‘Why did you die?’ I asked.
‘What difference does it make?’
‘It’s just a question.’
George took slow, deep breaths and looked over my shoulder. His throat bulged as he swallowed and he wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. He took a step and indicated that I should do the same.
‘The last thing that went through my head was that I thought I would have liked to be a dad.’ He sounded very sad. ‘Turned out that would never have happened. Apparently I fired blanks,’ George glanced at me briefly. ‘I would never have given Marianne a kid’
‘Was Marianne your wife?’
‘Yeah,’ I thought he might be crying. ‘We’d been married less than a year when I died.’ He stopped walking and looked at me.
‘I don’t understand.’
George used the fingers of his right hand to rub the stubble on his cheek. ‘I had to die for Peter Gutteridge to be born,’ George said quietly. ‘Marianne’s second husband was a bloke called Alfie Gutteridge. Nice bloke.’ He smiled. ‘We went to school together.’ He looked more relaxed now and stood with his hands in his pockets. He glanced at me every now and then but spent most of the time looking at the floor. ‘Alfie’s mum worked two jobs and took in ironing so she could afford the uniform when Alfie got into the grammar school.’ George kicked an imaginary stone away with his foot. ‘He ended up selling insurance. Anyway, after he married Marianne they had a kid, a little lad, Peter.’ He kicked another imaginary stone. ‘Peter became a doctor.’ George paused between each sentence. ‘He spent some time in Africa and when he was there he saved the life of a little girl. He was the only doctor for miles. Without him, the little girl would have died.’
I didn’t hide my confusion very well. ‘So you died so Marianne’s son could save the life of a little girl on the other side of the world.’
‘Peter’s saved a lot of lives.’ ‘Me dying has saved a lot of lives,’ he said philosophically
Later that day, George took me to a hospital, but it wasn’t the one I had become accustomed to over the past few days.
‘Where are we?’ I asked.
‘Liverpool,’ George said.
‘Why?’ I asked.
He pointed to the large building we stood in front of. ‘Because I wanted you to see something in here.’
‘It’s a hospital.’
‘Come on.’ George led the way through doors that opened to let two nurses out. George looked after them admiringly.
He still had an eye for a pretty girl.
I wondered how long it would take me to become as relaxed as George was.
Once inside the lobby, George consulted a list displayed on the wall. He located the department he was looking for. ‘Come on,’ he said again and I followed without question.
That was, until we got to where he was taking me.
‘What is this?’ I asked, looking around at the hospital equipment that surrounded us. Some of it was beeping, some ticking, and it all looked very serious.
Three of the beds had people occupying them and every one of them was hooked up to something.
There were two nurses attending the patient furthest from us. ‘Why have you brought me here, George?’ I asked, following him to a corner.
He stopped at the bottom of one of the occupied beds. I looked at the man sleeping in it.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked.
‘Ben Andrews.’
‘Who’s he?’
George turned to me. ‘He’s got your liver.’
Suddenly, another nurse burst into the room and went to the bed in the corner, where the nurses were still attending the patient. I gave them scant attention.
‘What do you mean he’s got my liver? How can he have my liver?’
‘He needed one.’ George looked at the bed and then at me. ‘You donated one. Luckily for him, you were a good match.’
I walked slowly around the bed. ‘So my liver’s in there right now?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Working and everything?’
‘Looks that way.’ George sounded amused.
‘Why?’ I looked up from the bed to look at George.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean why did he need my liver?’
George was being evasive. ‘His own didn’t work so well.’
‘Why?’ I said the word slowly.
‘Does it matter?’ George could not maintain eye contact.
After thinking over, I decided it didn’t. My liver wasn’t much use to me anymore so someone may as well see the benefit. ‘He’d better look after it,’ I said, ‘because if I find out I died so some bloody alcoholic could ruin my liver as well as his own I won’t be amused.’ I had been waving my arms around and turned on my heel. As I did, I noticed a man had joined the nurses by the bed. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and looked out of place. He stood back from the nurses and looked like he was waiting.
When he looked at me and asked, ‘Everything alright?’ I knew what he was waiting for.
He didn’t have to wait long. Within a minute or two there was a flash of light and the man who had been lying in the bed stood beside the man in jeans. He didn’t look confused in the least, which surprised me. He turned to the man wearing jeans and shook hands with him. They looked like two old friends. Was that how George and I were supposed to meet?
The newcomer looked at the body in the bed and shook his head slowly. As he turned around the back of his hospital gown opened to reveal the pale skin of his bare backside.
It made me glad that I had been dressed when I died and hoped someone would get the bloke some clothes quickly. He might be dead but I’m sure he didn’t want to walk around like that for all eternity.
The nurses were still working on the body in the bed when the two men disappeared.
I looked at Ben again and as I did, his eyes fluttered open. He looked at me and a hint of a smile curled his mouth.
‘Hello, Ben,’ I whispered.
His mouth moved as if he was trying to speak, but no words came out.
I touched his hand where it lay under the sheet.
