500 Miles from You (Scottish Bookshop #3)(6)

“I was thinking about maybe taking her in,” said her mother. They were extremely familiar with the hospital in Inverness.

“Well, let’s have a listen,” said Cormac, taking out his stethoscope. “Those beta-blockers not working on you, Islay?”

Trying to be helpful, the child shook her head, just a fraction. How used she was; how tired she was of the constant invasion, the constant questions. She looked so weary. Cormac felt his own heart sink. He’d left the army to get away from the endless trauma cases, but this, in its own way, was just as difficult. Jake took her blood pressure and frowned.

“Well?” said Mrs. Coudrie.

“I’ll talk to Joan,” said Jake. “This”—he wrote down the number on a piece of paper, but Elspeth Coudrie already knew it by heart—“is when we’d blue-light. But I think we’ll see what Joan has in her armory.”

Cormac patted Islay on the hand. “I know you want to stay up all night watching Mr. Drake on the television.”

Islay rolled her eyes. “It’s Drake,” she wheezed. “Not Mr. Drake. And I don’t like him anyway.”

“That’s good,” said Cormac. “He’s too old for you.”

Islay tried to smile.

“But the best thing you could do is get some sleep,” said Cormac.

This wasn’t true. The best—and rapidly turning into the only—thing she could do was to get a heart transplant. If only it were that simple.

“Imagine,” said Mrs. Coudrie, as Jake finished his call and Islay tried to get comfortable. “Imagine waiting for someone else’s child to die. Imagine hoping that they will.”

“I DON’T KNOW!” said Kai’s mother, her voice hysterical. “They were all yelling. And I just wanted to see my boy. He’s my boy! And they wanted to chop him up.”

Lissa took the woman’s hands. “Did you say no?” she said softly.

“I didn’t know what I was saying!” said the woman, looking up at her. “Yes. I think I said no.”

“Do you know,” said Lissa very softly and quietly, as if trying to soothe a child. “Do you know what would be the most wonderful thing you could do for Kai, and Kai could do for the world?”

“But they want to chop him up! My boy! My beautiful boy!”

“He’d be giving his life for others,” she said. “That . . . that is very beautiful.”

The woman gently touched a small crucifix around her neck.

“He could save a life,” insisted Lissa.

“But my beautiful boy . . .”

“Would be a hero. A hero beyond heroes. Forever.”

The tears didn’t stop falling. Mrs. Mitchell stood back. “Is it too late to say yes?”

Lissa shook her head, even though she wasn’t sure, even though it might be.

“Come, please,” she said. “Please. Can you come with me? Quickly?”

And together they ran back through the long corridors, the devil at their heels, Lissa terrified they would be too late, that they would have unplugged their machines, gone on their way, their tragic work unsuccessful.

They clattered into the resuscitation ward, panting, terrified. Thank God, thank God, thank God for all the cuts was the only thing she could think. The staff had taken a break; the next shift, which would remove the tubes and make up the body, had not yet been called in—and there he still was, still connected.

They both froze. Kai’s mother made a sound, an animal noise, as if it were all happening over again.

“You can do this,” said Lissa. “You can do this.”

The officious young transplant woman was summoned with a beep and came bustling down the corridor, the fussiness in her face transformed, suddenly, into something like hope.

“Mrs. Mitchell?”

The woman nodded blankly. She sat by his bed again, stroking the beautiful, still-warm skin. “She made me come back.”

“I didn’t!” said Lissa. And looking at the boy, so close to sleeping, she could absolutely understand the instinctive horror at cutting him up, parceling him out, using him for parts.

“Give me the thing to sign,” said Mrs. Mitchell. “Quickly please. I don’t want to change my mind again.”

The nurse brought the paperwork over. “You have to understand—”

“That it’s binding, yes, yes, I know that. Quick, I said!”

“No,” said the transplant nurse, straightening up. “I just really want you to understand. What you are doing is the bravest, the most wonderful thing you can do.”

Mrs. Mitchell stared at her, her mouth hanging open. “You sound,” she said, “like you want me to be pleased.”





Chapter 8


Kim-Ange was up and waiting for Lissa, after she’d pulled off her clothes, taken out her contacts, put on her thick, black-rimmed glasses, and gotten into her tracksuit bottoms. Lissa couldn’t deny being pleased to see her. Living in the nurses’ home, while hardly the lap of luxury—it was a grimy old sixties block near the hospital—was still much cheaper than trying to rent privately in London, or even getting the train in every day from where her parents lived in Hertfordshire, and it had the added benefit, even if it was noisy and the showers were peeling and the kitchens got very grim, of there always being someone to talk to if you’d had a bad day. A really, really, really bad day.