“I think you should call anyone who would like to come and see Laura.”
My dad starts breathing too quickly.
“The staff at Kings will help you arrange for them to visit.”
She stops at the door. “It’s a very good hospital. You’ll be in the best place possible, Laura.” And then she walks away again, leaving us watching the space where she once was.
“Where do they get the liver from?” I ask into the room. My parents look at me. They seem so different—I know them and yet I don’t.
“Someone gives it up for transplant,” Dad says.
“But they can’t live without it,” I remind him.
“No,” Dad says.
“So how can they give it to me?”
Dad looks as though he doesn’t understand me.
“You know this, Lo,” he says.
“Someone has got to die first.” Ma’s voice drifts toward me.
Someone dies. I live, but someone dies.
“They’ll save me?”
“Yes,” Dad says. “They will.”
And there’s silence. I notice every second ticking by. Dad stands up. “I’m going to get Rita.”
He’s starting to cry, but I don’t want him to.
“I’ll show you where the car is,” Ma says quickly. She rushes out of the room before him, without looking back. Dad leans down and kisses me on my cheek. His eyes are covered in tears.
I put my arms around his neck, because I don’t want to let him go. But I don’t want to see him cry, and he’s breaking apart on my skin.
“I’ve got to get Rita,” he says as he pulls away from me and disappears too, leaving me alone in this room.
I stare at the ceiling. There must be layers of breaths of all the people who’ve lain in this bed.
I feel tears, steady on the edge of my cheek. I forget why they’re here and then I remember. The doctor says my liver is failing. I put her words in a barrel and roll it across the grass toward the cliff. I push it off, watch it fly and fall and thud onto the rocks below.
The effort makes me too tired to stay awake, so I close my eyes and wait for time to come back.
“Laura, love.” Someone is pressing on my arm. A woman is standing next to me, blurred by my sleep. Ma stands next to her, but it isn’t my bedroom. “We’re transferring you to London.”
I’m in hospital.
My head was hurting and now it’s not.
Layers of my mind peel back and show me that I’ve killed my liver. It’s dying inside me. It’s broken and they won’t mend it.
How long?
Days.
“Ma.” I grab for her hand and I pull her toward me to make the rest of the room go. I’m crying and she’s trying to hold me, but my thoughts are falling over. I don’t want blackness instead of the sky.
“Lo.” Ma is stroking my hair and I need to hold her voice.
“I was better,” I tell her. “I was OK.”
“We’ll find a new liver.” But my mom’s face is crumbling to dust.
“I don’t want a new liver. I want mine to get better.” I grab her hand again, because she doesn’t seem to see. “We need to get a better doctor.”
“You’re going to a new hospital now, Laura,” the woman says. “They’ll do lots more tests.”
“What have you done with Dad?” I ask her. He’s not here. He’s not anywhere in this room.
“He’s fine,” Ma says.
“Where is he?” I stop crying so that I can look properly at the woman.
“He’s gone to get Rita,” Ma says. “They’re going to meet us in London.”
“How will they get there?” I ask.
“Dad will drive the car.”
“Can I sit with Rita?”
“They’ll meet us there,” Ma says. She looks so tired.
“Where’s Gramps?”
“Carla is looking after him until we go back.”
I try to shake the bandage from my arm, but it won’t loosen.
“We’ll have to be back by tonight,” I tell her. “Tricks will kill us.”
“We’ll pop you on this,” the woman says. She’s standing next to a thin bed with wheels.
“Traveling in style.” There’s a man here too.
They make me stand up, because if I go with them I’ll see Rita and my dad. I curl back down under the other sheets. The man is by my head and the woman is by my feet and they push me from the room.
Ma holds my hand as we walk down the sunken blue corridor. Its air snaps at her heels.
“You’re shaking,” I say. I can feel her trembling against my palm.
“I’m just cold,” she says.
“You’ll be warm in the ambulance.” The man smiles at us, but it isn’t real. I have a better pretend smile, which I use to make the hands clap.
