“Genet … ?” Hema said.
“There are two people in the waiting room you need to meet. One is an Ethiopian lady, Tsige. She used to live opposite Missing. Ghosh took care of her infant years ago. Marion met her again in Boston. The other is Mr. Holmes—he is Marion's neighbor. They want to speak to you.”
BY MIDMORNING, Hema knew the whole story. Genet had been ill with TB. But Appleby had his hands on the prison health records and they showed what we had not known before: Genet was also a silent carrier of hepatitis B. She contracted it (or so the prison doctor postulated) from an improperly sterilized needle or a transfusion or a tattoo when she was in the field in Eritrea; she could also have acquired it sexually. Genet had bled readily when we slept together, and I had been generously exposed to her blood and thereby to the virus. The incubation period of hepatitis B fit Shiva's hypothesis: it was six weeks from her visit to my falling ill.
Hema paced the waiting room, cursing Genet and bemoaning my stupidity in letting Genet get close to me again after everything she had put us through. Had Genet appeared just then, I would have feared for her life.
WHEN DEEPAK AND VINU made rounds together that afternoon they shared the latest lab results: my kidneys were failing; my liver, normally the source of clotting factors, wasn't producing any. If there were any viable liver cells left, they were showing no signs of recovering. There was not a bit of good news they could convey. They withdrew, Shiva following them. Thomas Stone and Hema stayed, silent around my immobile form. Now it was a watching game, a vigil to the end. There was no hope. The two of them as physicians knew it all too well, but if anything, experience made it even less palatable.
AT NOON, an ICU nurse paged both Deepak and Vinu to a Stone family conference. They came to find Hema and Shiva seated across from Thomas Stone in the small meeting room.
Hema, weary, head in her hands and elbows on the table, gazed up at the two young doctors in white coats, her son's peers. “You wanted to see us?” she said impatiently to Vinu and Deepak.
Deepak looked puzzled. “I didn't call this meeting.” He turned to Vinu, who shook his head.
“I did,” Shiva said. He had a stack of photocopied papers in front of him. A yellow legal pad was covered with notations in his careful script. Hema noticed an authority to his voice, a sense of action and energy and initiative that no one else seemed capable of displaying in the face of my terrible prognosis. “I called the meeting because I want to talk about a liver transplant.”
Deepak, who found it difficult to sit face-to-face with Shiva and not feel he was speaking to me, said, “We considered a transplant early on, Shiva. In fact, Dr. Stone and I talked about transferring Marion to Mecc—I mean to Boston General, Dr. Stone's hospital. Dr. Stone's team does more transplants than anyone on the East Coast. But we decided against it for two reasons. First of all, transplants are notoriously unsuccessful when the liver is being destroyed by fulminant hepatitis B. Even if we found a cadaver liver of the right blood group and size and we did the transplant successfully, we would have to use massive doses of steroids and other drugs that suppress the immune system to prevent rejection of the new liver. That would give the hepatitis B virus a field day and the new liver would be destroyed and we would be back to exactly where we are now.”
“Yes, I know,” Shiva said. “But what if the transplant is a perfect match? Not just the same blood group, but all six HLA antigens and other antigens you don't even measure—what if they all matched? Then no immune-suppressing drugs would be needed? Right? None. No steroids, no cyclosporine, nothing. Would you agree?”
“Theoretically, yes, but …,” Deepak said.
“A perfect match is what you would have if you took the liver from me,” Shiva said. “His body would see it as self, not as foreign in any way.”
The air had been sucked out of the room. No one spoke for a few seconds. Seeing Hema's expression, Shiva quickly explained, “I mean take a part of my liver, Ma. Leaving enough for me and taking out a lobe to give to Marion.”
“Shiva …” It was on Hema's lips to apologize for Shiva—this clearly was not his field, or hers for that matter. But then she changed her mind. She knew something about his tenacity when it came to medical situations that others thought impossible. “But, Shiva, has that ever been done—transplanting part of a liver?”
Shiva slid one of the articles over to her. “This is from last year. A review by Deepak Jesudass and Thomas Stone on the prospects for live donor liver transplant. It hasn't been done in humans, Ma, but before you say anything, read page three where I have underlined. They say, ‘Technically, the success in almost one hundred dogs, the ability to sustain life in the recipient and not jeopardize life in the donor, suggests that we are ready to perform this operation on humans. The risks to a healthy donor present a significant ethical obstacle, but we believe the critical shortage of cadaver organs obliges us to move forward. The time has come. Live donor transplant will overcome both the problem of organ shortage and the problem of cadaver livers that are damaged because it has taken too long to get consent and too long to remove the organ and get it to where it needs to be. Live donor liver transplant is the inevitable and necessary next step.’ “
Shiva wasn't reading, but reciting word for word from memory. It didn't surprise Hema, but it astonishmed the other physicians at the table. Hema felt proud of Shiva. She was reminded how often she took Shiva's eidetic gift for granted. She knew he could draw the page he was reciting from, reproduce it on a blank piece of paper, beginning and ending each line just as it was on the original, down to the punctuation, the page number, and the staple marks and photocopy smudges.
Shiva, sensing that he had quieted Hema for the moment, addressed Thomas Stone and Deepak, the two surgeons: “May I remind you that the first successful kidney transplant by Joseph Murray involved a dying twin who received a healthy kidney from his identical twin brother?”
Deepak spoke, because it appeared that Thomas Stone was in a state of shock, “Shiva, we also state in the paper,” Deepak said, “that there are ethical and legal implications—”
Shiva interrupted. “Yes, I know. But you also say ‘in all likelihood the first donors will be a parent or sibling, because such a donor has a pure motive and takes on the risk willingly’ “
Deepak and Thomas Stone looked like defendants whose alibi had just been shot down by a surprise witness. The prosecutor was moving in for the kill.
But the attack came from another quarter. Hema said, “Thomas, tell me the truth: in the last four days, given that this is your area of interest”—she tapped the paper, her fingers bunched together—”seeing Shiva lie next to his twin, did the thought of this live donor operation not cross your mind?”
If she expected him to squirm and swallow hard, she was in for a surprise: Stone looked steadily at Hema, and after a beat, he nodded almost imperceptibly. “I thought of the Murray twins, yes. I thought of it. But then thinking of all the hazards … I dismissed it. This is much, much harder than removing a kidney. It's never been done.”
“ I never thought of it!” Vinu Mehta said quietly. “Madam, I should have thought of it. Shiva, I thank you. In anyone else with acute hepatitis B, a liver transplant would simply feed the virus. But with a perfect match … Of course, Shiva, the issue is really the risk to you.”