‘Sensible man.’ Dr Knight held out his hand. As Conrad reached to take it he realized that Dr Knight was deliberately showing him a faint hairline scar that ran around the base of his thumb and then disappeared inside the palm. The thumb seemed wholly part of the hand, and yet detached from it.
‘That’s right,’ Dr Knight told him. ‘A small example of restorative surgery. Done while I was a student. I lost the top joint after infecting it in the dissecting room. The entire thumb was replaced. It’s served me well; I couldn’t really have taken up surgery without it.’ Dr Knight traced the faint scar across his palm for Conrad. ‘There are slight differences of course, the articulation for one thing — this one is a little more dexterous than my own used to be, and the nail is a different shape, but otherwise it feels like me. There’s also a certain altruistic pleasure that one is keeping alive part of another human being.’
‘Dr Knight — the driver of the car. You want to give me his leg?’
‘That’s true, Conrad. I should have to tell you, anyway, the patient must agree to the donor — people are naturally hesitant about being grafted to part of a criminal or psychopath. As I explained, for someone of your age it’s not easy to find the appropriate donor…’
‘But, Doctor — ‘ For once Dr Knight’s reasoning bewildered Conrad. ‘There must be someone else. It’s not that I feel any grudge against him, but… There’s some other reason, isn’t there?’
Dr Knight nodded after a pause. He walked away from the bed, and for a moment Conrad wondered if he was about to abandon the entire case. Then he turned on his heel and pointed through the window.
‘Conrad, while you’ve been here has it occurred to you to wonder why this hospital is empty?’
Conrad gestured at the distant walls. ‘Perhaps it’s too large. How many patients can it take?’
‘Over two thousand. It is large, but fifteen years ago, before I came here, it was barely big enough to deal with the influx of patients. Most of them were geriatric cases — men and women in their seventies and eighties who were having one or more vital organs replaced. There were immense waiting lists, many of the patients were trying to pay hugely inflated fees — bribes, if you like — to get in.’
‘Where have they all gone?’
‘An interesting question — the answer in part explains why you’re here, Conrad, and why we’re taking a special interest in your case. You see, Conrad, about ten or twelve years ago hospital boards all over the country noticed that admission rates were starting to fall off. To begin with they were relieved, but the decline has gone on each year, until now the rate of admission is down to about one per cent of the previous intake. And most of these patients are surgeons and physicians, or members of the nursing staff.’
‘But, Doctor — if they’re not coming here…’ Conrad found himself thinking of his aunt and uncle. ‘If they won’t come here that means they’re choosing to…’
Dr Knight nodded. ‘Exactly, Conrad. They’re choosing to die.’
A week later, when his uncle came to see him again, Conrad explained to him Dr Knight’s proposition. They sat together on the terrace outside the ward, looking out over the fountains at the deserted hospital. His uncle still wore a surgical mitten over his hand, but otherwise had recovered from the accident. He listened silently to Conrad.
‘None of the old people are coming any more, they’re lying at home when they fall ill and… waiting for the end. Dr Knight says there’s no reason why in many cases restorative surgery shouldn’t prolong life more or less indefinitely.’
‘A sort of life. How does he think you can help them, Conrad?’
‘Well, he believes that they need an example to follow, a symbol if you like. Someone like myself who’s been badly hurt in an accident right at the start of his life might make them accept the real benefits of restorative surgery.’
‘The two cases are hardly similar,’ his uncle mused. ‘However… How do you feel about it?’
‘Dr Knight’s been completely frank. He’s told me about those early cases where people who’d had new organs and limbs literally fell apart when the seams failed. I suppose he’s right. Life should be preserved you’d help a dying man if you found him on the pavement, why not in some other case? Because cancer or bronchitis are less dramatic—’
‘I understand, Conrad.’ His uncle raised a hand. ‘But why does he think older people are refusing surgery?’
‘He admits he doesn’t know. He feels that as the average age of the population rises there’s a tendency for the old people to dominate society and set its mood. Instead of having a majority of younger people around them they see only the aged like themselves. The one way of escape is death.’
‘It’s a theory. One thing — he wants to give you the leg of the driver who hit us. That seems a strange touch. A little ghoulish.’
