by Cole Moreton
‘No, there was not. I don’t think it was salvageable. We should be clear about that. Martin had no chance of survival. None at all.’
Twenty-Four
Marc
Marc tried to get on with his life as the New Year began, but his mum struggled with that. It was still only five months since Linda had thought she had lost him forever. She had fought with all her strength to keep it together in the hospital and plead, cajole or persuade – or sometimes just damn well demand – that the doctors did everything possible and she couldn’t just leave him alone now, thinking: ‘Freeman’s have done all this wonderful work to save my son, I need to take over here.’ So she did that, with the very best intentions, but Linda now admits she took it all too far. ‘I smothered him, that’s the word. I remember buying all these plastic tubs and sitting there fixing his medication for the day ahead. I didn’t realise this for quite a while but my whole conversation with him would be, “Marc, have you taken your pills? What time is your next appointment?” I forgot how to enjoy life and spend time with my son. That wasn’t the life he wanted either, to have me interfering with him all the time, but I was a nervous wreck. There was no help. Zilch. I could not sleep, I was up checking him all night, to see if he was breathing. It was worse than bringing your first newborn baby home.’
Her fear ran deep, as she confessed to her mother.
‘Mum, they told me the heart is gonna last five or six years, what age will he be when he passes away? We’re running out of time already.’
Wee tough Betty was having none of it.
‘Linda, you better snap out of this, lady. What a terrible thing to think. That boy needs you, but he also needs you to let him live. You’ve got to let him enjoy life!’
His friends were a great help; they had all known each other since nursery school and came round often. When they could eventually go out together, with Marc at first in a wheelchair, they set the alarms on their phones to tell him when he should take his tablets. That was still not enough for Linda in her agitated state. ‘I was worried constantly, phoning and texting him. I think he would turn his phone off just to get some peace.’
Sometimes, though, he did need her. Marc came through to her room at three in the morning with his quilt all wrapped around him and lay down on the bed.
‘Mum, have you got any photographs of my great-grampa?’
‘No, son. I never met that man. Are you okay?’ There was a strange look on his face in the half light and he seemed shaken. ‘What happened to you, Marc?’
‘I had these dreams when I was under, Mum. I was looking out of this window and there was Leasa on the other side.’
Linda listened and made connections with what had happened in the hospital. ‘You know what, that was the window in the high-dependency unit.’
‘Then I was sucked down this pipe and all the faces changed.’
‘Marc, that’s when they were doing suction on you. There was a tube down your throat. You had two lungs collapse. The physios sucked all the gunk out. You must have been aware of that noise, to think you were getting sucked down that tube.’
‘I saw this guy who said he was my great-grampa. Clear as I’m seeing you. We talked, then he said he had to let me go back. Then I woke up.’
Linda was stumped by that. She couldn’t help him with any more information about the old man, but the next time Marc saw his dad he described what he had seen. Norrie dug out an old photograph and there he was, the man in the dream, looking exactly the same.
‘Aye,’ said Marc. ‘That’s the guy.’
What Marc did not know was that John McCay was originally from Ireland. He actually spoke with an Irish accent just like in the dream and pronounced his name to rhyme with eye, at least at first. When he fell for a young Protestant woman in tough, working-class Glasgow in the hard times of the 1930s, John found himself on the wrong side of the divide between Catholic and Protestant and the football clubs Celtic and Rangers. Not that he cared much, even when he found out her family were part of the staunchly Unionist Orange Order and didn’t approve of him. There were frowns and threats but love won again and they got married anyway. To make life a little easier she made him say his name McCay to rhyme with hay, although quite how that was supposed to help has long been forgotten now, by Norrie at least, and he was the one with the information. His own formidable father – known to all as Mr McCay – was not one to share these things. ‘You spoke when you were spoken to,’ says Norrie, who rebelled against his dad. ‘You did what he told you. Unless you could find a way not to …’
Norrie got a couple of Scottish symbols tattooed on his arms without permission when he was Marc’s age and Mr McCay shouted at him: ‘Next thing we know there’ll be a lassie at the door and she’ll be pregnant.’ Norrie smiles at the memory and winks in recognition: ‘He wasn’t far off.’ By the time he was thirty, Norrie was a father of five. ‘I just had to look at Linda and she was pregnant.’
His granny, old John McCay’s wife, had a soft spot for him and could make him laugh. ‘She would say to me, “Norman! Are you sure that wee lassie’s not a Catholic? I think she is, son!” You know, because of having all these kids? She was funny.’
Norrie freely admits he was never a romantic with Linda. ‘See all that walking through the town holding hands with a lassie? That’s not for me. I’d walk in front. Or behind even.’ And what would Linda say to that? ‘You’re an unloving bastard.’
Still, there was no bad feeling after they divorced, he says. Nor was it awkward between them when they were in the hospital together in Newcastle, staying in the same flat.
Norrie’s way of dealing with things was to go for a walk every now and then for a quiet cigarette outside. ‘I like my own space. I knew we were in the right place in Newcastle. They had only given us a one per cent chance of getting there but Marc had made it, so I felt we’d come a long way and he was in safe hands.’
