by Jenny Colgan
“Move,” said the young doctor, who looked about nine.
“I’m not finished here,” said Lissa strongly, as she continued to work the oxygen mask, shined light in his eyes, checked for vitals.
“Yes, you are,” said the doctor. “Let me look at him.”
“I can do it!” said Lissa. His face. His beautiful face. He was a child, a child asleep, still warm—or was that their efforts?—still sleeping, dreaming, losing his homework, wishing he were a footballer or a rock star.
“Stand back!”
“I can do it!”
Lissa didn’t realize she had screamed, didn’t realize everyone stopped to look at her, as Ashkan pulled her back gently, his face a mask of concern. The junior doctor was already moving in, ignoring her.
“Step back.”
“I just . . .”
It was unheard of for a nurse to defy a doctor in this way, even if this particular doctor looked like he’d drawn his mustache on with a pen that morning.
“Step back!”
But she couldn’t; she could only stand, as if she had absolutely no idea where she was, her arms reaching out uselessly, muttering, “Kai . . . Kai . . .” into thin air, still believing fervently, even as the doctor looked at his watch, shook his head; even as the blood was no longer dripping on the floor, was getting ready to pool, to congeal. The only thread to life was her.
“I can just . . . try one more time . . .”
“GET HER OUT of here,” the young doctor was muttering as the porters tried to move the body onto the gurney. Several other medics appeared.
“Is next of kin here?” yelled one of them, and Lissa recognized in horror the people—perfectly nice, professional people—whom, in day-to-day life, she admired hugely. The transplant team.
“He’s not even dead, you vultures,” she found herself screaming, and Ashkan really did move then, bodily pulled her out of the ambulance as she swore and thrashed away. “He’s not even . . . !”
“I’m calling it,” said the doctor. “Take him to the HDU.”
This was where they held transplant patients, in a twilight world between life and death, just holding on for long enough to get the necessary signatures, to beg and plead that a life taken in vain would not be entirely in vain.
“18:38,” he said. “Can we move it fast? We’ve a . . .” And his voice sounded so very, very weary. “. . . hit-and-run incoming.”
Lissa collapsed onto the pavement as it started to rain and burst into tears, deep racking sobs. She was a professional, had been doing this for four years, had seen road accidents, murders, every kind of horrible thing it was possible to see.
But it was a boy she knew whose name was Kai who broke her, at 6:38 P.M., on a totally normal Tuesday night.
Chapter 4
Ashkan tried to move her.
“Mate,” he hissed under his breath. “Mate, you have to move. They’re going to haul you into the nutter room.”
There were no gentle words among the London Ambulance Service when it came to Occupational Health and the therapy unit. As far as they were concerned, ambulance paramedics were a gang of outlaws, pirates, screaming through the streets on a mission to save. Once you started wobbling the lip about it, like every other bugger would, well then. What was the point of you? Someone had to scrape people off the ground; someone had to hold the line. If you started crying and needing therapy and basket weaving, well, then you were no use. Nobody denied that it was a tough gig. That was the point of it. If you couldn’t hack it, you weren’t much use. A&E teams relied on each other like little else.
Lissa was finding it impossible even to get up, even as the rain crept down the collar of her heavy green jacket.
“Everything okay?” said Dev, the station controller, coming over, his kind face concerned, his glasses as usual up around his bald head—they were always wherever he wouldn’t be able to find them as soon as he needed them, including dangling around his neck or in his pocket.
“Fine!” said Ashkan breezily.
Lissa was aware they were there, that they were around, but somehow she couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t really focus on what they were asking of her or why she was sitting on wet pavement. It was like her body didn’t belong to her at all, like she was somewhere else and everything was going on without her and the person sitting on the wet pavement was somebody else.
Dev looked concerned. “Lissa? Were you on the hit-and-run?”
“She knew the lad,” said Ashkan. “Bad bloody luck. Bit of a shock.”
