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

‘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.’

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 a plan. They could go a more direct way, cross-country down the A68, shaving off miles. This might be a rollercoaster ride over the border hills, but if the police car went ahead to clear the way they hoped to drive smoothly enough to keep from hurting Marc. They might just make it before the power in the medical systems began to run out, or at least get near enough to transfer the patient if a Newcastle ambulance came up to meet them. Marc might not be able to survive the vibrations of a high-speed cross-country race for more than 100 miles, but then he might also have a heart attack here at the airport. There was no alternative. This was his only chance.

‘Okay, son, here we go,’ said Norrie aloud, looking back at the ambulance through the rear window of the police car as it led the way out of the airport. ‘Hold on tight!’

‘You’re shivering, we’ve got to go home to get you sorted,’ said Sue’s mother as they left Grantham Hospital in the early hours of that Wednesday morning, having seen the ambulance carrying Martin set off for Nottingham at high speed. Shock was setting in. Sue only had on a T-shirt and jeans and the dawn was chilly. The ambulance driver had told her father that it was pointless to try and follow behind, so they went back briefly to her house first and Sue found some warmer clothes. Rocky, their grizzled old Border Collie, was baffled by all these people turning up in his kitchen so early, booting him out into the garden to do his business.

‘Come on, old boy, we don’t know when we’ll be home again,’ said Len, helping the dog out of the door with the side of his foot, but Rocky didn’t get it. He did what he had to do, then came straight back in and flopped back into bed.

‘Where can we put a key?’

Len was thinking ahead. They put it under a pot in the shed and left that door unlocked. ‘I’ll phone your friend later and get her to take the dog,’ said Joan. She would also phone Sue’s office and tell them what was happening, assuming control of that side of things to help out her daughter.

Sue was barely there. She was thinking of Martin and the bleed on his brain, whatever that meant. The hospital staff had not said much more. She was thinking about brain damage. She was thinking about therapy and what that meant and what it cost and whether she would have to give up work to care for him at least for a while and whether their house would have to be adapted in some way, until he was better. He was alive, at least. Whatever happened, he was still her boy. His ambulance would have arrived in Nottingham by now. Their journey took an hour, with her father driving painfully slowly and Sue got exasperated, believing the doctors could not operate on her son without her permission.

‘Go faster, Dad. Go faster! I haven’t signed anything, they can’t take him into theatre without my signature as a parent, you’ve got to speed up here.’ But Len wouldn’t go faster, for fear of crashing. They had to follow a map, they didn’t know where they were going and when they got to the vast Queen’s Medical Centre – the biggest hospital in the country at the time, with more than a thousand beds – and were eventually able to find the intensive care unit, the night sister had not heard of a Martin Burton. ‘Sorry, we don’t have anyone of that name. Where have you come from again? No, we’ve not had any patients from Grantham here and I don’t think we’re expecting any.’

Sue panicked then, but the sister looked at her again. ‘Hang on, what age is your son? Sixteen? You want PICU then, he might be there.’

A young male nurse who didn’t look much older than Martin himself explained in a kindly voice that the P was for paediatric, for kids. She knew that, of course, but her head wasn’t working properly. He walked them there, ten minutes away through the labyrinth of the hospital, up to the fifth floor in the lift and through corridors that confused and this time the answer was yes, they had Martin. ‘Or we will have, he’s just coming back from theatre.’ So they were already operating without asking, thought Sue. He must be in a really bad way. Her stomach twisted tighter. There was tea or coffee in the family room, but she didn’t want either. There were tissues, but she was past tears. There was nothing to do now but wait.