A cloud passed over Linda’s face at the mention of children. She hadn’t been able to keep up with her old job at the newspaper, but Thorny had been able to find a lot of free-lancing editing work at the hospital and word of mouth had gotten her even more business. She could do that at home; that and the insurance settlement had given her an adequate, though not generous, income. But it seemed to him that she’d been a little morose and out of sorts lately. Maybe she could use a challenge.
“Linda, would you mind putting up with another little experiment?”
She sighed. “What now, Dr. Thorny?” Then she brightened. “Maybe you have an artificial ear for me that works off a remote control so I can turn off my hearing when certain people are talking at me!”
“Ha. I won’t mention any names,” he chuckled a bit, then sprung his idea. “Linda, what I’d like to try is to have Angel talk with you, as if she were going to do the surgery instead of Dr. Creighton. I’ll just sit in a corner and watch. You don’t mind me letting her practice on you, do you?”
“No. Angel and I are good friends. She’s teaching me how to knit; I’m up to moss stitch now. I tell everyone she’s the robot that cut my heart out, and they get this awful look on their faces, and we laugh and laugh. Yesterday, I asked how they made her look and act so human and she almost took herself apart in front of me. Said it was only fair since she’d seen most of my innards.”
Thorny laughed. “I guess that’s fair. Now, I’ve been too polite to ask that kind of question.”
“She doesn’t mind at all. She likes to show you everything. Her skin is thick and flexible, like ours. Her skeleton is just like yours or mine everywhere that counts for surface appearance, except it’s plastic. Everything underneath is in some kind of padded composite. She has muscles that swell and contract just like ours when they get electricity, but they can do it a lot faster. She’s got silicone implants for breasts—she says they’re the same kind they used to use in flesh-and-blood women before fat cultures. But they didn’t give her any nipples.”
Thorny wondered how difficult it would be to have the programmers tone down Angel’s cheerful exhibitionism; it wasn’t always appropriate. But how small a cage does one make for a butterfly?
“Well, she’s not likely to use them, is she now?” he said.
“Why not? She’d make a great nanny. I bet someone clever could figure out the plumbing. Then she’d look right in a T-shirt. And it would make her happier because she’d be able to make more people happy.”
“Linda, she was designed to be that way, it’s not like she was a human being—”
“Hey, Dr. Thorny, she is what she is. Who cares how she got to be that way? And I can think of at least one person who could learn a lot about being a real human being from her: your great Dr. Creighton. That pompous, lecherous phony can go take a flying you-know-what.”
“Hey, yourself,” Thorny chuckled—but it really wasn’t funny. So Creighton had been up to his old tricks with Linda, just this side of doing anything that would generate a formal complaint. One couldn’t really blame him; so many female patients went gaga over his looks and his natural charisma, the poor man probably thought that making a pass was a failsafe way to cheer someone up.
“Linda, just because somebody has an ‘M.D.’ behind their name, doesn’t mean they automatically qualify for a ‘Saint’ too. I’ll grant his bedside manner stinks, but he’s an outstanding surgeon, and by his own lights, a good person.” Aren’t we all? Thorny wondered. “He’s still responsible for you, and when the time comes he’s the one who’s going to give you your new heart.”
“I’m not going to let him cut me again. Or let him see me naked again.”
“Linda, you have to have the transplant.”
“Angel can do it.”
“Maybe she will. But it has to be under a specialist’s direction. As human as she seems, she’s legally just a tool. Like a scalpel, or a stethoscope. She doesn’t have her own malpractice insurance.” Or her own anything. She wasn’t a legal person, Thorny thought. Angel was a slave; property pure and simple. Maybe that had something to do with how protective Sarah Miles had been with her.
“Nuts. I want her to do it all alone.”
“Linda, that’s not possible.”
Linda shrugged and looked him in the eye. “Then no operation and I die. I’m ready. Doesn’t bother me at all. I shouldn’t have survived in the first place. Just turn me off and save the trouble.”
Thorny shook his head and tried to smile. “Please don’t talk like that. I’ve got too much work invested in you. What if we talk to one of the other surgeons?”
“That’s better, but not what I want. I want people to treat Angel like a real doctor. I’ve been trying to figure out why I didn’t die with Terry and my baby, and maybe this is it. So I can help her. You keep saying you want me to live, Dr. Thorny. Give me something to live for. Make them let Angel do my transplant.”
“Linda…” Thorny threw up his hands, then he thought of a way that she might accept. “I’ll work on it. But I want something from you, too.”
“Anything, Dr. Thorny, as long as Angel does the operation.”
“Leave yourself a little room for compromise, OK? Even if Angel were a human doctor, she wouldn’t be doing this alone.”
“OK I understand there have to be others around. But I want Angel giving the orders, I want her cutting me, and I don’t want Dr. Creighton anywhere near that operating room!”
“I’ll do what I can,” Thorny temporized.
“Please. My life depends on it.”
Thorny shook his head. “Well, then, I guess you should talk to your other doctor too. Let’s go find her.” They left the opulence of Dr. Creighton’s office for the elevator to the basement, the bustling lower floor corridors, and the children’s ward with its bright painted anthropoid ducks and chickens shedding feathery chips of paint here and there. They found Angel helping a hairless young girl in a red stocking cap build a castle from red foam blocks.
“Hi, Linda.” Angel beamed at them. “How are you doing today?” One wall of the castle started to collapse. Still smiling, Angel’s hands moved in a blur, catching the foam blocks in midair and setting them back in place. The girl giggled.
“Oh, OK Dr. Thorny thought I should talk to you.”
“I’d really be happy to talk to you.” Angel turned to the little girl. “Tippy, I have to go now.”
The girl’s forehead wrinkled. “Will you come back and play with me?”
“Sure. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
The girl giggled and turned to Thorny. “She can take her whole arm off!”
“Angel…” Thorny groaned.
Angel smiled and shrugged. “Bye, bye.”
“Bye,” Tippy said.
A few minutes later, they were in the cramped examining room of Thorny’s office. Its narrow crack of a window looked out over a shaded parking lot filled with dirty snow left over from winter. True to his word, Thorny positioned himself in a corner and tried to make himself invisible, almost knocking his ancient analog scale over in the process.
“Are you comfortable?” Angel asked her patient, after she and Linda had sat down.
“Yes.”
“How have you been feeling?”
“Oh, OK. Well, like I told Dr. Creighton, I’ve been getting a little stomach ache every now and then. And I’m a little out of shape. Terry’s gone, but still—”
“You’d like to feel good about yourself, I understand. Why do you think you’re out of shape?”
Linda shrugged, “I’ve put on some weight, so I guess that’s why I get tired going up stairs. And if I try to do any work around the house, I have to stop and rest after a few minutes. I can’t seem to swim full out for more than a couple of laps. Sometimes I wake up short of breath, like I had a bad dream or something. Maybe about the accident. But I’ll sit up and read for a half hour or so, then get tired again and go back to sleep. Do you sleep?”