An image came to me of Mr. Barnes and his reddening cheeks.
“Oh yeah, I do—but what’s that got to do with it?” I asked.
“We’d been learning about blood the previous lesson, right? He’d asked us to find out our blood types if we could. We started doing that stupid routine when we told him ours, where we pretended to be blood particles.”
“You’ve lost me, Theo.”
Theo sighed and turned to his right, addressing someone who wasn’t there.
“All right?”
He turned to his left, responding to his own question, and continued this back-and-forth as he spoke.
“All right.”
“How you feeling?”
“Oh, negative.”
“You?”
“Oh, negative.”
It gradually dawned on me what he was saying.
“Oh,” I breathed.
“O negative,” Theo said.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Theo
Joel and I talked long into the night. By the time he went to bed and I lay down on his lumpy sofa, I felt like I was tipping the balance in favor of him letting me help him. I was wary, though, of a U-turn overnight. I could just imagine him saying he’d thought it over and changed his mind.
I woke early, neck stiff from the draft coming through the window. I took in the flat properly for the first time. The place seemed sparse, lacking personality. The furniture was all the cheap Ikea stuff. When Joel first got successful, I used to picture him at home: writing in some swanky study, framed posters of his shows on the wall; a constant stream of famous friends and agents; Joel holding court, swirling red wine around his glass as everyone hung on his every word. And all the while, it looked like I’d been wrong. This, here, felt like a lonely life. It was nothing like the warmth and homeliness of the place he shared with Amber. I thought about her there now—curled up on the sofa, trying to process the impossible. If Joel refused my help, there would be days in the future when she’d feel his absence more keenly than others. Christmas. Warm summer evenings, golden sunlight never enough to melt the cold grip of grief. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. I simply refused to consider it.
When Joel came through in his dressing gown and we exchanged morning grunts of greeting, I watched him nervously as he made tea. His legs looked horribly sore from where he’d been scratching them.
“I’m sorry,” he called over the rising sound of the kettle, his back to me. I jumped to my feet and marched over toward him, ready to refute all his arguments and tell him I didn’t care what he said, that I would take him, by force if necessary, to the hospital, and we were going to do this. When he turned around, I was much closer than he was expecting, and he jumped.
“What?” he said. “What is it?”
“What were you going to say?” I asked, fists clenched at my sides.
“I was going to say I’d make you toast but I’m out of bread.”
“Oh, right.”
“Sorry.”
“No, doesn’t matter. I’m not very hungry.”
“Me neither.” He drummed his fingers on the countertop. “So I called the hospital.”
“That’s great!” I said. “And?”
“They’ve managed to arrange an emergency consultation for this afternoon.”
“Brilliant!” I said, clapping my hands together.
Joel sipped his tea and looked at me over the top of the mug.
“You make it sound like we’re going to Alton Towers.”
“Hey, come on . . .”
“No, I know,” Joel said. “Let’s just not get our hopes up, shall we?”
* * *
My hopes were very firmly up precisely until we arrived at the entrance of King’s College Hospital. Joel walked on ahead of me, but I froze, thinking of Gloucester and that waiting room. The vomit. The blood. Mum sobbing.
Joel turned around, realizing I wasn’t at his side. He walked back toward me.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah—yeah, fine. I just, er . . .” Did I imagine it, or did I see a trace of skepticism in Joel’s eyes, as if he might have been expecting me to back out? Real or not, it was the thing that pushed me on, and I was the one who strode forwards first and went through the door.
Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait too long before we were taken in to the office of Dr. Ashraf Abbasi. She was short, with close-cropped black hair and beady brown eyes. Several flourishing potted plants were dotted around the room. Determined to take any positives I could, I decided this was a good sign.
Dr. Abbasi recapped Joel’s situation and then we arrived at the possibility of us being a match.
“The fact you have the same blood type is a very good start,” she said. “We will need to do extensive testing, nevertheless, and I must give you the warning now: given the severity of Mr. Thompson’s liver damage, this operation would involve taking roughly sixty percent of Mr. Hern’s liver—almost all of the right lobe—in order to replace Mr. Thompson’s liver entirely. And that’s a lot of liver, okay?”
“Okay,” Joel and I said in unison.
I couldn’t help but picture the operating theater—or at least the sort I’d seen on TV. The tubes down my throat. A nurse wiping blood away as the doctor made that first incision. I felt a pressure start to grow on my chest. I sat forward and then back, trying to shift it.
