Dead Tomorrow

29

Lynn Beckett woke with a start. For some moments she had no idea where she was. Her right leg felt numb and her back ached. She stared, bewildered, at a cartoon on a television set that was mounted on a wall high up above her, suspended on a metal arm. On the screen, a man was being strapped to a catapult and aimed at a brick wall. Moments later he flew through it, leaving the wall intact but with an imprint of himself, like a stencil.

Then she remembered, and began gently pummelling her thigh, trying to get the circulation going. She was in Caitlin’s private room, off a small ward in the liver unit of the Royal South London Hospital. She must have drifted off. There was a faint smell of food. Mashed potatoes. As well as disinfectant and polish. Then she saw Caitlin beside her, lying in bed in her nightdress, her hair tousled, staring as ever at her mobile phone, reading something on the display. Beyond her, through the window of the small room, Lynn saw part of a crane, and the breeze blocks and spikes of a building under construction.

Despite having been allocated a bedroom, she had slept here last night, beside Caitlin. At one point, in agony from the cramped position of the chair, she had climbed into the bed and slept, curled up against her daughter, like spoons.

They had been woken at some horribly early hour and Caitlin had been wheeled off for a scan. Then, a while later, she had been wheeled back. Different nurses had come in and taken blood samples. At nine Lynn, feeling grungy and unwashed, had phoned work, telling her tough but kind team manager, Liv Thomas, that she did not know when she would be back. Liv was understanding about it, but suggested Lynn might want to work some extra hours in the following week to keep on target. Lynn said she would do her best.

And she sure as hell needed the money. It was costing her a fortune to be up here: £3 a day for Caitlin’s access to the TV and phone service; £15 per day to park; the cost of eating in the hospital canteen. And all the time running the risk of her employers deciding enough was enough and sacking her. She had used the entire, modest divorce settlement with Mal for the down payment on the house she now lived in with Caitlin, wanting to give her a proper home, to raise her with as much normality and security as possible. But it had been, and continued to be, a worrying financial stretch for her. As an additional worry, she was faced with having to come up with the money to fix her car, to get it through the imminent MOT.

Her job paid well, but her pay was performance-related, like a salesman’s. She needed to put in the hours to reach her targets and there was always the lure of a weekly bonus to the best performer. She took home, in a normal week, a lot more than a secretary/receptionist or a PA could earn in Brighton and Hove, and as she had no formal qualifications she considered herself lucky. But by the time she had paid the household bills and for petrol, Caitlin’s guitar lessons and all the stuff Caitlin had to have, like her mobile to keep in contact with her friends, and laptop and her clothes, as well as a few luxuries, like their bargain package holiday this summer to Sharm el Sheikh, she was left with very little. In addition, she was forever having to top up Caitlin’s empty current account. Her eight years at the debt collection agency had given her a morbid fear of owing money and for that reason she hated having to use credit cards herself.

Mal had at least been fair on the divorce settlement, and he did help out a little with his daughter, but Lynn was too proud to consider asking him for more. Her mother did what she could as well, but money was tight for her too. At the moment, Lynn had just over £1,000 put aside, which she had been saving all year, determined to give Caitlin a good Christmas – not that she was ever sure whether her daughter really connected to Christmas. Or to birthdays. Or to anything, really, that she had always considered normal life.

She wasn’t sure she could risk leaving Caitlin today and driving back to Brighton for work. Caitlin was not happy about being here and was in one of her strange moods, more angry than afraid. If she left her, she was scared her daughter might check herself out. She glanced at her watch. It was ten to one. On the screen, the man was in a house, making angry faces and puffing himself up. He ran out, straight through the front door, taking the whole front of the house with him. Despite herself, Lynn grinned. She’d been a sucker for cartoons all her life.

Caitlin was now tapping keys on her phone.

‘I’m sorry, darling,’ her mother said. ‘I drifted off.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Caitlin said, grinning suddenly, without taking her eyes from her phone. ‘Old people need their sleep.’

Despite her woes, Lynn laughed. ‘Thanks a lot!’

‘No, really,’ Caitlin said with a cheeky grin. ‘I just saw a programme about it on television. I thought about waking you, cos you ought to see it. But, you know, as it was about old people needing their sleep, I thought it was better not to!’

‘You cheeky monkey!’ Lynn tried to move, but both her legs had stiffened up.

There was a grinding roar of construction machinery outside. Then the door opened and the transplant coordinator they had met last night came in.

Today, rested and in daylight looking even more the English rose, Shirley Linsell was wearing a blue sleeveless cardigan over a white blouse and dark brown slacks.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘How are we today?’

Caitlin ignored her, continuing to text.

‘Fine!’ Lynn said, resolutely rising to her feet and pounding her dead thighs with both fists. ‘Cramp!’ she said, by way of explanation.

The transplant coordinator gave her a brief, sympathetic smile, then said, ‘The next test we are going to do is a liver biopsy.’ Walking across to Caitlin, she went on, ‘You are busy – got a lot of messages?’

‘I’m sending out instructions,’ Caitlin said. ‘You know, like what to do with my body and stuff.’

Lynn saw the shock on the coordinator’s face and the quizzical look on her daughter’s, that expression she so often had where it was impossible to tell if she was joking or being serious.

‘I think we have plenty of options for making you better, Caitlin,’ Shirley Linsell said in pleasant tone that did not patronize Lynn’s daughter.

Caitlin pressed her lips together and looked up with a wistful expression. ‘Yeah, well. Whatever.’ She shrugged. ‘Best to be prepared, right?’

Shirley Linsell smiled. ‘I think it’s best to be positive!’

Caitlin rocked her head sideways a few times, as if weighing this up. Then she nodded. ‘OK.’

‘What we’d like to do now, Caitlin, is to give you a small local anaesthetic, then we will take a tiny amount of your liver out with a needle. You won’t feel any pain at all. Dr Suddle will be here in a minute to tell you more about it.’

Abid Suddle was Caitlin’s consultant. A youthful, handsome thirty-seven-year-old of Afghan descent, he was the one person who, in Lynn’s view, Caitlin always seemed comfortable with. But he wasn’t always around, as the medical team were constantly being rotated.

‘You won’t take too much, will you?’ Caitlin asked.

‘Just the tiniest amount.’

‘You know, like, I know it’s fucked. So I sort of need whatever I’ve got left.’

The coordinator gave her a strange look, again uncertain whether Caitlin was joking.

‘We’ll take the absolute minimum we need. Don’t worry. It’s a minute amount.’

‘Yep, well, I’ll be pretty pissed off if you take too much.’

‘We don’t have to take any,’ the coordinator assured her gently. ‘Not if you don’t want us to.’

‘Right, cool,’ Caitlin said. ‘That would mean Plan B, right?’

‘Plan B?’ the transplant coordinator queried.

Caitlin spoke, still staring at her phone. ‘Yep, if I decide I don’t want your tests.’ Her expression was blank, unreadable. ‘That would be Plan B, wouldn’t it?’

‘What do you mean exactly, Caitlin?’ Shirley Linsell asked gently.

‘Plan B means I die. But, personally, I think Plan B is a pretty crap plan.’