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“Miss Adams?” She was startled by the voice directly behind her, and she wheeled on one heel to face it.

“Yes?”

He extended a powerful, cool hand. “I'm Peter Hallam.” As she shook his hand, she found herself looking up into the sharply etched, handsome, well-lined face of a man with blue eyes and gray hair and a smile that hovered in his eyes but didn't quite reach his lips. Despite their conversation on the phone, he wasn't at all what she had expected. She had painted a totally other mental picture of him. He was much taller, and so powerfully built, his shoulders were pressed into the starched white coat he wore over a blue shirt, dark tie, and gray trousers, and one instantly guessed he had played football in college. “Have you been waiting long?”

“Not at all.” She followed him to a table, feeling less in control than she would have liked. She was used to having a certain impact on her subjects, and here she had the impression of simply being dragged along in his wake. There was something incredibly magnetic about him.

“Coffee?”

“Please.” Their eyes met and locked, each one wondering what they would discover in the other, Mend or foe, supporter or opponent. But for the moment they had one thing in common. Pattie Lou Jones, and Mel was anxious to ask him about her.

“Cream and sugar?”

“No, thanks.” She made a move as though to join him on the food line, but he waved a hand toward an empty chair.

“Don't bother. I'll be right back. You keep an eye on the table.” He smiled and then she felt something gentle wash over her. He looked like a kind man, and a moment later he returned with a tray bearing two steaming cups, two glasses of orange juice, and some toast. “I wasn't sure if you'd had breakfast.” There was something so basically decent and thoughtful about him. She found herself instantly liking him.

“Thank you.” She smiled at him and then couldn't hold back any longer. “How's Pattie Lou?”

“She settled in nicely last night. She's a courageous little kid. She didn't even need her mother to stay with her.” But Mel somehow suspected that had to do with the comforting welcome she got from Peter Hallam and his team, and she was right on that score. His patient's mental well-being was of major importance to him, which was extremely rare for a surgeon. He had spent several hours with Pattie Lou after she arrived, getting to know her, as a person, not just an accumulation of data. With Sally gone, Peter had no other major crisis to attend to and now he wasn't thinking of Sally, only Pattie.

“How do her chances look, Doctor?” Mel was anxious to hear what he thought, and hopeful that the prognosis would be good.

“I'd like to say good, but they aren't. I think fair is a more accurate assessment of the situation.” Mel nodded somberly and took a sip of coffee.

“Will you do a transplant on her?”

“If we get a donor, which isn't very likely. Donors for children are very rare, Miss Adams. I think my first thought was the right one. Repairing her own heart as best we can and maybe putting in a pig valve to replace a badly damaged valve.”

“A pig's valve?” The thought unnerved her a little.

He nodded. “I think so, that or sheep.” The use of an animal valve had long since been common, at least to Peter.

“When?”

He sighed and narrowed his eyes, thinking about it as she watched him. “We'll run a battery of tests on her today, and we might do the surgery tomorrow.”

“Is she strong enough to survive it?”

“I think so.” Their eyes met and held for a long moment. There were no guarantees in this business. There were never sure wins, only sure losses. It was a tough thing to live with, day by day, and she admired what he was doing. She felt a strong urge to tell him that, but somehow it seemed too personal a statement to make, so she didn't, and kept the conversation to Pattie Lou and the story. After a while, he looked searchingly at Mel. She was so interested, so human. She was more than just a reporter. “What's your interest in all this, Miss Adams? Just another story or something more?”

“She's a special little girl, Doctor. It's difficult not to care about her.”

“Do you always care that much about your subjects? It must be exhausting.”

“Isn't that true of you? Do you care about them all, Doctor?”

“Almost always.” He was being very honest with her and it was easy to believe him. The patient he didn't care deeply about would be a very, very rare exception. She had already sensed that about him. And then he looked at her with a curious smile; her hands were folded in her lap as she watched him. “You didn't bring a notebook. Does that mean you're taping this?”

