雙語·當(dāng)呼吸化為空氣 原來 醫(yī)生們也是需要希望的

原來，醫(yī)生們也是需要希望的。
Doctors, it turns out, need hope, too.

見完艾瑪回家的路上，露西的媽媽打電話說，他們已經(jīng)往醫(yī)院去了。露西要生了。（“一定要早點上腰麻?！蔽覍λf。露西受的痛苦已經(jīng)夠多了。）爸爸用輪椅推我去了醫(yī)院，我又回到了熟悉的地方。產(chǎn)房里支了一張簡易床，我在上面躺下，蓋了保暖袋和毯子，這樣我骨瘦如柴的身體才不至于冷得發(fā)抖。接下來的兩個小時，我目睹了露西和護(hù)士一起經(jīng)歷生產(chǎn)的過程。隨著宮縮漸漸加劇，護(hù)士一直在報數(shù)讓露西使勁：“一二三四五，六七八九十！”
On the way home from the appointment with Emma, Lucy’s mom called to say they were headed to the hospital. Lucy was in labor.(“Make sure you ask about the epidural early,” I told her. She had suffered enough.) I returned to the hospital, pushed by my father in a wheel-chair. I lay down on a cot in the delivery room, heat packs and blankets keeping my skeletal body from shivering. For the next two hours, I watched Lucy and the nurse go through the ritual of labor. As a contraction built up, the nurse counted off the pushing: “And a one two three four five six seven eight nine and a ten!”

露西轉(zhuǎn)身，微笑著看我?！斑€以為我在打比賽呢！”她說。
Lucy turned to me, smiling. “It feels like I’m playing a sport!” she said.

我躺在小床上，用微笑回應(yīng)她，看著她起伏的孕肚。露西和女兒的生活中，將會有很多缺失。如果我只能陪伴到現(xiàn)在這個份兒上，那就盡量陪伴吧。
I lay on the cot and smiled back, watching her belly rise. There would be so many absences in Lucy’s and my daughter’s life—if this was as present as I could be, then so be it.

午夜之后，護(hù)士把我叫醒?！翱炝?。”她低語道。她抱起毯子，扶著我坐在露西身邊的一張椅子上。產(chǎn)科醫(yī)生已經(jīng)來了，和我年紀(jì)差不多。寶寶的頭露出來了。她看著我：“有件事可以肯定地告訴你：你女兒的頭發(fā)和你一模一樣，”她說，“而且很濃密呢?！蔽尹c點頭，握住露西的手，和她一起經(jīng)歷這生產(chǎn)的最后時刻。接著，她最后使了把勁，七月四日凌晨兩點十一分，她呱呱墜地，伊麗莎白·阿卡迪亞，昵稱卡迪，我們幾個月前就把名字想好了。
Sometime after midnight, the nurse nudged me awake. “It’s almost time,” she whispered. She gathered the blankets and helped me to a chair, next to Lucy. The obstetrician was already in the room, no older than I. She looked up at me as the baby was crowning. “I can tell you one thing: your daughter has hair exactly like yours,” she said. “And a lot of it.” I nodded, holding Lucy’s hand during the last moments of her labor. And then, with one final push, on July 4, at 2:11 a. m., there she was. Elizabeth Acadia—Cady; we had picked the name months before.

“能讓她貼貼你的皮膚嗎，爸爸？”護(hù)士問我。
“Can we put her on your skin, Papa?” the nurse asked me.

“不，我太——太涼了，”我上牙和下牙直打架，“但我很想抱抱她。”
“No, I’m too c-c-cold,” I said, my teeth chattering. “But I would love to hold her.”

她們用毯子把她裹好，遞給我。我一只手臂感受著這新生命的重量，另一只手與露西十指緊扣，生命的無限可能在我們面前鋪展開來。我體內(nèi)的癌細(xì)胞在慢慢消亡，但也有可能重新生長。展望無限廣闊的未來，我看到的不是寂靜無人的空蕩荒原，而是更簡單純粹的東西：一頁我將繼續(xù)書寫的白紙。
They wrapped her in blankets and handed her to me. Feeling her weight in one arm, and gripping Lucy’s hand with the other, the possibilities of life emanated before us. The cancer cells in my body would still be dying, or they’d start growing again. Looking out over the expanse ahead I saw not an empty wasteland but something simpler: a blank page on which I would go on.