They lift the bed into the ambulance, clicking it into place. There are wires everywhere. It makes me tired just looking at them. I can’t see where one starts and another ends.
“You’ll lie down for the whole journey,” the woman says.
“Yes,” I reply. I sit up to try to touch the little screen, and I wonder if it’ll make that noise.
“If you lie down now, Laura, we’ll get you comfortable.”
It isn’t like my soft bed. There are no wooden slats above me. If there were, I’d write a note to Rita and hide it underneath her mattress. I’d tell her about Dean but make her promise not to tell Ma and Dad.
They pull straps across my chest and legs. A man gets in.
“Hello. I’m Dr. Jones.” He shakes my mom’s hand. “I’ll be staying with you for the journey. Is that OK, Laura?”
I nod and watch as they sit down, seat belts sucking them into the seats.
Ma isn’t wearing make-up. I hear the van doors shut.
“Can we keep them open?” I ask, my heart battering too quickly now because this space is so small. Once, Spider put me in a box and taped it shut.
“We can’t drive with them open,” the doctor smiles.
“Where are we going?” I reach out for Ma’s hand as I try to sit up. She leans over to me, her seat belt stretching.
“We’re going to the hospital in London,” she says.
“Where’s Rita?” Panic flicks in me.
“She’s meeting us there.”
I’ll see Rita soon. I’ll wait for her there.
I don’t like the wires, so I close my eyes. “Ma?” I ask. She’s here, holding my hand. “Where are we?”
“We’re in the ambulance.”
I hear the wheels underneath us. Sleep lifts its layers from me.
“They’re taking me to get a new liver?”
“Yes,” she says.
I’ve ruined my one. It was working and now it’s shutting down and it wants to take me with it. I don’t want to go. I want to live. I need to feel the weight of feathers in my hair.
“Ma.” I don’t want to cry. She leans close to me. I’ve never seen her eyes like this, fear and love spiraled so deep. She’s beautiful, and I’d forgotten. I want my liver to work so I can keep seeing her. Please, please, please, don’t make me leave her.
I hold her hand so tight. Feel her own bones, her own blood in its miracle stream that keeps her breathing. And I never, ever want to let her go. I want to forever see her watching over me, know that her skin will keep me safe. Know that she’s mine and Rita’s mom and nobody else’s.
Rita. I curl my knees but the hurt doesn’t go smaller. It swells so big inside me, ripping my brain, my lungs, my heart into little shreds. There’s nothing left of me but hurting.
“Ma.”
The doctor watches and I want to scream at him to make it stop. Make it not happen. Find the right medicine to mend me.
“Ma.” The thought of her is swallowed whole by blinding darkness.
“Lo?” Ma’s voice finds me and wakes me. It must be breakfast, but I’m feeling sick, and I don’t think I want to eat.
I’m not at home, th
ough.
I remember. The bitter quick taste of the pills. Dean’s car. The hospital.
There’s a strap across me and I can’t get up.
“Ma.” I panic.
“It’s OK, Lo,” she says as she tries to stroke my hair. I thrash against her.
“They’ve got it wrong,” I shout at her.
The doctor stands awkward by the bed stuck into the ambulance.
“They’ll hurt me,” I say.
“They’re trying to help us,” Ma says, but she’s starting to cry.
“They’re wrong.” A headache is seeping its way in again. It weighs my body down, washing it through with tiredness.
“This is the best place for you, Laura,” the doctor says. “We’re at a very good hospital.”
The doors open and daylight streams through. I try to blink it away because it hurts.
They’re pushing the bed with me in it. Looking at the sky makes me dizzy. We go through doors, and the moving ceiling makes me feel sick. Ma holds my hand.
“At least we don’t have to battle with the lifts,” the man pushing the bed says. He’s above me, and it makes the world slip. “This place might look a bit old-fashioned, but you’re in the best hands.”
“How will Dad find us?” I ask Ma, as she walks along beside us.
“I’ve told him where to come.”