Lissa couldn’t even nod her head to respond. The police took her to the station to pick out the perpetrator from a lineup, and for a statement, which she gave blindly. Ashkan waited for her, even though his shift had ended.
“Come on,” said Ashkan gently. “Let’s fill you up with tea.”
He frog-marched her back to the hospital, and Lissa let him, as if her legs were moving without any input from her at all, as if they belonged to someone else.
The ground-floor canteen was quiet this time of night: on-duty doctors keeping an eye on their beepers and phones; one poor soul fast asleep by a potted plant, his head looking uncomfortable on a wicker divider; a clutch of porters playing cards; and a few nervous-looking family members, not sure they were in the right place, glancing around. The catering staff had gone for the day; it was just vending machines and hideous coffee in plastic cups with plastic stirrers. Ashkan brought back two teas and gave both of them to Lissa, pulling out his own flask of vegetable juice he squeezed himself. Ashkan took his health extremely seriously and usually headed straight for the gym at the end of his shift. Lissa had always teased him about how vain he was—he spent longer on his shiny black quiff than she did on her spirally curls, although, to be fair, they were liable to turn into frizz in the wet, so she just got them out of the way in a tight ponytail. Plus, the fewer things that stood out about her physically, the less abuse she normally had to take from people not quite in their right minds by the time they showed up at A&E.
Lissa took the tea, feeling it burn her fingers through the thin plastic—Ashkan was harshly opposed to single-use plastic, so his doing this was a clear sign of how concerned he was. She understood all of this—kind of—from a long, long way away. She could sense how worried he was. But somehow she just didn’t care. About anything. Because that boy was dead, and nothing mattered, and she felt half dead herself.
The harsh strip lights felt purgatorial; the rain-spattered windows showed nothing but themselves back to them. Lissa wondered for a second if they had all died in that ambulance. Her eyes were drawn to the door as a bent-over woman entered, her face anxiously scanning everybody in the room. When she saw Lissa, she blinked.
The woman who approached them couldn’t have been much older than Lissa, was surely only in her thirties. But the expression on her face was that of someone who’d lived a million lives.
Chapter 5
The woman was pulling her cardigan around herself, shuddering in the cold wind, the rain spattering from the south.
“Och, hello there, Cormac.”
“Hello there yourself, Mrs. Coudrie.”
There was a pause. “Could you just . . . I really don’t want to bother the doctor.”
He turned to Jake. “Off you go,” he said. “I can get myself home.”
Jake grimaced. “Is it wee Islay?”
The woman nodded.
“Aye, aye, I’ll come along,” said Jake, with the resigned voice of a man who knows that his dream of a lovely foaming pint and possibly a quick flirt with Ginty MacGuire has almost certainly just vanished forever.
Chapter 6
Lissa lifted her eyes to the strange woman’s. The lady’s face was drawn with pain.
“Excuse me,” she said.
It was as if someone were speaking from far away. Lissa managed to blink. “Yes?”
“I’m . . . I’m Kai Mitchell’s mother?”
She said it so quaveringly, as if she wasn’
t absolutely sure whether she was or whether she could still describe herself as such. Perhaps, Lissa found herself thinking, she wasn’t a mother anymore. She must be Ezra’s auntie.
Ashkan jumped up and offered her a chair.
“No,” she said gravely. “No, thank you. I don’t want to sit.” She looked around the chilly clinical cafeteria. “I’m not staying.”
Ashkan leaned over. “I am so, so sorry for your loss.”
She held up her hand. “I’m not. I’m furious.”
Lissa nodded, something stirring within her. “Me too,” she said.
Ashkan shot her a warning glance that she ignored. Instead she stood up.
“I’m furious too.”
“I just wanted to know,” said the woman. Behind her, at the door, stood a cluster of frightened, upset people: friends and family. Outside, Lissa knew, would be cameras, journalists, the media, desperate to spin another narrative of death.
In here, in this now-silent room, was just a desolate mother.
“You have people helping you?” said Ashkan, looking over. “You won’t be alone.”
