The Boy Who Gave His Heart Away: A Death that Brought the Gift of Life. Cole Moreton
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empty. The hard plastic seat pinched the back of her legs. She shivered. This was the quiet time between the last of the drunks and the first of the morning casualties. The calm before the dawn. The moments piled up, crowding her in. Sue was getting cold and scared but she was made of strong stuff. This will all work out, she told herself. No need to panic. ‘Somebody came and took notes: name and address, date of birth, allergies and that sort of thing. Then some young doctor came and asked me, was there a chance Martin had taken any drugs? I was pretty sure the answer was no.’
The doctor was insistent: ‘What about his brother, would he know? Could we perhaps ring him, just to make sure?’
‘No, we cannot,’ said Sue, rattled. Christopher had just turned twenty, he was sleeping over at his girlfriend Ashley’s house, his mother did not think it was appropriate to disturb him. ‘Unless you have got good reason to believe it’s drugs, I’m not waking Christopher to ask him.’
So then she was left alone again, on her own in the empty waiting room. Her mouth was dry, her eyes felt raw. A nurse came after a while and asked if she wanted to ring someone and ask them to come over to the hospital, but Sue said no. ‘I’m a Forces wife. I’m a big girl, I’ve spent a lot of my married life on my own, I’m used to handling things. I am not waking anyone at this hour just because my son has bumped his head.’
The nurse returned at four in the morning and insisted it would actually be best to call someone, to have them there for support. ‘Martin really is very poorly.’
That was when the penny dropped, remembers Sue. ‘She was drip-feeding me. This was the first time anyone had said that it was really serious.’ But the nurse was not going to tell her just how serious it was until there was someone to hold her hand. Or to catch her fall.
The phone rang and rang until the answerphone clicked on. ‘Please leave a message after the tone.’ Sue pressed redial and listened again to the purr of the call, steady and insistent, alerting the landline in the house of her parents, Len and Joan, in Lincoln, twenty-five miles to the north. If they didn’t pick up, what was she going to do? Who else could she call? Could she get the police to go round there and rouse them?
‘Hello?’
Her father sounded startled.
‘Dad, it’s me, Sue. Listen, I need you –’
‘Who is this?’
He was confused by sleep. She got frustrated and shouted.
‘It’s Susan. Your daughter. I’m in hospital –’
‘What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Where are you?’
‘It’s Martin. He’s had a fall. I need you to come, Dad. I’m on my own …’
The confusion fell away as Len recognised what she was saying and the fear in her voice woke him up, fully. ‘We’ll be there as soon as we can.’ He shook Joan, they dressed quickly and set off in the chill of the early morning. Both were seventy-three years old.
Len was concentrating on the road but Joan was worried, really worried. ‘What did she say exactly? Come on, she must have said more than that? What do you think is wrong? Did she really give you no idea?’ The sky began to glow beyond the street lights during the forty-minute drive. The roads were empty. The world seemed calm, too calm.
They were both scared stiff but Len was trying not to think too much about what was happening as they arrived at the hospital, a huddle of low prefab buildings that looked more like an old army base. They had to press a buzzer to be let into the hospital, which was otherwise deserted.
Sue was in a back room, distraught. ‘They think he’s got a bleed on his brain. They’re taking him to Nottingham to see a specialist, right away.’
The nurse beside her spoke softly. ‘Would you like to see him before he goes?’
Sue felt giddy, fluttery. ‘Yes, please.’
‘He’s on a machine …’
Somewhere in among the nurses and the monitors and drips and tubes in a room full of people and things was Martin. Her normal instinct would have been to push everyone aside, but Sue was rattled by what was happening and uncertain of herself in that moment: the doctors must know best. So she held back, thinking, ‘I have to let them do whatever they need to do.’
But then the nurses parted and she saw Martin, under a clear plastic mask. His eyes were closed. His hair was all messed up. He was unusually still, she sensed that in an instant. She hoped he couldn’t hear all this commotion: the beeping of the monitors, the tense conversations between staff, the rattling of her own heart. He would be afraid, poor love. She moved in close, trying to reassure him. ‘You’ve had a fall. That’s all, silly pudding. You’ve bumped your head. You’ll be fine.’
There was no way of knowing if he could hear her voice, but she had to say something, even if she was struggling to believe it. Half-blind from the tears, Sue bent to give her son a brief, soft kiss on the forehead before he was taken to the ambulance. ‘It’s all right, love. It’s all right. Mum’s here. Everything will be okay.’
Five
Marc was not going to make it down the corridor. He could not survive being moved out of the ward in a swarm of medics, trailing drips, monitors and machines. If he did then he would die in the lift on the way down to the specialist ambulance or somewhere out on the City of Edinburgh bypass in the night. There was no way he would get to the airport alive, his mum and dad were convinced of that, although neither of them dared say so. They were both hoping and praying to be wrong. Linda was weeping and keening as the bed was loaded into a big, boxy white ambulance. Marc lay at the centre of an octopus of tubes and wires. The ventilator was helping his lungs, the mechanical assist relieving his heart. All of this was tricky to get into the vehicle and it was going to be even harder to move out and into the aircraft without a slip that could mean a broken connection and a nasty death. They had to get there first, though. One of the medics, a stubbled Scot who might have had a son of his own about the same age, flashed Norrie McCay a sympathetic look. Norrie hoped he would talk to Marc on the way, even though the boy was unconscious. He didn’t want his son to feel alone.
‘Come on, son, let’s do this,’ Norrie said to himself as he got into the back of the police escort car, as if he was talking to Marc. But when they pulled up on the apron at Edinburgh Airport, he could see a problem. A really serious one.
‘Is that the plane for our Marc?’
‘Aye,’ said his driver. ‘Think so.’
Norrie had imagined a transporter plane that would open up at the back and allow the ambulance to drive right in – but this was just a small light aircraft, nowhere near big enough for the equipment, Marc and the medics. It was horrifying.
‘I’d no get in that door myself. What the hell’s going on? My Marc’s dying here!’
‘Calm down. We’ll get this sorted.’
The police officers looked uncertain as they went into a huddle with the ambulance crew on the tarmac. Norrie listened with the window of the police car wound down then called his oldest child, Leasa, on his mobile. ‘They’re saying the plane’s too small, hen.’
He was beginning to panic now. The one per cent chance of survival he had grabbed so thankfully and desperately was vanishing. ‘They’ve got tae take us by road. No, I don’t understand it either.’
Norrie remembers being told there was only enough battery power in the ambulance to keep the life-saving machines in the back going without a recharge for another two hours. The Freeman Hospital in Newcastle was at least two and a half hours away by the usual route, down the A1 through Berwick, Seahouses and Alnwick and into the city from the north. There was not enough time, even at night. This was hopeless, but the driver had