So far, so good.
This is what their technology is trying to do: blend the robotic wonders of an artificial heart with the idea of cell regeneration and tissue compatibility. The best way of doing that is via a full organ — as in a beating-heart transplant like this — but the future hope is that stem cells, rather than full organs, will be enough.
Gruff Voice says, “No leaks. Blood flow is strong.”
Their goggled eyes meet again. They know this is the moment of truth. He gives her an encouraging nod. Maggie takes one more deep breath and turns to the perfusionist. “Turn it off.”
“Wait, shouldn’t we wean?”
“Not with the THUMPR7. It should kick in right away.”
The perfusionist hesitates.
“Do it,” Maggie snaps.
The perfusionist grudgingly switches off the bypass machine.
For a moment, nothing happens. Flat line.
Five seconds pass. Ten seconds.
The perfusionist says, “Doctor?”
“Wait,” Maggie says.
“It’s not working.”
“Then he’s dead either way,” Maggie says, while that sarcastic inner voice adds, And he ain’t the only one...
Ten more seconds pass, fifteen, twenty.
Ivan Brovski puts his large, gloved hands on both her shoulders as though to push her out of the way. “Doctor McCabe, what’s happening—?”
And then, with an audible grunt, the THUMPR7 starts beating.
BEAT... BEAT... BEAT...
Steadier now.
BEAT... BEAT... BEAT...
It’s working.
BEAT... BEAT... BEAT...
The room cheers.
BEAT... BEAT... BEAT...
Under the mask, Maggie’s face breaks into a wide smile. She looks up to lock celebratory goggle-eyes with Gruff Voice.
But he’s gone.
Maggie rips off her gloves, strips out of her gown, and steps into the shower.
The shower’s jet stream is powerful. Marc had always liked that in a shower, maybe more so because the showers during any kind of humanitarian mission were set on what Marc called “light urination.” When Maggie and Marc renovated the bathroom in their apartment, he offered the contractor no opinions on tiles, faucets, colors, toilets, design, only noting, “I want the water pressure to be so powerful I bleed.”
The pang again.
Weird when it comes back. She hadn’t felt him that much during surgery. Now, in the shower, with the powerful blast washing the blood and tissue of an evil man off her, once again grief makes its sneak attack.
She dries off and slips back into sweats. There is a full-size mask and goggles for her to wear on the way out. Forget it. If they recognize her, who cares? She enters that main tunnel again and heads to the makeshift ICU. She looks in the window. Ragoravich is still unconscious. There are monitors and six overly masked staff present. Maggie wonders whether any of these people had been on her team.
Through the glass, she hears it again.
BEAT... BEAT... BEAT...
From behind her, she hears Ivan Brovski’s voice. “A tremendous success.”
Maggie frowns. He sees it in the window’s reflection.
“You don’t agree?”
BEAT... BEAT... BEAT...
“I warned Oleg. I warned you. I don’t think it’s ready for human usage.” She turns to him. “Who were the other surgeons with me?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“To keep confidentiality?”
“Yes. You know now how we hire people. You know how we pay them. It’s like you, in Russia.”
“Speaking of Russia,” Maggie says. “You almost killed me.”
“Not really, no. You ran onto the roof. My men, they reacted. Aleksander was running away too at the time. It created something of a panic. We wanted to close it all down. We needed you alive, but the men didn’t know the mission. And then, of course, there was Nadia.”
BEAT... BEAT... BEAT...
“What about Nadia?”
He shrugs. “She was in many ways the lady of the house.”
“Are you saying she wanted—”
“I don’t know,” Brovski says. “It doesn’t matter anymore, does it?”
BEAT... BEAT... BEAT...
“Nadia led me here,” Maggie says.
“What do you mean?”
“Can I see your phone?”
“Excuse me?”
She lifts her hand and beckons for him to give it to her. He looks as though he’s about to protest but then, thinking better of it, he opens it with his face and hands it over. Maggie takes it and starts searching for the appropriate app. Brovski watches over her shoulder. Maggie doesn’t care. When she opens the app, she scrolls down.
“Good timing,” she says. “My being here.”
Hmm. The dropped pin is there. Nadia had been telling the truth.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“It’s nothing.”
Maggie hands his phone back to him. “It was good timing, I guess — my coming to France just when you needed me to do the surgery.”
Brovski shrugs. “We could have grabbed you and brought you here anytime.”
“So why didn’t you?”
He shrugs again. “No need. You showed up.”
BEAT... BEAT... BEAT...
“Yeah, I’m not really buying that, Ivan.”
“And I’m not really selling it either.”
“Do you know who killed my husband?”
Just like that. She holds his gaze.
“I can tell you what Oleg and I believed.”
She waits.
“You are adrenaline junkies. You always took too many risks with your humanitarian missions, and while your medical care benefited some, it wasn’t worth it. Many you saved ended up living short, miserable lives in squalor or getting killed in the next battle. You didn’t have to take such risks. You could have played it safer. Instead, you chose to keep rolling the dice. Eventually the dice came up snake eyes.”
BEAT... BEAT... BEAT...
“So it was just a matter of time,” she says.
“I know you want there to be more. And maybe there is. Your husband died a hero. But he also died a fool.”
Ivan Brovski starts to walk away.
“And Trace Packer?”
He says nothing.
“Do you know where he is?”
BEAT... BEAT... BEAT...
“You must be exhausted, Doctor McCabe.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I’m giving you today.” He nods toward the exit. “You know the way out.”
She starts toward him, but he slips into a room and locks the door behind him. Maybe that’s for the best. She’s far too exhausted right now to come up with a new strategy to get the truth out of him. She turns left and moves down that massive white artery back to the stairwell. At the top of the stairs, she pushes the barrels out of the way. She’s back up in the musty old cellar. She looks to the right, to the door, and she sees a man wearing a baseball cap exiting.
“Hold up!” she shouts.
He doesn’t. The door closes behind him. Maggie hurries after him.
Of course, he could be anyone. He doesn’t have to be the surgeon who stood across from her. But he’s wearing a baseball cap. That might be meaningless, but you don’t see a lot of men in France wearing them. In the United States, it’s almost a staple, especially when someone doesn’t want to be recognized.
But in France?
She opens the door and bursts out into the overgrown vineyard. It feels good to be back out of the bunker with its piped-in staleness. The air outside is both sweet and acrid, earthy and ethereal.
She looks left. Nothing. She looks right. Nothing. The only way out, as far as she knows, is to the right, to the gate where she has come and gone both times she’s been here. She sprints toward it. When she makes the final turn she can see the gate, and through the gate, the man in the baseball cap is getting into the back of a car.