“Are you okay, Mr. Hern?” Dr. Abbasi asked.
“Yes, fine,” I said quickly, keen to show I was in peak health. “Carry on.”
“If the operation is a success, and your body accepts the transplant, Mr. Thompson, then your new healthy liver will grow to around ninety percent of the size of your original one. This will take four months, give or take. And, Mr. Hern, yours will grow back to its original size, maybe a little quicker.”
“That’s incredible,” I said.
“Yes, but what are the risks?” Joel asked. “I mean, of the operation itself.”
Dr. Abbasi tilted her head from side to side. “Well,” she said, “all the risks that come with putting the body through so much. Blood clot, pneumonia, bile leakage, wound infection . . .”
“Ha,” I said, half to myself.
I saw Joel and the doctor looking at me.
“Sorry, it just sounded a bit like you were commentating on a very depressing horse race: ‘It’s Blood Clot followed by Pneumonia—but Bile Leakage is fast approaching with two furlongs to go . . .’ ”
Silence.
“Perhaps you could remove Theo’s brain while you’re at it,” Joel said, though he smiled all the same, which made me feel the best I had all day.
* * *
Joel and I were separated for testing for the rest of the afternoon and the following day. MRI and CT scans, endless blood and urine tests, a heartbeat-assessing echocardiogram, several X-rays—and all topped off with a four-hour psychological assessment from the hospital, followed by a separate session with an independent assessor from the Human Tissue Authority (my least favorite rappers—though I didn’t have the energy left to make that joke out loud, which was probably for the best).
I understood the need for all the physical stuff, but the psychological part of it just felt like we were wasting time. I knew they were only doing their job, but the HTA test in particular frustrated me. The point of it seemed to be to make sure that I didn’t feel like I was being pressured into doing this—that I had a choice. Well, in some ways they were right to be concerned, because I didn’t have a choice, but only because I knew that this was something I had to do if I ever wanted to look myself in the eye again, and the fact I was terrified of the surgery and how painful it was all going to be, let alone the recovery, was entirely irrelevant.
Finally, after a second exhausting day of tests and assessments, I was allowed to leave the hospital. Dr. Abb
asi told me that, given the severity of Joel’s condition, the process to see if we were a match would be fast-tracked, but even then we’d have to wait at least four more days before we found out.
I found Joel outside, sitting on a bench. He was holding something between his fingers, turning it back and forth. When I sat down next to him, I realized it was a ring.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s a ukulele,” Joel said, still staring at it.
“No, I know what . . . I just meant . . . I mean, is it yours or . . . ?”
“It’s an engagement ring, Theo.”
“Fuck, really? For Amber?”
“No, for him.” Joel nodded at a traffic warden across the road who was picking his nose. “We’re starting a new life together in Paraguay.”
“Yeah, and what happened to sarcasm being the—”
“Okay, okay, sorry,” Joel said, putting the ring back in his pocket.
The traffic warden’s eyes lit up as someone pulled into a parking space that was clearly off-limits, and he waddled off toward them.
“How long have you been planning to propose?” I asked.
Joel puffed out his cheeks. “Few months, I guess. We were supposed to be going away together. Then I got the diagnosis, so . . . not ideal, timing-wise.”
“No,” I said. Then, after a moment: “You don’t have to explain if you don’t want to, but . . .”
“Why didn’t I tell her?”
“Well, yeah.”
Joel reached out to itch his leg but then stopped himself, clenching his fist.
“I’ve been thinking about that a lot, too,” he said. “The story I’ve been telling myself is that I wanted to keep her happy for as long as I could, even if that meant staying away from her, keeping her at a distance. But, if I’m honest, I’m not sure that’s why.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a simpler answer: I was terrified of the actual moment I had to tell her. I didn’t think I could handle it.”
“Have you told Amber that?” I asked.
“No. I haven’t had the chance. She’s still too angry. Or at least she was. She wants to see me later.”
“Well, that’s a good sign,” I said. “You know, I only spent a little bit of time with her, but it’s obvious that she loves you an insane amount. I mean, I don’t see the attraction myself . . .”—Joel smiled—“but if you tell her what you just told me, I’m sure she’ll understand.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Joel said. “I really hope so, Theo.”
A thought struck me. “And you’ll tell her about this, right? About what we’re hoping to do.”
