As she did so, the microwave pinged. She waited for another minute, then opened the door and took out the pizza. She then cut it into sections, put it on a tray and carried it through into the lounge.
As she opened the door, the television was blaring. On the screen she recognized two of the characters of
Laguna Beach
, one of the soaps her daughter was addicted to. Caitlin was lying on the sofa, her head on Luke’s chest, barefoot, her toes curled, two cans of Coke open on the glass-topped coffee table. She looked at her daughter’s face for a moment, saw her totally absorbed in the programme, smiling at something, and for an instant she felt overwhelmed by a rush of emotion. She had a strong desire to cradle Caitlin in her arms.
God, the girl needed reassurance –
deserved
reassurance. And she deserved someone a lot better than that dickhead, with his stupid, lopsided hairstyle, on the sofa with her.
She was still furious at him for spooking Caitlin – and herself – with the statistics about the numbers of people on transplant waiting lists – and their mortality rate.
‘Pizza!’ she said, a lot more cheerfully than she felt.
Luke, in a hoodie, ripped jeans and untied trainers, peered at her from under his slanted fringe, then raised a hand as if he was directing traffic.
‘Yeah! Cool! I’m cool with pizza.’
You’d look even cooler wearing it as a hat, Lynn thought. She could have happily dumped it all on his head. Instead, she kept calm, put the tray down, exited the room and returned to the kitchen. Ignoring the Sunday newspaper, she picked up the Val McDermid crime novel she had been reading for the past few days, in the hope of immersing herself in a different world for an hour or so.
In the novel a man was putting a victim into a replica of a medieval torture machine and Lynn suddenly thought how pleasant it would be to put Luke into such a machine.
Then she put the book down and cried.
42
Susan Cooper was utterly exhausted. She had lost track of the days since Nat’s accident. Apart from brief trips home for a shower and change of clothing, she had lived here, in this ITU ward, since last Wednesday. It was now, according to the
Daily Mail newspaper on her lap, Monday.
The paper was full of advertisements bordered with holly, and cheery, festive articles and tips. How to avoid a Christmas hangover! How to avoid putting on those extra pounds during the festive season! How to decorate your tree using recycled household rubbish! A hundred great Christmas gift ideas! How to buy your man a gift he will never forget!
How about,
How to help your man live until Christmas
, she thought bleakly, or, How to help your man live long enough to see his unborn child?
In the last five days there had been no change. The five longest days of her life. Five days of living in a chair at Nat’s bedside in the blue ITU ward. She was sick of the sight of blue. Sick of the pale blue of the walls, the blue of the curtains that at the moment were drawn around his bed, the blue of the venetian blinds, the blue tops and trousers of the nursing staff and the doctors. The only different colour came from all the cards he had been sent. She’d given the flowers to another ward, as there was no room in here.
She toyed with going into the curtained area, but it was crowded with medics at the moment. An alarm suddenly chimed.
BEEP-BEEP-BONG
. Then stopped almost instantly. She hated that alarm more and more. Every damn time it spooked her. Then another one chimed on the far side of the ward. She put the paper down and stood up, needing a break.
There was another alarm chime from Nat’s bed and she wondered again whether to check inside the curtain. But she had been checking constantly, quizzing every member of the medical staff day in and day out, and knew she must be close to driving them demented. She decided to go out of the ward for a few minutes to get a change of scenery.
She walked past several beds, the occupants mostly intubated and silent, either asleep or staring vacantly, and stopped by the hygienic hand-rub dispenser on the wall by the door. Dutifully giving her hands a squirt and massaging the gunk into her skin, she then pressed the green button to unlock the door, pushed it open and stepped out of the ward. She walked, like a zombie, along the corridor, past the door on her left to the quiet room and the one on her right to the larger, but no more cheerful, waiting room, past an abstract painting that looked like a collision between two trucks filled with multicoloured cuttlefish, and further along the corridor to the window on the far side of the lift.
This had become her window on the outside world.
