Donor, The

by FitzGerald, Helen

  I hate everything.

  I want to die.

  Thanks Dad, for writing the perfect note. He had a thing about notes, ever since she left, without leaving so much as a scribble. And this was a masterpiece: the screenplay he never started let alone finished.

  Oh shut up Georgie and find that bottle.

  You should cry Georgie, you should.

  Ah, there it was, in the bag, along with what? Cigarettes.

  The station.

  Trains leave for Central at nine minutes past the hour.

  Did Kay call my name as I left? I wasn’t sure. My ears had stopped hearing. Did it matter that I was barefoot? In just jeans and a T-shirt at ten to nine on a weekday?

  My feet had stopped feeling.

  One step then another and another. The train would come soon and I didn’t want to miss it. It was a further grand thing about our suburb, the train line, leaving at nine minutes past the hour every hour. The train line and the schools.

  I didn’t care when young girls stared on the way back from Brownies.

  Oh, that was another thing about our area, Brownies.

  I didn’t care when a woman stared from her front door, waiting for the Tesco delivery man to empty the van and fill her kitchen.

  A car may have tooted as I crossed the road to the station. May have even screeched a little. I had my bottle in my hand now. The walking was necessary.

  Nothing could stop me.

  I am mean.

  Am I mean?

  There were boys on the ramp, smoking boys. I walked past them, down to the platform. It was one minute past nine. A middle-aged man sat on the bench reading the business section of his paper. He was going out of town. Must have gone to the pub round the corner on the way back from work. Probably had a job in the city and went to important meetings that required dark grey suits and a knowledge of the business section of the Herald. When his train came, he would head further into suburban wilderness where there are no pubs.

  I didn’t want him to see me. I walked to the other side of the platform, sat on the edge, and drank a quarter of my bottle.

  I am selfish.

  Am I selfish?

  I suppose there is evidence. If Dad buys Doritos and I find them first, I eat them all.

  The smoking boys on the ramp were laughing at me. Once I might have cared but I didn’t care about anyone any more.

  Ah, I am all of the above.

  The train came and went on the other platform, along with the businessman.

  It was five minutes past nine.

  I want to kill my father.

  Do I want to kill my dad?

  I wonder if he wrote it quickly, discovered it quickly, or did he agonise over it like the screenplay he never wrote a few years back?

  I have found it hard to conform.

  Have I?

  I drank another quarter of my bottle.

  I want to die.

  Do I?

  Four minutes until my train, my end, would arrive. Before that, two questions. I felt anxious to answer them in time.

  Do I have nothing to live for?

  What will it feel like, dying this way, compared to slowly merging with my Alfred?

  I supposed it would feel scary for a moment, then very sore, sorer than anything you could imagine, then maybe you might hear something, a screeching of brakes, perhaps, or the smoking boys on the ramp screaming – no, yelling, because they’re boys. Or maybe the silence would arrive sooner, even sooner than the soreness. So really all you’d have is the scary part, and I was already fucking scared so another scary thing, big scary train, wouldn’t bother me. No, I concluded, this could be a good way to die compared to merging with my Alfred.

  Georgie and Alfred: They lived together. They died together. It was hard to tell them apart towards the end. Whose tube was that? Whose was that red stuff? Who was that sniggering?

  But, hey, I’d only answered the easy question.

  The first was the hardest. Do I have nothing to live for? ‘Let me think,’ I said out loud. ‘What do people normally have to live for?’

  If it’s happiness, I’m fucked.

  If it’s money, I’m fucked.

  If it’s procreation, I’m fucked.

  If it’s hope …

  If it’s loving …

  Oh, okay, I see.

  *

  Something pinged, made me look around. The screen on the platform was flashing with a fresh message. THE 9.09 TO GLASGOW CENTRAL HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO AN EVENT IN NEILSTON. ALL TRAINS CANCELLED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

  Ha! The train was cancelled. I didn’t believe in messages from God, didn’t even believe in God, but the train was cancelled!

  *

  I have an incredible staracity, a word I made up to define my skill for doing what I do for hours each day. Stare. At bloody nothing. For ages.

  I was walking along the train tracks. What had happened in Neilston to cancel my train? An event. Big word, event. Either a meteor had struck it or there’d been a jumper. Something death-related, anyway. When I died, would my father tell people he’d had an event? ‘I’m so sorry to hear about your event,’ they might write on white cards embossed with smug silver barely coating the secret message: ‘Thank God it’s you who had the event. We have not had one. Go, us!’

  In the Neilston case I supposed someone down the road had asked himself: What do people normally live for? and he had worse answers than me. I had scored one and a half out of five – some hope, a strong desire for loving. He might have got one, or none, which meant he had no choice but to jump – or gently lower himself down and stand – in front of the train that was obviously not destined for me. I passed the test. Well, that was something.

