It didn’t register with Lissa at all.

“Carry on. More blood! Now!” said Lissa fiercely, and redoubled her efforts, hissing into the boy’s ear, “Come on, Kai! Wake up! Wake up!”

THEY HAD ARRIVED at Guy’s Hospital: the ambulance doors were hurled open without ceremony and two porters and an A&E doctor jumped aboard.

“Move,” said the young doctor, who looked about nine.

“I’m not finished here,” said Lissa strongly, as she continued to work the oxygen mask, shined light in his eyes, checked for vitals.

“Yes, you are,” said the doctor. “Let me look at him.”

“I can do it!” said Lissa. His face. His beautiful face. He was a child, a child asleep, still warm—or was that their efforts?—still sleeping, dreaming, losing his homework, wishing he were a footballer or a rock star.

“Stand back!”

“I can do it!”

Lissa didn’t realize she had screamed, didn’t realize everyone stopped to look at her, as Ashkan pulled her back gently, his face a mask of concern. The junior doctor was already moving in, ignoring her.

“Step back.”

“I just . . .”

It was unheard of for a nurse to defy a doctor in this way, even if this particular doctor looked like he’d drawn his mustache on with a pen that morning.

“Step back!”

But she couldn’t; she could only stand, as if she had absolutely no idea where she was, her arms reaching out uselessly, muttering, “Kai . . . Kai . . .” into thin air, still believing fervently, even as the doctor looked at his watch, shook his head; even as the blood was no longer dripping on the floor, was getting ready to pool, to congeal. The only thread to life was her.

“I can just . . . try one more time . . .”

“GET HER OUT of here,” the young doctor was muttering as the porters tried to move the body onto the gurney. Several other medics appeared.

“Is next of kin here?” yelled one of them, and Lissa recognized in horror the people—perfectly nice, professional people—whom, in day-to-day life, she admired hugely. The transplant team.

“He’s not even dead, you vultures,” she found herself screaming, and Ashkan really did move then, bodily pulled her out of the ambulance as she swore and thrashed away. “He’s not even . . . !”

“I’m calling it,” said the doctor. “Take him to the HDU.”

This was where they held transplant patients, in a twilight world between life and death, just holding on for long enough to get the necessary signatures, to beg and plead that a life taken in vain would not be entirely in vain.

“18:38,” he said. “Can we move it fast? We’ve a . . .” And his voice sounded so very, very weary. “. . . hit-and-run incoming.”