But by the time the medical student arrived he had studied the notebook and was happy about being there. When he helped Kazandjian to prep a bitch named Harriet, mostly collie with lustrous brown eyes and terrible breath, she licked his hand with a warm, rough tongue. He wanted to buy a bone and sneak her into the room on the sixth floor but he remembered Susan Garland and instead steeled himself and put her under with a stiff jolt of Pentothal. He scrubbed and got ready just the way he would have for a human patient and while Kazandjian prepped a German Shepherd named Wilhelm he removed a kidney from Harriet and then while Kazandjian perfused Harriet’s kidney he removed a kidney from Wilhelm and from that moment he forgot they were dogs. The veins were veins and the arteries were arteries, and he knew only that he was performing his first kidney transplants. He worked very carefully and cleanly and when finally Harriet owned one of Wilhelm’s kidneys and Wilhelm owned one of Harriet’s it was almost one a.m., but he could feel Kazandjian’s silent respect, which pleased him more than if the student had put it into words.

They gave Harriet a minimum dose of Imuran and Wilhelm a maximum dose; it was not one of the new agents—in fact it was the one they had used on Susan Garland—but Kender wanted to do studies with the established drugs first, in order to be ready for the upcoming transplant on Mrs. Bergstrom. Kazandjian asked some intelligent questions about immunosuppression, and after they had returned the dogs to their pens the student brewed coffee over a Bunsen burner while Adam explained how the antibodies in the recipient’s system were like defensive soldiers reacting as though the transplanted tissue were an invading army, and how the function of the immunosuppressive drug was to strike a hard enough blow against the defensive forces so they wouldn’t be able to fight off the foreign organ.

By the time he was back in his room it was nearly two o’clock. He should have been able to fall into bed like a log but instead when he reached for sleep it eluded him. He was keyed up by the experience of the transplantations and haunted by a terrifying compulsion to telephone Arthur Garland and apologize.

It was after four o’clock when finally he fell asleep. Spurgeon Robinson’s alarm woke him at seven. He had dreamed of Susan Garland.

Have a ball, luv.

Around eight o’clock, he decided to get up and take a short run and then a very long shower, a combination which he had found sometimes could be substituted for rest.