Our Song

by Dani Atkins

  Max was the only one to accompany me to the meeting with the Specialist Nurse from the Organ Donation team. Joe’s parents, for all their bravery, had quietly declined when I’d asked them. Max held my hand tightly gripped within his own throughout the interview, and I was grateful for the practical questions he thought to ask, because I was hanging on by a thread already stretched to breaking point, and there was still so much to decide. When the nurse produced a large sheaf of papers that would require my signature, I know Max felt my entire body stiffen in terror beside him.

  ‘How soon do you need our answer?’ he asked. ‘Can we have a day or two to think about this?’

  The woman’s eyes were sympathetic as she shook her head regretfully. ‘I am afraid there’s no easy way to say this, but the sooner you are able to arrive at a decision, the better it will be, not just for the organ recipients, but also for you and your family. Obviously no one is trying to rush you into something you are not comfortable with, but the successful outcomes we would hope to achieve from the donation diminish dramatically the longer we wait. Time is against us here and – as always – there are significantly more people waiting for an organ transplant than there are suitable donors. Indeed, on this very ward there is a patient whose own survival depends on him being matched with a suitable donor.’

  I froze at her words. I looked at Max, aghast, and for just a moment he didn’t understand the look on my face, then his frown of puzzlement turned into a look of incredulity.

  ‘Here, on the ICU? Another patient on this ward is in need of a transplant?’ The Specialist Nurse looked more than a little taken aback at my question, or perhaps it was the horrified look in my eyes. ‘You don’t mean David, do you? David Williams?’ The woman was looking distinctly uncomfortable now.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Taylor, but I’m not permitted to discuss another patient’s condition with you. It was insensitive of me to mention it, and I can only apologise.’

  I closed my ears to her words of remorse. She had to mean David. There were no other patients on the ward except him and Joe. So it had to be David she was talking about. David was the person who was in desperate need of some poor grieving family (but not ours) making the decision to let a vital part of them (his heart, for God’s sake, we were talking about his heart) do something incredible after their loved one had gone. But not Joe, never Joe. That was too much to ask of anyone.

  Somewhere, from far away, I could hear Max asking the Specialist Nurse the exact question that I never would have been able to voice. ‘Are you saying that Joe’s heart could go to the other patient on this ward, to David Williams?’

  The nurse took a beat before answering, and I’m sure she could feel the intensity of two pairs of eyes glaring at her as she spoke. ‘No. No, of course not. There are a great many factors which are taken into consideration when organs are allocated. First and foremost, consideration is given to patients who most urgently need a transplant, but many other things need to match – or be very close – to ensure a successful organ transplant: blood group, age and weight, all of these are taken into account.’ The nurse smiled kindly. ‘The chances of two patients being on the same ward and one being eligible and suitable for an organ transplantation from the other, well . . . well, the odds of that happening are infnitesimally small.’

  Infinitesimally small, I thought, as I took the literature the nurse had handed me and allowed Max to lead me from the room. How infinitesimal? Was that in any way comparable to the odds of finding the man you first fell in love with, and the man you love now both being desperately ill in the same hospital on the same night? Ridiculous odds that defied all explanation or logic were something I had already learned to accept.

  Chapter 13

  Charlotte

  I walked into the Relatives’ Room and stopped in my tracks. I hadn’t expected anyone to be in there, and certainly not Ally. If I were in her position I would be spending every single minute at my husband’s bedside, not sitting alone in this small room, poring over a sheaf of forms and pamphlets. Only she wasn’t alone; I realised that when a blur of movement from the corner of the room caught my attention. A man stood there. He was tall and stylishly fashionable, from his trendily cut hair to his undoubtedly expensive soft leather boots. He looked vaguely out of place, as though he’d been plucked from an environment far more colourful and exotic and dropped into this drab grey hospital ward by mistake.

  He spun around and looked at me. I can’t say his expression was entirely welcoming.

  I turned to the other occupant of the room. Ally had paused, her pen still gripped within her clenched fingers. Her cheeks were damp and her eyes looked defeated.

