opportunity to check out the baby.
Renata lay inside the germ-free chamber, hooked to an IV. Aside from her waxy pallor, she looked perfectly healthy. Un-der the warm glow of the heat lamp, her sparse hair shone blond with the softest of golden-bronze highlights. She lay on her back, quietly staring up at a bunny and duckie mobile hang-ing from inside the top of the box.
Fletcher seemed to study the results with cursory attention. 'This will do very well,' she said.
'Question,' said Landry. 'How did you know to bring her in when her tests before and after the abortion didn't include the HLA typing?'
Fletcher closed the folder and looked down at Landry from her half-inch advantage. 'Dalton's O
positive and so is the baby. I had her frozen sample retested, but the HLA results were ambiguous. Since Renata has a rare HLA, I grasped at straws. If we're lucky, Mark, my `woman doctor's intuition' will pan out, and this baby'll have a better chance.' She clapped him on the shoulder. 'And isn't that what medicine's all about?'
'Aren't marrow donors supposed to be close relatives? Mr. and Mrs. Chandler both seem fit.' What a snoop. 'Do you have access to their medical histo-ries?' Landry shook his head.
'Then you couldn't be aware of the mismatched ABO and Lewis factors and Mr. Chandler's history of hepatitis B, could you?'
Landry shook his head again.
'Would it be safe to assume that a closely matched stranger's marrow might, under such circumstances, be preferable to the parents'?'
'Well, yes, but why did you go straight to this woman in-stead of going through the marrow registry program?'
'I told you,' Fletcher said. 'Her HLA is rare.'
'But-'
'Look, scut puppy.' She was tired, worried, and irritated. 'You stick the patients, and I'll do the doctoring. Okay?'
Landry said nothing. Turning, he walked out of the infant ICU, leaving Dr. Fletcher behind in her anger.
He made straight for the file room and its computer.
'Is this thing logged on?' he asked.
The busy record keeper nodded without lifting his gaze from a stack of forms. Landry started tapping away, pleased to know that he was accessing the files with someone else's security code. Though everyone did it, he felt he had extra reasons to be secretive. The screen offered up the files on Karen and Renata Chan-dler. He scrolled through them quickly, noting within instants that their Rh factors were identical. As Dr. Fletcher indicated, though, their ABOs were indeed mismatched. The mother had AB blood, the baby had type O. A transfusion or marrow trans-plant from mother to daughter would be fatal. Renata's own blood would hemolyze-clump up and kill her.
No mention existed of the father in either file, so the hepati-tis B comment couldn't... Landry looked back at the blood groups. Something was wrong. Mother AB, daughter O. That can't be, he thought. Can it? If the mother was AB, the daughter would have to be A, B, or AB. She could never be O. Ever.
When the realization struck him, he laughed. Of course! She was in the fertility program. She got someone else's egg. Landry shook his head. What a jerk. Valerie Dalton must have been the egg donor. That's why Fletcher brought her in. Nothing super unusual in that.
Except, he realized, that Valerie Dalton was unaware of Fletcher's involvement in the fertility program. She was only familiar with the Fletcher that performed abortions.
A sickening sensation churned inside Landry's stomach.
Calling up Dalton's file, he noted with relief that the date of her abortion was March third. Scrolling back to Karen's file, he saw that her fertility operation took place January seven-teenth. Maybe I'm wrong. I have to be wrong. Or maybe...
He printed out copies of the screen pages, then darted over to Reproductive Endocrinology, fifty feet down the hallway.
The receptionist listened to his request. 'Well, hon,' she said in her raspy voice. 'I don't know what good seeing the old appointment books will do. We don't keep patients' addresses there.'
