"Read the letter, Gunnar," Billie said. "Just read it. Then do whatever you're going to do. You're the captain."
He unfolded the letter.
She watched him read it. He read it the way pilots read things, with his finger moving down the left margin, line by line, because pilots are trained to read checklists that way, out loud in their heads, so they will not skip a line and kill someone. His finger went down past the letterhead of the registry and the letterhead of the hospital. Past the courier's name. Past human hematopoietic progenitor cell product. Past must not be exposed to X-ray or irradiation. And it stopped. Billie did not have to look to know where. The patient has begun a myeloablative conditioning regimen.
He stood there with his finger on that word for a long time. Then he put his other hand flat on the galley counter, next to the coffee maker that worked if you hit it, and leaned on it. Then he sat down, slowly, on the folded-down jumpseat by the door, with the letter in his lap, and took off his hat.
"That's what they did to her," he said.
Neither of the women said anything.
"Before they knew there wasn't going to be a donor." He was looking at the letter and not at them. "They started it because they thought they had a match. A woman in Brazil. Ten out of ten. They started Sigrun on the conditioning, and the woman in Brazil—something happened, she got sick, or she changed her mind, they don't tell you. They don't tell you anything. The coordinator called on a Tuesday. And they'd already started. You can't stop once you start. Do you know that? I didn't know that. They kill it all. The doctor said myeloablative to me like I was supposed to know what it meant." He stopped. "They found a cord blood unit. It didn't take. She had three good weeks. She made me take her to the Mexican place on Main Street in Parker and she ate half of a chile relleno." He turned the letter over, as though there might be more on the back. "Somebody in Baltimore is sitting there right now. With nothing. Waiting for that box."
"Yes," Billie said.
"And I was going to put it on the jet bridge."
"Yes."