“No.” She quietly shook her head and smiled. “I'm not. I'd rather we get to know each other.”

That possibility intrigued him, and he couldn't resist asking another question. “Why?”

“Because I can do a better job of reporting what you do here if I learn something about you. Not on paper, or on tape, but by watching, listening, getting to know you.” She was good at what she did, and he sensed that. It was just that she was well known in the business, a star actually, she was in truth a real pro, and an unusually good one. Peter Hallam liked that. It was like being perfectly matched to your opponent in a competitive sport, and it gave him a feeling of excitement, which suddenly led to an offer he hadn't planned to make her.

“Would you like to follow me on rounds this morning? Just for your own interest.”

Her eyes lit up. She was flattered by the unexpected offer, and hoped that it meant that he liked her, or better yet, was already beginning to trust her. That was important for the smooth flow of any story.

“I'd like that very much, Doctor.” She let her eyes convey to him how touched she was by the offer.

“You could call me Peter.”

“If you call me Mel.” They exchanged a smile.

“Agreed.” He touched her shoulder as he stood, and she leapt up, excited by the prospect of following him on rounds. It was a rare opportunity and she was grateful for it. He turned to her again, this time with a smile, as they left the cafeteria. “My patients will be very impressed to see you here, Mel. I'm sure they've all seen you on T.V.” For some reason, the remark surprised her and she smiled.

“I doubt that.” There was a modesty about her that those who knew her well always teased her for, especially Grant and her daughters.

But this time he laughed at her. “You're hardly an anonymous figure, you know. And heart patients watch the news on TV too.”

“I just always assume that people won't recognize me off camera.”

“But I'll bet they do.” He smiled again and Melanie nodded in answer. It was intriguing to him that she hadn't let her success go to her head over the years. He had expected someone very different.

“In any case, Dr. Hallam,” she went on, “you're the star here, and rightly so.” Her eyes shone with frank admiration, but this time a similarly humble side turned up in him.

“I'm hardly a star, Mel.” He was serious as he said it. “I just work here, as a part of a remarkably good team. Believe me, my patients will be a lot more excited to see you than me, and rightly so. It'll do them good to see a new face.” He pressed the button for the elevator, and when it came, he pressed six, and they entered amidst a group of white-coated doctors and fresh-faced nurses. The shifts were just changing.

“You know, I've always liked your views, and the way you handle a story.” He spoke softly as the elevator stopped at each floor, and Mel noticed two nurses staring discreetly at her. “There's something very direct and honest about your approach. I suppose it's why I agreed to do this.”

“Whatever your reason, I'm glad you did. Pattie Lou needed you desperately.” He nodded, he couldn't disagree with her on that score. But now there was more to it. He had opened himself up to an interview on network news, and as they sat in his cubicle on the sixth floor, a few minutes later, he looked with honesty at Mel and tried to explain to her the risks and dangers of transplants. He warned her that she might even come away from the story with negative feelings about them. It was a possibility he'd thought of before agreeing to the interview, but he was willing to take that risk. There was more to be gained by telling all than by hiding from the press, and if she handled it right, she could warm up public opinion considerably, but she seemed startled by the risks he described and odds he gave.

“Do you mean I could possibly decide that heart transplants aren't a good idea? Is that what you're saying, Peter?”

“You might, although that would be a very foolish view. The fact is that transplant patients are going to die anyway, and quite soon. What we give them is a chance, and sometimes not a very good one at that. The risk is high, most of the time the odds are poor, but there
is
that chance, and the patient makes up his own mind. Some people just don't want to go through what they'd have to, and they opt not to take the chance. I respect that. But if they let me, I try. It's all anyone can do. I'm not advocating transplant for all patients, that would be mad. But the fact is that for some it's ideal, and right now we will need to open new doors. We can't just operate with human heart donors, we need more than there are, so we're groping for new paths, and it's that process that the public resists. They think we're trying to play God, and we're not, we're trying to save lives, and doing our best, it's as simple as that.” He stood up, as she followed suit, and he looked down at her from his considerable height. “You tell me what you think at the end of today, and tell me if you disagree with the means we pursue. In fact”—he narrowed his eyes as he looked at her—“I'd be particularly interested in what you think. You're an intelligent woman yet relatively uneducated in this field. You come to it with fresh eyes. You tell me if you're shocked, if you're appalled, or if you approve.” And as they left his cubicle, he had another thought. “Tell me something, Mel, have you formed any kind of preconceived opinion at all?” He watched her face intently as they walked and she furrowed her brow.

