THE CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS ON THE WARD DID NOTHING TO LIFT LUCY’S spirits. The last few weeks had been hellish, and she sat awaiting her biopsy with a sense of dread. Though not strictly a painful procedure, the feeling of pending discomfort was exacerbated by a mood of heavy gloom that had overtaken her ever since the headaches had started and the nightmares settled in. The sense that she was rebuilding her life with a future to look forward to was now almost terminated in her mind.

It was so difficult to understand. Her posttransplant period had initially gone well: her progress was exemplary. Beyond slightly shaky hands and appetite cravings and an odd feeling that her mind was sometimes not wholly her own, the drugs hadn’t caused her any especially unpleasant side effects, and she was managing her health and her psychological well-being better than anyone had anticipated. Then in early November, she got a cold, which sent Alex and Courtney Denham into overdrive. She knew infections were serious, and she’d been fastidious about hygiene, diet, and her lifestyle. It was just a cold, but her temperature soared out of control, and Alex—regardless of Amel’s insistence that he had done nothing at all that was even close to negligent—blamed himself for the evening on the boat, the excursion to Mortlake, even the possibility that she’d somehow come into contact with the cat litter at his flat. Unable to account for anything else that might have sent her from the glowing recuperation period after her transplant to this current downward spiral, he watched her now like a first-time mother with a newborn. He was completely professional, never actually communicating alarm to her; but his actions told her he was her clinician again, and their journey as two attracted people was on hold. Long sessions talking to Mr. Azziz, Mr. Denham, and a new consultant based at the Brompton indicated that Alex was seriously worried. He disappeared to the lab, ran tests personally, changed her medication, and fretted.