As a literary analyst and a keen observer of medical humanities, I have long held that the writings of Dr. Abraham Verghese occupy a unique and vital space in contemporary literature. He writes from a place of profound dual expertise: the precise, diagnostic eye of the physician and the searching, empathetic heart of a novelist. In my view, nowhere is this synthesis more potent or more tightly distilled than in his short story, “Abscond.”
Many approach this story, often found as a standalone Kindle Single or in collections, seeking a simple narrative. They find one, of course—a road trip, a memory, a marital disagreement. But to read “Abscond” only for its surface plot is, in my professional opinion, to miss the entire diagnosis.
In this comprehensive analysis, I will unpack the intricate layers of “Abscond.” This is not just a summary; it is an exploration. I will dissect its narrative structure, probe the psychological depths of its characters, and place its profound themes under a critical microscope. I argue that “Abscond” is far more than a “short story”; it is a complex meditation on the limitations of science, the persistence of faith, and the inescapable gravity of the past, particularly as experienced by the immigrant professional.
We will proceed in stages. First, I will establish the critical context of Verghese as a physician-author. Second, I will provide a detailed narrative synopsis—the “what happened”—which will serve as our foundation. From there, I will conduct a deep character analysis, followed by an exhaustive thematic dissection. Finally, I will offer my professional critique of the story’s literary craft.
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The Verghese Context: Medicine as Narrative
Before I delve into the story itself, I must position its author. One cannot, and should not, analyze “Abscond” in a vacuum. Abraham Verghese is not a writer who happens to be a doctor; he is a physician for whom writing is an essential act of diagnosis and healing.
His non-fiction blockbusters, like My Own Country, and his epic novel, Cutting forStone, are testaments to this. He is a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and his entire philosophy revolves around the importance of the “bedside” examination, the human touch, and the patient’s story as a diagnostic tool.
I raise this because “Abscond” is, at its core, a story about a diagnosis. It is about a medical case that defies a simple, clinical explanation. Verghese uses his fiction to explore the very questions that science alone cannot answer. He is uniquely positioned to write about the schism between the physical and the metaphysical, the test result and the lived experience, the scalpel and the soul.
When I read “Abscond,” I am reading a story penned by a man who understands the chemical reactions in the brain that produce memory, yet simultaneously respects the soul-deep weight that memory carries. He knows the pathology of fevers, but he also knows the power of prayer. This story is his examination room for these conflicting forces.
Narrative Synopsis: The Anatomy of a Memory
To understand my analysis, you must first grasp the narrative scaffolding. I will summarize the plot here, not as a simple recounting, but as an unfolding of the central conflict.
The Frame: A Tense American Road Trip
The story opens in media res—in the middle of the action. We are in a car with Dr. Thomas and his wife, Dr. Mina. Both are Indian immigrants, both physicians, and both are driving through the vast, anonymous landscape of the American West.
Immediately, I detect a palpable tension. This is not a joyful vacation. The dialogue is clipped, the atmosphere “simmering.” Verghese uses the confined space of the car as a pressure cooker. Thomas is driving, but his mind is clearly elsewhere. Mina, his wife, is the pragmatic, present-tense force, trying to navigate the simple realities of the trip: maps, gas, lodging. Thomas, however, is a man possessed. He is a man who has “absconded” from his own present moment.
The Flashback: The Case in India
The story’s entire center of gravity is not in the car. It is thousands of miles away and years in the past, in a Catholic mission hospital in India where Thomas and Mina first met. This memory, which Thomas finally reveals, forms the core of the narrative.
The case was that of a young, destitute girl brought in with a severe, unremitting fever and abdominal distress. As young, data-driven doctors, Thomas and his colleagues ran every conceivable test. They followed the Western medical playbook meticulously. Yet, all tests came back negative. The girl’s condition worsened. She was, by all scientific measures, dying.
The Catalyst: Sister Ann and the Novena
Enter Sister Ann, a nun at the mission hospital. Seeing the doctors fail, she represents a different paradigm. She asks Thomas for permission to begin a novena—a nine-day cycle of prayer—for the girl, petitioning a specific long-dead priest known for his healing powers.
Thomas, the scientist, is dismissive. He sees this as ritualistic, superstitious nonsense. He is a man of “facts,” and this intercession of faith is an irritant. Nonetheless, he coldly acquiesces. He has, after all, nothing left in his own medical arsenal.
The “Miracle”: A Crisis of Faith and Fact
This is the story’s critical joint. The novena begins. And, as the nine days progress, the girl’s fever… breaks. She begins to eat. Her color returns. By the end of the novena, she is, for all intents and purposes, cured. She walks out of the hospital.
The hospital’s religious staff, led by Sister Ann, declare it a miracle. The event is a triumph of faith.
Thomas, however, is thrown into a state of profound intellectual and spiritual crisis. He cannot accept this. His scientific mind needs an explanation. He dives back into the case, searching for a missed diagnosis. Was it a cyclical fever, like malaria, that simply ran its course? Was it a misread chart? Was it a psychosomatic recovery? He proposes various theories, but he knows he is grasping. He cannot scientifically prove any of them. The “miracle” stubbornly resists his attempts to pathologize it.
