If it didn’t happen, then the build-up of pressure could mean instant heart failure-instant death.

This was no time for panic. The procedure called for infinite patience.

The balloon was inflated once. Twice. Three times the valve was stretched.

‘Enough,’ Gina said, and Cal heard exhaustion in her voice.

But she couldn’t stop now. She had to check the pressures again. If the pressures weren’t equalised the whole thing would have to be repeated, using balloons of different lengths and diameters, and this tiny heart was under so much strain anyway…

The catheters were reinserted, once more measuring the pressures in the right ventricle and the pulmonary artery.

Please.

The figures…

‘Hey,’ Jill said in a tiny tremulous voice that didn’t sound the least bit like the efficient director of nursing they all knew-and, if truth be told, they often feared. ‘We have lift-off. Isn’t that right, Houston?’

‘I… Maybe,’ Gina said. She glanced up at her anaesthetist. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think maybe you’ve done it,’ Emily said in a voice that was none too steady. ‘Oh, Gina, that was fantastic.’

‘Fantastic? It’s a miracle,’ Gina whispered. ‘If we have indeed won. He’s not out of the woods yet.’

He wasn’t. They all knew that. To operate on such a tiny baby was asking for post-op complications. Indeed, there might well be complications already. He’d stopped breathing that afternoon. He’d had a birth in circumstances that were appalling. And now maybe he was facing a new threat. Von Willebrand’s?

For him to pull through…

‘He’ll make it,’ Cal said, and he wasn’t sure why he knew or how he knew, it was just definite, absolute knowledge. ‘I know he will. You’ve done it, Gina.’