“Yes, I will,” said the woman. “Were you with him?”
Ashkan indicated Lissa. “She was with him the most. She did the most.”
“I didn’t do enough,” said Lissa dully. If she’d been braver. If she’d realized the car was going too fast, shouted a warning. If she’d paid more attention.
“You need to know we did everything we could. We tried . . .” said Ashkan—they couldn’t be too careful, not these days, with lawyers hanging around like carrion crows.
But the woman wasn’t listening to him. She had stepped forward and was taking Lissa’s cold hands.
“You held his hand?”
Lissa nodded.
“This hand held his hand?”
“We tried,” said Lissa.
And suddenly the two women were weeping in each other’s arms, clinging to each other. Ashkan was very unhappy. This wasn’t appropriate, not at all. He wasn’t sure what to do.
“I’m so sorry,” Lissa sobbed.
“Did he say anything?”
Lissa desperately wanted to say he had asked for her or said to tell her that he loved her. But she couldn’t.
“He was . . . he was already so unwell,” she said.
The woman nodded. “Oh well,” she said. “I’m glad . . . I’m glad someone was with him.”
Lissa nodded, wishing she could do more.
“All those people shouting at me,” said the woman, looking confused. “You know, they want to chop him up! They were shouting at me! To chop him up! To cut up the body of my son! Before he’s even cold! To cut bits off him!”
Ashkan winced. The transplant people were so desperate, so determined—and if he had good organs, oh, what a difference they would make to people.
Lissa seemed to snap out of herself a little then and straightened up. “What did you say?” she asked.
Chapter 7
The cottage was nearly identical to the one they’d just left but furnished in a neutral, modern style, with a wood-burning stove and large prints of the children in black and white on the walls.
“Hello there, Islay,” Cormac said cheerily. “Why aren’t you asleep, then?”
The tween was lying on the bed, blue and breathing heavily. Nonetheless she attempted a grin for Cormac and a slightly flirtatious look for Jake, who was generally a hit with the ladies.
“Ach, you’ve looked better,” said Cormac, understating the case. The child had severe cardiomyopathy, and absolutely nothing seemed to be helping. The pacemaker was just the latest in a line of therapies that were failing her.
“I was thinking about maybe taking her in,” said her mother. They were extremely familiar with the hospital in Inverness.
“Well, let’s have a listen,” said Cormac, taking out his stethoscope. “Those beta-blockers not working on you, Islay?”
Trying to be helpful, the child shook her head, just a fraction. How used she was; how tired she was of the constant invasion, the constant questions. She looked so weary. Cormac felt his own heart sink. He’d left the army to get away from the endless trauma cases, but this, in its own way, was just as difficult. Jake took her blood pressure and frowned.
“Well?” said Mrs. Coudrie.
“I’ll talk to Joan,” said Jake. “This”—he wrote down the number on a piece of paper, but Elspeth Coudrie already knew it by heart—“is when we’d blue-light. But I think we’ll see what Joan has in her armory.”
Cormac patted Islay on the hand. “I know you want to stay up all night watching Mr. Drake on the television.”
Islay rolled her eyes. “It’s Drake,” she wheezed. “Not Mr. Drake. And I don’t like him anyway.”
“That’s good,” said Cormac. “He’s too old for you.”
Islay tried to smile.
“But the best thing you could do is get some sleep,” said Cormac.
This wasn’t true. The best—and rapidly turning into the only—thing she could do was to get a heart transplant. If only it were that simple.
“Imagine,” said Mrs. Coudrie, as Jake finished his call and Islay tried to get comfortable. “Imagine waiting for someone else’s child to die. Imagine hoping that they will.”
“I DON’T KNOW!” said Kai’s mother, her voice hysterical. “They were all yelling. And I just wanted to see my boy. He’s my boy! And they wanted to chop him up.”
Lissa took the woman’s hands. “Did you say no?” she said softly.
“I didn’t know what I was saying!” said the woman, looking up at her. “Yes. I think I said no.”
