Outside the hospital there was still traffic but it was thinning. The air blew in from the sea and over the dirtiest part of the city, carrying a rich mixture of smells, most of them bad. He felt like swimming twenty fast laps or making prolonged love, some activity frenziedly physical that might lighten the weight pushing him into the concrete. If he were anything but the son of a drunkard he would have gone to a bar. Instead he walked across the street to Maxie’s and had canned chowder and two cups of black coffee. There wasn’t a damn thing the kid behind the counter could do to or for the chowder. The coffee was like a first kiss from an ugly girl, nothing to brag about but comforting.

The Surgical Fellow, Meomartino, had established the lines of communication between the Operating Rooms and the donor’s next-of-kin. You had to hand it to him, the system worked, Adam Silverstone thought grudgingly as he scrubbed away at his nails.

Spurgeon Robinson was stationed at the door of OR-3.

Upstairs, in the surgical office on the first floor, another intern named Jack Moylan waited with Mrs. Connors. In Moylan’s pocket was a slip giving permission for autopsy. He sat with the telephone receiver held to his ear, listening for something to come over the silent open line. At the other end of the line was a first-year resident named Mike Schneider, who sat behind the desk in the corridor outside the OR door.

Ten feet from where Spurgeon stood and watched and waited, Paul Connors lay on the table. It was more than twenty-four hours since he had been brought into the hospital, but the respirator still breathed for him. Meomartino already had prepped him and placed a sterile plastic drape over the abdominal area.

Near him Dr. Kender, the Associate Chief of Surgery, talked softly with Dr. Arthur Williamson of the Department of Medicine.

At the same time in adjoining OR-4, Adam Silverstone, by now scrubbed and gowned, walked to the operating table on which Susan Garland lay. The girl, sedated, stared at him sleepily, not recognizing him behind the surgical mask.

“Hi, luv,” he said.

“Oh. You.”

“How you doing?”

“Everybody in sheets. You’re all so weird.” She smiled, and closed her eyes.

At 7:55 in OR-3 Dr. Kender and Dr. Williamson placed the electrodes of an electroencephalograph on Paul Connors’ skull.

As it had on the previous evening, the EEG’s stylus drew a straight line on the graph paper, confirming their knowledge that his mind was not alive. Twice in twenty-four hours they had recorded the absence of electrical activity in the patient’s brain. His pupils were widely dilated and they found no peripheral reflexes.

At 7:59 Dr. Kender turned off the respirator. Almost at once, Paul Connors ceased to breathe.

At 8:16 Dr. Williamson checked for a heart-beat and, finding none, declared him to be dead.

Immediately, Spurgeon Robinson opened the door leading to the corridor. “Right now,” he said to Mike Schneider.