Donor, The

by FitzGerald, Helen

  Was Will more scared waiting to hear about Kay’s result? Did he sleep less? Eat less? Tremble more?

  Was he angrier when it came in? Or was it a natural reaction to the doubling of misfortune?

  Did he cry more when they told him Kay would have to wait just as long?

  And when he punched the door of his never-renovated kitchen, was it because both of them had rare types? Or was that jagged fist hole for Kay alone?

  If bad luck comes in threes, Will felt he’d had all his.

  Georgie’s body was dying.

  Kay’s body was dying.

  And he was the only probable and willing match.

  Locked in the upstairs bathroom, shirt off, black marker in hand, he drew a kidney shape on his left side and another on his right.

  ‘These are my kidneys,’ he said. ‘And there’s only one spare.’

  9

  Almost as soon as I became ill, I got a new boyfriend. He presented me with a comfy armchair and I accepted. He was dull and predicable, a replica of my father. He liked to feed me but he couldn’t cook. He liked to be with me but he had nothing to say. He liked to give but he always took more.

  Oh gurgling machine.

  I’d have liked a different kind of boyfriend. One who moved, for example. One who touched me and didn’t just stick it in me and suck and drip and turn my arm to noisy lumps. But I couldn’t have a different kind of boyfriend. I probably never would. What would I say? ‘Not Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Sunday, Jim (for example), I’ll be busy then.’

  ‘We could have dinner after,’ he might suggest, and I’d have to say, ‘But where/what kind? ’Cause there’s all sorts of shit I can’t eat now. Like bananas. If I eat a banana I’ll probably die, but then I’ll probably die anyways.’

  ‘What about a walk?’

  ‘I’d love to, Jim, but I’m exhausted, like all the time.’

  ‘What about we watch a movie on one of the days in between?’

  ‘Nup. I’ll be too busy drinking gallons of water and feeling like crap, and anyways I’m yellow. Do you really want a yellow girlfriend?’

  Bye bye, Jim (for example).

  I named my new boyfriend Alfred. He looked like an Alfred. A square white robot with wires, some very red, some less so. Sometimes I imagined him talking to me and it was always with a deep Alfred-like voice (Now, now, Georgina, you know you should stay still.) Alfred who sucked me out and filled me up again and would do so till I died, or till someone else died first, a very special someone, with a limited Gucci-bag-kidney like mine, the type you see in the ‘Get her style’ section of magazines, carried by a B-grade celeb who joined a waiting list and paid thousands to just get that damned bag in order to improve her standing.

  It was more boring than visiting one of Dad’s housewives for coffee or reading a full non-fiction book or listening to Dad read his pre-proposal for an outline of a short film. He read it to us when we were ten. Fifteen minutes had never been more excruciating. What was it about again? All I remember is a leaf. It was a not very interesting brown.

  I couldn’t even smoke in there. Had to use foul nicotine chewing gum that made me hiccup.

  The doctor in Edinburgh gave me a leaflet when he had told me I needed Alfred. On the front of the leaflet, a woman was sitting in a chair like mine smiling happily as if it was the best place in the world to be. ‘You should try this!’ her smile said from the glossy page. ‘You should try it now! Even if it’s very expensive!’ The woman was at least forty. Perhaps for her it was fun, compared with fighting face lines and ordering toilet paper in bulk. But I was sixteen. I had parties to go to, drugs to take, countries to see, love to fall in. I bet the woman on the brochure didn’t even have the disease. I bet when they wrapped the photo shoot she said, ‘Thanks, Maxie!’ whisked the plug from her unpunctured arm and went out shopping while eating a banana. Wish they’d have asked me to pose for it. I’d have done the Vicky and then the middle finger and then the loser sign and then scowled, ‘They are all liars! This is fuckin’ dreadful, I hate it and so will you!’