Then, when they all got back home, he tried to help Marc have some of his old life back, to give him a bit of hope and something to aim for. ‘It was getting cold, coming on to winter, but we would take him down the football park in his wheelchair to watch games. It was freezing, but he was all wrapped up and it cheered him up. I just took it that Marc would get better. He’d had a wee blip in his life, now he was on his way back. I didn’t think about how long he would have left, at all.’
Twenty-Five
Martin
The card in Sue’s hands took her breath away. Friends and family had all sent their love, sympathy and prayers but this was something different, a message from a stranger. ‘It was spidery writing, very shaky. I remember thinking it was from someone either quite elderly or quite ill.’ The card showed a tree of life rising from the ground with green leaves against a star-filled purple sky, and the words ‘Thank You’ in silver writing on the cover.
To whom it may concern,
I am very sorry for your sad loss. Thank you for helping me to start to live my life again. It has made such a lot of difference.
Always grateful, Fred.
There was no other information, but that is the way with transplants, deliberately. The system is set up to protect people’s privacy, not least because feelings are raw, says Nigel. ‘Every time they have communication it reminds you of your loss, so people don’t want to go there.’
Fred had written to the co-ordinator at his hospital, who had forwarded the card to their own transplant nurse in Nottingham and she had rung to ask if they wanted to read it. ‘They promise you’ll never get something in the post which you’ll open up thinking it’s something else and then go, “Agh!” It might hit you at a hard time, knock you for six on your way to work,’ says Sue. ‘You’ll always know it’s coming, they’ll always give you that prior warning.’
The nurse also wrote with further news, but this time it was not so good. ‘Unfortunately, the fifty-eight-year-old man who received a double lung transplant has since died. I am sure this must be upsetting for you to
read and I am sorry.’ This must have been Fred. The card must have been sent before his death. ‘This gentleman was terribly poorly prior to his transplantation, he received all possible treatment to try to improve his life, but unfortunately for his family this was not to be the case.’
There was more. ‘The lady that received a kidney transplant unfortunately had to have it taken out again as her body rejected the kidney.’ The doctors had taken every possible precaution, but her immune system had still refused to accept the organ. The gentleman who had been given the other kidney was doing well though, and is able to enjoy being with his granddaughter for a while longer than he had feared.
‘I am sure you are probably feeling exhausted reading this letter,’ wrote the nurse, who offered to come and see them to talk things through. She did have some good news. ‘The thirty-four-year-old gentleman that received a liver transplant continues to do well. He was suffering from a very rare condition that was extremely difficult to manage. He is now able to spend time with his two small children.’
And the boy who had received the heart had now turned sixteen and was doing very well, she wrote. ‘This boy was desperately ill prior to his transplant and would not have survived without it. Martin has had an incredible impact on this boy’s life.’
That was very true. They were bound together now in a remarkable way. But the impact Martin would have on Marc was not over yet. Not by a long, long way.
Twenty-Six
Marc
Linda loved her job at the Royal Alexandra Hospital and there were bills to pay, so when Marc was settled at home again in the spring she went back to work. Now, though, she found that everything had changed in her head. ‘I was in a state. It was too close to home. The first night, a man passed away in Room 10. I went into the kitchen and I was sobbing, uncontrollably. I couldn’t do my job any more. I tried but I kept going into tears.’
She went back again for the next shift and the next, hoping these feelings would somehow pass, but they got worse. Then Linda was moved to a different ward and had to go around the patients in the dead of night checking catheters. They were all asleep, the lights were low. She came to the end of the round and found herself standing outside the doors to Room 25. This was the high dependency unit, where Marc had been taken that first night, straight after she had blocked the ambulance bay and demanded to be seen. The fear came flooding back.
‘I could hear the do-do-do of the heart monitor on a patient behind those doors. I swear to God I stood there frozen and the tears just came. This nurse came up and said, “Linda you’re having a wee flashback. Come away with me, hen, and let’s sort you out.” We sat and had a cup of tea and I kept saying, “What am I doing here at work? I should be with Marc.”’
Still she kept going, until the hospital extended the length of the shifts so she had to work twelve hours at a time, which was far too long for her to be away from Marc. Then she thought, ‘It’s not worth it.’ But before she left, there was something she needed her friends at the hospital to help her do. Linda wanted to write to the family of the boy that had given Marc his new heart, whoever they were, to say thank you. ‘I had this overwhelming urge to let them know how grateful we were and how much their son was loved for what he had done. His heart had not just saved Marc, it had saved my other three sons, my daughter, everybody in the whole family. There was a ripple effect. We are very close, we see each other or speak every day and if we had lost Marc then I don’t think my family would have recovered.’
The transplant nurses at the hospital said they would ask the donor family if they wanted to have anonymous contact. ‘I used to drive the co-ordinator nuts, until eventually he was getting fed up with me and he said, “Okay, you can write a letter. Just say a few things about this and that, don’t go on too much.”’
So while she was still working at the Royal Alexandra in the summer of 2004, only six months after Marc’s return home, four of her fellow nurses sat down together in the staffroom and helped Linda write the letter. It reads now like it was written by a committee of very caring people, well aware of the damage they would do if they got it wrong. ‘We were all in floods of tears trying to get it right.’
