The Boy Who Gave His Heart Away: A Death that Brought the Gift of Life. Cole Moreton

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СКАЧАТЬ registrar who had come up from the operating theatre two floors below explained what had been done in surgery, and that sickened Sue. Then Dr Vyas took over again, gently but firmly. They needed to see how he would settle down and do some more tests before they could be sure what had caused this and what might happen next.

      ‘If I can just prepare you a little, Martin is still very poorly. He has a tube in his mouth and there are various lines into him. These things are all part and parcel of his treatment here. You will notice that he isn’t moving, this is because of the drugs we give him to prevent any more problems. Would you like to see Martin now?’

      If Martin had been awake he could have looked out of the window and seen the early morning sky. The pale blue curtains were drawn back, offering a grim view of air conditioning units and the flat top of the next hospital block, but the sky was out there too, distant and hopeful. But this handsome young lad could see nothing with his eyes closed and there was no prospect of them opening soon, not even when his mother entered the room. He lay flat on his back on a white iron bed with his head in a support block and a white, corrugated plastic pipe going into his mouth and down into his oesophagus for the ventilator, feeding air into his lungs to help them work. The monitors behind him showed a series of squiggly lines, changing all the time: blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen levels and the reading from a gauge on the end of a hairline wire going into his head. Half a dozen pumps sent drugs into his body through a single feed in the groin – ‘the hosepipe’, as the staff called it when there was nobody else around. Martin wasn’t moving, except for the rise and fall of his chest.

      ‘You can touch him,’ said the nurse gently, feeling Sue hold back. ‘It’s okay.’

      She went closer then, feeling the warmth rising from his body, or maybe it was the warm air under the blanket, but it was suddenly hot in that room, stiflingly so, prickling her neck. Sue kissed the tips of her fingers and placed them on his forehead, pushing them through his hair.

      ‘Oh, Martin. What are we going to do with you?’

      ‘Call for you,’ said a nurse at the door and Sue went to the desk confused, but it was Nigel on a crackly line from Las Vegas, sounding far away. She was just about able to hold it together and describe the situation, as much as she had been told and could remember, until she had to tell him the condition Martin was in, right there and then. ‘He’s got a bleed in the brain. We don’t know what the outcome is going to be, we don’t know …’ Her voice cracked and Nigel also struggled not to lose control. ‘I’ll get there as soon as I can.’

      Sue put the phone down and turned back to the reality of the ward, momentarily thrown, before being overcome by a rush of concern for her other son Christopher, aged twenty, who had arrived with his girlfriend, Ashley. ‘I was split between the two boys, divided between thinking about Martin on life support and worrying how Chris was coping with it. Christopher was very angry that he couldn’t do anything to protect Martin. He was very angry that Nigel wasn’t there. I think he felt he had to be the man. He kept having to go out to go off for a walk. I think he was letting himself vent that anger by storming around outside the hospital, rather than actually sitting with Martin and showing his emotions.’

      ‘Ashley stayed with him the whole time. If he moved, she moved. I was aware that he was a very angry young man right then and I wanted her to not have to deal with that, so I said to Ashley, “If he gets more angry and you need anybody, just fetch my dad.”’

      Back at Martin’s bedside, for the sake of something to say to the young nurse in blue who was moving around her son, Sue began to ask questions. ‘What will happen now? If everything is for the best, how long do you think it might be before Martin could come home? We’ll do whatever is necessary for him, obviously …’

      The way the nurse responded made Sue realise with a lurch that she might be getting this wrong. Everything she was fearing and dreading might actually be too much to hope for.

      ‘We’ll wake him up slowly,’ the nurse said cautiously. ‘Then we’ll wait and see.’

      Nine

       Marc

      Somewhere south of the border, Linda was struggling too. She was in her own car with Leasa travelling to Newcastle when she felt her tongue swell up inside her mouth until she couldn’t talk. Her lips ballooned and her eyes became raw, weeping like they were full of grit.

      ‘Oh my God, what’s happened to you?’

      The nurse who met them at the Freeman was shocked and treated Linda straight away. She had been given a couple of pills for a headache by a paramedic up in Scotland and was suffering an allergic reaction. The symptoms were dramatic but they would pass away with the right drugs. Linda was weak though and she needed to be put under observation. A porter pushed her to a ward in a wheelchair.

      ‘I was sedated and they kept me in overnight, with large doses of antihistamines. That was a really bad start, I just wanted to be with my boy.’

      Norrie was already at the hospital and couldn’t believe it when Leasa found him and told him. ‘Seriously, that could only happen to Linda. Unbelievable.’

      She was going to be okay though, it was just a bit of a drama. Leasa shook her head and made a joke about how her emotional mum was the centre of attention, even now.

      ‘There’s no show without Punch.’

      Linda was brought up in a village to the west of Glasgow, a country girl who fell for the first handsome boy she met at her first proper disco in the local town, when she was just seventeen. His name was Norman but everybody called him Norrie.

      ‘We just clicked right away.’

      He was short and sharp, gregarious and funny, but not one for candlelight or flowers. ‘There was no romance. Never.’

      Within six months, to the horror of both their parents, Linda was pregnant. Norrie proposed. Sort of. ‘My granny and my father think we should get married because you’re pregnant. They’ll pay for the register office in Johnstone, which is £36.’

      ‘There were no violins,’ says Linda. ‘We were too young. I’d hardly been out with any boys. I hadn’t lived my life. I hadn’t even been to the dancing before and I had to stop anyway because of the baby.’

      Linda was seven months pregnant on the day they got married in 1981. The only witnesses were a couple who were their friends. ‘We had a meal. Then I went home and made my bed, cos I was knackered.’

      Leasa was the first child to arrive, a beautiful, very calm baby, who would grow up to become a strong young woman. Then came Darren and Ryan, both proper lads, destined to be a soldier and a professional footballer. Marc was next, the sparky little lad they all doted on and called over for cuddles. ‘Marc gave me the least bother. He was never ill and he never got in trouble at school. If there was a cat or a dog in the house it would go straight to Marc, he had a really good soul. Very laid-back and never complained about nothing. A wonderful brother to his sister Leasa, really dedicated to his brothers and his friends. A very caring son.’ He was very shy, though. ‘If anyone spoke to Marc he went scarlet.’

      Linda was proud of her kids, but seeing them grow up and get on with their own lives was a struggle for her sometimes. They needed her less and less. Marc became her ally against the passing of time. He was the one she could still hold close and keep safe, until a fifth child came СКАЧАТЬ