  I was walking along the train tracks. I had consumed one whole bottle of vodka. My feet were bare. I wanted to find the right place to stare. I was looking forward to it. People who don’t have good staracity don’t know what they’re missing. When I stare, I turn what’s in front of me into something altogether different. Not better, necessarily. Sometimes much worse. But that can be an excellent thing, returning to reality and finding it’s an improvement on the mass murder in your stare, that everything in the real world is actually less bloody. It’s the best thing to do at times like these.

  Had there ever been times like these? Had someone else found the mother she craved more than her mother craved heroin – only to be sliced open to no avail? Had anyone else been hit twice by Will Marion, who slaps faces fucking hard and who loves my sister more than he loves me?

  He was going to let me go.

  He was going to save Kay.

  He was going to let me go.

  He’d never made one decision, my father, not one, in his whole life, and this is the one.

  *

  I reached the perfect place, up the platform, over the bridge; the skateboard park. Large and green, this park. Ominous, maybe even without the knowledge that a woman had been killed here not so long ago, dragged from the sidewalk and inside to be raped and strangled and turned into posters and yellow plastic police strips. Sitting on the half pipe, I wondered if being raped and strangled would be worse than my situation in any case?

  Dad. I loved you, mostly. Like a scab to pick at, eat even, if no one’s watching. Scabs are nice. I like a lot about them. But I despise them too. War scars. I fell off that chute. I couldn’t ride that bike.

  I despised you for the wrong reason. It wasn’t your fault she left. It wasn’t your fault and I blamed you for it. I wish now it was the right reason. Such a nice simple reason – you made her go. You never stopped her. Now I yearn for that anger. Where is anger when I need it?

  Where are tears when I need them?

  What has happened to my staracity?

  I’m supposed to go to dialysis again tomorrow.

  Fuck you, Dad.

  Fuck you, Alfred.

  I’m not going.

  39

  If Kay wasn’t sleeping she was flicking from on
e news channel to another. Afghanistan, flick. Cocaine-taking politician, flick. Pile up on the M8. STOP. Watching the footage of the M8, she’d ask herself, as he touched her phone, if this might be her kidney.

  How old is the person? she’d say to the television, and if the reporter didn’t answer, she’d switch to another channel to see if more information was available. If there was none, she’d say a little prayer that went like this:

  Please, oh please God, let that be mine.

  She felt bad that she didn’t say ‘or Georgie’s’.

  For the last few days she’d flicked through her waking hours – news, news and the occasional ad that interested her:

  ‘Three people die every day waiting for a kidney … Please register as a donor now.’

  Please register now, she’d say. I am the weak dying guy in the chair on that ad. I’m waiting for the flesh that you won’t need.

  Apart from the ad, it was the news.

  There was a drowning in the Clyde. Could be hers.

  A murder in Pollok. Would that one do?

  A fire in Edinburgh. Too damaged?

  The morning after Georgie ran off – ignoring her plea to ‘Stay, don’t go, I think I’m going crazy!’ (Did Georgie even hear? It was unlike her to leave her sister in distress) – Kay turned on the news, got out of bed, showered, dressed, and walked to the train station. There’d been a death at Neilston. A man of twenty-four had jumped in front of the train to Glasgow Central. His name was John Bain. John Bain, she asked herself as she walked towards the station, have you got my kidney?

  She knew it was silly before she arrived at Neilston. The body would be well gone. Everything would be back to normal. But she couldn’t help herself. She needed to see first hand the kind of incident that she longed for.

  The body was gone. The trains were running on schedule. John Bain had either been too squished, donated to someone else or had failed to register as a donor.

  Kay didn’t want to go home. Like looking very hard in the direction a bus was supposed to come from – any time soon, any time soon, relax your neck and you’ll miss it – she felt she should crook her neck for her kidney.

  She went into town, wandered around until she found a hospital and followed signs to the Accident and Emergency Department. The waiting area was typically depressing. Plastic chairs were filled with the coughing, the bleeding, the moaning, the head-holding, the almost-puking, the drunk and the drug-addled. Pale children played with broken bits of sticky toys. Paramedics wheeled trolleys through double doors. Receptionists noted walking wounded details through thick glass:

  ‘Mrs Malloy … chest pains, you say? Go to room 5!’

  ‘Mr Thomas … when did the rash appear? Where is it? On the groin area? Take a seat.’

  ‘Miss Carroll … ring stuck on your finger? We’ll call your name.’

  ‘Mr King … you’re looking unsteady. Car accident? Mr King? Mr King? Nurse!’

  And so on.

  Kay watched intently. The man leaning over the cardboard puke container – was he dying? Should I ask him? The teenager lying unconscious on the trolley in the corridor. Could I have hers? The middle-aged woman with chest pains being taken in for a scan. Ask her, ask her, before the second attack. Have you registered? Would you please consider me?

  If she waited long enough, Kay thought, maybe hers would arrive.

  40

  Will woke late and sore. Even his penis was bruised. Out of the bedroom (or garage), Linda was a sweet person, a close friend, called him ‘Good Guy’, made muffins. Inside, she was a sadistic nutjob wringing juice from body parts with bare hands.