The nurses had given up trying to revive the body so one of them came over to check on Ben. She checked his pulse as she looked at the watch attached to her lapel. She wrote something on the chart that hung on the bottom of the bed and moved onto the next bed.
‘See you, Ben,’ I said. I looked at George, who gave a slight nod and started to move towards the door.
As George passed the bottom of the bed he had a piece of advice for Ben. ‘Don’t bugger it up this time,’ he said, taking me by the arm and leading me away.
‘Where did the rest go?’ I asked as we left the building.
‘Here and there. Your heart’s gone to a bloke from Rochdale; one of your kidneys went to a teenager from Rotherham and the other to a woman in Birmingham.’
‘Spread about a bit, aren’t they?’
‘There’s shortage of donated organs and they have to go where they’re needed.’
‘But why so soon? I’ve only been dead a few days.’
‘Can’t hang around where these things are concerned.’
‘It’s not fair,’ I said. ‘Just the other day, those things were inside me,’ My voice became faster and louder. ‘They were working inside me. How can they be working in other people now?’ I ranted. ‘How can they belong to them now? They’re my organs.’
George stopped walking but I didn’t and I’d taken a couple of steps before I realised. I turned and looked at him.
‘You can’t use them anymore.’
There was something in George’s voice I couldn’t work out, something I hadn’t heard before.
‘You all right?’ I asked.
‘Yeah.’ He took a cigarette from his pocket and popped it into his mouth. I could sense there was something wrong. ‘It’s a great thing you did.’ I didn’t understand. I hadn’t done anything. ‘You donating your organs has saved at least four lives.�
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‘Well, like you said, they were no good to me.’
I walked a few steps before the thought hit me and in one movement, I stopped and spun to face George. My movement surprised him and it showed on his face.
‘What’s wrong?’
I asked the question slowly. ‘Is it one of them?’ I asked.
‘Is what one of them?’
‘The reason I died.’
Confusion replaced the surprise on his face.
‘I’m not with you.’
‘Did I die so one of those people could have my organs?’
‘No.’ He screwed up his face as he spoke.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive.’
I narrowed my eyes as I said, ‘If you say so.’
‘This isn’t a puppy farm,’ he said as he came up beside me. ‘We don’t grow organs to order, you know.’
‘Good.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘No,’ I said firmly, hoping Marc could hear me. Maybe he did, because he put the dress back in the wardrobe where it had hung unworn since the day I’d bought it.
‘Why?’ George asked. ‘I liked that one.’
‘What?’ I screwed my nose up in disbelief.
‘I did,’ he shrugged. ‘I think purple can look very …’ he struggled to find the right word, ‘… fetching in the right light,’ he said it with a smile.
I shook my head. ‘It’s not purple, its aubergine and I must have been asleep when I bought it.’
Marc lifted every garment out of the wardrobe and studied it before putting it back. Eventually he came across one that he studied longer than the rest. He nodded ever so slightly and threw it onto the bed. He shut the door to my wardrobe and left the room, closing the door behind him.
The eyes of all three women showed tears.
‘Who are they?’ George asked.
‘That’s Molly,’ I said, pointing to the eldest. ‘The one in the red top is Allison and the other one is Gail.’
‘Are these the women you worked with?’
‘Yes.’
‘No men?’
‘No.’
He nodded and I wondered what difference it made.
‘So,’ he nodded his head as he looked around, ‘a librarian?’ He started to finger the books on the rows to his right.
‘Not really.’
‘But this is a library.’
‘I know, but it’s Molly who’s the librarian. The rest of us are volunteer helpers.’
‘Oh.’ He was still nodding. ‘How often did you work here?’
‘Wednesday afternoons,’ I told him. ‘The good thing is that it’s only open during term time so I did it while Naomi was at school. It’s just as much a social thing as anything else. I get …’ I corrected myself, ‘got a lot of pleasure out of it.’
George had wandered over to the desk where the women sat. ‘Did you get to use one of those stamp things with the date on it?’ He made the motion with his hand.
‘Sometimes,’ I said. I think I may have smiled.
We watched the women. There were a few people in the library but they were all busy looking for books so my former colleagues stood together by the desk. They each had a mug in their hands and drank as they talked.
‘It’s tragic,’ Molly said, wiping something from her eye.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Allison said. ‘She was here last week telling us how she was going to have lunch with that friend of hers on the Thursday. How can she be getting cremated tomorrow?’
‘That poor man,’ Gail said. ‘I don’t know what he’s going to do without her. And Naomi, I mean, how old is she? Five? Six?’
‘She’ll be seven this year,’ Allison said. ‘She’s in the same class as our Michael.’
‘Poor little mite.’
‘It just shows you,’ Molly said as she straightened a pile of papers that sat on the desk in front of her. ‘You can’t take anything for granted. Any one of us could be dead before tea time.’
‘You never know,’ Gail agreed.
‘Why?’ Allison asked. ‘That’s what I’d like to know.’
You and me both.
After a mouthful of coffee, she continued. ‘You know, you see these bad buggers roaming the streets picking on kids, mugging old women, and they’re as right as rain. Nothing happens to them. Then you’ve got Ellen who’s the sweetest person you could hope to meet and this happens to her.’
