He operated on a long series of canines, some of them old and ugly and some of them scarcely more than puppies and so beautiful he had to steel his heart from remembering the quaint insane newspaper ads of the anti-vivisection groups who preferred to sacrifice children to save animals. As he worked he zeroed-in on the most effective dosages, lowering the maximum quantities and raising the minimum ones, carefully recording the results in Kender’s coffee-stained notebook.

Three of the dogs that received large amounts of the drug developed infections and died.

Four of the animals receiving smaller dosages sloughed-off the transplanted kidney.

When he had narrowed down the field of choices it was evident that the range of effective but safe dosage was razor-thin, with rejection of the transplanted kidney on one side of the line and an open invitation to infection on the other.

He went on to test other drugs and had completed animal studies on nine of the agents when Dr. Kender admitted Peggy Weld to the hospital for a pre-operative physical.

Kender studied the lab notebook carefully. Together they translated the animal weights into terms of human weight and calculated proportionate drug dosages.

“What immunosuppressive are you going to use on Mrs. Bergstrom?” Adam asked.

Kender cracked his knuckles without answering, then tugged at his ear. “Which would you use?”

Adam shrugged. “In the agents I’ve tested so far, there don’t seem to be any panaceas. I’d guess four or five are unsatisfactory. A couple, I would say, are about as effective as Imuran.”

“But no better?”

“I don’t believe they are.”

“I agree with you. Yours is about the twentieth study we’ve done here. I’ve done ten or twelve of them myself. At least our transplant team is familiar with the drug. We’ll stick to Imuran.”

Adam nodded.

They placed the transplantation on the operative schedule for Thursday morning, with Mrs. Bergstrom in OR-3 and Miss Weld in OR-4.

He was solvent and doing much less moonlighting but he was still not getting enough sleep, now because of Gaby Pender. They toured the museums, went to Symphony and a couple of parties. One evening they stayed in her apartment and necked with wonderful progress but her roommate came home. On days when they couldn’t see each other, they talked on the telephone.

Then early in November she told him casually that she had to drive to Vermont for four days and asked him if he could come with her. He considered the implications, and then her choice of words. “What do you mean, you have to?”

“I have to go see my father.”

“Oh.”

Why not, he thought. He was assigned to the Bergstrom transplant, but they could leave Thursday night.

He was supposed to be off for only thirty-six hours but he traded with Meomartino against a future double shift so they would have more time.