“He’ll get lost.” There’re too many high ceilings and thin corridors.
“He’ll know how to find us.”
Doors and more doors swing shut behind us.
“Here we are.”
“I don’t like it,” I tell Ma. There’s a strange smell that slithers down inside me. Ma just squeezes my hand. “My head hurts,” I whisper, but I don’t think she hears me.
We wait by a desk, and the doctor talks to other people, but I keep staring at the ceiling until we move without him, the smell trapped in the wheels underneath me. Through another door and into a more silent room.
“The unit is nice and quiet for you at the moment,” the man from the ambulance says. There are three empty beds and a corner of the room has a curtain pulled around it.
“Where’s Dad?” I ask. “Is he in there?”
“No. That’s another patient. You’ll be just here.” The ambulance woman unstraps me. “This is your bed,” she says, and they help me over onto the tightly stretched sheet. She points to the chair next to us. “Mom, you can sit here,” she says and Ma nods, as though her head is moved by strings.
“We won’t be here long, Ma,” I tell her. “You can share my bed if it’s more comfy.”
She doubles over slightly, like she might be sick, but then she straightens herself quickly.
The man starts to pull the curtain around us, blocking out the room, but a woman appears just in time.
“Laura?” she asks and I nod and she looks at my mom. “Are you Laura’s mom?”
“Yes.” My mom’s voice shouldn’t be here, in this strange room.
“I’m Chrissy. I’m your intensive care nurse, so I’ll be closely linked to you, and you can ask me anything.” I stare at her. She looks back to me. I like her face; it’s smiling, even when she isn’t. “So, you’re from the circus?” she asks. “I’ve never met anyone from the circus.” Now I see her as a child, wide-eyed for us. “Do you do the trapeze?”
“Yes,” I tell her. I was on the trapeze with Dean.
“I always wanted to do that. Although I’m not sure I could now, as I’m not so good with heights anymore.”
We were on a roof and nothing could touch us but the clouds.
“When will you get Lo a new liver?” Ma asks suddenly.
“We’ll do everything we can, but for now we just need to get her settled and comfortable,” she says. “In a minute I’m going to hook up some machines that will keep an eye on Laura’s heart and oxygen levels and tell us how her blood pressure is doing. If they decide to put Laura on the transplant list, there’ll be a lot of people in to see you—an intensive care physician, your anesthetist and your consultant surgeon. But I’ll be your first port of call.” She looks at me. “So you mustn’t worry as I’ll be here. If there’s anything you don’t understand, then I’ll help translate it for you. It can seem a bit like a foreign language.”
“When will we know?” Ma asks, her face determined. “If there’s a liver for her?”
“It’s impossible to predict if there will be one,” Chrissy says. “But she’s in the best place.”
Ma suddenly leaves me. She finds the gap in the curtain, and I hear her feet across the floor.
I let Chrissy take my hand.
“This is a very difficult time for you all,” she says quietly. A question is at the edge of me. It tastes of salt.
“Will I die?” I look her straight in the eye, so I can see if there’s the flicker of a lie.
“We’ll do everything we can to make sure you don’t,” she says.
“But I might?” My heart beats hard at my breaths.
“It will be very difficult for us to find you a liver in time,” she answers.
There must be a way. If I push really hard against the day I can turn it into yesterday and then yesterday again. I can be in Terini, I’ll walk through the door and just be angry at it all, at Ma and Rob and Dean and Rita. I can find a glass and smash it hard against the wall. Watch as it shatters and leave the pieces and then run from it, just for a bit. I can run alongside the sea, the water calling to my angel wings. The wind will listen to me, and then I’ll know that nothing’s so bad. Nothing’s so bad as this. As leaving it all, really leaving it all forever.
“Please try,” I say. But the rest of my words are trapped by the pain in my throat. Chrissy puts her arms around me and it’s enough to make my tears break.
My crying is everything. It rips a hole in the ceiling and shatters the sun.