“Honestly, I'm not entirely sure. Basically, I think that everything you're doing makes sense, of course. But I must admit, the odds you're talking about frighten me. The chances of survival, for any reasonable length of time, are so slim.”

He looked long and hard at her. “What may seem unreasonable to you may be the last straw of hope to a dying woman or man or child. Maybe to them, even two months … two days … two hours longer sounds good. Admittedly, the odds frighten me too. But what choice do we have? Right now, that's the best we've got.” She nodded and followed him into the hall, thinking of Pattie Lou, and she watched him as he began to read through his patients' charts, face intent, brows knit, asking questions, looking at the results of tests. Again and again, Melanie heard the names of the drugs given to heart-transplant patients to allay rejection of the new heart. And she began to make a few notes herself, of questions she wanted to ask him when he had time, about the risks of these drugs, their effects on the patients' personalities and minds.

Suddenly she saw Peter Hallam get up, and begin to walk quickly down the hall. She followed him a few steps, and then stopped, unsure of whether or not he wanted her with him, and as though sensing her indecision, he suddenly turned to her with a wave.

“Come on.” He waved to a stack of white coats on a narrow stainless steel cart and indicated to her to grab one, which she did on the run, and caught up with him as she struggled to put it on. He had his arms full of charts, two residents and a nurse were following respectfully behind. Peter Hallam's day had begun. He smiled once at Mel and pushed open the first door, which revealed an elderly man. He had had a quadruple bypass two weeks before and said that he felt like a boy again. He didn't look much like a boy, he still looked tired and pale and a little wan, but after they left his room, Peter assured her that he was going to be fine, and they moved on to the next room, where suddenly Melanie felt a tug at her heart. She found herself staring down into the face of a little boy. He had a congenital heart and lung disease, and nothing surgical had been done for him yet. He wheezed horribly and was the size of a five- or six-year-old child, but a glance at his chart told Mel that he was ten. They had been contemplating a heart-lung transplant on him, but thus far, there had been so few done that they felt it was too soon to attempt it on such a young child, and intermediary measures were being taken to keep him alive. Melanie watched as Peter sat down in a chair next to his bed and talked at great length to him. More than once, Melanie had to fight back tears, and she turned so the boy wouldn't see her damp eyes. Peter touched her shoulder again as they left the room, this time in comfort.

They moved on to a man who had been given a plastic heart, which Melanie learned was powered by air. The patient was suffering from a massive infection, which apparently was sometimes a problem. Given the odds and the circumstances surrounding these desperately sick people, everything was a risk or a threat or a problem. Danger lurked everywhere, within their own defeated bodies, even in the air. And infection was greatly to be feared, and almost impossible to avoid, in their weakened condition. And then there was another patient, obviously comatose, and after speaking briefly to the nurse, Peter didn't linger long in the room. There were two moon-faced men who had undergone heart transplants within the year, and Melanie already knew from the material she'd read that often the steroids they took had that side effect, but eventually it would be controlled. Suddenly these people came alive to her. And what was even more real to her now was how poor the odds were. Peter answered some of her questions now, as they sat in his cubicle again. And as she looked at her watch, she was amazed to discover that it was almost noon. They had been doing rounds for four hours, had probably been to twenty rooms.

“The odds?” He looked at her over his coffee cup. “Heart-transplant patients have a sixty-five percent chance of living for one year after the surgery is performed. That's roughly two chances in three that they'll make it for a year.”