Ripper by Isabel Allende Read Free Book Online

misfortune and Indiana’s need to play the Good Samaritan. Indiana often offered therapies to bolster Carol’s immune system, but she always managed to find some excuse for postponing them. At first, suspecting the woman couldn’t afford to pay, Indiana offered the treatments for free, as she often did with patients in straitened circumstances, but when Carol continued to find excuses, Indi did not insist; she knew better than anyone that many people still distrusted alternative medicine.
    The women shared a taste for sushi, walks in the park, and romantic comedies, and were both concerned about animal welfare. Carol—like Amanda—was a vegetarian but made an exception with sushi, while Indiana was happy just to protest against the suffering endured by battery hens and laboratory rats and the fashion industry’s use of fur. One of her favorite organizations was PETA, which a year earlier had petitioned the mayor of San Francisco to change the name of the Tenderloin district: it was inexcusable that a neighborhood should be named after a prime cut from some suffering animal; the area should be renamed after a vegetable. The mayor did not respond.
    Despite the things they had in common, Indiana and Carol’s relationship was somewhat strained, with Indiana feeling she had to keep a certain distance, lest Carol stick to her like dandruff. The woman felt helpless and forsaken; her life was a catalog of rejections and disappointments. Carol saw herself as boring, with no charm, no talent, and few social skills, and suspected that her husband had only married her to get a green card. Indiana gently advised that she needed to rewrite this script that cast her as the victim, since the first step toward healing was to rid oneself of negative energy and bitterness. Instead, Indiana suggested, Carol needed a positive script, one that connected her to the oneness of the universe and to the divine light, but still Carol clung to her misfortune. Indiana sometimes worried she might be sucked into the bottomless chasm of this woman’s need: Carol phoned Indiana at all hours to whine, and waited outside her treatment room for hours to bring her expensive chocolates that clearly represented a sizable percentage of her social security check. Indiana would politely eat these, counting every calorie and with no real pleasure, since she preferred the dark chocolates flecked with chili that she shared with Alan.
    Carol had no children and no family, but she did have a couple of friends Indiana never met who accompanied her to the chemotherapy sessions. Carol’s only topics of conversation were her cancer and her husband, a Colombian deported for drug dealing whom she was trying to bring back to the States. The cancer itself caused her no pain, but the poison being dripped into her veins was killing her. Carol’s skin was deathly pale, she had no energy, and her voice quavered, but Indiana nurtured the hope that she might recover—her scent was different from that of the other cancer patients Indi had treated. What’s more, Indiana’s customary ability to tune in to other people’s illnesses didn’t work with Carol, something she took as a positive sign.
    One day, as they were discussing this at the Café Rossini, Carol talked about her fear of dying and her hopes that Indiana would help her—a burden Indiana felt unable to take on.
    “You’re a very spiritual person, Indi,” Carol said.
    Indiana laughed. “Don’t call me that! The only people I know who claim to be spiritual are sanctimonious and steal books about the occult from bookstores.”
    “Do you believe in reincarnation?” Carol asked.
    “I believe in the immortality of the soul.”
    “I’ve frittered away this life, so if reincarnation really does exist, I’ll come back as a cockroach.”
    Indiana lent Carol some books she always kept at her bedside, an eclectic mixture of tomes about Sufism, Platonism, Buddhism, and contemporary psychology, though she didn’t