  Some say boredom enhances creativity. Sickly children go on to direct Oscar-winning films and pen Booker-winning books. I didn’t give a fuck about writing books or directing films. I wanted to go down the offie and then to Club Boho. I wanted to shag someone again. Would Alfred really be the love of my life? That’s it, that’s it, right there, Alfred, yes.

  There is something very unsexy about depending on someone. If I pulled him out, I’d regret it. So I wouldn’t. I’d semi-decline there, four times a week, four hours a go, and be thankful for Alfred while hating the very sight of him. For most people, I supposed, this is what marriage is like.

  I’d try hard not to look at Alfred, scouring the people-filled room instead. There’s:

  EVIE. She is fifty-two. Too old for her name. She has short bright red hair, probably a hangover from her art-teaching days. Her granddaughter bought her a portable DVD player and she watches BBC adaptations of Catherine Cookson novels on it. I can hear the dreary dark rain through her earphones.

  JIMMY. He’s forty. He’s heard a rumour he’s next to go. He rubs his phone as an expectant mother rubs her bursting nine-month belly.

  PEGGY. She’s very old. I don’t know how old. Being here doesn’t seem to worry her. Even though she knows she’s never getting a new one. I expect she sits still at home in the same way. Here, at least, she has SAMUEL to talk to.

  He’s around thirty-eight. He gets angry when people get the call inexplicably before him. He shouts at nurses, things like: ‘What is the system? How can this be? Did he use his connections? Did he pay?’

  Samuel was talking about RON, forty-nine. He was very rich. Knew people. How come it only took three months for him to be whisked away and inserted with a red lump of life?

  And, of course, there’s Kay, sitting beside me, reading her books, taking notes carefully and optimistically, as if one day she will actually finish school, graduate, be a physiotherapist. As if.

  *

  ‘Georgie, how you feeling?’ Like clockwork, my father had arrived. Looking at his eyes evoked the same feelings as looking at Alfred. So I didn’t.

  ‘Bored,’ I said, staring blankly over his shoulder.

  ‘I brought your iPod. Put some new tunes on.’ He paused, sat down, fidgeted. ‘Georgie, I’m going away for a few days.’

  ‘Oh?’ I didn’t believe him. He sometimes made grand gestures at a change of routine (We’ll go to Ireland for the weekend … We never did … never got further than Arran … I need to get out of this job … Didn’t. I’m going to write a horror film, starting next week … Never did … Let’s play badminton Thursdays, as a family … Yeah, yeah).

  He paused. ‘I’m going to find your mother.’

  I may have flinched a little, but within seconds my default ‘whatever’ had taken control again. Like he would get off his arse and do something meaningful. Like I didn’t know him too well. He’d go home after the visit, put on the telly, drink too much wine and forget all about it.

  I had a coping strategy. I wasn’t going to think about any of it any more. I wasn’t going to worry about my blood and how dirty it was and where it came from, and who it came from, any more. After Dad left, I decided to go out and find a boy. His name would not be Alfred.

  *

  ‘What colour would you say I am?’ I asked a boy who went by the name of Eddie. As usual, I felt tired and nauseous, but I was on a mission.

  ‘I dunno. Normal.’

  ‘You’re a smooth talker, Eddie.’

  ‘Pink, then, like very nice roses.’

  That was better. Eddie had a job and a flat. I wasn’t interested in either.

  My attempt to fall in love with him went something like this (before I list the events, let me just tell you outright that it failed):

  Eddie and I drink too much beer in a pub in the Southside then get a taxi into a club in the town, where we drink too much vodka.

  Eddie dances
badly, but likes the way I dance. He holds me by the hips, hooks one leg through mine and tries to rub me with the top of his quad.

  Eddie says we should get out of here.

  In the taxi, Eddie puts his hand under my shirt and feels my nipple. I’m so tired. I don’t like having my nipples felt. Tweak tweak pinch, like ow, like why?

  We arrive at his flat in Shawlands and, still determined to fall in love, I follow him up a paint-peely close and into the hall, which has three bikes in it.

