“Nicole,” Mr. Kim said in an agonized whisper as soon as he recognized her. His face was nothing but blackened skin. Even speaking one word was painful. “I want to die,” the man said, nodding at his wife in the corner.
Mrs. Kim stood up and approached Nicole. “My husband wants me to sign the euthanasia papers,” she said. “But I am unwilling unless you can tell me that there is absolutely no chance he can ever be happy again.” She started to cry but stopped herself.
Nicole hesitated for a moment. “I cannot tell you that, Mrs. Kim,” Nicole said grimly. She glanced back and forth between the burned man and his wife. “What I can tell you is that he will probably die sometime in the next twenty-four hours and will suffer ceaselessly until his
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death. If a medical miracle occurs and he survives, he’ll be seriously disfigured and debilitated for the rest of his life.”
“I want to die now,” Mr. Kim repeated with effort.
Nicole sent the Tiasso for the euthanasia documents. The papers required signatures from the attending physician, the spouse, and the individual himself if, in the opinion of the doctor, he was competent to make his own decisions. While the Tiasso was gone, Nicole motioned to Ellie to meet her out in the hall.
“What are you doing here?” Nicole said quietly to Ellie when they were out of earshot. “I told you to stay at home and rest. You had a bad concussion.”
“I’m all right, Mother,” Ellie said. “Besides, when I heard that Mr. Kim was badly burned, I wanted to do something to help. He was such a good friend back in the early days.”
“He’s in terrible shape,” Nicole said, shaking her head. “I can’t believe he’s still alive.”
Ellie reached out and touched her mother on the forearm. “He wants his death to be useful,” she said. “Mrs. Kim talked to me about it. I’ve already sent for Amadou, but I need for you to talk to Dr. Turner.”
Nicole stared at her daughter. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“Don’t you remember Amadou Diaba? Eponine’s friend, the Nigerian pharmacist with the Senoufo grandmother. He’s the one who caught RV-41 from a blood transfusion. . , . Anyway, Eponine told me that his heart is rapidly deteriorating.”
Nicole was silent for several seconds. She could not believe what she was hearing. “You want me,” she said finally, “to ask Dr. Turner to perform a manual heart transplant, right now, in the middle of this crisis?”
“If he decides now, it can be done later tonight, can’t
it? Mr. Kirn’s heart can be kept healthy at least that long.”
. “Look, Ellie,” Nicole said, “we don’t even know—”
“I already checked,” Ellie interrupted. “One of the Tiassos verified that Mr. Kim would be an acceptable donor.”
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Nicole shook her head again. “All right, all right,” she said. “I’ll think about it. Meanwhile, I want you to lie down and rest. A concussion is not a trivial injury.”
“You’re asking me to do whatf” an incredulous Dr. Robert Turner said to Nicole.
“Now, Dr. Turner,” Amadou said in his British acce.it, “it is not Dr. Wakefield who is really making the request. It is I. I beseech you to perform this operation. And please do not consider it risky. You have yourself told me that I will not live more than three months longer. I know full well that I may die on the operating table. But if I survive, according to the statistics you showed me, I have a fifty-fifty chance of living eight more years. I could even marry and have a child.”
Dr. Turner spun around and glanced at the clock on his office wall. “Forget for a moment, Mr. Diaba, tiiat it is past midnight and I have been working nine hours straight with burn victims. Consider what you are asking. I have not performed a heart transplant for five years. And I have never ever done one without being supported by the finest cardiological staff and equipment on the planet Earth. All the surgical work, for example, was always done by robots.”
“I understand all that, Dr. Turner. But it is not really germane. I will certainly die without the operation. There will almost certainly not be another donor in the near future. Besides, Ellie told me that you have recently been reviewing all the heart transplant procedures, as part of your work in preparing your budget request for new equipment—”
Dr. Turner flashed a quizzical look at Ellie. “My mother told me about your thorough preparation, Dr. Turner. I hope you’re not upset that I said something to Amadou.”
“I will be pleased to assist you in any way I can,” Nicole added. “Although I have never done any heart surgery myself, I did complete my residency at a cardiological institute.”
Dr. Turner looked around the room, first at Ellie, then
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at Amadou and Nicole. “Then that settles it, I guess. I don’t see where you’ve given me much choice.”
“You’ll do it?” Ellie exclaimed with youthful excitement.
“I wi).I try,” the doctor answered. He walked over to Amadou Diaba and extended both his hands. “You do know, don’t you, that there is very little chance you will ever wake up?”
“Yes, sir, Dr. Turner. But very little chance is better than none. … I thank you.”
Dr. Turner turned to Nicole. “I’ll meet you in my office for a procedure review in fifteen minutes. And by the way, Dr. Wakefield, will you please have a Tiasso bring us a fresh pot of coffee?”
Preparing for the transplant operation brought back memories that Dr. Robert Turner had buried in the recesses of his mind. Once or twice he even imagined for several seconds that he had actually returned to the Dallas Medical Center. He remembered mostly how happy he had been in those distant days on another world. He had loved his work; he had loved his family. His life had been almost perfect.
Drs. Turner and Wakefield carefully wrote down the exact sequence of events that they would follow before they began the procedure. Then, during the operation itself, they stopped to check with each other after each major segment was completed. No untoward events occurred at any time during the procedure. When Dr. Turner removed Amadou’s old heart, he turned it over so that Nicole and Ellie (she had insisted on staying in case there was anything she could do to help) could see the badly atrophied muscles. The man’s heart was a disaster. Amadou would probably have died in less than a month.
An automatic pump kept the patient’s blood circulating while the new heart was “hooked up” to all the principal arteries and veins. This was the most difficult and dangerous phase of the operation. In Dr. Turner’s experience, this segment ‘had never ever been performed by human hands.
388 ARTHUR C. CLARKE AND GENTRY LEE
Dr. Turner’s surgical skills had been finely tuned by the many manual operations he had conducted during his three years in New Eden. He surprised even himself with the ease with which he connected the new heart to Amadou’s critical blood vessels.
Toward the end ,of the procedure, when all of the dangerous phases had been completed, Nicole offered to perform the few remaining tasks. But Dr. Turner shook his head. Despite the fact that it was almost dawn in the colony, he was determined to finish the operation himself.
Was it the extreme fatigue that caused Dr. Turner’s eyes to play tricks on him during the final minutes of the operation? Or could it perhaps have been the surge of adrenaline that accompanied his realization that the procedure was going to be successful? Whatever the cause, during the terminal stages of the operation, Robert Turner periodically witnessed remarkable changes in the face of Amadou Diaba. Several times his patient’s face slowly altered before his eyes, the features of Amadou becoming those of Carl Tyson, the young black man that Dr. Turner had murdered in Dallas. Once, after finishing a stitch, Dr. Turner glanced up at Amadou and was frightened by Carl Tyson’s cocky grin. The doctor blinked, and looked again, but it was only Amadou Diaba on the operating table.
After this phenomenon had occurred several times, Dr. Turner asked Nicole if she had noticed anything unusual about Amadou’s face. “Nothing but his smile,” she replied. “I’ve never seen anyone smile like that under anesthesia.”
When the operation was over and the Tiassos reported that all of the patient’s vital signs were excellent, Dr. Turner, Nicole, and Ellie were exultant despite their exhaustion. The doctor invited the two women to join him in his office, for one final celebratory cup of coffee. At that moment, he didn’t yet realize that he was going to propose to Ellie.
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