Dead Tomorrow

silent and play this out as an onlooker.
    ‘Then,’ he said baldly, ‘I’m afraid you will die. I think you have only a short time to live. A few months at the most. It could be much less.’
    There was a long silence. Lynn felt the grip of her daughter’s hand suddenly and she squeezed back, as hard as she could.
    ‘Die?’ Caitlin said.
    It came out as a trembling whisper. Caitlin turned to her mother in shock, stared at her face. Lynn smiled at her, unable to think for a momentof anything she could say to her child.
    Nervously, Caitlin asked, ‘Is this true? Mum? Is this what they already told you?’
    ‘You are very seriously ill, darling. But if you have a transplant it will be fine. You’ll be well again. You’ll be able to live a completely normal life.’
    Caitlin was silent. She withdrew her hand and put a finger in her mouth, something Lynn had not seen her do in years. There was a beep, then a fax machine on a shelf near the doctor printed out a sheet of paper.
    ‘I’ve been on the Net,’ Caitlin said abruptly. ‘I Googled liver transplants. They come from dead people, right?’
    ‘Mostly, yes.’
    ‘So I’d be getting a dead person’s liver?’
    ‘There is no absolute guarantee we’ll be lucky in getting you a liver at all.’
    Lynn stared at him in stunned silence. ‘What do you mean, no guarantee ?’
    ‘You both have to understand,’ he said in a matter-of-fact way that made Lynn want to rise up and slap him, ‘that there is a shortage of livers and that you have a rare blood group, which makes it harder than for some people. It depends if I can get you in as a priority–which I am hoping I can. But your condition is technically “chronic” and patients with “acute” liver failure tend to get priority. I’ll have to fight that corner for you. At least you tick some of the right boxes, being young and otherwise healthy.’
    ‘So, if I get one at all, it’s likely I’m going to spend the rest of my life with a dead woman’s liver in me?’
    ‘Or a man’s,’ he said.
    ‘How great is that?’
    ‘Isn’t that a lot better than the alternative, darling?’ Lynn asked, and tried to take herhand again, but was brushed away.
    ‘So this is going to be from some organ donor?’
    ‘Yes,’ Neil Granger said.
    ‘So I would be carrying around for the rest of my life the knowledge that someone died and I’ve got a bit of them inside me?’
    ‘I can give you some literature to read, Caitlin,’ he said. ‘And when you go up to the Royal, you will meet a lot of people, including social workers and psychologists, who will talk to you all about what it means. But there is one important thing to remember. The loved ones and families of people who have died often take great comfort from knowing that the death wasn’t completely in vain. That that person’s death has enabled someone else to live.’
    Caitlin was pensive for some moments, then she said, ‘Great, you want me to have a liver transplant so that someone else can feel good about their daughter’s, or husband’s, or son’s death?’
    ‘No, that’s not the reason. I want you to have it so I can save your life.’
    ‘Life sucks, doesn’t it?’ Caitlin said. ‘Life really sucks.’
    ‘Death sucks even more,’ the consultant replied.

13
    Susan Cooper had discovered that therewas a fine view from this particular window, just past the lifts on the seventh floor of the Royal Sussex County Hospital, across the rooftops of Kemp Town to the English Channel. All today, the sea had been a brilliant, sparkling blue, but now, at six o’clock on this late November evening, the falling darkness had turned it into an inky void, stretching to infinity beyond the lights of the city.
    She was staring out at that vast blackness now. Her hands rested on the radiator, not for the warmth it gave off but merely to support her drained body. She stared silently, bleakly, through the reflection of her face in the window, feeling the draught of cold air through the thin glass. But feeling little else.
    She was numb with shock. She could not believe this was happening.
    She made a mental list of the people she still needed to call. She’d dreaded breaking the news to Nat’s brother, to his sister in Australia, to his friends. Both his parents had died in their fifties, his father from a heart attack, his mother from cancer, and Nat used to joke that he would never make old bones. Some joke.
    She turned, padded back to the