I’m sleepy as they press things onto my chest and attach me to wires. They murmur by the bed, sometimes Ma’s voice pushes through. But it’s only when I hear Rita that I open my eyes. The room is strange, with curtains for walls and at first she looks different too, the edges of her murky. She must have been watching me and waiting for me to wake up, because when I do, she comes forward and hugs me so tight.
She’s crying though, as she lies down next to me. Our faces are almost touching, and I watch her eyelashes close and open, close and open. The sunset of her eyelid, the sparkle green of her eye.
“Why did you do it?” she whispers.
“I’m sorry.” No reasons seem enough now and I feel the lines of my heart break.
“Why didn’t you stop?” she asks, her voice a shadow.
“I think they’ve got it wrong,” I say. “I was fine. I took the pills, but I got better.”
The sound of Rita’s tears hits hard on my chest, and I hold her hand tight.
“I’m not sick enough to die,” I tell her. “I’ll get better.” But her tears have soaked into my bones. And they fill my lungs until the snatches of air aren’t enough.
I open my eyes and Gramps is sitting next to the bed. He has my hand lightly in his, the sleeve of his coat brushing my wrist.
“Lo?” he asks, as though I’m not really here. His eyes are sunken red. I blink, to try to make it all better, but none of it goes away. Gramps’s mouth doesn’t smile.
“I’m sorry, Gramps.”
He moves slightly. “You could have talked to me.”
“I know.” But my words are too dry.
“Were things really that bad?”
No. Nothing is as bad as this.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” I say.
Outside, there is the day. It needs to slow down and split each of its minutes and split them again and again, until they reach longer than we can see.
“You’re too young for this, Lo,” he says.
“I’ll get better,” I tell him, but for the first time ever, Gramps can’t look at me. In the creases on his face, I trace our memories, Rita and I standing on a sho
ulder each and curled up on blankets under the van, Gramps bringing us glasses of squeezed lemon. I can’t leave him. I know I can’t. Fear digs into me and takes my breath from me. But I must breathe. I must breathe.
“I want to change it, Gramps. I need to make it so I didn’t take those pills.” He shakes his head, heavy and sad. “Gramps,” I say angrily because he barely moves to make it better. “You need to get Lil. Maybe in her cards it’ll say. Follow what she tells you.”
“Lo,” he says.
“I feel sick,” I say. Gramps looks quickly around him, but my stomach suddenly twists itself open. He tries to hold my head up, but the vomit falls wet from my mouth, onto my skin and the pillow and the sheet.
My mom rushes in as the smell of vomit stings the air. It plants tiny bombs inside me that make my body shake.
I want to sit up, but I have nothing left. Chrissy is here.
She moves me, and I let her.
Rita
Lo. Her name goes in a circle, taking everything else away. Lo. Lo. If I say it enough, if I think it enough, then this will all be wrong. She’ll sit up, shake off the tubes they’ve stuck in her neck, her hand, her arms and I’ll be able to see her, the real her, my sister Lo.
I sit with Ash outside of that room and stare at the wall, and I know when she walks out of there she’ll laugh and say she loves me. And we’ll run so far away from here that we won’t feel it behind us.
But there’s a deep, red pain that’s grinding inside me.
I hold Ash’s hand tight. We have to anchor each other as the storm will smash us against the sky if we let go.
“I don’t think I can go in.” The fear in Ash’s eyes spills over onto me, and I feel my arms shaking.
“I’ll stay with you,” I tell him.
“I won’t know what to say.”
“Just say what you want to. Don’t leave anything out.” I don’t know where my strength to speak comes from. “She might be asleep, but she’ll still hear you.”
Spider comes out of the room that hides Lo. As he closes the door behind him, his face collapses. It makes Ash’s breathing go too strange. I stand up and bring him with me, but his hand pulls at mine, trying to escape.
I don’t give him a choice. I half drag him through the door, across the room, and through the curtain wall, until we’re here. Seeing Lo in that bed again nearly spins me away.
Flight of a Starling Page 18