Marathe and Kate at Ryle's — "I have been knowing since the…"
‘I have been knowing since the wedding night her death was coming. Her restenosis of the heart, it is irreversible. Now my Gertraude, she has been in a comatose and vegetating state for almost one year. This coma has no exit, it is said. The advanced Jaarvik IX Exterior Artificial Heart is said by the public-aid cardiologists of Switzerland to be her chance for life. With it they say my wife can live for many more years in a comatose and vegetated state.’
Context
What the betrayal buys, stated exactly: a prosthetic heart to sustain a comatose, skull-less woman — "many more years in a comatose and vegetated state" offered without irony as the prize. The Jaarvik IX is the same artificial-heart model from Steeply's Moment article (045; spelled "Jarvik" there — both spellings authorial per the archive's record), whose famous theft was Poor Tony's work; Poor Tony has just mugged the woman Marathe is telling this to. The prosthesis-object at the center of the plot's tightest ring.