  ‘Ally I . . . I . . .’ I had no idea what to say to her. In truth, it frightened me to get close to her, to that raw and exposed pain, because I knew how easily I could be the one in her position. How I still might be. I took a step towards her, aware that the mysterious man in the corner had matched it with one of his own.

  ‘I heard the terrible news . . . about Joe. I’m so very sorry.’ She didn’t ask who had told me, I doubt that she even cared. I reached out hesitantly, my hand hovering in the space between us, before I laid it upon her bowed shoulder. I could feel the man’s eyes scrutinising me like a laser. Who was he?

  As I leant in closer, Ally swept the forms she had been in the process of signing a little further away from me, sliding them down the length of the low table. But she was too late. Even upside-down I had easily been able to read the heading on the topmost form. The words Organ Donation seemed to leap at me off the page, and in response my heart leapt right back on seeing them. I was suddenly aware of the need to tread very carefully here.

  ‘How are you doing?’

  There was so much pain in her eyes it was hard to meet them. It was like looking directly at an eclipse, if you did it for too long, you would do damage. ‘Not good,’ she admitted.

  ‘If there’s anything I can do—’

  ‘We’ve got it covered. Thank you,’ interrupted the man, walking yet another step closer to Ally. There was just a hint of an accent in his voice.

  ‘Well. If you need me to do anything. Get anything for you . . . ?’

  Ally nodded and the man bridged the final distance between them, putting his hand on her shoulder, on the exact spot where my own had just lain.

  ‘How’s Jake?’ I asked. ‘This must be so dreadful for him.’ It was totally the wrong thing to have said, I knew that instantly from the tightening of Ally’s mouth and the small exhaled hiss from her companion.

  ‘Ally and her family will take good care of Jake. You don’t need to worry about my godson.’ There was something in his words that told me that this man – whoever he was – knew all about David’s connection to Jake.

  I was silent for a long moment, mentally regrouping. I needed to speak to Ally. I needed to ask her something, and I was pretty certain that I wasn’t going to be able to do it with this guy watching over her like a bodyguard. Don’t get me wrong, I was glad that she had the support of so many people around her, given the awful way things had turned out, but their presence didn’t make it any easier for what I wanted – no, for what I had – to do now.

  ‘Ally I know this is a living nightmare for you. But could I have a word with you?’ I paused for a second. ‘Alone.’

  Ally raised her head. It seemed as though even that was an effort, and for a moment I wondered whether this was the right time to do this? But if not now, then when? There would never be a right time for this conversation. It simply didn’t exist.

  ‘Whatever you have to say to Ally, you can say in front of me, Charlotte.’

  I gasped. Well, he certainly knew every bit as much of our history as I had suspected. I saw the look in his eyes and realised that he knew something else too. He knew what I was about to ask her.

  ‘It’s a personal matter. Private,’ I said, trying to hold firm on the quicksand I was currently standing on.

  ‘I’m sorry. I did
n’t travel three-and-a-half thousand miles to be with Ally to leave her alone now. You’re either going to have to speak in front of me, or not say anything at all.’ His tone made it perfectly clear which option he hoped I would take.

  It wasn’t going to happen. He was tough, I could see that. But then so was I. And this was too important to let him silence me. I dropped down into the seat directly in front of Ally. I needed her to be able to see my face when I asked this question, as much as I needed to be able to see hers.

  It took several minutes before she raised her eyes to mine, waiting. I think she’d needed that time to brace herself. In the seconds that passed before I spoke I looked at her, really looked at her. She was the woman he had loved first. She was the one who had claimed his heart before I reached it. And she was the one who had broken it. She lived on in a part of him that I had never been able to reach. He still thought I didn’t know this, but of course I did. What wife wouldn’t? For years I had resented the pretty brunette sitting in front of me. Resented her, feared her, and at times even hated her. What if their paths crossed again? Would the love I knew he had for me be strong enough to hold him? Or would the ties that had linked him to her prove even stronger? Were his feelings for her reciprocated in any way? Did she still think of him? Did she ever wonder . . . what if? Did she still love him? For years I had been terrified the answer to those questions might be yes, she did. Today everything I lived for, everything I prayed for, hinged on the hope that she did.

