Keep Her Silent

by Theresa Talbot

  ‘So, what you after?’ He sipped the coffee through the foam and broke off a corner of the biscuit.

  ‘Nothing! Can’t I buy you a coffee just for the hell of it?’ She was clearly losing her touch.

  ‘Last time you bought me a coffee, O’Neil, you were looking for some guy’s phone number.’

  She could feel her face going red. ‘That was a long time ago. Anyway…’ she decided to use the direct approach ‘… the tainted blood scandal.’

  Sandy put his cup on the table, raised his eyebrow, giving her the OK to continue.

  ‘I want to interview some of the victims, and thought—’

  ‘That bunch are a nightmare.’

  ‘Sandy! That’s a hellish thing to say.’ She was genuinely shocked, and surprised that she was hurt by his outburst, but she needed him to fill in some gaps.

  She didn’t go into detail about the programme at this stage, just told him that she was looking at medical negligence stories in general.

  ‘Well, steer clear of that mob. They’re just impossible to deal with.’

  ‘From what I can gather they’ve been dealt a really horrific blow.’

  Sandy wiped the foam from his lips with the back of his hand. He liked to give the impression that he was a laid-back, can’t-be-arsed type of journalist, treading water in a cushy number to see him to retirement. But his years of experience alone meant for the most part he knew his stuff.

  ‘Listen, there’s no doubt they’ve suffered. It must be crap for all of them. I’m not denying that. But they’re so busy fighting among themselves that they’re alienating themselves from anyone who could maybe help.’

  ‘Explain.’

  Sandy didn’t tell her much more than what she knew already: basically those affected by the infected blood were categorised into different groups. He pushed his plate to one side and pulled the sugar bowl towards him. ‘Right, here you have every patient affected.’ He glanced up to make sure Oonagh was paying attention. He took out a handful of sugar sachets and placed them in front of the bowl. ‘Some of these were infected with hep C in the late seventies and would have died without the factor VIII. Next—’ he grabbed another handful, smaller this time ‘—we have the poor sods who were infected later, once the risks were known.’ The last handful of sugar was smaller again. ‘Then there are those non-haemophiliacs who were infected during transfusions after operations and the likes.’

  ‘Right, so we’ve got a table full of sugar, people are dying and the problem is?’

  ‘There’s a whole load of stuff as to how the blood became infected. Some of it was never properly heat treated to make it safe, others because it came from suspect sources…’

  Oonagh was anxious to get to the heart of it all. ‘So what’s the bottom line?’ She hoped he’d leave the sugar alone. It was getting on her tits and reminded her of how much dumbing down there was in television.

  ‘Well, some are dying, an increasing amount are dead, there’s no one single reason or person to blame and no criminal charges.’

  ‘This doesn’t really explain it, though, Sandy.’

  ‘The bottom line, Oonagh, is none of the campaign groups can agree on a compensation figure. They’ve been offered different amounts in line with how much their lives have been affected – but in return they need to drop the negligence claims.’

  ‘That’s deplorable.’

  Sandy nodded. ‘Yeah, but that’s life, eh? Some want to take the money as at least it’s better than a kick in the chukkies, others are furious and say the compensation doesn’t even amount to a year’s wages. You know as well as I do how compensation works. Joe Public thinks there’s money to burn. But in real life it’s not like that. One poor sod crippled from hep C, cannae get up the stairs, can’t work. But he’s a haemophiliac. His life was already hanging by a thread. It’s just a different type of shite that he was dealing with before. He can hardly claim loss of earnings when he had a disease that meant he was unable to leave his front door most days anyway.’

  ‘Yes, but that can’t be the same for all of them. There must be some who were—’

  Sandy cut in. ‘That’s my point, Oonagh. There are just too many variants within the victims to get a one-size-fits-all compo arrangement. And if one group turn it down then none of them get the cash.’

  Oonagh liked Sandy, she liked him a lot, but this left a bitter taste in her mouth. She couldn’t imagine any other scenario where victims were accused of being so complicit in their own downfall. ‘So basically you’re telling me that because the victims can’t agree then they’re snookered?’