然而，家中卻充滿了色彩與活力。
Yet there is dynamism in our house.

日子一天天過去，卡迪像朵小花般慢慢綻放：第一次抓握，第一個微笑，第一聲大笑。她的兒科醫(yī)生定期用圖表記錄她的成長，在那些表明她逐漸長大的指標(biāo)前畫勾。她周身散發(fā)著一種嶄新的光明。她坐在我膝上微笑，沉浸在我不成調(diào)的哼唱中，整個家似乎都被熾熱的光照亮了。
Day to day, week to week, Cady blossoms: a first grasp, a first smile, a first laugh. Her pediatrician regularly records her growth on charts, tick marks indicating her progress over time. A brightening newness surrounds her. As she sits in my lap smiling, enthralled by my tuneless singing, an incandescence lights the room.

時間對于如今的我，就像一把“雙刃劍”：每天，我都從上次復(fù)發(fā)中恢復(fù)一些，但又距離下次復(fù)發(fā)更近一些，當(dāng)然，也離死亡更近一些。也許那一天比我估計的要晚，但肯定比我希望的早。我想，意識到這一點，大概會做出兩種反應(yīng)。最明顯直接的反應(yīng)應(yīng)該是立即行動的沖動，“最充分地享受生活”，去旅行，去大快朵頤，去把握那些曾經(jīng)忽略的夢想。然而，癌癥的一個殘酷之處，就是這種病不僅限制了你的時間，還限制了你的精力，極大地減少了你一天里能做的事情，就像一只疲憊的兔子在賽跑。不過，即便我有這個精力，我也更希望像一只烏龜，深思熟慮，穩(wěn)步踏實地向前。有些時候，我只是單純地在堅持而已。
Time for me is now double-edged: every day brings me further from the low of my last relapse but closer to the next recurrence—and, eventually, death. Perhaps later than I think, but certainly sooner than I desire. There are, I imagine, two responses to that realization. The most obvious might be an impulse to frantic activity: to “l(fā)ive life to its fullest,” to travel, to dine, to achieve a host of neglected ambitions. Part of the cruelty of cancer, though, is not only that it limits your time; it also limits your energy, vastly reducing the amount you can squeeze into a day. It is a tired hare who now races. And even if I had the energy, I prefer a more tortoise-like approach. I plod, I ponder. Some days, I simply persist.

如果一個人高速行動時，時間會膨脹，那要是幾乎一動不動，時間會收縮嗎？一定會的吧：現(xiàn)在，每一天似乎都縮短了很多。一天天過得千篇一律，時間似乎也靜止了。英語中，“time”這個詞的意思多種多樣：“現(xiàn)在的時間是兩點四十五”，“我這段時間過得不太好”。對于現(xiàn)在的我，與其說時間是時鐘的嘀嗒作響，不如說是一種生存的狀態(tài)。疲憊成為穩(wěn)定的常態(tài)，反而有種豁然開朗的感覺。做醫(yī)生的時候，在手術(shù)室全神貫注地治療病人，對指針的走動也許的確沒有感覺和概念，但從沒覺得時間是毫無意義的。而現(xiàn)在，每天的一分一秒都變得毫無意義，每一天整體來看也好不到哪兒去。醫(yī)學(xué)院的培訓(xùn)非常殘酷無情，完全是著眼于未來的，一直都給人未知的滿足。你會一直思考，五年后的自己在做什么。然而，現(xiàn)在的我，完全看不到五年后的自己在做什么。也許已經(jīng)去世，也許沒有。也許恢復(fù)了健康。也許在從事文學(xué)創(chuàng)作。我真的不知道。所以，花時間去思考未來似乎沒什么用處，只要想想午飯吃什么就好了。
If time dilates when one moves at high speeds, does it contract when one moves barely at all? It must: the days have shortened considerably. With little to distinguish one day from the next, time has begun to feel static. In English, we use the word time in different ways: “The time is two forty-five” versus “I’m going through a tough time.” These days, time feels less like the ticking clock and more like a state of being. Languor settles in. There’s a feeling of openness. As a surgeon, focused on a patient in the OR, I might have found the position of the clock’s hands arbitrary, but I never thought them meaningless. Now the time of day means nothing, the day of the week scarcely more. Medical training is relentlessly futureoriented, all about delayed gratification; you’re always thinking about what you’ll be doing five years down the line. But now I don’t know what I’ll be doing five years down the line. I may be dead. I may not be. I may be healthy. I may be writing. I don’t know. And so it’s not all that useful to spend time thinking about the future—that is, beyond lunch.

