殘忍而美麗的情誼:The Kite Runner 追風箏的人(178)

I keep fading in and out.
THE NAME OF THE MAN with the Clark Gable mustache turned out to be Dr. Faruqi. He wasn’t a soap opera star at all, but a head-and-neck surgeon, though I kept thinking of him as some one named Armand in some steamy soap set on a tropical island.
Where am I? I wanted to ask. But my mouth wouldn’t open. I frowned. Grunted. Armand smiled; his teeth were blinding white.
“Not yet, Amir,” he said, “but soon. When the wires are out.” He spoke English with a thick, rolling Urdu accent.
Wires?
Armand crossed his arms; he had hairy forearms and wore a gold wedding band. “You must be wondering where you are, what happened to you. That’s perfectly normal, the postsurgical state is always disorienting. So I’ll tell you what I know.”
I wanted to ask him about the wires. Postsurgical? Where was Aisha? I wanted her to smile at me, wanted her soft hands in mine. Armand frowned, cocked one eyebrow in a slightly selfimportant way. “You are in a hospital in Peshawar. You’ve been here two days. You have suffered some very significant injuries, Amir, I should tell you. I would say you’re very lucky to be alive, my friend.” He swayed his index finger back and forth like a pendu lum when he said this. “Your spleen had ruptured, probably--and fortunately for you--a delayed rupture, because you had signs of early hemorrhage into your abdominal cavity My colleagues from the general surgery unit had to perform an emergency splenec tomy. If it had ruptured earlier, you would have bled to death.” He patted me on the arm, the one with the IV, and smiled. “You also suffered seven broken ribs. One of them caused a pneumothorax.”
I frowned. Tried to open my mouth. Remembered about the wires.
“That means a punctured lung,” Armand explained. He tugged at a clear plastic tubing on my left side. I felt the jabbing again in my chest. “We sealed the leak with this chest tube.” I followed the tube poking through bandages on my chest to a container halffilled with columns of water. The bubbling sound came from there.
“You had also suffered various lacerations. That means ‘cuts.” I wanted to tell him I knew what the word meant; I was a writer. I went to open my mouth. Forgot about the wires again.
“The worst laceration was on your upper lip,” Armand said. “The impact had cut your upper lip in two, clean down the mid dle. But not to worry, the plastics guys sewed it back together and they think you will have an excellent result, though there will be a scar. That is unavoidable.
“There was also an orbital fracture on the left side; that’s the eye socket bone, and we had to fix that too. The wires in your jaws will come out in about six weeks,” Armand said. “Until then it’s liq uids and shakes. You will lose some weight and you will be talking like Al Pacino from the first Godfather movie for a little while.” He laughed. “But you have a job to do today. Do you know what it is?”
I shook my head.

我不斷清醒了又昏過去。
原來那個有着克拉克?蓋博鬍子的男人叫法魯奇大夫。他根本不是肥皂劇明星，而是一個專治顱頸的外科醫師。不過我總是把他當成阿曼德，某出背景設在一個熱帶島嶼的肥皂劇的主角。
我在哪兒？我想問，但無法張口。我皺眉，呻吟。阿曼德笑起來，他的牙齒真白。
“還沒好，阿米爾。”他說，“不過快了，拆了線就好。”他的英語帶有濃厚的烏爾都語翹舌音。
線？
阿曼德雙臂抱胸，他的小臂毛茸茸的，戴着一條結婚金鍊。“你肯定在想你在哪兒，發生什麼事了。那很正常。手術後總是有這種茫然的狀態。所以我會把我知道的告訴你。”
我想問他線的事情。手術後？艾莎在哪裏？我想看見她的微笑，想拉着她柔軟的手。阿曼德皺眉，揚起一道眉毛，看上去有點自以爲是。“你在白沙瓦的醫院。你在這兒兩天了。你傷得很重，阿米爾，我得對你說。要我說，你能活下來真的很幸運，我的朋友。”他一邊說，一邊伸出食指，像鐘擺那樣來回晃動。“你的脾臟破裂，幸運的是，很可能是後來才破裂的，因爲你的腹腔有出血的初期症狀。我那些普通外科的同事已經給你做了脾切手術。如果它破裂的時間早一些，你也許會流血致死。”他拍拍我的手臂，插着輸液管那邊，露出笑臉。“你還斷了七根肋骨，其中有根引發氣胸。”
我皺眉，試圖張開嘴巴，卻想起有線。
“也就是說，你的肺被刺破了。”阿曼德解釋說，他拉着我左側的一根透明塑料管，胸腔又傳來陣痛。“我們用這根胸管彌合裂口。”我順着那根管子，看見它一頭插在我胸前的繃帶之下，另一頭插在裝着半罐水柱的容器裏面。泡泡的聲音就是從那兒傳來的。
“你身上還有很多不同的創口。也就是‘傷口’。”我想跟他說我知道那個詞是什麼意思，我是個作家。我想要張開嘴，又忘記縫着線了。
“最嚴重的創口在上脣。”阿曼德說，“衝擊力讓你的上脣裂成兩半，從人中裂開。不過別擔心，整容醫師幫你縫好了，他們認爲你會恢復得很好，不過那兒會有道傷痕。這可避免不了。”
“你左邊眶骨組織破裂，就是你左眼眶的骨頭，我們也替你修好了。你下巴的線要過六個星期才能拆，”阿曼德說，“在那之前，只能吃流食和奶昔。你會消瘦一些，而且在一段很短的時間內，你說話會像電影《教父》第一部裏面那個阿爾?帕西諾一樣。”他笑起來，“但你今天需要完成一項工作，你知道是什麼嗎？”
我搖搖頭。