  Sandy nodded and placed the sugar sachets back in the bowl. Carefully ensuring they all faced the same way.

  ‘It’s just too complicated, Oonagh, and at the end of the day it’s a pain in the tonsils. I could spend three weeks making a single package about this that’s on air for less than four minutes. In that time, I could have covered five different stories for the network.’

  It broke her heart, but she knew he was right. Very few duty editors would sign off such an assignment. There just weren’t the resources. She’d already resigned herself to the fact that most of this programme would be made in her own time. It was a good job she didn’t have anyone to go on holiday with as she made a mental note to cancel all leave.

  ‘I still want to interview some of the victims.’

  Sandy just shrugged. ‘’S up to you,’ and stood up to leave.

  ‘I’ve got a contact for Eva Muirhead?’ Oonagh posed it as a question.

  Sandy slid the sugar bowl towards Oonagh with his index finger. ‘There are hundreds of victims who I reckon would speak to you, Oonagh – why d’you want to talk to the one bampot that’s too crazy for the sugar bowl?’

  *

  ‘It was my fault. They get the gene from the mother, you know.’ She smoothed the soft white Babygro on the bed. ‘We brought him home in this. It was miles too big. Funny how you have no idea you’re defective until it’s too late.’ The clothes seemed to be laid out in chronological order: baby to toddler, smart infant school uniform and the immaculate wee black brogues, without even a scuff.

  ‘He was so excited the day we bought these. He promised me he’d keep them good.’ She held them to her chest. ‘I don’t want his school shoes to be good. I want them wrecked and scuffed and broken. He was seven. Seven years old and he never got a chance to wear his school uniform like the rest of the kids.’

  Oonagh struggled to keep it together as the wee boy’s life was laid out before her. This was so fucking unfair. She reached out and touched Eva Muirhead’s shoulder. The mother’s loss was palpable. ‘It doesn’t get any easier. People think after a few years it eases, fades into the background, but it doesn’t.’ The sob in her throat clawed its way out of her mouth. ‘He was my wee boy.’ Her cry was visceral and Oonagh broke every rule in her book as she wrapped both arms around Eva Muirhead and held her close.

  The sun streamed through the window and the light glinted off the bedside table. Eva’s sobs subsided, but Oonagh guessed they were never far from the surface.

  ‘People think we’re nutters, you know. Crackpots screaming about compensation. Justice. Perhaps we are, but no one’s listening.’

  ‘Eva, what kind of help are you getting?’

  She just shrugged. ‘None really. Oh, there are support groups for people who’ve lost children, and others from the tainted blood scandal, but I just feel…’

  She didn’t say hers was a special case. There was no hierarchy of grief from Eva Muirhead, no special claim to be worse off than any other grieving mother. But Oonagh knew she was.

  Eva made her way back into the main living room, away from her dead son’s things. She had prepared for Oonagh’s visit; folders apparently containing every scrap of paperwork and information on Mark’s medical condition were on the table.

  Oonagh feared this was a bigger story than she could handle. She’d need a helluva lot of help and backup. A separate researcher
, one she could trust, and a production team that could deliver the goods. This wasn’t a programme that she could put together in a few weeks; this would take time. Every new piece of information led her down a wormhole until she felt she was drowning in data.

  ‘Eva, I’m so sorry, I need to ask some really upsetting questions.’ Oonagh didn’t want to add to her pain.

  ‘There’s nothing you can say or do that would make me feel any worse. I’ve got nothing inside. I don’t even have bitterness any more. Just nothing.’

  Oonagh thought back to the times she’d read out a news item on the tainted blood scandal. She’d hardly even taken in the words. Another victim dead, another group calling for a public inquiry. But Eva Muirhead’s pain would go on long after the studio lights went out.

  She told Oonagh that Mark had been diagnosed with haemophilia when he was just six months old. There had been no known family history and prior to that Eva had been oblivious to the fact she carried the defective gene. ‘When I think back to the times I’d injected him, and he was trying to be brave. It was sore. I could see it in his face, but he was such a wee soldier. He was being brave for me and I was killing him. Injecting him with that filthy poison.’