The Resolution: The Haunting Present
Back in the car, Thomas confesses this to Mina. The reason he is so distant, so agitated on this road trip, is that this old case—this “failure” of science to explain the world—has haunted him ever since. He absconded from India, from that hospital, but the memory has absconded with him.
Mina’s reaction is the story’s final, ambiguous note. She is not haunted. She has moved on. She remembers the case, but she has filed it away. She lives in the present. The story ends with them still in the car, the tension unresolved. Thomas is left alone with his ghost, a man of science who has seen the limits of his own religion.
Character Dissection: The Internal Worlds
In my analysis, the characters of “Abscond” function as a kindpre of “differential diagnosis” for the human condition. They each represent a different response to the central crisis.
Dr. Thomas: The Haunted Rationalist
Thomas is our narrator, and his psyche is the battlefield where the story’s conflict takes place. I read him as a man fundamentally defined by his need for control. As a physician, his entire training is based on a clear methodology: observe, test, diagnose, treat. There is a “right” answer, and it is his job to find it.
The case of the young girl is not a miracle to him; it is a failure of data. It is an intellectual and professional humiliation. The event exposes the terrifying possibility that his understanding of the universe—the scientific materialism that underpins his entire identity—is incomplete.
His “absconding” is twofold. First, he physically absconded from India, perhaps believing the new, secular world of American medicine would provide a more rational environment. Second, and more importantly, he is constantly “absconding” from the present. He uses the past to flee the complexities of his marriage and his life. He is, in my view, a deeply tragic figure, brilliant and capable, yet trapped in a prison of his own intellectual rigidity. He cannot simply be in the world; he must explain it. And when he fails, he is lost.
Dr. Mina: The Pragmatic Present
Mina is the necessary counterweight to Thomas. She is, in many ways, his opposite. Where Thomas is lost in the past, Mina is anchored in the present. Her concerns on the road trip are tangible: maps, fuel, time. She is not unfeeling; rather, I see her as having achieved an integration that Thomas lacks.
She, too, is a scientist. She, too, was at the hospital. But she was ableto process the event and move on. She has, in effect, “absconded” from the past in a healthy way. She has left it behind. She accepts the ambiguity of the event—not as a failure, but simply as a thing that happened.
Her presence in the car serves to highlight Thomas’s own pathology. She is the control group in his experiment of memory. Her pragmatism is not a lack of depth; it is a sign of a more resilient, better-integrated personality. She has made peace with the world’s ambiguities, while Thomas insists on fighting them.
Sister Ann: The Embodiment of Faith
Though she appears only in flashback, Sister Ann is the story’s catalyst. I do not read her as a simple, pious woman. She is the administrator of a different, and equally powerful, system of belief. Her “medicine” is the novena. Her “pharmacology” is prayer.
Verghese brilliantly portrays her not as an antagonist to Thomas, but as a professional peer operating on a different plane. She does not challenge his science; she simply offers an alternative when his science fails. Her confidence is absolute, not because she is arrogant, not because she “knows” the girl will be cured, but because her process (the prayer) is its own justification, regardless of the outcome.
For Thomas, the outcome is everything. For Sister Ann, the process of faith is the point. She represents a complete, self-contained worldview that Thomas’s scientific skepticism can neither penetrate nor dismiss, much to his eternal frustration.
Thematic Deep Dive: Deconstructing the “Abscond”
Now I move to the core of my analysis. The true “meaning” of “Abscond” lies in the intricate web of its themes. I will explore the four primary thematic pillars that I believe support this entire narrative.
1. The Central Schism: Faith vs. Science
This is the most obvious, and most potent, theme. I must stress that Verghese, the physician-scientist, does not write a simple polemic elevating faith over science. That would be facile. Instead, he presents an unresolvable tension.
The story is a perfect intellectual trap. Thomas needs a rational, medical explanation for the girl’s recovery. As an expert, I can list the possibilities alongside him:
- Misdiagnosis: The original diagnosis of a fatal condition was simply wrong.
- Cyclical Illness: The girl had an illness (like a variant of malaria or brucellosis) with a natural cyclical rhythm, and the fever broke on its own. The novena was a coincidence.
- The Placebo Effect / Psychosomatic Healing: The ritual, the attention, and the girl’s belief in the prayer triggered a profound psychosomatic healing response.
Verghese is smart enough to know all of this. He intentionally withholds a neat explanation. Thomas’s tragedy is that he cannot accept coincidence, and he is too arrogant to accept the power of the psychosomatic. He must have a pathological answer.
The story, in my reading, argues that “science” and “faith” are two different languages for describing the same unknowable reality. Science excels at “how.” Faith excels at “why.” Thomas is a man who screams “how” in a room that is quietly asking “why.” The story’s genius is that it honors both questions.
2. The Title’s True Meaning: The Verb “Abscond”
I find the title itself to be a masterpiece of lexical choice. Let’s examine it. “To abscond” means to leave hurriedly and secretly, typically to avoid detection or arrest. It is a word loaded with guilt, escape, and secrecy.
