‘Mrs Chapman? Are you there?’
‘Sorry, yes, I’m here. That’s absolutely wonderful news. Excuse me, I think I’m…’ Kate searched for her handkerchief. ‘Oh dear, now you’ll think I’m a stupid, over-emotional woman.’
‘Not at all. We’re all delighted here, too.’
Kate did her best to sound composed. She took a deep breath and asked, ‘Can you say when, Doctor?’
‘We think some time in the next few days.’
‘That soon?’
‘As I understand it, the putative donor has been declared brain-dead but is currently on a life-support machine. Permission for organ removal has been obtained, so it’s just a question of completing certain formalities. The donor isn’t in a British hospital, so there will be transport details to arrange. I’m afraid I can’t give you any more details; I don’t have that information to hand.’
‘I think I’d rather not know any more,’ said Kate.
‘Of course. Why don’t you call us later on? We’ll be able to tell you more about dates.’
Kate put down the phone. Her hands were shaking and her pulse was racing. She didn’t know what to do first. Sandy! She had to tell Sandy! Her fingers were all thumbs as she dialled the number of the local hospital. ‘Get me the lab, please.’
‘Ringing for you now.’
‘Lab.’
‘Sandy, it’s me. A kidney’s going to become available for Amanda in the next few days!’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘No, I’m not. I’ve just had Dr Hatfull on the phone. They’ve identified a donor and they’ve got permission. It’ll be coming from abroad so they have transport to arrange but he sounded confident. It’s going to happen!’
‘That’s absolutely wonderful! I can’t believe it. I thought we’d have to wait for God knows how long.’
‘Me too. I thought the best that could happen would be that she would be allowed home, but this is even better.’
‘I still can’t believe it,’ stammered Sandy. ‘This is just so good, I…’ Words failed him.
She heard the sob in his voice. ‘I know,’ she said gently. ‘I feel just the same.’
All thoughts of the oven disappeared from Kate’s head. She wanted to tell absolutely everyone. She phoned her mother and father, and then Sandy’s mother and father, before putting on her coat and running down to the school to see Isa Jenkins. She met the janitor at the door.
‘Hello, Mrs Chapman,’ he said. ‘Coming back to us then?’
‘Soon, Joe, soon,’ Kate replied as she hurried along the corridor to Isa’s classroom.
Isa was teaching but Kate gestured to her through the glass door panel and she smiled and came outside.
‘Amanda’s going to have her transplant,’ said Kate, her eyes bright with excitement.
‘Oh my dear, I’m so happy for you,’ said Isa, putting her arms round Kate and hugging her.
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Kate. ‘It’s a prayer answered, a dream come true.’
‘And kidney transplants are really just routine these days,’ said Isa. ‘She’ll be back at school in no time and so will you, I hope. We all miss you.’
‘I can’t wait,’ replied Kate. ‘I just want everything to be as it was before this awful business started.’
‘I’m sure it will be,’ said Isa. ‘Now I’d better get back to the geography of the Amazon delta and you’ve probably got a thousand things to do.’
‘I don’t know where to start,’ laughed Kate. ‘I just had to come and tell you and thank you for your support through all this.’
‘No need,’ said Isa. ‘I’ll pray that everything goes well for her.’
When she got home Kate decided to phone Clive Turner at the Children’s Hospital and tell him the news.
‘What a piece of luck,’ he said. ‘That’s absolutely marvellous. I’m so pleased for you all. You hardly had to wait any time at all.’
‘I can’t believe it myself,’ said Kate. ‘I just wanted to thank you for suggesting the referral in the first place. I shudder to think what might have happened if it hadn’t come about.’
Turner wanted to point out that the Children’s Hospital might have been equally successful in stabilizing Amanda in the long run, but he didn’t. He realized that Kate was euphoric and excited and meant no slight to his own hospital. He simply said, ‘I wish her all the luck, Kate, not that I think she’ll need it.’
Lack of proper sleep almost caused Dunbar to make a serious mistake. He wanted to start work at once on analysing Ross’s research data disks and had loaded the first one into the computer in his office when he remembered the monitoring cable. He hit the eject button with a thump, and the disk popped out into his waiting hand. The blood started pounding in his temples. Had the disk registered its presence on screen before he’d hit the button? He hadn’t seen it come up in the corner of the screen but then he hadn’t been looking closely.
Fear had now made him very wide awake indeed. He had to act quickly. He brought out his notebook computer and quickly loaded the disk into it. He needed to know its title. The disc was named simply ‘Research Data One’. This was a bit of luck. He ejected it and replaced it with a blank disc which he initialized as ‘Research Data One’. There was no reason why he couldn’t have a disk of his own with that title. He’d leave it lying around on his desk, just in case anyone had seen Ross’s disk register when he’d put it in. He quickly transferred some accounts data to it, then, satisfied that he’d covered his tracks as well as he could, put Ross’s disk into his notebook computer and started to work through the data.
True to character, Ross was meticulous with his experimental records. They made straightforward reading to someone with a medical background. Dunbar found out exactly what he wanted to know, and quickly. That was the good part. The bottom line said that Ross and his colleagues had made much progress in altering the genetic make-up of experimental pigs to contain elements of the human immune system. The bad news was that they were still a very long way from being able to transplant pig organs into human subjects with any hope of success.
The records showed that immunological problems had plagued the programme from the outset. Ross and his team were struggling with a lack of stability in the transgenic pigs’ make-up which had brought progress practically to a halt and showed no sign of resolution in the near future. They had not even started to address the problems associated with the possibility of viral transfer from pigs to humans, the objection that was currently the main stumbling-block as far as government licensing was concerned.
This all meant only one thing to Dunbar. His recent doubts were well founded. He’d been on the wrong track all along. With things the way they stood, Ross would not have dreamed of attempting pig-to-human transplants.
After checking that she was still at home, Dunbar drove back to Lisa’s place to tell her the bad news in person. ‘There’s been no big research breakthrough,’ he said dejectedly. ‘Ross is nowhere near being able to transplant animal organs successfully. There’d have been no point in even trying. We were wrong.’
‘But the kids still died,’ said Lisa. ‘And I’m still certain they were given incompatible organs.’
Dunbar nodded.
‘And you actually saw them removing organs from a pig at the hospital.’
‘I’ve no doubt that Ross is up to something,’ agreed Dunbar. ‘But it’s not as straightforward as we imagined. Ross is just too clever a man. I tried making a list of everything out of the ordinary I’d seen at Medic Ecosse, to see if I could fit more pieces into the puzzle, but no success so far.’
‘What sorts of things?’ she asked.
Dunbar shrugged. ‘Little things. There’s a kid in at the moment, Amanda Chapman. She’s waiting on a kidney transplant. Medic Ecosse gave her a marrow puncture she didn’t really need — all her blood stats were known already. Everyone seemed to know that except the people in charge of her treatment.’
‘A marrow puncture?’ exclaimed Lisa as if it meant something to her.
Dunbar felt a chill across the back of his neck. ‘Yes. Why?’
‘Amy had that done as well,’ said Lisa.