. As the doctor and his temporary nurse quietly slip the shrouded bodies over the rail, Sister Mary Joseph Praise breaks down. She is inconsolable, and Dr. Stone feels ashamed because he failed to save the young woman. When Sister Mary Joseph Praise says she envies her friend because she is now in heaven, the doctor snorts his skepticism and takes her words as a sign that his nurse is on the verge of delirium. He takes her to his cabin, puts her to bed in his bunk, makes sure she is sleeping (the only true blessing he can give her), and goes to re-examine the other passengers. Dr. Stone does not need sleep.

Two days later, passengers are allowed to leave the ship. Dr. Stone finds Sister Mary Joseph Praise in her own cabin, eyes red and face wet with tears. When he finally looks at her, really looks at her, he is struck with her luminous beauty and becomes tongue-tied and uncomfortable. He tells her the fever was almost certainly typhus and invites her to join him at the hospital in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia where he is headed, although he actually knows nothing at all about the hospital or its needs. She remains silent, thinking about how foreign this man is to her. In her experience, doctors are docile and care more about the disease than their patients. Dr. Stone bullied and threatened the captain and crew to ensure he could care for the sick. He is different.

She finally thanks him for the offer and for trying to help her friend, which he dismisses as nothing. Sister Mary Joseph Praise takes the doctor’s hands and prays a blessing over him. He remembers her washing him, holding his head when he retched, singing, and praying for his recovery. He abruptly walks away, and Sister Mary Joseph Praise now knows the life she thought was complete is not. There is a void she never knew existed.

Aden seems a wonderful haven, portal to Africa and the world—until she steps off the ship. It is a beastly place to her, full of heat and smoke and sin; it reminds her of hell. When she finally arrives at the place where she is to meet a fellow nun, she is met by a revolting and irreverent man who tells her the nun who had lived there suddenly died. Sister Mary Joseph Praise does not believe him and has a deep foreboding as he leers at her face, her lips, and her bosom.

Marion has learned all of this information about his mother from others, but her story stops in Aden at the house of that man. The only clear thing is that something happened to her there, and she left Aden with the sure knowledge that her loving God was also a harsh, vengeful God “who could be so even to His faithful.” Although he will learn more later, Marion knows his mother escaped within the year and made her way to Addis Ababa and the Missing Hospital. Matron was undoubtedly surprised at the sight of this frightened but determined young girl dressed as a nun. Her once-white habit is now soiled and grimy, and there is a fresh bloodstain at the juncture of her legs. On her face is hurt and confusion mixed with a kind of fervor. The young girl is nearly faint with exhaustion, but she recites the litany of a postulant wishing to enter the order and Matron automatically tells her to enter.

Matron settles Sister Mary Joseph Praise into a bed. The girl is malnourished and terrified, waking up delirious and clinging to Matron, who is keeping vigil. It is another week before the girl can sleep alone and another week before the color returns to her cheeks. When Matron finally takes her on a tour of her hospital, she is stunned to see her rather stern and serious new surgeon, Thomas Stone, grinning at the girl. Marion believes it was then that his mother knew she would be staying here and working for this skilled surgeon. It would be inspiring work, and the thought of returning to India through Aden would have been too daunting to contemplate. In the seven years she was there, Sister Mary Joseph Praise refused to talk about her time in Aden; instead, she believed God led her to Missing to make something beautiful of her life.

That gap in her story is what drives Marion the biographer to dig deep, and he wonders if his mother knew such a quest would lead him to study medicine and to Thomas Stone. As Matron has told Marion, for the next seven years his parents worked in virtually wordless harmony in Operating Theater 3, keeping the same hours. Sister Mary Joseph Praise was Dr. Stone’s ever-present, uncomplaining, dutiful shadow—until Marion and Shiva made themselves known to her.