The Boy Who Gave His Heart Away: A Death that Brought the Gift of Life. Cole Moreton
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Название: The Boy Who Gave His Heart Away: A Death that Brought the Gift of Life
Автор: Cole Moreton
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
isbn: 9780008225711
isbn:
The hammering on the door startled Nigel Burton as he lay awake in a bed far from home, on the other side of the Atlantic and on the far side of America.
‘Yes? What?’
It was still Tuesday night there, eight hours behind Nottingham.
‘Chief Tech Burton?’
The big, bulky Sergeant Supplier with a grim look on his face clearly hadn’t come to drag Nigel out on the town. ‘I’ve had a call from the guard room at Cottesmore.’
They worked at the same base in England but were staying in apartments on Las Vegas Boulevard for ‘Red Flag’, an advanced aerial combat exercise in the skies above Nevada. Red versus Blue with live bombs, the RAF on the side of the good guys in raids and dogfights across hundreds of miles, training for serious combat. Nigel was the liaison between the pilots and the ground crews that kept the planes flying. The Sergeant Supplier at his door saw to the spare parts, but they knew each other only by sight. Whatever this was about, couldn’t it wait? Nigel had been up at half past four that morning and out to Nellis Air Force Base on the edge of town to get the first wave of Harrier Jump Jets away. He’d turned down a trip to the Strip with the lads for an early night, but clearly wasn’t going to get it.
‘One of your sons has collapsed and they’d like you to phone home.’
Nigel had served his country in wartime, and this carefully spoken man with a dark moustache and close-cropped, thinning hair was known and admired for being cool under pressure. He was trained to put other worries to the back of his mind and focus on the task in hand. This news was nothing he could not handle, although somebody at home had obviously thought it was serious enough to ring the helpline for forces families, which was how he had been traced and told. He didn’t expect it was Christopher who was poorly, Martin was the one who was always tripping over his own feet. He once fell off his skateboard and they took him to hospital then, but it all worked out okay. Fully expecting to be told that the crisis had passed, he rang home. There was no answer. Len and Joan did not reply to the phone at their house either. Nigel rang his own father, who knew nothing.
‘It’s very early here.’
Nigel told the sergeant he was not too worried.
‘These things happen. It will be fine, I’m sure.’
They sat in the apartment kitchen while Nigel kept trying to call home without success, but the next person he spoke to was a squadron leader calling from RAF Innsworth in Gloucestershire, the management centre for the RAF, who said he had been tasked with getting Nigel home. That was alarming. They didn’t pay for a commercial ticket back to the UK without a good, urgent reason, particularly if you were the only person in your unit who could do your job during an important exercise.
‘All I can tell you at the moment is that Martin has collapsed and it is serious. The earliest I can get you out of Vegas is 07.45 hours tomorrow morning. You will have to stop over in Pittsburgh for three hours, then catch the Gatwick flight from there. It’s the quickest way. We’ll have a car at the airport to take you to Nottingham. We’ll get you to your son as fast as we can.’
Fine, thought Nigel, as he started to pack his two kit bags, alone again in his room, but why the massive rush? There must be something he was not being told. Something terrible.
Seven
The police car rode the hills like a speedboat on the waves. Pushed back into his seat by the force of it all, Norrie felt sick to the stomach and gripped the hand rest with fright. He didn’t dare look at the speedometer. They were plunging into deep space, with the blackness wrapping back around them in the rearview mirror. The ambulance was just about in their slipstream, but suddenly they were slowing down.
‘What’s up? What are we doing?’
‘This is England. We have to stop.’
The ambulance passed by at speed as they pulled over and Norrie was alarmed. ‘You’re not gonna let them leave me behind?’
‘No way. See?’
Another police car sat in the lay-by ahead, this time with the markings of the Northumberland Police. ‘Come on, Norrie, let’s get you swapped,’ the officer said as he grabbed the spare oxygen bottles out from the back seat, letting in a rush of cold air. Norrie quickly tried to climb in the back of the next car but the door wouldn’t open.
‘No, Jock,’ said the driver, an Englishman on his own in the car. ‘You sit up front with me.’ Norrie would have got cross if anyone else had called him Jock, but he wasn’t going to argue with the only man who could get him to his son. The ambulance had disappeared over the hill but the driver saw him looking after it and grinned. ‘Don’t worry, Jock, we’ll catch them.’
What happened next was a shock, says Norrie. ‘I swear it was like being in a plane. We nearly took off. I thought, “My god, he’s bombing it!”’
They had been going fast before, north of the border, but this was something else and it made Norrie laugh. He was getting hysterical with the grief, the stress and the fear, but he was elated, too – they were doing something for Marc at last, going somewhere fast, getting the best help they could. At least they were trying, all these people – the doctors, the nurses, the paramedics, the cops – all on his son’s side. They were hurtling through the dark again now, but he knew they were heading down through the open country of the Northumberland National Park. ‘I could see the ambulance far off in front, but there were hills, so the tail lights would pop up red in the distance then they’d disappear.’
The lights started to get closer but Norrie suddenly began to feel really sick.
‘Are you all right?’ The driver must have heard him groan.
‘Not really. Can I have a cigarette, to settle my nerves?’
‘What? No, pal. You’re in a police car!’ The driver was concentrating on the road but he must have thought about his passenger and how there would be nobody else to clear up the sick, because he changed his mind. ‘Special circumstances? All right, you can.’
The window next to Norrie opened just a crack and the wind raged in his ear, but it was clear what he was expected to try and do. So he lit his fag, took a drag, craned his neck and tried to blow smoke out of the window. They were going at more than 100 miles an hour. The wind blew the smoke back in his eyes and the ash in his mouth, all over his face. The driver laughed. ‘Nice one, Jock.’
Norrie laughed too, high on adrenaline. It felt like seconds before they were in among houses and street lights again and the shop signs suggested they were on the edge of Newcastle, where two other patrol cars joined them. ‘My mates are going to play tag,’ said the driver, meaning that one car would race ahead and block off the road for the ambulance to pass through, then the other would accelerate away to the next junction to do the same. ‘I felt like I was in a movie,’ says Norrie, who had never seen such driving. Jock or not, he was grateful. ‘I couldn’t СКАЧАТЬ