  Ally

  It was a bright and cheery room. The walls were covered in vibrantly painted murals. There were toys everywhere, stacked in overflowing colourful crates in each corner, and the floor was dotted with beanbags and vivid neon-coloured cubes to sit on.

  I blinked, waiting for the fluorescent lights to finally stop flickering before stepping into the day room. The Specialist Nurse beside me, her hand still on the light switch, surveyed the room briefly and then turned to face me. ‘Do you think this will do?’

  I looked around the room, imagining it as it must be during the daytime, full of small courageous children from the adjacent ward, ignoring their bandages, plaster casts or drips they were attached to, bravely disregarding their pain to play among the donated toys. I could think of no better location to do this.

  I turned to the nurse. ‘Yes. This will be perfect. Thank you for suggesting it.’

  ‘I’m happy to stay, if you would like, if you think it might help,’ she offered once again. I slowly shook my head.

  ‘I think it will be better for Jake if there are just the people he knows and loves here,’ Max affirmed politely. He softened the rebuff with a small smile. ‘No offence.’

  ‘None taken.’ The nurse consulted her watch. ‘Well, I’d best get back to the ICU. You know where to find me if you need me.’ She paused at the threshold and looked back at Max and me, standing incongruously in this overly happy, overly jolly room. There was sympathy in her eyes. ‘Good luck,’ she said gently.

  My dad had phoned; he was on his way back from the zoo, bringing with him a very tired and excitable boy. A boy whose world I was about to shatter. It made me want to run; to put as much distance as possible between myself and the dreadful thing I had to do. But I couldn’t do that. I owed it to Joe, and the son he had raised as though he was his own, to do this thing as well as I could. I’d sat at Joe’s bedside, trying to stretch the last hours we had together to fill a lifetime of memories, and wished I could draw on his strength. Joe would have known the words to use, he would have found a way to lessen the crippling cruelty of the blow. But for me they remained painfully elusive. I had no idea what to say to my own child. Perhaps it would have helped if my head wasn’t still so full of the dreadful conversation I’d had with Charlotte earlier. Although several hours had passed, the scene kept repeating on me, like I’d eaten something bad that refused to stay down.

  ‘How can you ask that of me?’ My voice was shaking with disbelief.

  ‘How can I not?’ she had countered.

  ‘Have you no compassion? No sensitivity at all? Can you hear how unbelievably cruel it is, even to have suggested it?’

  She was crying then. We both were. ‘I’m sorry Ally, but I’m fighting here to keep the man I love alive. You’d do exactly the same thing if the tables were turned.’

  Would I? Somehow I didn’t think that I would. ‘Anyway,’ I had said, gesturing towards the pile of papers on the table before me. ‘It doesn’t work like that. Computers decide where the . . . the donations . . . go. There’s a register, there’s a list of priorities.’

  ‘I know all about that,’ Charlotte had replied, and I realised then that this had not been some spur-of-the-moment request. She had done her research. ‘But in America they have something called “Designated Donation”, where you can request that your loved one’s organs go to a specific individual.’

  ‘Yes, well, we’re not in America now, are we?’ Max’s voice was glacier cold. It was the first time he had spoken since Charlotte had made her outrageous request.

  She had thrown him a quick, dismissive glance before turning back to me. ‘It’s rare, admittedly, even over there. But I’ve been looking into this; I’ve been on the internet all morning.’ I bet you have, I thought bitterly. ‘The next-of-kin can make a request, even in the UK. You can ask that David is considered as the recipient, and if his condition is serious enough, if no one else has a higher priority, then they’ll try to follow your wishes.’