  What do you like about me? I ask him and he says it’s my tits.

  In the bedroom, Eddie undresses. He’s very thin and white. I can see at least two ribs. He has either shaved his pubic hair or he’s eleven. His penis looks like a nose.

  What first attracted you to me? I ask him. It was your tits, he says, pulling my bra over my head without bothering to unclip it and catching my top lip for a moment along the way.

  He pops one of what he likes about me in his mouth. I feel sick. I don’t like how he’s gnawing at me. What am I? A breastfeeding mother? Unlatch, I say, so he does, a little taken aback, before heading towards the lower region, taking my jeans and pants down, kneeling.

  Am I actually going to vomit? I don’t like how he’s lapping at me. When you spotted me on the dance floor did you think I was beautiful? I ask, but his mouth is too busy to say more than Mmm hmm.

  Eddie is very quick at what he does next. Jack rabbit bang bang bang and he’s so thin I can hardly feel him on top and he sighs and slides off and says Ah! and lights a fag and I say Well? And he says Well what? And I say What was it that attracted you to me? And he says God, haven’t we done enough talking already? And oh I need the bathroom now but it’s already coming out as I say I’m never going to fall in love with you, Eddie.

  10

  Kay was fast asleep and Georgie was ‘out with friends’ – which for some years had been code for ‘out doing God knows what’ – when Will took a newly purchased notebook into his office. He cleared a space on the desk, opened the notebook at the first page and wrote the heading ‘1) Cynthia’. The fact that he had written the number ‘1’ scared him, because this indicated that there were subsequent options; that if this did not work he would need to move on to numbers 2) and 3) and – God forbid – 4), or even 5). He was unwilling to consider failure. He would succeed. He would do everything in his power to get that woman’s kidney. Okay, so the plan was not foolproof. He might not find her. She might be dead. If alive, she might not be compatible. He might not be, for that matter. No! Of course he would be. He had always been able to do everything for those girls. He would be able to do this too. From the moment he received the diagnoses, Will just knew that he would be compatible and refused to consider otherwise.

  So both parents saving both children was the best option – and should be attempted in full before any others were considered.

  A week earlier, Will had spoken to the specialist about the test. ‘Not yet,’ he had said. The doctor, Mr Jamieson – who always had Van Morrison on repeat on the CD player in his office – nodded when Will told him there was no hurry. ‘We can do that any time,’ Will said. ‘Just dotting the i’s. Of course I’ll be suitable.’

  Sometimes a dreadful scenario crept into Will’s thoughts, one where he has already been tested and is ready to donate, but there is no other donor available. In this situation, he would have a terrible, unthinkable decision to make. The thought of it made him slap his face with his hand (Don’t go there, Will. Don’t even think about it. Not now. Not ever.) Which option would this be above? Number 5, perhaps? He hit his forehead with his palm this time and said ‘No!’ out loud. He would never choose. He would save Georgie and Kay – which meant having both donors in place at the same time – which meant finding Cynthia. She was their mother, after all. What mother would refuse? What mother would leave the fate of her beautiful children at the mercy of an unreadable, ever-increasing list – a list with at least 6,500 people on it – yet only 1,800 transplants had been carried out in the last twelve months?

  He sighed, fear overtaking his attempt at confidence, because the sort of mother who might do the above is also the sort of mother who might bugger off to the shops and never come back.

  The AA map route to Manchester Prison churned out of the printer. Was that all he needed for the journey tomorrow afternoon? He checked the list he’d written under the heading on the first page of his notebook.

  Ia) Booking (Yes, he’d booked the prison visit.)

  Ib) ID (Yes, he had the necessary identification to get through the gate.)

  Ic) Cash (He had money, just in case – £200 to be exact, leaving his flex account with a grand total of £1790.56 until next payday, in two weeks’ time.)

  Will took himself to the smallest bedroom upstairs and stared at the ceiling for several hours before falling asleep.