‘It makes you wonder,’ Molly said, ‘if Him upstairs has got a bloody clue.’
‘My mum always says that everything happens for a reason,’ Gail told them. ‘But I think she’d struggle to find reasons behind this.’
They all stared silently into their mugs for a moment.
‘Is it right that he died as well?’ Gail asked, putting her empty mug under the counter. ‘You know the bloke that hit her.’
‘That’s what it said in the paper,’ Molly said, as she put her mug on her desk and took a book from the old man that had approached the counter. ‘Best thing that could have happened to him,’ she said as she stamped the date onto the flap of paper with the library’s name printed on it. George seemed unduly interested in the stamp for some reason and he watched Molly carefully.
The old man started to shuffle away but stopped after a few steps. He turned and leaned heavily on the counter. He spoke slowly in a throaty voice. ‘Is that the accident on Silver Street you’re talking about? The one where the lass was killed?’
‘Yes,’ Molly told him, ‘she was a friend of ours.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ the old man wheezed.
‘They said that the bloke who did it was three times over the limit,’ Gail said, leaning towards him.
‘Is that right?’ the old man asked.
‘Yes,’ Gail said. ‘Him dying was probably the best thing that could have happened. I mean, what would have happened to him if he’d lived? A slap on the hand, a couple of points on his licence?’
‘So you think he deserved to die?’ The old man struggled to catch his breath.
Gail’s face flushed. She probably hadn’t realised what she was saying. She wasn’t usually so outspoken.
‘I’m just saying,’ she blustered, ‘that he deserved more, that’s all.’
The man nodded slowly, almost pushed himself away from the counter, and shuffled off.
‘Who was that?’ Allison asked.
‘Don’t know,’ Molly said. ‘He comes in now and again and gets a couple of books for his wife.’ She picked up the ticket he had exchanged the book for. ‘Harold Webber,’ she said.
Webber? I looked at George. He was nodding his head before I’d even asked.
‘Harold Webber,’ he said. ‘Phil’s dad. He’ll be dead within the fortnight.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
I stared at the coffin in the middle of the room.
Nervously, I walked towards it, almost stopping as I caught sight of the body that lay inside.
I lay inside.
‘They did a good job,’ George commented.
I nodded. I had to admit, I did look pretty. In fact, the make-up job was much better than I’d ever managed. I looked at the clothes that I was wearing. I approved of the lavender skirt that Marc had decided on. It had been a favourite of mine because the length hid my chunky calves. I wouldn’t have put the blouse with it but in the grand scheme of things, what did it matter?
The door to our left opened and the man who had dressed me earlier walked in. My parents followed.
My father had to support my mother the entire way, and by the time they reached the coffin, his support was the only thing that was stopping her from hitting the floor.
She gave a whimper as she finally saw me. Her hand covered her mouth and she shook. I could only stare at her. I had never seen this woman before.
She pushed against Dad’s arm and forced herself to stand by my coffin and look inside it. Her hand went out to me. It shook as she stroked my cheek softly and I instin
ctively put my hand to my face.
‘Night, night, darling,’ she said, the way she had a million times before. ‘Sleep tight.’
She turned away briefly. ‘This is wrong,’ she whispered. ‘It should be me in there.’ My dad looked uncomfortable. ‘It should be me in there.’ My mother’s words were louder the second time.
‘Come on, Peg.’ Dad took hold of her elbow with one hand and put the other arm around her shoulder.
She shrugged his arm and hand away and stood frozen, staring into my coffin. Although my dad was only inches from her he may as well have been miles away. I had never seen anyone look so alone.
‘You don’t understand.’ She shifted her gaze and locked eyes with my dad. ‘It should have been me. She wasn’t supposed to be there.’ Mum’s eyes went back to the coffin.
My hand went to my mouth but could not prevent a noise from escaping.
‘Naomi was supposed to stay with us on Thursday night.’ Dad appeared confused and Mum started to pace the floor. ‘Ellen asked me if I’d pick Naomi up from school and let her stay over. I said I was feeling a bit under the weather and wasn’t up to having her overnight. That’s why they called on their way home.’ Her voice was louder than it should have been considering where she was. ‘Ellen thought I was ill. I wasn’t ill. I was just feeling sorry for myself. I was put out that Ellen was going to have lunch and an afternoon’s shopping with her friend.’
She put the palms of both hands against the wall and let them take the weight of her body. After a few seconds she pushed herself up. As she walked back to the coffin she sobbed. ‘Now because of me …’ there was a pause as she forced herself to say the words, ‘… my baby’s dead.’ After one loud primal scream she yelled, ‘It should have been me.’ With that she fell to her knees and rocked as she sobbed. Dad looked at her and rubbed his hand back and forth over his mouth.
I stared at my dad, who after a few seconds slowly lowered himself to his haunches beside his wife.
I didn’t try to hide the anger from my face as I turned to George. He had anticipated my reaction and took hold of my shoulders.
‘I don’t believe her,’ I screamed.
I think George said, ‘She’s wrong,’ but I’m not sure because I wasn’t listening.
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