It was the window she stared through on to an alternative reality. Rooftops and soaring gulls, and the Channel beyond. A world of tranquil normality. A world in which Nat was fine. A world in which the grey hulls of ships passed along the grey horizon, and in which, yesterday, she had watched the distant white sails of yachts out of the Marina racing around marker buoys. The winter racing series, the Frostbite Series. She knew all about it, because for a couple of years, on Sunday mornings that he had off, Nat had crewed on one of those yachts, grinding winches. He had enjoyed the fresh air and, like squash, found it a good escape from the pressures of the hospital.
Then he had bought the motorbike and instead had spent his free Sunday mornings racing around the countryside with a group of other born-again bikers. The bike she hated so much.
Oh shit, she thought. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
As if sensing her mood, her baby moved inside her.
‘Hi, Bump,’ she said. Then she pulled out her mobile phone. Eight missed calls. New message after new message after new message. Nat’s brother. His sailing friends. His squash partner. His sister. Jane, her best friend, and two other girlfriends, as well.
She heard footfalls behind her. Soft and squeaky on the linoleum. Then a female voice she did not recognize.
‘Mrs Cooper?’
She turned and saw a pleasant-looking woman who was holding a clipboard loaded with forms. In her late thirties, the woman had long, light brown hair pulled back into a bun, a brown and cream striped top, black trousers and soft black shoes. On her chest was pinned a badge which read, Specialist Nurse.
‘I’m Chris Jackson,’ she said, then smiled sympathetically. ‘How are you?’
Susan shrugged and gave a wan smile. ‘Not great, if you want to know the truth.’
There was a brief moment of hesitation and Susan felt awkward, sensing something bad was coming.
‘Could we have a chat for a few minutes, Mrs Cooper?’ the nurse asked. ‘If I’m not interrupting anything, that is.’
‘Yes, fine.’
‘Perhaps we could go into the quiet room. Can I get you a cup of tea?’
‘Thank you.’
‘How do you take it?’
‘Milk, no sugar.’
A few minutes later Susan was seated on a green chair with wooden arms in the windowless quiet room. There was a corner table with what looked like a bedside table lamp with a fringed shade on it. A small mirror was mounted on one wall, a print of a dreary landscape on another, and there was a tiny fan, switched off. The atmosphere was oppressive.
Chris Jackson returned with two cups of tea and sat opposite her. She smiled, pleasantly but awkwardly.
‘May I call you Susan?’
She nodded.
‘I’m afraid, Susan, it’s not looking good.’ She stirred her tea. ‘We’ve done everything we can for your husband. Because of who he is, and the affection the staff have for him, everyone has put in even more effort than normal. But in five days he has not responded, and I’m afraid there has been a development this morning.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The frequent check of his pupils reveals that there’s been a change in the brain consistent with raised pressure.’
‘His pupils have blown, right?’ Susan said.
Chris Jackson gave a grim smile. ‘Yes, of course. With your background, you’d understand.’
‘And I understand the severity of his brain damage. How much longer do you – do you think – you know…’ She started choking on the words. ‘That he’ll be with us?’
‘There are more repeat tests to be done, but it’s looking conclusive. Is there anyone you would like to call? Any other family members you would like to be here, to say goodbye to him, and to give you support?’
Susan put her cup and saucer down, dug in her handbag for a tissue, then dabbed her eyes and nodded.
‘His brother – he’s on his way down from London anyway – he should be here soon. I – I-’ She shook her head, sniffed and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself while fighting back tears. ‘How sure are you?’
‘There was a rise in his blood pressure to 220 over 110. Then it plunged to 90 over 40. Do you understand the significance of that?’
‘Yes.’ Susan nodded, her eyes becoming a damburst of tears. ‘Nat has effectively died. Right?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Chris Jackson very quietly.
Susan nodded, pressing the tissue hard against each eye in turn. The other woman waited patiently. After a few minutes, Susan sipped some tea.
‘Look,’ Chris Jackson said. ‘There is something I’m going to talk to you about now. Because your husband is in here, and his body is intact, to a large extent, you have the option of donating his vital organs to help save the lives of others.’
