Read by Tony Bell
I was the one of the lucky ones. In-Time were recruiting, my licence was clean, my knowledge of national highways was impeccable. As I charged through the rain and pushed my van to the limit of the law, I considered my fortune. To carry life, or the chance for life, was a privilege. Livers, kidneys – a heart once. A team of surgeons awaited my arrival, and a dying person relied on my concentration.
I developed a need to know who the organs were for. With a name I could visualise the recipient – a picture based on the scantiest of information, the sketch of a life. I learned about their medical conditions too – cirrhosis, renal failure, cardiomyopathy. Call me sinister, but it motivated me. Then, on an otherwise unremarkable day, I took a cool box from a transplant coordinator in Leicester. I watched her finish the paperwork, reading the name of the patient upside down. Alicia Michaels, 17 years old. It had to be.
As I drove to London I thought about Susie, two years older than this Alicia. I thought about the day I found out Blue Line had finally gone under – by text, from a middle-manager, on Christmas Day, one hour before Helen, my ex-wife, was due to drop our daughter off. That was our arrangement: breakfast and stocking with Mum, turkey with me, back to Helen’s in time for the feature film. I'd have preferred the whole of Boxing Day, but Susie wanted to split it. Fine by me, and loyal of her. The redundancy text pinged in, and I had to decide what to do. If I didn't tell her the day would be a travesty. If I did the day would be ruined. I bottled it. I decided our happiness should be preserved for the day, and told her on Boxing Day instead. I rang Helen and pretended I'd only just received the text.
“I know,” she said, “We saw it on the news when Susie got back from yours.” Then she brought Susie to the phone and muttered, “Your Dad's got something to say to you...”
*
We had known for a while that Blue Line was a 'problem child', that it had been ‘eating money’. It was sold for a pound, to a group of venture capitalists headed by David Michaels. He wasn't our boss, but he pulled our boss's strings. The guy was a phenomenon, a 'turnaround king'. Grey hair, military cut like an American general. He came on a visit. I, along with four other drivers, was selected to meet him. With his customary frankness he didn't pretend to us that the future was guaranteed. We had one year to generate ‘black numbers’. He joined us in the canteen. I became uncomfortable – for him. I was sure he must be desperate to go. Nevertheless he queued up, bought us coffees and sat on a low couch with his collar open and his legs spread in a confident, at-home way. A colleague filled the silence:
“Any kids Mr Michaels?”
“Three,” in the soft Welsh accent that profile writers had remarked.
“What sort?”
“Two girls, one lad,”
“How old?”
“Fifteen the oldest...”
“Girls are trouble,” I joked, interjecting. He looked at me carefully, and his focus shifted to a faraway place.
“Yes. Yes they can be.”
I thought nothing more of it as we drained our coffees too quickly and moved out into the main depot. He had seen enough.
*
Paracetamol is often the first thing these kids find. A disastrous choice, I now know. It works slowly, giving you enough time to regret the action and to understand what's happening as the toxins accumulate. The toxins, ammonia mostly, make the brain swell. The edges of the brain are crushed, inhibiting the blood supply, and the brain stem, seat of all our basic functions, is squeezed down through the hole at the base of the skull. Only one thing can cure this: a new liver. If one isn't found in time most patients will die. With a new liver 85% will survive. It didn't take me long on my smartphone to confirm that Alicia Michaels was indeed David Michaels' daughter. The age was right, the destination made sense. I was transporting her only chance for life.
*
The route into London took me over the Thames. This natural barrier caused me to pause, dangerously. I flicked the indicator and turned left at Vauxhall Bridge, onto the embankment. It was two o’clock in the morning. I knew the precise spot. A small public garden faces the river, just over the road from the old Tate. We came here as a happier family, when Susie was only four. After seeing the Turners we strolled out and discovered it. We chased Susie around the long benches and watched an amphibious craft full of tourists plunge into the water from the opposite bank.
Then, twelve years later, we came again, just Susie and I. She was doing a project on some surrealist. Afterwards we walked across to the garden. I smiled in nostalgic remembrance, but she had no recollection. We talked about art – her true love. Then we argued. I wanted her to study something useful; in fact I insisted. But she won in the end. I agreed to help fund her if she was good enough to get an offer from somewhere like St Martin’s. And she did! But the dream faded when Blue Line went under. In the uncompensated year it took me to find the new job at In-Time she was forced to reconsider her future. The thought of loans, of poverty, of thirty grand in debt, terrified her. She saw and accepted the need for a more prosaic, a more responsible life. So she left home and took a job that would never recognise her artistic talent. She never complained, but she despised me for it. And because she despised me she didn't come to me at her hour of need.