  ‘Eva, please; you put your trust in the medical profession. They were the ones that let you and your family down. Don’t torture yourself like this.’ Oonagh’s words felt hollow, but she just didn’t know what else to say.

  Mark Muirhead was seven years old when he died. He was HIV positive. After his diagnosis the doctors in the children’s unit quizzed Eva about a possible heroin habit when she was pregnant. Had she injected?

  ‘I was a thirty-two-year-old chartered accountant when I got pregnant. I could have written a book on being dull, yet they were asking me all this stuff.’

  Could it have been Mark’s dad? they’d asked. Had he been having unprotected sex with prostitutes? Was he frequenting gay bars, picking up rent boys?

  ‘Brian lost his job as soon as it got out about Mark. He was a catering manager and they said it was too risky. There was a huge article in one of the tabloids with the headline: ‘Every Haemophiliac in the UK has AIDS’. Friends I’d known for years wouldn’t let me near them. Pulled their kids to one side as I walked past. Mark loved swimming, but we were banned from the local pool. We were treated like lepers. And all the time I was trying to find out what was wrong with my baby. I used to worry that haemophilia would hamper Mark’s life. Maybe stop him having kids of his own one day. He wasn’t supposed to die before he’d had a chance to wear his school shoes.’

  This time Eva Muirhead didn’t cry. She grabbed one of the folders and flicked through the pages. ‘Look; it’s here in black and white.’

  Oonagh scanned the document in which a Canadian pharmaceutical company pleaded guilty to labelling blood as coming from donors in Sweden when in actual fact it came from Russian cadavers. Oonagh read and reread the last line.

  ‘They’ve actually admitted this?’

  Eva nodded. ‘The blood was then repackaged and exported to Europe to make factor VIII.’

  According to Eva there were never any criminal charges brought about, instead they were being pursued in the civil courts.

  ‘It was as though he was slipping through my fingers. Gradually he was getting sicker. There was nothing I could do. He was so ill. In the end we brought Mark home to die. Wanted him to be surrounded by his favourite toys, in a house where he was loved. He looked like a wee old man. His skin as thin as paper. That night Brian held him. I lay beside them both in the bed, stroking his cheek. I was whispering goodbye and telling him how much I loved him. D’you know what he said?’

  Oonagh’s chest tightened as Eva tried to suppress her sobs.

  ‘He said, “Mummy, where am I going?” And the only thing I could think to say was to tell him he was going on a big adventure with ET. Up into the sky. Why the hell did I say that?’

  By now Eva’s cries were convulsing in her throat, and Oonagh did nothing to stop her own tears, which stung her cheeks.

  ‘Our wee boy, he didn’t deserve that. D’you know how sick I feel thinking that I might’ve injected him with blood from a Russian corpse who died of God knows what?’

  Eva’s cries subsided, and Oonagh reached for her hand. ‘If this is known, well documented, what’s the…’ she struggled to find the right words ‘… why’s there such a problem with getting justice?’

  Eva waved her hand over the sea of paperwork. ‘I’ve pored over this for almost two decades. Each year the files get bigger and bigger; more mess come to the surface. I practically know every case by heart, but d’you know what those bastards say in their defence? Said Mark was going to die anyway, and at the time they didn’t know the blood was infected. That’s why we can’t get any justice. There’s no bottom line here. No one to take ultimate responsibility. No one to sue.’

  ‘I need to play devil’s advocate here, Eva.’ Oonagh felt like a shit, but there were some things that needed to be said. ‘Could they have been right? Were they at least giving him what they believed was a fighting chance?’

  Eva’s knuckles whitened slightly as she gripped the arm of the chair. She’d obviously been asked that question before. She tapped her index finger on the table next to the files. ‘Every single sufferer in here is different. And for some that may well be the case. I firmly believe Mark’s condition was more than manageable. D’you know how many paediatricians are familiar with the disease?’ She didn’t wait for Oonagh to reply. ‘Very few. They maybe see one or two patients throughout their careers. Sometimes none at all. They were as much in the dark as we were. I don’t blame them. It was the haematology departments who were playing God. Bastards. I can’t prove it, but I know my boy was deliberately infected with HIV. Those bastards needed a guinea pig.’

