“Damn it!” Creighton growled. “Put a lid on that machine, Benson! Or I—”
“Stuff it, Creighton!” Angel snapped back in a voice that dripped with authority, at a volume that surprised the hell out of Thorny.
A shocked silence gripped the room. Creighton appealed to the Director with a look of gaping-mouthed outrage, and got a stony stare in response.
“When,” Angel continued sharply, “someone’s insecurity and stupidity puts other people at risk, I think it’s better to say the situation and the idiot responsible stink to high hell than not. I won’t risk peoples lives just to be nice!”
The Director gave her a ghost of a tight-lipped smile. “We do have to keep priorities clear. But, Angel, the language of a crusty old family practitioner doesn’t quite fit you.” She looked at Thorny, who coughed in embarrassment. There was a scattering of soft laughter around the room as other people realized just whose language had inspired Angel.
“Ma’am, the words fit. Not only has Dr. Creighton’s behavior threatened to deny Linda Coombs and others the benefit of the speed and accuracy with which I can perform surgery, but the patient has asked that I, specifically, perform the surgery. I regret hurting Dr. Creighton’s feelings but those must be secondary considerations…”
There was more laughter, including from Angel. Thorny realized that one way of interpreting the laughter around the room was that the other doctors had reached a conclusion similar to Angel’s. Creighton, for once, sat in shocked silence.
“Ma’am,” Angel added, “Linda happened to latch on to me, but someday she’ll latch on to other things, and other people. Another husband, a child. She’s young, she’s a fighter and a very determined person. She’s not going to forget her medicine, sit around, mope, give up and die if we let her have a reason to live. And with respect to objectivity, one has to ask how much Dr. Creighton’s dislike of what I represent has affected his treatment of Linda.”
“I only suggest,” Creighton huffed, “that putting one willful, non-compliant patient ahead of others on the priority list not be dictated by the advertising needs, if you can call them that, of a robot.”
“My patient, Dr. Creighton,” Thorny interjected, “has not been non-compliant. And I don’t make any claims to objective detachment here, I’m too old for that charade. I brought Linda into this world. I don’t want her to rot waiting for a heart just because you don’t put her into the right category’ for reasons that I don’t think have a gnat’s ass to do with her suitability!”
“Doctors.” the Director interjected, at a volume and with an inflection that brought instant silence. “We were listening to Angel.”
“Thank you, Ma’am. Physically, Linda’s a good candidate for a transplant, and if I do it, she’ll be an excellent candidate psychologically. And I can help those unnamed other patients if I can help Linda. She’s a real person, who needs help. Please let me help her.”
A deep hush filled the office. Corny, but effective. Thorny reflected. On second thought, maybe it wasn’t so corny.
The Director leaned back and laced her fingers together. “I’ll have Dr. Tunman do a thorough review of the case and discuss it with all of you”—she nodded to the other transplant people, pointedly ignoring the fuming Creighton, “and we’ll follow your recommendations.”
She paused. “Angel, Nurse Miles told me about Linda’s feelings, and that she would be comfortable with you as lead surgeon on the transplant. From what I’ve seen today, you are a responsible, independently-thinking being, and highly motivated to help your patient—whether by feelings or programming doesn’t seem to matter. But… you aren’t a doctor and you aren’t even a legally responsible person.”
“I know, Ma’am. Dr. Benson could still supervise me, and a surgeon would have to be technically in charge of the operation. Whatever I may think about him as a person, I don’t want to deprive Linda of Dr. Creighton’s experience. Dr. Tunman has already agreed to help us from the cardiology side when the new heart is in, and I know I can do a very good job with the surgery itself. If Nurse Miles will take charge of support, I think that would make a very good team.”
Creighton’s face was now a stoic stone mask “I have no current objection to, uh, her performing the surgery with whatever assistance is suitable. A heart transplant is, after all, fairly straightforward from a technical standpoint. I can concentrate on donor selection and postoperative care, and monitor the operation itself from my office. But since I will be legally responsible for the patient, I reserve the right to have the final say as to how the operation is done. I assure all of you that I am as committed to this patient’s survival as anyone. And, well, I’ll try to be a good sport about it.” He gave Thorny a wintry grin. “Then have your dance, Thorny.”
But he’ll call the tune, Thorny finished the line silently. Creighton saw himself as Figaro? Despite himself, he felt some sympathy for the humiliated man. Modified sympathy. Angel looked concerned as well. Perhaps, he thought, there was a greater distinction to be made between biological emotion and her emulated anger than her other emotions; it was more copied, more phony.
The Director looked around the room for any other comments, but there weren’t any. “Very well. It’s a risk, but clearly one the patient wants to take, and arguably one that will help her morale and increase her chance of survival. Dr. Benson, Angel is your project and… Linda is your patient. I’ll look to you to organize everything. See me if you have problems; a lot is riding on this.”
“That’s fine with me, ma’am,” Thorny declared, forcibly putting aside any second thoughts.
“And with me.” Angel added.
The Director nodded curtly, and the meeting was over.
At his home office the next evening, Thorny watched Angel handle one of his young football patients with a badly dislocated thumb. She had his forearm and hand strapped to a conformal imaging plate, so he could watch what was happening as she maneuvered the joint back into place.
Thorny’s mind wandered to the advances he’d seen in four decades of practice. He remembered having to send patients to a hospital for a long wait to get a two-dimensional still photograph taken with radiation so hard it might cause cancer in its own right. And then waiting more hours, or sometimes a day or more for an “official” interpretation by an underworked, overpaid, “no weekends, 8-to-4 and off to the golf course” radiologist.
Nowadays, a three-hundred-dollar flat plate array of nanosensors could use the few photons of monochromatic light that made it through soft tissue to reconstruct a realtime three dimensional image of anything thinner than a man’s arm. Anyone who’d covered a bright flashlight with their hand could see that something like that was possible, and, about a decade ago someone had finally done it. In five years the price had dropped to the point where Thorny could afford one. Best of all, he didn’t need an “expert” anymore—his eye and the computer’s interpretation were just as good, if not better.
The young man, however, seemed to take it all for granted. He was clearly more interested in Angel’s sculpted anatomy than his own—something which pleased Angel no end but, he worried, might be sending the wrong message to her patient. Young men these days, he thought testily, had to learn to suppress any outward evidence of such natural interests to protect themselves from harassment charges, so Angel wasn’t doing the boy any long-term favor. Another thing to mention to her.