So, who or what is “absconding” in this story?
- Thomas and Mina Abscond from India: They are part of the “brain drain” generation, leaving their homeland for a better, more “rational” life in the West. They are absconding from the poverty, chaos, and, yes, the raw faith of their past.
- Thomas Absconds from the Present: He is a fugitive from his own life. He hides from his wife and his current reality by taking refuge in this obsessive memory. The road trip is not a vacation; it is an internal escape.
- The Memory Absconds with Thomas: This is the most brilliant inversion. The past is not a passive thing; it is an active agent. The memory of Sister Ann absconds with Thomas’s peace of mind. It steals his present. It is the arresting officer from whom he cannot escape.
- The “Miracle” Absconds from Explanation: The cure itself “absconds.” It evades scientific capture. It refuses to be “arrested” by a clear diagnosis. It remains at large, a fugitive in Thomas’s ordered mind.
3. The Immigrant’s Burden: The Haunted Past
I also read “Abscond” as a powerful, and deeply specific, story about the immigrant experience. Thomas and Mina are “Foreign Medical Graduates” (FMGs), a term that carries its own set of cultural and professional baggage.
They have successfully assimilated. They are “doctors” in America, the pinnacle of the immigrant dream. And yet, the story proves that assimilation is a myth. You can take the doctor out of India, but you cannot take the Indian “miracle” out of the doctor.
The American landscape they drive through is described as vast, empty, and sterile. It is a land of facts, highways, and predictable exits. It is the world Thomas thought he wanted. But the lush, chaotic, faith-drenched past of India haunts this sterile landscape. The story powerfully suggests that the immigrant’s identity is forever a “haunted house”—a new structure built on top of an old, unexorcised foundation. Thomas is the ghost in his own new life.
4. Marriage as a Mirror
Finally, the story is a quiet, devastating portrayal of a marriage. The car is a crucible for Thomas and Mina’s relationship. Notice how they communicate—or fail to. Thomas is silent, internal, and obsessive. Mina is vocal, external, and pragmatic.
Their disagreement about the past is, in fact, a proxy war for the state of their union. Thomas’s obsession with the “miracle” is a way for him to avoid engaging with the person sitting right next to him. I would argue that his fixation on the past is a form of emotional infidelity. He is having an “affair” with his own intellectual crisis.
Mina’s frustration is not just that he is distant. It is that he is choosing to be. He is choosing to be haunted because it is easier than choosing to be present, to be a husband, to be a partner in the navigation of their shared present. The unresolved case in India is a convenient scapegoat for an unresolved tension in their marriage.
A Critique: The Craft of the Physician-Author
As a piece of literary craft, I find “Abscond” to be exceptionally well-executed. Its precision is, fittingly, surgical.
- The Frame Narrative: The use of the road trip to frame the flashback is a classic but effective technique. The “present” in the car is static and tense, acting as a taut wire upon which the dynamic, colorful “past” can be threaded. The back-and-forth between the two creates a narrative rhythm that builds suspense masterfully.
- Clinical Prose: Verghese’s prose is his signature. It is clean, precise, and observational. He describes the young girl’s symptoms or the interior of the car with the same exacting, dispassionate eye. This clinical style makes the “eruption” of the miracle all the more jarring and effective.
- Mastery of Ambiguity: The story’s greatest strength, in my professional opinion, is its refusal to provide an answer. A lesser writer would have revealed a “trick” at the end—a misread lab result, a confession from Sister Ann. Verghese does not. He forces the reader, like Thomas, to live with the ambiguity. He does not provide a cure; he provides a perfect diagnosis of the human need for certainty in an uncertain world.
Conclusion: The Lingering Diagnosis
To summarize, Abraham Verghese’s “Abscond” is a story that I find to be dense, profound, and deeply unsettling. It masquerades as a simple domestic drama, but it is, in fact, a complex theological, psychological, and philosophical inquiry.
It is a story about the lines we draw—between past and present, faith and science, memory and reality—and what happens when those lines blur. Thomas, our protagonist, is a man of science who encounters a data point that his entire system cannot process. The “miracle” is a virus in his code, and it has caused his entire operating system to lag.
I argue that “Abscond” is ultimately a cautionary tale. It warns against the arrogance of certainty, whether it be the certainty of the scientist or the zealot. It champions, instead, the messy, ambiguous, and profoundly human space in between.
In the end, Thomas is still driving. He is still trapped in the car with his wife and his memory. Verghese offers no easy exit. He does not allow Thomas, or us, to “abscond” from the difficult questions. We are left, as in life, with the unresolved case, the simmering tension, and the long, open road ahead. It is a diagnosis that lingers long after the story is finished.
Would you like me to analyze the symbolism of the “road trip” in American literature and how Verghese subverts it in “Abscond”?
If you haven’t yet experienced the depth and beauty of “Abscond,” I highly recommend picking up a copy and immersing yourself in its narrative. Abraham Verghese’s storytelling will leave you enriched and inspired. Join the conversation by sharing your thoughts and reflections on “Abscond” in the comments below. Let’s explore the impact of this remarkable short story together!
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