Harvest

'That alone is enough to get you fired,' said Parr. He glanced at his watch. 'As of seven-thirty — that's right now — you're out of the residency programme.'

Abby stared at him in shock. She started to protest, but found her throat had closed down, strangling the words. 'You can't do that,' said Mark. 'Why not?' said Parr.

'For one thing, it's a decision for the Programme Director. Knowing the General, I don't think he'll take to having his authority usurped. For another thing, our surgical house staff is already stretched thin. We lose Abby, that means thoracic service rotates call every other night. They'll get tired, Parr. They'll make mistakes. If you want lawyers on your doorstep, that's how to do it.' He glanced at Abby. 'You're on call tomorrow night, aren't you?'

She nodded.

'So what do we do now, Parr?' said Mark. 'You know of some other second-year resident who can just step right in and take her place?'

Jeremiah Parr glared at Mark. 'This is temporary. Believe me, this is only temporary.' He turned to Abby. 'You'll hear more about this tomorrow. Now get out of here.'

On unsteady legs, Abby somehow managed to walk out of Parr's office. She felt too numb to think. She made it halfway down the hallway and stopped. Felt the numbness give way to tears. She would have broken down and cried right then and there, had it not been for Mark, who came up beside her.

'Abby.' He turned her around to face him. 'It's been a battlefield here all afternoon. What the hell did you think you were doing today?'

'I was saving a boy's life. That's what I thought I was doing!' Her voice cracked, shattered into sobs. 'We saved him, Mark. It's exactly what we should have done. I wasn't following orders. I was following my own instincts. Mine.' She made an angry swipe at her tears. 'If Parr wants to get back at me, then let him. I'll present the facts to any ethics committee. A seventeen-year-old boy versus some rich man's wife. I'll lay it all out, Mark. Maybe I'll still get fired. But I'll go down kicking and screaming.' She turned and continued down the hall.

'There's another way. An easier way.'

'I can't think of one.'

'Listen to me.' Again he caught her arm. 'LetVivian take the fall! She'll do it anyway.'

'I did more than just follow her orders.'

'Abby, take a gift when it's offered! Vivian accepted the blame.

She did it to protect you and the nurses. Leave it at that.'

'And what happens to her?'

'She's already resigned. Peter Dayne's taking over as Chief Resident.'

'And where does Vivian go?'

'That's her concern, not Bayside's.'

'She did exactly what she should have done. She saved her patient's life. You don't fire someone for that!'

'She violated the number one rule here. And that's play with the team. This hospital can't afford loose cannons like Vivian Chao. A doctor's either with us or against us.' He paused. 'Where does that put you?'

'I don't know.' She shook her head. Felt the tears beginning to fall again. 'I don't know any more.'

'Consider your options, Abby. Or your lack of them. Vivian's finished her five years of residency. She's already Board-eligible. She could find a job, open a surgical practice. But all you've got is an internship. You get fired now, you'll never be a surgeon. What're you going to do? Spend the rest of your life doing insurance physicals? Is that what you want?'

'No.' She took a breath and let it out in a rush of despair. 'No.' 'What the hell do you want?'

'I know exactly what I want!' She wiped her face with a furious swipe of her hand. Took another deep breath. 'I knew it today. This afternoon. When I watched Tarasoft in the OR. I saw him pick up the donor heart and it's limp, like a handful of dead meat. And there's the boy on the table. He connects the two and the heart starts beating. And suddenly there's life again. .' She paused, swallowing back another surge of tears. 'That's when I knew what I wanted. I want to do what Tarasoft does.' She looked at Mark. 'Graft a piece of life onto kids like Josh O' Day.'

Mark nodded. 'Then you have to make it happen. Abby, we can still make this work. Your job. The fellowship. Everything.'

'I don't see how.'

'I'm the one who pushed your name for the transplant team. You're still my number one choice. I can talk to Archer and the others. If we all stick by you, Parr will have to back down.'

'That's a big if.'

'You can help make it happen. First, let Vivian take the blame.

She was Chief Resident. She made a bad judgment call.'

'But she didn't!'

'You saw only half the picture. You didn't see the other patient.' 'What other patient?'

'Nina Voss. She was admitted at noon today. Maybe you should take a look at her now. See for yourself that the choice wasn't so clear. That it's possible you did make a mistake.' Abby swallowed. 'Where is she?'

'Fourth floor. Medical ICU.'

Even from the hallway, Abby could hear the commotion in the MICU: the cacophony of voices, the whine of a portable x-ray machine, two telephones ringing at once. The instant she walked through the doorway, she felt a hush descend on the room. Even the telephones suddenly went silent. A few of the nurses were staring at her; most were pointedly looking the other way.

'Dr. DiMatteo,' said Aaron Levi. He had just emerged from Cubicle Five, and he stood staring at her with a look of barely suppressed rage. 'Perhaps you should come and see this,' he said.

The throng of personnel silently moved aside to let Abby approach Cubicle Five. She went to the window. Through the glass, she saw a woman lying in the bed, a fragile-looking woman with white blonde hair and a face as colourless as the sheets. An ET tube had been inserted down her throat and was hooked up to a ventilator. She was fighting the machine, her chest moving spasmodically as she tried to suck in air. The machine wasn't cooperating. Alarms buzzed as it fed her breaths at its own preset rhythm, ignoring the patient's desperate inhalations. Both the woman's hands were restrained. A medical resident was inserting an arterial line in one of the patient's wrists, piercing deep under the skin and threading a plastic catheter into the radial artery. The other wrist, tied to the bed, looked like a pincushion of IV lines and bruises. A nurse was murmuring to the patient, attempting to calm her down, but the woman, fully conscious, stared up with an expression of sheer terror. It was the look of an animal being tortured.

'That's Nina Voss,' said Aaron.

Abby remained silent, stunned by the horror she saw in the woman's eyes.

'She was admitted eight hours ago. Almost from the moment she arrived, her condition deteriorated. At five o'clock she coded. Ventricular tachycardia. Twenty minutes ago, she coded again. That's why she's intubated. She was scheduled for surgery tonight. The team was ready. The OR was ready. The patient was more than ready. Then we find out the donor went to surgery hours ahead of schedule. And the heart that should have gone to this woman has been stolen. Swlen, Dr. DiMatteo.'

Still Abby said nothing. She was translured by the ordeal she was witnessing in Cubicle Five. At that instant, Nina Voss's eyes lifted to hers. It was only a brief meeting of gazes, an appeal for mercy. The pain in those eyes left Abby shaken.

'We didn't know,' Abby whispered. 'We didn't know her condition was critical…'

'Do you realize what will happen now? Do you have any idea?'

'The boy-' She turned to Aaron. 'The boy's alive.'

'What about this woman's life?'

There was no reply Abby could make. No matter what she said, how she defended herself, she could not justify the suffering beyond that window.

She scarcely noticed the man crossing towards her from the nurses' station. Only when he said, 'Is this Dr. DiMatteo?' did she focus on the man's face. He was in his sixties, tall and well dressed, the sort of man whose very presence demands attention.

Quietly she answered, 'I'm Abby DiMatteo.' Only as she said it did she realize what she saw in the man's