Dr. Sanjay Rao's office had a view of the Arabian Sea and a wall of donor outcome files that Priya had not been allowed to read in her first month. By month two, she had partial access. By month three, she understood that partial access was a specific kind of control — enough to seem transparent, not enough to see the shape of the thing.
Rao was sixty, sharp-jawed, the kind of doctor who had built his reputation before synthetics changed the field. He had papers in The Lancet and the New England Journal and was, by every visible measure, one of the finest transplant surgeons in the country. He was also, Priya was increasingly certain, something else.
"Mehrotra's numbers look good," he said. "Recovery projection ninety-six percent."
"The organ was excellent," she said carefully. "Very healthy tissue. Unusual for a forty-year-old donor."
"We have good procurement relationships."
"The registry file listed the donor as a traffic accident death in Navi Mumbai. Twenty-two hours before surgery. The organ showed no ischemia, no trauma markers." She looked at him steadily. "Traffic fatalities typically show some trauma to surrounding tissue. This organ looked like it was removed from a living—"
"Priya." His voice was not angry. It was the specific even tone of a man who had had this conversation before and had the architecture ready to redirect it. "The recovery team at Navi Mumbai General has a very good protocol. Removal within forty minutes of clinical death. That's why the tissue quality is what it is. Let me worry about the procurement chain."
She held his gaze. Then nodded. "The new procurement tomorrow — what's the case?"
