“You shouldn’t miss the experience. We adopted her, you know?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“I fought with Bonnie about that. For five years. I was ashamed. But then we finally got her, six weeks old . . .” Garland took the prescription, started to say something else, shook his head and walked away.

The transplant had been done on Friday. By the following Wednesday Adam felt in his bones that they were home free.

Susan Garland’s blood pressure was still high, but the kidney was functioning as though custom-designed.

“I never thought my heart would pound because somebody called for a bedpan,” Bonita Garland told him.

It would be a while yet before her daughter could be comfortable. The incision bothered her and she was weakened by the drugs they administered to keep her system from rejecting the kidney. She was depressed. She snapped at well-meant remarks and she wept at night. On Thursday she brightened during a visit from Howard, who turned out to be a skinny boy, painfully shy.

It was Howard’s effect on her that gave Adam the idea.

“Who’s her favorite radio disc jockey?”

“I think J. J. Johnson,” her mother said.

“Why don’t you call him and ask him to dedicate some numbers to her on Saturday night? We can invite Howard to visit her. She won’t be able to dance or even leave her bed, but under the circumstances it might be an acceptable substitute.”

“You should be a psychiatrist,” Mrs. Garland said.

“My private dance?” Susan said when they told her about it. “My hair’s got to be washed. It’s grubby.” Her mood changed so drastically that, by now carried away, Silverstone telephoned and ordered a corsage, spending for red roses money he had earmarked for other purposes, and dictating a card:

Have a ball, luv.

On Friday her morale was good but it dropped as evening approached. When Adam came by on rounds he found that she had listed several complaints with the nurse.

“What’s the matter, Susie?”

“I ache.”

“Where?”

“All over. My stomach.”

“You’ve got to expect a little of that. After all, you’ve had a major operation.” He knew that you could fall into the trap of over-coddling. He checked the surgical wound, which was unremarkable. Her pulse rate was up a little, but when he cuffed her arm and took her blood pressure he grinned in satisfaction. “Normal. For the first time. How do you like them apples?”

“Good.” She smiled faintly.

“You get some sleep, now, so you can enjoy your dance tomorrow night.”

She nodded and he hurried away.

It was six hours later that the floor nurse, coming into her room with medication, discovered that in her sleep the girl had bled to death internally during the quiet hours of the night.

“Dr. Longwood wants the Garland case discussed at the next meeting of the Death Committee,” Meomartino said over lunch the next day.

“I don’t think that’s fair,” Adam said.

They were sitting with Spurgeon Robinson at a table next to the wall. He was toying with the horrible stew the hospital served every Saturday. Spurgeon ate his apathetically while Meomartino virtually shoveled it away. How the hell had the cliché evolved which insisted that the rich had sensitive stomachs, Adam asked himself.