The boy was thin, nervous, his mother beside him holding his hand with the grip of a woman who had been holding it through something long and difficult. They looked at Priya with the look that patients gave her at Sion — not the look they gave at Kalyani, that particular mix of deference and distance. The look that said: you are the person who knows, and we need you to know, and we need you to tell us.
"Good news," she said. She sat at the chair beside the bed and meant it. "The organ we have for you — it's the new synthetic. The most advanced one available. Your compatibility numbers are excellent and the rejection risk is lower than anything we had two years ago." She looked at the boy. "You're going to be fine."
His mother's hand tightened on his. His expression went from tightly held to something that was trying very hard not to be relief but was relief, unmanaged and complete.
Priya went through the procedure, the timeline, the recovery. She answered every question. When the mother asked — hesitantly, the way people asked when they weren't sure the question was allowed — "Is synthetic really as good as real?" Priya said yes. Clearly, without qualification. Yes. Better, in your son's specific case, for these specific reasons, which she explained.
The mother nodded. Believed it. Because it was true, and because the person telling her had twelve years of experience and the specific authority of someone who had seen both from the inside and was not guessing.
The last authentic thing, the thing that had been sold and taken and processed and certificated and inserted into the bodies of people who could afford to pay for the proof of its origin — it was not a luxury anymore. It was just tissue. Just the biological function of a living body, which could be replicated, which could be made available to anyone who needed it, which could be removed from the economy of scarcity and authenticity that had made it worth killing for.
It was not done. It would not be done for years. The system was large and the gaps were many and the work was long. This was the condition of the work, not a reason to stop.
She stayed with the boy and his mother until they were ready for her to leave. Then she went back into the corridor and the hospital went on around her — its noise, its necessity, its enormous daily task of keeping the people in it alive — and she went back to work.// END TRANSMISSION //The Organ Market — End of Book One
