THE TRIP THROUGH the pitch-black countryside seemed to take forever. Jake had the headlights on high beam, given the unlikeliness of bumping into anyone—at least until 4:30, when the farmers started getting up—and every hedgerow, it seemed, contained a pair of suddenly glowing eyes. Creatures stirred by the road: hooting owls, a shiver of starlings taking off from a tree, a quick rustling in the gorse or the high grass as small creatures rumbled through, past almost before you knew it. Cormac imagined the ambulance, the only little pool of light in the whole world, as it shot past distant darkened farmhouses and vast fields of sleeping cows, one occasionally stirring itself sleepily to watch as the precious cargo sped by; the animals of the Highlands, it felt to Cormac—ridiculously, of course—standing aside respectfully to let them through, nothing standing in their way, as a girl sat on a bed, tracing a plane through the night skies.

Chapter 11

The sun rose at six A.M., approaching the March equinox, and Cormac was there to see it, partly because he’d gotten caught up in making sure the operation went all right and partly because he had to wait for Jake, who had to sleep an acceptable amount of time before he was allowed to drive the ambulance back again.

He didn’t mind. He’d sat with the parents for a while, then, as Joan was still back in Kirrinfief, he took the calls from the hospital office in London, after explaining who he was. He was a little intimidated, talking to the world-class teaching hospital—it felt a little like taking an exam—but he explained as much of Islay’s backstory and state of mind as he could and felt he was more or less doing all right.

The plane had landed at a little after one o’clock, and another ambulance was dispatched and sent screaming through the streets, with absolutely no cares whom it woke in the process.

Cormac had watched as they’d jumped out the back, running. The icebox was so small, so inconsequential looking. It looked like nothing, even as it contained the whole world.

How amazing. And also the sheer luck: the tissue matching, the exactness of the match. He watched as they dashed in, said a wee prayer. Wondered, briefly, about the person who had sacrificed his life to give it, and to think how very, very lucky they were. Or should be.

LISSA GAVE UP at six. It was light. She closed her heavy, crusty eyes, opened them again, and thought at least she could get in first in the shower, wash it all away. That was one good thing about the nurses’ accommodations: it was triumphantly overheated, which meant almost limitless amounts of hot water, as long as you didn’t mind the low water pressure that made it dribble.