Dead Tomorrow

discomfort, quite apart from danger. She’s raw all over her body from scratching. She has a high temperature She’s going downhill very quickly. I’m shocked how she’s deteriorated since I last saw her. If you want the brutal truth, she’s not going to survive here, like this. I spoke to Dr Granger about her earlier. A transplant is her only option and she needs one very urgently, before she gets too weak.’
    ‘You want her back in the Royal?’
    ‘Yes. Right away. Tonight, really.’
    ‘Have you ever been there, Ross?’
    ‘Not for some years, no.’
    ‘The place is a nightmare. It’s not their fault. There are some good people there. It’s the system. The National Health management. The government. I don’t know where the blame lies–but it’s a living hell to be there. It’s easy for you to say she should be in hospital, but just what does that mean? Sticking her in a mixed ward, with confused old people who try to climb into bed with her in the middle of the night? Where you have to fight to find a wheelchair to move her around? Where I’m not supposed to be with her, to comfort her, after eight-thirty at night?’
    ‘Lynn, they don’t put children into adult wards.’
    ‘They have done it. When they were overcrowded.’
    ‘I’m sure we can see that it doesn’t happen again.’
    ‘I’m so damn scared for her, Ross.’
    ‘She’ll get atransplant quickly now.’
    ‘Are you sure? Are you really sure, Ross? Do you know how the system works?’
    ‘Dr Granger will make sure of it.’
    She shook her head. ‘I’m sure Dr Granger means well, but he doesn’t know his way around their bloody system any more than you do. They meet once a week, on Wednesdays, to decide who gets a transplant that week–assuming a matching liver becomes available. Well, it’s now Thursday night, so the earliest we’d get a green light would be next Wednesday. Almost a whole week. Is she going to survive another week?’
    ‘She won’t survive here,’ he said bluntly.
    She reached out and gripped his hand, and through a flood of tears she said, ‘She has a better chance here, Ross, believe me. She does. Just don’t ask. Please just don’t sodding ask.’
    ‘What do you mean by that, Lynn?’
    She was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘I’ll get her back to the Royal the instant you have a liver for her. Until then, she stays here. That’s what I mean. OK?’
    ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said. ‘That’s a promise.’
    ‘I know you will. Just so long as you understand, I’m her mother, and I will do what I can.’

82
    Fat snowflakes were falling asIan Tilling parked his clapped-out Opel Kadett on an empty stretch of street, just a couple of hundred yards from the front entrance of the Gara de Nord. As usual when he turned off the ignition, the engine rattled on, continuing to turn over, coughing and firing for several seconds before finally quitting.
    He climbed out, along with Andreea and Ileana, and slammed the door. He liked Ileana. She was a committed carer, totally dedicated to helping the deprived of Bucharest. She had a pretty face, even with her predatory, aquiline nose, but, almost as if to deliberately deter admirers, she kept her fair hair fiercely combed back into a matronly bun, wore unflattering glasses and dressed in functional rather than feminine clothes.
    On more than one occasion when they had worked together, he had thought about how stunning she could look with a makeover. He had also been amused by how persistently the randy Subcomisar Radu Constantinescu had attempted to get her to come for a drink with him, and how adroitly she had rebuffed him on each occasion.
    Sometimes there were prostitutes out along the street here, but to his disappointment there were none tonight. This was where they had been hoping to find the girl called Raluca. With Ileana leading, they walked up the steps in the icy night air, and into the cavernous, gloomy interior of Bucharest’s mainline railway terminus. Almost immediately, Ian noticed a gaggle of street kids over to their left. A hundred yards further on, beneath the feeble sodium glow of the overhead bulbs, a small group of policemen stood smoking and sharing a joke.
    ‘Those are friends of Raluca, overthere,’ Ileana said to him quietly, jerking her gloved thumb at the group.
    ‘OK. Let’s take them something.’
    Followed by the two girls, he walked across the deserted concourse, past the closed M ETROPOL café, and an old,