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

Linda lost control then and in her wild panic she fixed on a consultant cardiologist who had come to help explain, a small man she thought looked Italian. Grabbing his lapels, she yelled into his face. ‘You’ve got to do something. He’s only fifteen!’ The doctor was sorry, he said. He told them that he would do anything he could to save Marc, she had to believe that, but that they had run out of options.

‘There is nothing more we can do.’

What do you say when your friend is dying? How do you go up to a mate in a coma, all wrapped up in blankets, unconscious with a tube down his throat and all those wires connecting his body to machines, in front of his parents and his granny and his sister, and say, ‘Yeah, so … Right. Goodbye then, pal.’ The two lads who came to visit Marc were brave and resourceful but they couldn’t help the tears. Linda held them both, one on either side of her, pushing their heads hard against her shoulders as if trying to squeeze the pain away, for all three of them. It didn’t work.

Norrie was in the corner of the room, answering strange questions from the dishevelled but commanding doctor: ‘What height is Marc? What weight do you think he is?’

Linda overheard and turned on the medic, furiously. ‘What are you asking that for? You wanna be measuring him for the morgue, is that it?’

‘No, Linda, hang on,’ said Norrie, grabbing a hand to get her to listen. ‘There’s something going on, they’ve got an idea, I’m sure of it.’

She refused to believe it until the doctor offered just a chance, the slimmest chance, of help. ‘There is a machine in Newcastle, it could take over the work of Marc’s heart and keep him going until another heart becomes available.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘From a donor.’

A dead boy’s heart. Or a girl’s. A dead girl’s heart in Marc – that struck Linda as even stranger for a moment. But then again, why not? ‘Could it be anyone?’

‘As long as the size and blood type are right. You won’t remember this I’m sure, of course – there’s a lot going on for you – but this machine is called an ECMO, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine …’

Weirdly, those words stayed in Linda’s brain forever, as did the next thing she heard the doctor say. ‘… Make no mistake, Marc is dying right now. There is only a one per cent chance he can survive the journey. He might not even make it off the hospital bed and down that corridor, let alone all the way to Newcastle …’

‘What did you say, about Marc’s chances?’

‘One per cent. I’m sorry, Norrie, I can’t put it higher than that.’

Norrie seized the tiny chance anyway. ‘What are we waiting for? Let’s go now!’

But Linda hesitated – she looked down at her son – she understood what was likely to happen. ‘If my son dies in that ambulance he is going to die on his own, isn’t he? He needs us with him. Please let me and his dad go with him.’

The doctor was touched, Linda could see that, but she remembers being told it was not possible. They were going to use a specialist intensive care ambulance to take Marc to Edinburgh Airport, where he would be put on an adapted plane and flown down to Newcastle. There was already barely enough room in the ambulance for the medical staff and all the equipment they needed to fight for Marc’s life. A police escort would take spare oxygen bottles for the ventilator, but one person might be able to squeeze in there and then sit in the back of the plane if it was big enough. That was the best they could do. Another ambulance and patrol car would be waiting when they landed. Norrie said he would go with the cops, if they let him. Leasa, the level-headed daughter, took control of her mum. ‘You’re better off coming in the car with me. We’ll go down together.’

Linda was terrified. She was panicking and pleading in her head, praying, ‘God, can I make a deal, make a pact?’ Then she got an idea so crazy that she thought it just might work. She grabbed the doctor’s arm tight and yanked him, demanding his full attention. ‘Listen, I’m forty, I’ve had my life, can you not give Marc my heart, here and now?’

She meant it, too. They could have put Linda under with anaesthetic right there and then and taken a knife to her chest, pulled out her heart to give to Marc and left her dead and she would have let it happen, without hesitation.

‘I’m serious, I’m telling you, why not?

‘Please, doctor, please. Please give my heart to my son.’

They couldn’t. Of course not. No doctor would kill a healthy mother to save an ailing, almost-adult son, no matter how much she pleaded. The others all knew that.

‘Come on, Mum. Come on,’ said Leasa, pulling her close. So once again Linda had to let her boy go, despite every instinct telling her that this journey would be his last, feeling that prayers were all she had left.

‘Please, God. Don’t let him die on the way.’

Hot and sweaty from playing football and thirsty for milk from the fridge, Martin Burton got back to his house in Grantham on that Tuesday evening to find there was nobody else home. His big brother was at his girlfriend’s house for tea and would spend the night there. He already knew his mother Sue was at the swimming pool with her friend. Martin had eaten his dinner before going off to the park but now he wanted a big bowl of Coco Pops. If he ate a bit too much sometimes, well then he burned it off. A restless lad, he was always on the go and up for a laugh. The telephone rang and it was his father calling from America, where he was on a desert exercise with the RAF. It was a happy, chatty call of the kind they always had when Dad was away.

‘Am I going to get a cuddly?’

‘Sorry son. You’ve got plenty. This isn’t a cuddly place – they don’t have a lot of cuddlies in Las Vegas.’

It was no big deal, he always asked that. They laughed about it then said goodnight.

‘Love you, son.’

‘Love you, Dad.’

However many miles were between them, they were still close. Nigel was a military man but his sons meant the world to him.

When the call was over, Martin probably turned up the television louder than Mum usually allowed, because he didn’t like to be on his own. Big Brother was his favourite, all those people going mad in a house like a prison, only it looked fun with the stuff they had to do, dressing up and playing silly games. A big lad in a kilt called Cameron had just won it a month before and he was nice. Martin bounded up to his mum for a hug when she came in from swimming, her hair still wet. They sat together for a while watching the box, his legs over hers. This was a bit uncomfortable because Martin was a growing boy of sixteen and she was petite – ‘but you’ve got to enjoy having them close while you can, haven’t you?’ That was what she always said. Her other son had grown up so fast and, proud as she was of the man he was becoming, she missed him as a boy. Nothing was wrong with Martin that night. Nothing at all. She left him watching the telly and went to bed. ‘Be quiet when you come up, will you? I’ve got work in the morning.’

Sue was a small, neat woman with a short dark hair, serious glasses and an efficient manner. She liked an orderly home, which was a challenge with teenagers. Still, they knew very well that they were loved by their mum. She had flashes of temper about things like leaving dirty washing all over the floor but Mum also knew how to have fun. They lived in a detached house with a garage and a drive on the edge of Grantham, a quiet market town in the flatlands of Lincolnshire, best known as the birthplace of the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, not that there was much to show for it. Grantham didn’t like to make a fuss, and the Burtons were a bit like that too.