說話時的措辭也變得混亂起來。怎么說才對呢？“我是一個外科醫(yī)生”？“我曾經(jīng)是一個外科醫(yī)生”？格雷厄姆·格林曾經(jīng)說過，人真正的生命是在頭二十年，剩下的不過是對過去日子的反射。那我現(xiàn)在究竟生活在什么時態(tài)之中？我是不是已經(jīng)過完了現(xiàn)在時態(tài)，進(jìn)入了過去完成時？將來時態(tài)似乎一片空白，用別人的話來說，就是“說不準(zhǔn)”。幾個月前，我在斯坦福參加了第十五次大學(xué)同學(xué)會，站在場地邊，喝著一杯威士忌，看著一輪粉紅的夕陽一點一點沉到地平線下面。老朋友們依依惜別，向我承諾：“第二十五次同學(xué)會還是會見到你的！”——如果我回一個“呃……可能見不到了”，那就顯得太不禮貌了。
Verb conjugation has become muddled, as well. Which is correct:“I am a neurosurgeon,” “I was a neurosurgeon,” or “I had been a neurosurgeon before and will be again”? Graham Greene once said that life was lived in the first twenty years and the remainder was just reflection. So what tense am I living in now? Have I proceeded beyond the present tense and into the past perfect? The future tense seems vacant and, on others’ lips, jarring. A few months ago, I celebrated my fifteenth college reunion at Stanford and stood out on the quad, drinking a whiskey as a pink sun dipped below the hori-zon; when old friends called out parting promises— “We’ll see you at the twenty-fifth!”—it seemed rude to respond with “Well. . . probably not.”

面對生命的界限，人人都會屈服。我想，進(jìn)入這種過去完成時的人，應(yīng)該不止我一個。大多數(shù)的夢想和抱負(fù)，要么被實現(xiàn)，要么被拋棄，無論如何，都屬于過去。而我的未來已經(jīng)不是一架天梯，通往逐步升高的人生目標(biāo)，而是一路平坦，鋪陳為永恒的現(xiàn)在。金錢、地位，這一切的虛榮浮華，都像《傳道書》里對其毫無興趣的傳道者所說的：不過是捕風(fēng)而已。
Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed.

然而，有個小東西是有篤定未來的：我們的女兒，卡迪。但愿我能活到她記事，能給她留下點回憶。語言文字的壽命是我無法企及的，所以我想過給她寫一些信。但是信里又能說些什么呢？我都不知道這孩子十五歲時是什么樣子的，我都不知道她會不會接受我們給她的昵稱。這個小嬰兒完全代表著未來，而我的生命呢，除了特別微小的可能，很快將成為過去。她與我，只有短暫的交集。也許，我只有一件事想告訴她。
Yet one thing cannot be robbed of her futurity: our daughter, Cady. I hope I’ll live long enough that she has some memory of me. Words have a longevity I do not. I had thought I could leave her a series of letters—but what would they say? I don’t know what this girl will be like when she is fifteen; I don’t even know if she’ll take to the nickname we’ve given her. There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring the improbable, is all but past.