“I can’t believe, uh, you’re a robot,” the boy said, manfully ignoring what must have been a fairly painful twist and pull from Angel. “You’re so pretty. And you act so, so natural like.”
“The people who made me had a lot of fun doing that, and I’m really happy that I please people. But most of that is just following examples. The hard part was my imaging processor and my future-modeling functions. The stuff that lets me predict what will happen when I do something like this.”
“Ouch! Oh, that feels better now.”
“It’s back in place, so it should,” Angel declared with what seemed motherly authority.
“See how the proximal phalanx—that’s the short bone—fits on the metacarpal bone—that’s the longer one—there now? That’s how it’s supposed to be. Your tendons—these ropy things here, and here—are going to be sore for a while and you might experience a little tenderness in the joint here, off and on for a few weeks. Don’t worry about it—just take it as a warning to take it easy in that area. Keep wearing this brace until the pain and swelling are pretty much gone. Call me in a couple of days, and let me look at it over the phone. Remember, the longer you can keep from reinjuring it the better. I’ll give you some exercises to do, too.”
“For my fingers?”
Angel laughed. “Just like any other part of you that plays football. The stronger and bigger your finger muscles are, the less likely that something like this will happen again.”
“You don’t have to exercise, do you?”
“Actually, I do. I have to move to pump lubricant to my joints; otherwise they’ll dry out and get hard to move. So I knit for my finger joints and have some other exercises that make sure I move everything. I’m programmed to feel good when I do it, so I do it whenever I don’t have anything better to do with my body and isn’t likely to bother anyone. My joints are really sophisticated; they can move in ways that yours can’t so that all my fingers are opposable. I can take my skin off and show you what it looks like inside. Want to see?”
The boy shook his head, embarrassed, “Uh, no, that’s OK.”
“Angel,” Thorny interrupted, “Our patient’s mother is probably holding dinner for him.”
“Oh, yeah.” The boy said. “I’d better get going.” He gathered up his things clumsily, with the thumb in its brace. Angel helped him. “See you, Doc, Angel.”
The boy was out the door, and Angel turned to him, displaying joy at what must have been near the top of her scale. Not quite appropriate for her last patient, Thorny thought, so something else must be going on. “Well?” he asked.
“We did it!” Angel gushed. “They decided to move Linda up on the waiting list, and she could get a new heart as soon as they find a match! The hospital cybersystem just got the decision, and now it’s going out on the national transplant network.”
Thorny smiled. Angel’s learned repertory of emotional display had grown over the last month to the point of near histrionics, and he’d had to caution her to tone it down a bit for some audiences because some people would react against that style of communication. But at home, she could let herself go. One of her programmed purposes in life was to display her abilities, and she got internal rewards for doing so. Was this, Thorny wondered, so very different from what went on inside his own biochemical machine?
“May I tell Linda?” Angel asked, with standard hopeful intonations.
“Sure,” Thorny agreed.
The operation started out uneventfully. Everything went by the book: quickly, smoothly, efficiently. Thorny glanced at Tunman, who stood silently in a corner of the operating suite, poised to take over when the new heart was in. Until the operation was completed, Creighton was officially in charge, and Tunman’s authority was as limited as Thomy’s. They all knew Elvis was on the line, monitoring everything from his office. But he said nothing.
Angel moved smoothly, accurately, tirelessly. She never paused, except to wait for one of her human assistants. They were ready for the donor heart in half the usual time.
The Rockwell unit came out and the connecting large blood vessels were trimmed carefully—too much and they would be stretched to reach the new heart, requiring a graft; not enough, and there would be tissue weakened by its prolonged contact with the prosthetic.
The new heart was that of a thirty-year-old woman from Alabama, brain-dead of a gunshot wound inflicted by a husband who’d complained of her laziness. It was the twenty-first century, thought Thorny, but some things never change. The one saving grace was that the murderer would probably also wind up on the donor list—as soon as his appeals ran out. Dr. Creighton, in a rare display of personal concern, had personally flown to Montgomery to examine the potential donor, and brought the organ back in his own private jet. Perhaps, Thorny thought, the man had learned a lesson.
An overhead waldo descended to the carrier, cradled the new heart out in a basket of arms, and set it in place as Angel held the chest cavity open. The microwalds began connecting blood vessels immediately, gluing the small ones, adding a few stitches for the main arteries.
“Any problems?” Angel asked. Everyone said no, so she started the heart, sending a slight current through one of the waldos. The heart began beating, and Thorny sighed with relief. Angel touched it gently, almost lovingly, and then let it take over fully from the heart-lung bypass. Nurse Miles shot a look at him.
“She can hear through her fingers. She’s listening.”
Angel froze. “Thorny, the heart’s defective. Listen, I’ll send it through the cybersystem.”
Thorny heard the rhythmic swish of blood coursing through the heart from a nearby speaker. A few seconds later a tri-D view of the heart with animated false-color blood flow appeared on a monitor.
“Damn,” he said. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was seeing, but he knew it wasn’t good.
Angel spoke, “This heart has a flail anterior leaflet and wide-open mitral regurgitation.”
Tunman nodded in agreement, but Thorny didn’t see him. Even a nonspecialist like himself knew what “wide-open mitral regurgitation” meant—with every heart beat, much of her blood spurted back through the leaking mitral valve into her left atrium and lungs, and not enough went to the rest of her body. How could that happen? Every donor heart was supposed to be thoroughly checked before it was harvested!
Linda was as good as dead. She was weak already, and this heart would never sustain her. It wasn’t Angel’s fault, nor his, but there was no question in his mind where the blame would fall.
“I see it, too.” Creighton’s disembodied voice broke in, very quickly. “The heart will have to be removed and a new Rockwell implanted. And I don’t want any argument from you, Benson! Stabilize her and I’ll be in with the new unit in ten minutes.” His link went off line.
“No, her kidneys won’t take another wait on the donor list.” Angel declared, “Let’s fix the valve.”
You can’t do that, Thorny almost said. Angel “knew” the standard techniques—but she’d never actually done that kind of operation, and not even the best, most experienced human surgeons were always successful. If she ignored Creighton’s order, and Linda died…
It was bad enough that Linda’s life was at stake—but, potentially, the lives of so many other people that Angel and her successors could help were also.
She looked questioningly up at Thorny.
“Bruk?” he asked.
“You have ten minutes, I think,” the cardiologist coolly replied.
Thorny’s throat felt like it was on fire, and the pressure building in the center of his chest made him wonder if he might need a new heart soon, too. But… heart, kidneys, the patient’s mind, the whole patient. It was a “general practice” decision if there ever was one. He nodded.