  After Kay went off to school the following morning, he decided not to wake Georgie. The dialysis was really taking its toll on her. She needed her rest.

  He was about to make himself breakfast when the doorbell rang.

  ‘Hello, William,’ his father said. ‘We need to talk.’

  His parents visited once a month for dinner, a routine which they had insisted on after Cynthia left. Each month Will dreaded it, Georgie tried to get out of it and Kay looked on the bright side. (‘They’re our grandparents, Georgie. They love us. You can’t go out with friends!’) Will believed these three hours gave his parents a ‘get-out-of-guilt-free’ card. They’d seen their son. Tick. Asked their granddaughters about school and netball and orchestra. Tick. So off they could tootle to their show-home house in North Queensferry, which was far enough away to make further contact (i.e. help) impossible. Will’s father had been a major in the army. His mum a husband-follower who liked good port at dinner parties. They’d sent Will to boarding school aged nine, where he’d hidden his loneliness in books and music. After graduating they sent him off to uni in St Andrews, where – much to their disapproval – he buried himself in films and filmy types. As a result, Will didn’t know his parents at all. Thus far, he had no regrets. What he knew of them, he didn’t like. Will’s father had retired following the death of his uber-wealthy parents, leaving him enough money to buy twenty-three flats in Spain. He decided to rent them out and asked Will if he would like to manage the rentals for him. (‘It’s all very well wasting time on some Mickey Mouse media course, but it’s the real world now, William. You’re a father! You need to support your family.’) The job involved advertising the properties, banking money and talking to people about the firmness of the beds, proximity to beach and pool facilities and the likelihood of rain. For years, Will had logged onto the computer each day with a loud sigh. It was possibly the loneliest and most tedious job in the world. Sometimes he prayed that a film idea would pop into his brain like it used to when he was at St Andrews. It never did.

  ‘Rentals were down 30 per cent this year,’ Will’s father said. He was in one of his golfing ensembles – well-ironed grey trousers, black and red and grey argyle V-neck jumper. He’d obviously planned the visit to coincide with a round at Loch Lomond. As if Will cared about the rentals at the moment. As if it bothered him that Brits were staying home for their holidays this year.

  ‘Thing is, we can’t afford to keep them. Bad time to sell, bottom’s out of the market, over-supply and what not, but I’m afraid we have no option.’

  As Will made him a cup of coffee he wondered if he should throw it over his father’s head. He hadn’t seen him since that phone call, and he wanted to talk about the credit crunch!

  That phone call was the first Will had made after Kay’s diagnosis. He didn’t beat around the bush. He asked his mother outright. ‘Would one or both of you be willing to be tested?’

  After a pause that was long enough to answer his question, Will’s mother said they’d have to talk it over.

  Will’s father emailed two days later. ‘William, we are still thinking about it. Obviously there migh
t be issues because of our age. Have you put the new photographs of the pool on holidaylettings.com?’

  ‘Here you go,’ Will said, recalling the email angrily and placing the mug of Nescafé on the bench. He was throwing it over his father’s head in his head. He hadn’t written this option in his notebook yet, but as he sipped his coffee he decided it would be option no. 2).

  They both drank it as fast as they could while Will answered questions that did not involve being an unemployed single parent with children who might die.

  When he left, Will grabbed his keys and found himself walking around to Linda’s house.

  *

  ‘You’re crying,’ Will said when she finally answered the door.

  ‘It’s the tears give it away,’ she said, shutting it behind him.

  Over a bottle of Highland Spring mineral water, they took turns to unload. They both had good reasons to. Linda’s involved a mobile phone that rang at 2155 the previous night. At first, she ignored it, thinking it was the radio or a car alarm. But when it rang again at 2157, she followed the twinkle tone upstairs, into the bedroom, and into the fitted wardrobes she’d paid a handsome joiner a fortune to build, and into a pair of trousers.