Dead Tomorrow

available.’
    ‘I’d be misleading you if I gave you a time or a date, Lynn.’
    ‘Are we talking twenty-four hours? A week? A month?’
    Shirley Linsell shrugged and gave a wan smile. ‘I don’t know, that’s the honest truth. We thought we had got lucky, getting this liver so quickly, in a week with no matching recipient higher up the priority list than Caitlin. The donor was an apparently healthy thirty-year-old man, but clearly, it turned out, he had a drink or a diet problem.’
    ‘Sothis same shit could happen again, could it?’
    The coordinator smiled, trying to placate Lynn and reassure Caitlin. ‘We have a very good record here. I’m sure that everything will be fine.’
    ‘You have a good record? What does that mean?’ Lynn said.
    ‘Mum!’ Caitlin implored.
    Ignoring her, Lynn went on, ‘You mean you have a good record compared to the national average? That only 19 per cent of your patients die before they get a liver, compared to the national average of 20 per cent? I know about the National Health and your damn statistics.’ Lynn started crying. ‘You’ve gambled with my daughter’s life by giving some elderly alcoholic an extra few months of life because that will tick the right boxes for your statistics. I’m right, aren’t I?’
    ‘We don’t play God here, Mrs Beckett. We cannot say that one human being has more right to life than another because of their age, or because of how they may or may not have abused their bodies. We’re non-judgemental. We try our best to help everyone. Sometimes we have to make difficult decisions.’
    Lynn glared at her. Never in her whole life had she hated anyone as much as she hated this woman right now. She didn’t even know if she was getting the truth or being fed some yarn. Had some rich oligarch with a sick child made a donation to the hospital for bumping Caitlin and getting his child saved? Or had there been a screw-up that she was trying to cover up?
    ‘Really?’ she sneered. ‘ Difficult decisions? Tell me something, Shirley, did you ever lose a night’s sleep in your life over a difficult decision ?’
    The nurse kept calm, her tone gentle. ‘I care about allour patients very deeply, Mrs Beckett. I take their problems home with me every night.’
    Lynn could see she was telling the truth.
    ‘OK, answer this for me–you just said that Caitlin would have got this liver, had it been OK, because there was no matching recipient higher up the list than her. That could change, right? At any moment?’
    ‘We have a weekly meeting to decide the priority list,’ Shirley Linsell replied.
    ‘So it could all change at your next meeting, couldn’t it? If someone in greater need than Caitlin–in your assessment–came along?’
    ‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s how it works.’
    ‘That’s great,’ Lynn said, her blood boiling again. ‘You’re like a firing squad, aren’t you? This weekly meeting to decide who is going to live and who’s going to die. It’s like you all pull the trigger, but one of you doesn’t have a bullet in the gun, just a blank. Your patients die and none of you has to take the damn blame.’

49
    Simonalay on the examination couch, wearing just a loose dressing gown. Dr Nicolau, a serious, pleasant-looking man of about forty, strapped a Velcro sleeve around her arm and tightened it, plugged his stethoscope into his ears and pumped the rubber bulb until the sleeve squeezed her arm tightly. Then he looked at a gauge fitted to it.
    After a few moments he released the sleeve, nodding, as if everything was fine.
    The German woman, who had told her that her name was Marlene, stood beside her. She was beautiful, Simona thought. She was dressed in a sleek, fur-trimmed black suede coat, over a light pink pullover, smart jeans and black leather boots. Her blonde, elegantly tangled hair cascaded around her shoulders, and she smelled of a wonderful perfume.
    Simona liked and trusted her. Romeo had been right in his judgement of her, she thought. She was such a confident woman, kind and gentle. Simona had never known her mother, but if she could have chosen a mother, she would have liked her to be a person like Marlene.
    ‘Just going to take a little blood,’ the doctor said, removing the strap and producing a syringe.
    Simona stared at it, cringing in fear.
    ‘It’s OK, Simona,’ Marlene said.
    ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, her voice tight.
    ‘We are giving you a full examination, just to make sureyou are