“Do you know,” said Lissa very softly and quietly, as if trying to soothe a child. “Do you know what would be the most wonderful thing you could do for Kai, and Kai could do for the world?”
“But they want to chop him up! My boy! My beautiful boy!”
“He’d be giving his life for others,” she said. “That . . . that is very beautiful.”
The woman gently touched a small crucifix around her neck.
“He could save a life,” insisted Lissa.
“But my beautiful boy . . .”
“Would be a hero. A hero beyond heroes. Forever.”
The tears didn’t stop falling. Mrs. Mitchell stood back. “Is it too late to say yes?”
Lissa shook her head, even though she wasn’t sure, even though it might be.
“Come, please,” she said. “Please. Can you come with me? Quickly?”
And together they ran back through the long corridors, the devil at their heels, Lissa terrified they would be too late, that they would have unplugged their machines, gone on their way, their tragic work unsuccessful.
They clattered into the resuscitation ward, panting, terrified. Thank God, thank God, thank God for all the cuts was the only thing she could think. The staff had taken a break; the next shift, which would remove the tubes and make up the body, had not yet been called in—and there he still was, still connected.
They both froze. Kai’s mother made a sound, an animal noise, as if it were all happening over again.
“You can do this,” said Lissa. “You can do this.”
The officious young transplant woman was summoned with a beep and came bustling down the corridor, the fussiness in her face transformed, suddenly, into something like hope.
“Mrs. Mitchell?”
The woman nodded blankly. She sat by his bed again, stroking the beautiful, still-warm skin. “She made me come back.”
“I didn’t!” said Lissa. And looking at the boy, so close to sleeping, she could absolutely understand the instinctive horror at cutting him up, parceling him out, using him for parts.
“Give me the thing to sign,” said Mrs. Mitchell. “Quickly please. I don’t want to change my mind again.”
The nurse brought the paperwork over. “You have to understand—”
“That it’s binding, yes, yes, I know that. Quick, I said!”
&n
bsp; “No,” said the transplant nurse, straightening up. “I just really want you to understand. What you are doing is the bravest, the most wonderful thing you can do.”
Mrs. Mitchell stared at her, her mouth hanging open. “You sound,” she said, “like you want me to be pleased.”
Chapter 8
Kim-Ange was up and waiting for Lissa, after she’d pulled off her clothes, taken out her contacts, put on her thick, black-rimmed glasses, and gotten into her tracksuit bottoms. Lissa couldn’t deny being pleased to see her. Living in the nurses’ home, while hardly the lap of luxury—it was a grimy old sixties block near the hospital—was still much cheaper than trying to rent privately in London, or even getting the train in every day from where her parents lived in Hertfordshire, and it had the added benefit, even if it was noisy and the showers were peeling and the kitchens got very grim, of there always being someone to talk to if you’d had a bad day. A really, really, really bad day.
Kim-Ange had her hands up.
“I know,” she said, her face a mask of sadness. She was holding up a bottle of some mysterious plum-colored substance. That was the good thing and bad thing about nurses’ homes: word got around.
“It was Ezra’s . . .”
“I know that too.” Kim-Ange swallowed. “He’s been seeing Yazzie.”
“Ah,” said Lissa, even in her exhaustion and misery registering that Ezra had been spreading himself around the exact same place she actually lived.
She felt utterly hollow inside.
Kim-Ange waved the bottle. “Come try this.”
Ever since she’d found an old cocktail cabinet in a dumpster that she’d hoicked home single-handedly, Kim-Ange had been on a mission to invent something new, which meant experimenting with a lot of things that were disgusting. Lissa didn’t care that evening, though.
“So, how bad are you feeling about it?” said Kim-Ange, eyeing her shrewdly. “Tracksuit bottoms bad? I mean, you know other people can see you.”
Kim-Ange had extremely high sartorial standards. She herself was wearing a long pink-and-red nightdress, matching robe, marabou slippers, and a full face of makeup.