The bridge trembles.

Abstract

Big Louis is dead. I found out only yesterday, because the last time I went to the Clinic I didn't meet any of the people who might have told me, which can happen when you're down to three‐monthly visits. He might have died as long as five months ago. It's odd to discover you have been orphaned for months without knowing it. Louis was the first person to receive a liver transplant at the Unit when it started at the Austin Hospital here in Melbourne in 1988. Units were already working in Brisbane and Adelaide, but he was our first. They'd tried transplanting livers long before that, but everybody used to die, so they gave up for a while, but in the early 1980s they began again. What had changed the odds were better operating techniques and yet another miracle drug, this one called Cyclosporin. Cyclosporin controlled rejection without damaging the patient too much. It came into use only in 1989, so Louis must have survived his first few months without it. The Unit must have been proud of him. So Louis was Number One. The last one, operated on about a week ago, is Number 301. I am Number 108, from April 1994. We write our history in the old‐fashioned way here: dates and numbers matter in this long, thin, accidental family I have joined. We care about lines of descent, too, so Louis was our grandfather. He was a big, slow‐moving Frenchman or Belgian in his late sixties who couldn't or wouldn't speak English. He would sit peaceably in the waiting room on his too‐small chair, one large hand on each knee, and exude the mild benignity of an elephant, or perhaps a bishop. It was good to see him slowly moving up the corridor ahead or lying …