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FOUR
    Despite Annabel's invitation, Luke didn 't turn up to her clinic that afternoon and she heard from Geoffrey later that he'd been in a meeting with representatives from the department of surgery.
    Daisy Miller, when she called in to see her on her ward round the next morning, looked cheerful. 'How was the movie?' asked Annabel.
    'Great.' Daisy beamed. 'Well, from what I remember. I was too excited about all the famous people in the audience to notice much. And I was back on time,' she told her, dimpling a little when Annabel's registrar rolled her eyes tellingly. 'Well, maybe twenty minutes late, but that's all. And I'm in good shape today, Dr Stuart. I promise. My breathing's almost normal this morning and my heart's been fine. At least as fine as it ever is. I hardly even feel tired after last night and I haven't had any real problems since Monday. Can I go home?'
    'Let's have a look at you.' Annabel examined her heart, the back of her chest then the pulsation level in one of the veins in her neck—the height of the pulsation gave her an indication of Daisy's fluid levels.
    'Your ECHO yesterday wasn't as good as I was hoping it was going to be,' she conceded when she'd finished. One of the key indices they examined when they did the scan was the percentage of blood inside the heart's left ventricle ejected at each beat, and Daisy's result yesterday had shown a decline from the last time she'd been in hospital. 'Your ejection fraction's dropped again,' she told her patient, going through the figures since Daisy's understanding of her disease was intelligent and advanced. 'But you're not looking too bad so I suppose I'm happy for you to leave us.'
    She smiled at Daisy's delighted whoop. 'Why so keen? What have you got planned?' She remembered that Daisy was dating a professional footballer. 'Another night out with the man with the great body, is it?'
    'Clubbing tonight if I can convince him, and I said I'd come and see him play on Saturday,' Daisy revealed. 'I haven't seen him playing before, not properly, and it's a big game.'
    'Have fun.' Annabel glanced over the chart her registrar had picked up for her to inspect. 'Your blood pressure's good. Oh, I had a word with Tony Grant last night,' she added, referring to Daisy's transplant surgeon. 'He said he'd be in first thing to say hello so you'd better wait around to see him before you go. I'm surprised he's not been in already. The surgeons are normally up and about round here by seven.'
    'He did a transplant last night,' Daisy told her. 'He's probably slept in.'
    'Did he?' Annabel raised her brows at her juniors, surprised she'd not heard anything about it. Normally word of such events got around the hospital fairly quickly. 'Who did they do?'
    'Daniel McEanor,' Mark, her SHO, told her.
    Annabel nodded. Daniel wasn't one of her patients but the consultants at St Peter's conferred frequently about their patients at case conferences and she'd been on call several times when Daniel had been admitted so she knew him fairly well. A nine-year-old with heart and lung complications secondary to a congenital heart condition, he'd been on home oxygen therapy, awaiting a heart and lung transplant for over a year, and critically ill in Intensive Care with both heart and lung failure at St Peter's for a week.
    Annabel said her farewells to Daisy and organised for her to come to see her in Outpatients for a follow-up ECHO the following week. Outside in the corridor, she asked her registrar about Daniel's surgery.
    'He's still touch and go, apparently,' Hannah told her gingerly. She waggled her hand in the air in a demonstration of the delicacy of the situation. 'Danny was already very ill before they started. It was a difficult operation, then they had trouble starting the heart and they had difficulties pacing it post-op. Without Danny in what passes for him as peak condition, it can't have been easy.'
    'They couldn't have denied him the chance,' Annabel said quietly, blinking