  Oonagh reached out and held Eva’s arm. ‘Surely not.’

  Eva pulled away. ‘D’you know how many people look at me as though I’m mental when I say that?’

  ‘I don’t think you’re mental, Eva, but I genuinely want you to be wrong.’ Oonagh meant what she said. Eva’s theory was too horrific.

  ‘Oonagh, I’m sorry, but somewhere along the line some bastard signed off a consignment of blood from Soviet mortuaries and state prisons. That I can prove. The bottom line is I injected my only son with blood from corpses, drug addicts and killers and I’m just meant to think that’s a bad roll of the dice.’

  ‘What about Brian? Are you two still together?’

  Eva dropped her eyes and shook her head. She walked over to the window sill and picked up a framed picture of the three of them. A happy family: Eva with her dark blonde hair slightly over her face, Brian grinning with Mark in his arms. Taken during happier times. Before Mark’s illness claimed the best of his childhood. Bastard, thought Oonagh, leaving Eva to deal with this on her own. She kept her trap shut on this one.

  ‘D’you know there are people thought we’d made it up?’

  Oonagh must have looked confused.

  ‘Made up the tainted blood scandal. I’ve had poison-pen letters from people saying Brian had AIDS and gave it to Mark. Or that I’d been sleeping around. They said the most vile things.’

  It was dawning on Oonagh that a decent production team was the least of her worries. The studio lawyers would be working overtime for six months to pass any of this to go on-air.

  ‘Were you ever tested for HIV?’

  Eva shook her head. ‘We both refused. If either of us had contracted it from Mark then, well, I’d rather not know.’

  ‘Eva, what makes you think that Mark was deliberately infected with HIV? That’s a pretty serious allegation.’ Eva Muirhead shot her a look; Oonagh hurried to explain herself. ‘I mean, isn’t there the possibility that he contracted the disease through the infected blood? You said so yourself.’

  Once again Eva referred to the documents on the table. ‘There’s a cluster of kids here. They’re all fairly similar to Mark in the way that the disease present
ed itself. They all had what’s known as mild haemophilia.’ She went on to explain, ‘Severe haemophiliacs bleed into their muscles and joints, and bleed spontaneously. It’s all to do with the amount of clotting agent missing from the blood. It’s a horrible disease.’

  Oonagh could see Eva Muirhead was a self-taught expert on the subject.

  ‘Moderate sufferers will have problems after surgery or dental work. They tend not to bleed spontaneously. Mark was at the mild end of the scale. Yes, he’d have had a problem with surgery, or an open-wound injury, but that was it.’

  ‘And you’re saying…’

  ‘There’s a cluster of half a dozen kids, all similar age to Mark with mild haemophilia, and they all contracted AIDS around the same time.’ She caught the question in Oonagh’s expression. ‘Yes, all dead.’

  Not for the first time Oonagh felt out of her depth.

  ‘None of these kids ever really needed Factor VIII. I believe that they were used as lab rats and deliberately infected with this new blood-borne disease.’

  This was a bit of a leap. It was becoming difficult to separate what might be a crackpot conspiracy theory from the real deal. But her gut told her to trust Eva Muirhead and her mother’s instinct.

  ‘Why would they do that, Eva? Why would any doctor be so vicious as to give a child AIDS?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It was the perfect way to gauge the pathology of the disease. This way they could monitor the kids.’ Eva turned her back to Oonagh. ‘I sound like a nutter, don’t I?’

  ‘Eva, I’ve met nutters, lots of them. Believe me, you’ve a long way to go.’

  Eva turned and let out a slight laugh. ‘Thanks. I think.’

  She levelled with her. ‘Eva, I’m not going to kid on, there’s a lot of information here. I’m struggling to take it all in.’

  Oonagh didn’t want to leave it there, but she needed to gather the information and was due back at the studio. ‘Can we meet again, Eva? I feel I’m just at the tip of the iceberg here.’