Over the next twelve hours, updates trickled from the operating room: The bones of Faust’s left forearm had been grafted onto Garcia’s radius and ulna by the left-hand team. The bones of the right forearm had been joined by the other team. Left-hand nerves. Right-hand nerves. Right-hand tendons. Left-hand tendons. Left-hand blood vessels. Right-hand blood vessels. By the thirteen-hour mark, I was exhausted, but Carmen seemed as focused and quietly intent as she had at the beginning. When the head of the transplant team, Dr. Alvarez, appeared, Carmen and I stood to receive the news, our eyes boring into the doctor’s in an effort to see if she was bringing good news or bad. “We’ve had a setback,” she said quietly, and for the first time I sensed fear in Carmen. “A damaged blood vessel on the left side.”
Carmen’s voice was quiet but hard as granite. “Does that mean the left hand will fail?”
Dr. Alvarez shook her head. “I hope not. We’re taking a short section of vein from your husband’s leg and splicing it in to repair the damaged section. It’s not difficult to do, but we need to get the blood flowing to that hand as soon as possible. I’m going back to the OR, but I wanted to let you know.”
Carmen nodded. “Thank you, Doctor. Thank you for everything you’re doing for him.”
The surgeon smiled through her mask of fatigue as she turned to go.
An hour later she returned. “We’re finished. We got the bleeding stopped. Everything looks very good. There are no guarantees, of course. His body might reject the hands, the nerves might fail to regenerate, the immunosuppressants might cause complications. But if we’re lucky, none of those things will happen. And if we’re very lucky, within six months he’ll be able to hold a scalpel again, and be able to hold hands with you and your son again.”
Carmen’s face quivered, and then she began to tremble from head to toe, and she allowed herself to cry.
“I am…so very grateful. To you. To everyone here at Emory. To that man who gave his hands for my husband. To…” She raised her arms wide, then let them fall with a teary smile. “So grateful.”
“So am I,” said the doctor with a tired but warm smile.
I excused myself to make a phone call. Sixteen hours earlier, just after they’d begun the transplant procedure, I’d phoned Miranda. She hadn’t answered, and the call had rolled to voice mail. “I’m at Emory,” I’d said. “They’ve just taken Eddie into surgery. They’re going for the bilateral transplant. I know you don’t want to talk to me or see me, but I’m sure Carmen and Eddie would appreciate it if you could come.” Then I’d turned off the phone.
Now, when I switched it back on, it chirped at me. The display told me I had new voice-mail messages—twenty-three, in fact, a number that astonished me. Before I got a chance to listen to even one of the twenty-three, though, the phone buzzed in my hand. It was Miranda calling, and she sounded breathless. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“It’s done,” I said. “Both hands. The doctor sounds very hopeful.”
The whoop of delight from my cell phone nearly split my ear. Then I heard a second whoop, this time in stereo: Miranda came sprinting around the corner, nearly careening into Carmen, the surgeon, and me.
“Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!” Miranda cried. “Oh, how wonderful. Oh, hallelujah!” She threw her arms around Carmen. “I was in Texas, in the middle of a job interview, when the FBI called me.” The words tumbled out of her. “I ran out and jumped on a plane as soon as I heard the message. Oh, happy, happy day!”
Then she turned to me, her face wet with tears. “Damnyou,” she said, and I felt my heart begin to crack, but suddenly she hugged me, as unreservedly and joyously as she’d hugged Carmen. “Damn you,” she repeated, this time through a mixture of tears and laughter. “Don’t ever do that to me again.” She pulled back and wiped her eyes. “I just saw your picture half a dozen times on the CNN monitors in the Atlanta airport. Black-market kidneys from Pakistan, butchered and stolen bodies, a murderous bone thief, and a daring professor who risked his life in an undercover sting. Hell of a story. If I weren’t so mad at you for keeping me in the dark, I’d be really, really proud.” She shook her head. “Damn you for playing your sleazy part so well”—she laughed—“and damn the FBI for being so secretive.” She smiled and planted a big kiss on my cheek.
“Not so fast,” I said. “You were in Texas for a job interview? Out at the Body Ranch—our new competition?”
She shrugged sheepishly. “They’re just getting off the ground. They thought maybe I could be helpful.”
She smiled once again—her old, full-face, eye-contact smile. “It’s nice to be wanted, but it didn’t mean a thing. Really. If you’ll take me back, I’ll never stray again.”
“Promise?”
She held up the three fingers of the Boy Scout salute. “Promise.”
“Deal.”
EPILOGUE