We'd always understood each other, Susie and I. I could read her feelings, reflect them back to her. I led her through the swings of adolescence, I comforted her in the days of dejection. Not Helen, me – the father. But now, insulated from me by an unspoken sense of disappointment, trapped in a bedsit on the edge of a damp town miles from home, she grew frustrated and depressed. She didn't dare ask for help; she knew I had nothing to give. An old friend came to see her, one who had gone on to Art College. It was too much. That same evening my Susie tried to kill herself – not with pills, but with a blade. Not to the wrist, but to the neck. She meant it. The neighbour downstairs called the police, having heard wild thumps as Susie began to careen around the bathroom, the blood draining from her.
She was in hospital for six weeks. Helen wouldn't let me see her. And then, just as she was discharged… I got the job with In-Time. I spent every day and night on the road, earning all I could, trying to make it up to her. But it was too late. Susie’s ambition had withered. The blade had cut me off from her for good. The relationship was dead.
When terrible things happen, we look for something to blame. Fate, circumstance, God … That awful Christmas had been the start of it. If I hadn't lost my job with Blue Line, if I hadn't had to lie, if I hadn't had to work all hours at In-Time … I knew who'd taken my daughter away from me: David Michaels.
*
The river lapped at the embankment. I sucked the fresh, night air. Then, in a series of smooth, committed motions I lifted the cool box out of the van, carried it across the road to the river. and placed it on the broad wall. It pivoted on the rounded top of grey stone. When I took my hand away it wobbled. The current was running left to right, from the city to the sea. Would the white cube catch on the arch of a bridge, snag on a barge, circle calmly on an infinite eddy, or go the distance, this precious liver, this symbol of loss… decaying over time? Cars flitted by behind me. The wind strengthened. I held the corner of the box, and considered:
The transplant surgeon assesses a liver when it arrives. She judges its colour and strokes its surface for irregularities. If it looks like it might not wake up after it has been stitched in she rejects it. That’s what Michaels does with his companies. If he doesn’t believe they'll thrive he wrinkles his nose and moves on. That's his right. But unlike the surgeon, who is mindful that the organ represents a tragedy, Michaels drops his money-guzzling ‘problem child’ in a manner and at a time that suits him, with little thought of the consequences. Can he have any conception of employees as people, as breadwinners, role models, soul mates and fathers, this man who cut the funds off a day before Christmas: a day when families under strain indulge in fantasy?
I tilted the box. I heard again Helen’s icy tone when she rang to inform me about Susie’s suicide attempt. According to her, it was all because I'd withdrawn my promise of support and shattered Susie's dreams. I listened, but all I could think about was my girl, curled up on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood. Helen droned on and on, hammering shards of blame into my breast, where they would melt over a lifetime into black guilt. All my fault. All my fault. The cool box slipped a little under my hand. Not my fault. His. The injury would be great. Hurt for hurt, loss for loss. The injury would be equal.
*
Charlie the transplant coordinator was waiting for me at a side entrance. She was rubbing her eyes. I'd done the liver run to London countless times, and she recognised me.
“No problems?” she asked.
“No. Smooth run.”
She signed the form and took the box to the surgeon. I entered the hospital building. At the foot of a stone stairwell I saw a sign – Liver Unit, 3rd Floor. I ascended and looked along the corridor. Other signs suspended from the ceiling indicated wards, labs and offices. Intensive Care. I walked purposefully towards it, trying to look as though I belonged. The double door was closed. I nudged it but it was locked. Visitors had to press the buzzer and state their connection with a patient. The glass in the doors was frosted, but as I pressed an eye to it the glass brightened. Someone was leaving. Two blurred forms approached, and an arm reached out to press the exit button. I stepped back hastily. The doors opened. David Michaels – same severe hairstyle, winter tan – walked out with his wife. Both looked at me. They assumed I was a relative of another patient. But my glance was weightier than was natural to a meeting without meaning. He held my gaze as they turned to walk down the corridor.
“Can I help you?” he asked. A born leader. Assertive, even at this time.
“No. No. I was just… I’m the driver, for transplants. The driver. ”
“You do a wonderful job,” he murmured. What had I expected him to say? Thank you? What did I want to tell him? I didn’t know. I still don't. His wife looked across at him, her expression pained, then gently tugged him away. They carried on up the corridor while I stood, watching, my mouth bursting with words that would forever remain unsaid.
(c) Phil Berry, 2015
Phil Berry (b. 1971) is a novelist, medical writer and the author of a book series for children called 'All The Pieces'. He studied medicine in Bristol and works as a hospital doctor specialising in liver disease. He lives in London.
Evening Standard Award nominee for A Man for All Seasons, Tony Bell (left) has performed all over the world with award-winning all-male Shakespeare company, Propeller, playing Bottom, Feste, Autolycus and Tranio. TV includes Coronation Street, Holby City, Midsomer Murders, EastEnders & The Bill. He is also a radio and voiceover artist.
Comments