Provenance. The documentation of origin. The thing that made a painting worth more than a reproduction — the proof that this specific thing came from this specific source. Applied to a human organ. The inside of a person, treated as an artefact with a certificate of authenticity.
She read the pricing.
PROVENANCE SERVICE — RATE CARD (INTERNAL USE ONLY)
Kidney (single): ₹2.2 crore — ₹3.8 crore
Liver (full): ₹4.5 crore — ₹7 crore
Heart: ₹8 crore — ₹14 crore
Lung (single): ₹3.5 crore — ₹5.5 crore
Corneas (pair): ₹40 lakh — ₹80 lakh
Note: Pricing reflects donor profile premium.
Age under 35 = +30%. Non-smoker = +15%. Genetic screening clean = +20%.
A human heart for fourteen crore rupees.
She thought about the Worli flat. The forty-percent-above-market salary. She had been recruited specifically — a transplant surgeon with exceptional hands and a twelve-year reputation for clean work. Not just to perform surgeries. To perform surgeries without asking questions. To be the exceptional hands at the end of the supply chain.
She was not an innocent bystander. She was a recruited component.
Then she found something worse. The pre-written death certificate for Raju Waghmare, the twenty-eight-year-old heart donor. Dated for tomorrow, cause of death listed as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy — a condition his own excellent health records made an absurd fiction.
The signature on the death certificate was hers. Dr. Priya Vashisht. Her own digital signature, replicated from her standard OR sign-offs. They had not asked her to sign it. They had simply used it.
Priya went to the bathroom and was sick. Efficiently, without drama. Then she rinsed her mouth and looked at herself in the mirror and said, aloud: "You did not know. You know now. What are you going to do."
Not a question. A requirement.
She went back to her laptop. She had one day before Raju Waghmare was brought to Kalyani Medical Centre for the last time. She needed his address. She kept reading.