  The house was empty. Will was glad because he had things he needed to do, privately. He went into his office before his morning coffee, picked up his notebook (had he left it open?) and sat on the sofa bed. He inhaled deeply and blew the air onto the notebook. ‘4)’ he wrote at the top of page four. He couldn’t write the word. How could he? Then, if he couldn’t write it on a piece of paper, how would he ever do it?

  ‘Suicide.’

  Will felt he’d already done it. Like scratching ‘I love Cynthia’ on the fence of the Bothy after their third date all those years ago. If he hadn’t loved her before that scribe, he felt he must after.

  About 55,600,000 search results. Suicide was a popular subject. He narrowed the criteria: ‘How to commit suicide safely’, deleted ‘safely’, as it was ridiculous, and clicked on Wikipedia’s succinct guide to the choices available.

  Options now forming a list in his notebook, Will pondered, scoring them out of ten thus:

  1. Pesticides

  Would screw up organs.

  0/10

  2. Bleeding/wrist cutting

  I’m too scared. And apparently this can be much worse than you expect.

  2/10

  3. Drowning

  How would they get me out of the loch/river/ swimming pool? Timing would be very difficult. Would need a fit attendant.

  1/10

  4. Suffocation

  Hard to manage head bag on my own. Would naturally fight against it.

  2/10

  5. Electrocution

  Ow! Can get seriously burnt too. Still … pretty quick.

  4/10

  6. Jumping

  Afraid of heights and kidney may be pulp.

  0/10

  7. Firearms

  Hmm.

  8/10

  8. Hanging

  Oh but do I have to? If you get it wrong, it can go on for ages. If you get it right …

  7/10

  9. Vehicular impact – Rail/subway train

  See ‘6. Jumping’ above.

  0/10

  10. Poisoning – Pesticide poisoning/Drug overdosing/

  Carbon monoxide poisoning/Other toxins

  Would probably damage organs. Not 100% sure how much.

  3/10

  11. Immolation

  eath by fire, methinks not.

  0/10

  12. Seppuku

  Samurai warrior style. Could I be a warrior? Maybe.

  Could I dress up all fancy?

  12a. Research dress requirements and purchase online

  Could I hold my sword before me?

  12b. Buy sword

  Could I place my special cloth beneath?

  12c. Need special cloth as well

  Could I read my death poem?

  Often sidetracked, Will set to on the death poem required for a Samurai warrior to commit seppuku. One hour and seventeen scrunched sheets of A4 printing paper later, this was the result:

  12d. Death Poem

  I’ve always found it difficult

  To choose the perfect gift

  Till now.

  Smile about this.

  Please, when you open this,

  Smile.

  Though wrapped with love,

  The paper is meaningless

  As I’ve only ever lived through you

  And this way

  I can continue.

  He was pleased with the poem. It made him cry. He wiped his tears and wrote:

  Could I open my kimono, take up my short sword and plunge it into my abdomen?

  Could I make a cut to the left, a cut to the right, an upwards stroke?

  I would need an attendant.

  12e. Find attendant who does not think this all too weird

  The attendant, standing by on the second stroke, would perform daki-kubi when I was all but decapitated, leaving a slight band of flesh attaching my head to my body.

  Fuck it, that sounds dreadful.

  0/10

  13. Apocarteresis (suicide by starvation)

  Very slow. And I’ve never been able to resist crisps.

  If someone offers me one, I’ll just eat it.

  0/10

  14. Explosion

  Ha! NO!

  0/10

  15. Suicide attack (like a suicide bomber)

  No need to kill anyone else.

  0/10

  16.
Indirect suicide (get a cop to shoot me … i.e. force someone else into doing it)

  Have to take someone hostage or something. Too hard. Might shoot my kidneys.

  0/10

  17. Assisted suicide …

  Okay, here we go! Legal, painless. Just need compelling reason to die. (What could be more compelling than my reason?) Dignified, not scary, kind, clean, calm.

  *

  As he googled, he became more and more excited. Dignitas! People went there all the time. Never came back, mind.

  Dignitas, the Swiss suicide clinic, the five-star suicide clinic, the suicide clinic voted by users as the best suicide clinic in the world. Could it be painless? Could he arrange safe, immediate transplants in Switzerland?

  He’d considered being a kidney tourist, why not a suicide tourist? He’d always wanted to travel.

  He read everything there was to read about it online. It was a crushing blow when he discovered that he needed recommendations from doctors (15g), which he would never get, and also that the girls may be prosecuted for helping him (15h).

  ‘2/10’ he wrote, downhearted.

  So, he thought, perusing the very tidy list which had in fact taken up three pages after the one he’d ripped out earlier …

  It’d have to be the gun.

  41

  Will opened his daughter’s diary. What had she said exactly? You’d be surprised how easy it is to get a gun.

  If she could find one, surely he could? Where would she have looked?