team of thirty surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses and technicians. His brother Marius Barnard assisted with the surgery. 25-year-old Denise Darvall and her mother had been struck by a drunk driver while crossing a busy street on a Saturday afternoon. Her mother died at the scene. Denise was taken to Groote Schuur. Peter Rose-Innis, the hospital's senior neurosurgeon, attended to her. A skull X-ray showed two serious fractures. She showed no sign of pain when ice water was poured in her ear. In addition, her brain had no sign of electrical activity. A blood transfusion and respirator maintained the beat of her heart. Coert Venter and Bertie Bosman were the doctors who approached Denise's father Edward Darvall and asked for permission to use her heart for a possible transplant. He had been at the scene of the original accident and had been sedated after being brought to the hospital. As he waited, he thought they were still trying to save his daughter's life. Bosman told him there was a man in the hospital who was desperately ill and in need of a heart transplant, and perhaps Edward could do him a great kindness if they would allow them to transplant his Denise's heart. Bosman and Venter withdrew from the room, saying that he should take as long as needed to consider their request and that they would understand if he declined to give his consent. In the four minutes Edward Darvall took to reach his decision he thought of his daughter, a birthday, and a gift she had given to him from a first salary. He began to cry and decided what needed to be done. He composed himself and summoned the doctors back to the small room. He told them that if they could not save his daughter, they must try to save this man. Although Washkansky died of pneumonia eighteen days after the transplant because of a weakened immune system, Barnard regarded the surgery as a success because the heart was "not being stimulated by an electrical machine". As Barnard related in his book, One Life, a decision was made on the fifth postoperative day to bombard Washkansky's system with immunosuppressants to guard against a potential rejection of the new heart. As later heart transplants would reveal, the signs noted at that time were part of a resettling program for the new heart and not necessarily an indication of rejection.