Twenty-Seven
Martin
Dear Friends,
First and foremost we would like to express our deepest condolences for the loss of your son. I would also like to apologise for any grief or upset this letter may cause you.
This is the most difficult letter I have ever had to write. I cannot begin to stress how your decisions, choices and emotions that you went through (which are unimaginable) are so much appreciated and the choice you made saved my son’s life.
Our fifteen-year-old son, Marc, was the top goal scorer for his football team, a big, strong, healthy boy who had never been ill. Marc felt unwell on 20th August last year. Within days he was on a life support machine, a virus had attacked his heart and twice we were told he was dying of uncontrollable heart failure and multiple organ failure. In order for Marc to have any chance he was to be transferred to Newcastle, where he was placed on a machine which would keep him alive temporarily, until a donor heart may or may not become available.
Marc had a 99 per cent chance of not making the journey.
All of the above took place and on 29th August 2003, Marc successfully came through a 12-hour operation. Unfortunately, in order for the heart transplant to take place that night, your son’s life was lost.
Marc is doing remarkably well and hopefully has an illness-free life ahead of him. I thank God every day for your decision. My entire family could never express in any way or form our heart-felt thanks and deep gratitude.
My thoughts are with you every day and especially will be on 29th August.
Should it give you even a shred of comfort, please do not hesitate to contact us at any time.
Marc will be seventeen on 8th September and that has been made possible because of you. Thank you for your son’s heart.
Linda McCay,
Marc’s Mum
There was a card too, with a pink cover and a poem that began with the words, ‘Angel of Love – Thank You’. Members of the family had signed it and given their relationship to Marc in brackets. There on the top left was his own signature too, Sue realised with a little shiver of surprise. Marc had put his name in friendly, curvy letters, not quite joined up, but underlined. An almost childish hand, as Martin’s would have been, and the message was a little playful. ‘Thinking of youz ALWAYS.’
This was him. He wrote this, thought Sue, imagining a pen in a teenage fist. Then a slip of paper fell out of the package and it was a newspaper cutting, thin in her fingers, with the headline: ‘Heart transplant gives brave teen Marc a second chance at life’. His face stared up from the paper, straight at her. A very handsome young man in a red and white football kit with his hair razored at the side but spiky on top. Well, he probably wanted it to be spiky but it was fluffy, really. Marc was frowning and looking into the camera with a cocky half-smile, as you might when you’re a lad having your picture taken as part of a team, maybe to celebrate a big win. His portrait had been cropped from a larger image, it was blurry but Sue still had a strong sense of him, for the first time. There he was, a boy. A lad like her Martin, who loved his football. The kind of lad Martin might have liked to have been, all sporty and dashing, if he had been bothered about that sort of thing. They might have been friends, though. Mates. Marc looked just like one or two of the boys who had been at the funeral, that hair was the style they had.
She sat down and went on staring at the image as the paper clipping trembled slightly in her hand. Marc stared back. He was real suddenly, not an idea or a name on a list but a real person, this person, going about his business, living his life, playing his sport, with Martin’s heart inside him. Something about that disturbed Sue and frightened her. Something about it was a little bit comforting, somewhere deep inside.
‘That was a nice moment, because I could put a face to him. W
e knew he had suffered a sudden illness and needed a heart very urgently, but up until then he was just this faceless person. Now I could see him. It was good to see that this person did exist and to be told he was doing really well, but it was really odd to think of Martin’s heart still beating inside him while he was walking and running around somewhere far away.’
So now she knew their names and where they lived. The McCays. It made a difference to her, a really big one. Alongside the loss and the grief and the anger there was now also the knowledge that somebody had been helped, somebody had a life because of Martin. No, not just somebody in general, not any more. This person. This Marc, this good-looking chap. This Linda and all the other names on the card, which she couldn’t quite take in. Sue was still at the point where it felt like a betrayal of her son to enjoy life without him, but she did feel their thanks like a rush of warmth, if only for a moment. So what now?
Sue was glad to get the letter but she could not reply immediately for fear of all the feelings it would stir up. She was working to stay away from those every day, for her own survival. It took her a few weeks to find the strength to write back and tell this Linda all about her Martin, mother to mother, enclosing a picture of her son, but she did want to do it. ‘I wanted Linda to know that I was glad Marc was doing well. I didn’t want her to think I was resentful of that, in any way. I was really grateful that she had taken the time to write to me, but I believed it would be a one-off thank-you and that would be all the contact we ever had. I didn’t dream there would ever be such a strong bond between us.’
As the anniversary of her son’s death approached, Sue was lonely in her grief. She needed to talk to someone who understood what she was feeling, because no friendship or marriage is ever strong enough to bear such a burden alone. ‘We had some fantastic support from our friends, don’t get me wrong, but everyone would say, “I can’t imagine what you’re going through.” Or else other people would say they were really sorry and start talking about how they had lost their parents. I’ve lost both my mum and dad since I lost Martin and I can say without hesitation that there’s a bloomin’ big difference. I needed to have contact with people in the same situation.’