  ‘These aren’t my wishes,’ I cried in desperation. ‘They’re yours. None of this is what I want.’ I was breathing raggedly, each indrawn gulp struggling to fill my lungs with enough air to continue. ‘I don’t want to choose where Joe’s organs go, I don’t even want to know. Let the doctors decide. That’s the way it’s meant to be.’

  ‘None of this is the way it’s meant to be. You’re not meant to lose Joe, not like this.’ There was real and genuine pain in Charlotte’s voice. ‘And I’m not meant to lose David. I can’t help him. I can’t save him. But you can.

  ‘Don’t ask me to do this, Charlotte. It’s more than anyone should be asked.’

  She looked lost for a minute, all her arguments, all her lines of attack stripped away. ‘I’m not asking for me. I’m asking for David. If he ever meant anything to you—’ Max made a sound then, like a low warning rumble of thunder. ‘And what about Jake? Have you thought about him? Does he really deserve to lose two fathers in one night?’

  ‘And we’re done,’ cut in Max angrily, stepping in between us like a referee ‘Okay Charlotte, that’s enough. You’ve said your piece. I really think you should leave now, before I do or say something I won’t be proud of.’

  Telling Jake broke me. I knew that it would. He had come dashing through the glass swing doors of the day room, my dad several metres behind him. Jake’s eyes scanned the room, saw me and then saw the tall shape of a man standing in the corner. ‘Daddy!’ he cried. Max turned around and I watched the joy on my child’s face melt away and then reappear as he recognised the other person with me. ‘Uncle Max! What are you doing here?’

  Max scooped him up in his arms, in a way no seven-year-old would normally tolerate, but Jake flew to him like a miniature torpedo. Somewhere mid-hug, mid-gleeful exclamations, the oddness of it all filtered through to my far-too-observant child. Max slowly lowered him back onto his feet, but Jake’s eyes didn’t leave his face.

  ‘Why are you here? Mummy never said you were coming. We always know when you’re going to visit us.’

  Max’s eyes went to mine over the top of Jake’s thick shock of dark hair. Very slowly Jake turned to me. ‘Is it because of Daddy? Is Uncle Max here because of Daddy being on all those machines?’

  He saw me hesitate. Saw me swallow deeply before answering. ‘Yes, sweetie. Uncle Max came because I told him how sick Daddy is and he wanted to be with us. To help us.’

  ‘Help us? Why do we need help? Daddy just needs to have a bit longer to sleep and then he’ll wake up
. And he’ll be all better again. That’s right, isn’t it?’ Jake turned to my father who was standing by the door, his face stricken. Finding no response, Jake turned back to his godfather with less certainty in his voice. ‘That’s right?’ Max looked in actual physical pain. Finally Jake looked at me. ‘Mummy . . . Mummy, just how sick is Daddy?’

  And here it was. The moment no parent, even in their worst nightmare, is prepared to face. I opened my arms and Jake went into them. I wanted to hold him close, to protect him, yet I was the one about to do damage. ‘Jakey, Daddy was hurt much worse than we realised at first.’

  ‘He’s sleeping.’

  A knife went through me, all the way through.

  ‘That’s what we thought at first. That’s what we all hoped But it turns out . . .’ My voice began to break, and I couldn’t allow that. I bit down on my lip, so hard that I tasted blood. I saw Max take a step towards us, but I shook my head and he froze in his tracks. This was my task. Mine alone. ‘It turns out Daddy’s body was really badly hurt. Deep inside him.’

  ‘He’s just sleeping, you’ll see.’

  A second knife joined the first.

  ‘No he’s not, sweetheart. I wish he was, but he’s not. Daddy was really brave and he went into the cold water to save that little boy. And now you’re going to have to be really brave too.’

  There was a long, long, terrible silence. Jake broke it first. ‘Daddy’s not going to wake up, is he?’

  Peripherally I saw both Max and my father coming towards us. There is a need to consolidate, to unite, when something terrible is coming. But sometimes, however many loved ones stand beside you, you can’t stop the onslaught from felling you.