She paused, waiting for a reaction.
Susan stared silently down into her cup.
‘A lot of people get comfort from this. It means that the death of their loved one can at least help to save the lives of others. It would mean that something positive comes out of Nat’s death.’
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said. ‘I’m carrying his child. He’s not going to see it now, is he?’
‘But at least something of him will live on in this child.’
Susan stared at her tea again. It felt as if there was a band of steel tightening around her gullet.
‘How – I mean, if I – he – donated organs, would he be – you know – disfigured?’
‘He would receive the same medical care as if he was a living patient. He wouldn’t be disfigured, no. There would be just one incision down his chest.’
After a long silence, Susan said, ‘I know Nat always supported the concept of organ donation.’
‘But he didn’t carry a donor card? Or join the register?’
‘I think he would have done, in time.’ She shrugged and dabbed her eyes again. ‘I don’t think he expected to – to…’
The nurse nodded, sparing her from finishing the sentence. ‘Not many people do,’ she said.
Susan laughed bitterly. ‘That fucking motorbike. I didn’t want him to have it. Right? If only I’d put my foot down.’
‘It’s very hard to stop strong-minded people from doing things, Susan. You cannot blame yourself, now or ever.’
There was another long silence. Then she said, ‘If I gave consent, would you give him an anaesthetic?’
‘If that’s what you want, yes. But it isn’t necessary. He can’t feel anything at all.’
‘How much of him would you take?’
‘Whatever you wanted.’
‘I don’t want you to take his eyes.’
‘That’s fine, I understand.’ Her pager bleeped suddenly. She glanced at it, then put it back in its holster. ‘Would you like another cup?’
Susan shrugged.
‘I’ll make you another cup and I’ll get the consent forms. I will need to go through his medical history with you.’
‘Do you know who his organs will go to?’ Susan asked.
‘No, not at this stage. There’s a national database for organs – kidneys, heart, liver, lungs, pancreas and the small bowel – with over eight thousand people waiting. Your husband’s would be allocated on a match and priority basis – finding recipients who would have the best chance of success. We would write to you and tell you who has benefited from his donation.’
Susan closed her eyes to stop the tears.
‘Get the forms,’ she said. ‘Just get the sodding forms before I change my mind.’
43
The Denarii Collection Agency, for whom Lynn Beckett worked, was located on two floors of one of Brighton and Hove’s newest office blocks, close to the railway station in the trendy New England Quarter.
The agency, named after the ancient Roman coins, had customers from the full range of companies providing consumer credit – banks, building societies, mail-order catalogues, stores which supplied their own credit cards, hire purchase companies – and in the worsening economic climate, business was booming. Some of their business came from simply chasing bad debts for specific clients. But a big part was bad debt portfolios that they purchased in bulk, taking a gamble on how much they would be able to recover.
At a quarter past five on Monday afternoon, Lynn was seated at her ten-person work station. Her team was called the Harrier Hornets. Each team was identified by its name, which hung above it on a board suspended from the ceiling. The other, fiercely competitive teams in the huge open-plan office were called Silver Sharks, Leaping Leopards and Denarii Demons. Over on the far side of the office was the litigation department, beneath a sign which said Legal Eagles, and beyond them was the dialler management team, which monitored the calls the collection agents made.
Normally she liked being here. She liked the camaraderie and the friendly rivalry. This was fuelled by huge flat screens around the walls constantly showing bonuses to be won, which ranged from a box of chocolates to outings, such as dinner in a posh restaurant or a night at the dogs. The screen in her line of view currently depicted an animated cooking pot filled with gold coins, together with the words
THE COLLECTED BONUS POT £673
. Often, she felt, the atmosphere was akin to being in a casino.
By the end of the week that would have grown even larger, and either one of the collection agents in her team or one in a rival team would be taking it home as a bonus. She could do with that right now, she thought, and it was still possible. So far she was having a good start to the week, despite the interruptions.