Thomas Stone is often considered mysterious, though it is likely he is even more of a mystery to himself than to others. Dr. Stone is painfully shy everywhere else, but he feels at home in the operating theater, as if it is the one place where his body and soul are at peace. As a surgeon he is known for being precise and bold, inventive and courageous, calm despite every pressure. However, when his long-time assistant, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, goes into labor, he is none of these things.

He is about to do surgery on a young boy and expects the proper instrument to be placed in his hand, as it has for the past seven years. Instead, he discovers a young probationer timidly telling him that Sister Mary Joseph Praise is indisposed. Dr. Stone begins the surgery, though without his usual confidence, and asks the frightened girl to tell his usual assistant that there is no time to be sick in the operating room and remind her that he returned to surgery the day after he amputated his own finger (a surgery so masterful that few people noticed he was missing an appendage), never thinking his message could be hurtful or rude. The probationer is an excellent memorizer of facts but a poor student of human nature. She walks into the darkened room of Sister Mary Joseph Praise, finds her huddled under a blanket, and does not get a response from her. The probationer delivers the message into the air and leaves. She goes to class and does not return to Operating Theater 3.

It is afternoon (following nine surgeries) before Thomas Stone impatiently checks on his assistant. He has never been to her room before; when she typed his manuscripts or drew illustrations for his book, it was in his office or his quarters. When he steps in he is struck by a “miasma at once familiar and alarming” but cannot immediately place it. As he opens the windows to allow fresh air and sunlight into the room, he sees his finger suspended in a sealed jar of preserving fluid. He feels a pang of nostalgia for the lost appendage until he sees Sister Mary Joseph Praise in agony on her narrow cot. He is reminded of Sister Anjali, whom he could not save, and falls to his knees at her side. Her name, Mary, escapes his lips first as an expression of fear and finally as a confession of love. She does not, cannot answer.

Thomas Stone knows now he has always loved her, almost from their first meeting, but never told her. His love has become almost invisible to him in the past seven years; it is just part of his daily existence. He is sure she loves him, though she has taken her cue from him and never told him so. Fear rises up in him—fear that he will lose her before he can tell her of his love, of his mistake in not expressing it. It is a selfish fear. When he lifts the sheets, he discovers her swollen abdomen. In his experience, a woman’s swollen abdomen is always presumed to be a pregnancy; however, this woman is a nun, so his immediate diagnosis is a bowel obstruction. He carries Sister Mary Joseph Praise to their operating room.

He shouts for help, and staff members come running, including Gebrew, the watchman and gardener at Missing. Matron is stunned to see a “blubbering, helpless Dr. Stone.” He has several times before gone on a drunken binge, and Matron assumes this is one of those...