But this time Joel didn’t say anything. After a moment, he passed me the key to his flat. I hadn’t noticed it when we’d been on the walk, but I saw now there were scars on his knuckles, like faint chalk marks. Joel glanced at me and I looked away, but then he held his hands out, closing and unclosing his fist, as if testing he still had mobility.
“Do you remember the day at school when we had that argument—where I told you not to ask me if I was okay ever again?”
I nodded.
“The truth is that Mike, the guy Mum was . . .” He stopped and gathered himself. “Mike was hurting us. Me and Mum. And if he wasn’t being violent, he was being intimidating and controlling. Sometimes it just got too much, and I didn’t know how to cope, and I’d end up taking it out on a wall. Hence . . .” He balled and unballed his fists again, showing me the scars properly this time. “I got it into my head that you wouldn’t want to know about it—that it would be too hard for you to hear and it would make things weird between us, and all that time we spent mucking around together was like my happy place, you know? For some reason I could talk to Amber about it, though. It was just . . . it felt easier. And then, a few days before the party, things escalated with Mike, which is why I was so desperate to talk to her that night. When Amber realized how upset I was when you’d seen us together and left, she ran to the car to try and come after you—she was desperate to make everything okay between us, because she knew how much you meant to me. I know it’s too late to say this now, but if I had my time again, you know I wouldn’t have shut you out like that, right?”
It was jarring, to feel everything fall into place with such a heavy thud. So much made sense now.
“I’m so sorry you and your mum had to go through all that,” I said. “I knew you hated Mike, but I didn’t have any idea that he was . . . about what he was doing.”
“Yeah, well, they’re clever, people like Mike. They make it feel like it’s somehow your fault and that you shouldn’t talk about it.”
I shook my head. I was burning with anger at what that man had done—the way he’d silenced Joel. Then something else occurred to me.
“You told me one of the reasons your liver got damaged so easily was because you’d fallen down the stairs. Was that . . . ?”
Joel nodded.
“That piece of shit,” I muttered. “Do you ever think about what he’s doing now?”
Joel shrugged. “Not really. In my drinking days, at the worst of it, I’d try and find him on Facebook. But I sort of scared myself, thinking about what I’d do if I did find him. All the bravado from the booze. But it doesn’t matter what he’s doing, to be honest, because fuck him. We won in the end. Me and Mum.”
We sat with our own thoughts in silence for a while after this.
“Do you want to get a coffee or something?” I asked eventually.
“I think I just need a bit more time on my own,” Joel said.
“Of course. I understand.” I got to my feet. “That stuff about Mike,” I said. “I’m really glad you were able to tell me.”
Joel was looking ahead, but he nodded to show me he’d heard.
I was about to leave him to it, but then I realized there was something else I needed to say.
“I haven’t told you this, but it was Alice who convinced me to do the walk with you,” I said. “She forgave you a long time ago for that night. Or at least what she thought happened that night. I just thought you should know.”
This time Joel looked at me. He tried to say something, but then he stopped. I got the impression he was too choked up. But then he smiled at me, and that said far more than any words could.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Joel
I rang the doorbell rather than going in with my keys, just in case Amber didn’t want me in the house yet—or at all, in fact. But when she opened the door, she pulled me gently toward her, holding me for a moment, and pressed her lips against mine. But just as I was losing myself in the moment, she pulled back and gestured for me to go down into the living room. I took the conflicting gestures to mean that she loved me but wanted answers. A fair bargain.
“Do you want to go first?” I asked after we’d sat down.
Amber nodded.
It was the practical questions she wanted answered first. How long had I been ill before I went to the doctor? When had they first diagnosed me? When had they told me how serious it was? I answered the questions faithfully and slowly, like I was giving a statement to the police. Amber showed no particular emotion as I spoke, but I could sense a sort of crackling energy trembling below the surface. Then we got to the hardest part.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
It felt like the vise was back on my heart, squeezing it to the point it might burst. The pain traveled down into my stomach, spreading greedily now. When I finally spoke, the words seemed to come from somewhere else—they were the words of the boy bracing himself against his bedroom door, waiting for angry footsteps on the stairs, listening to his mother whimpering in the next room.
“I was too scared.”
The tears I’d been holding back breached my defenses, and it felt like my lungs had been punctured as I struggled to breath
e. Amber threw her arms around me, holding me so tightly it hurt, and I breathed in her scent, felt the warmth of her, and the fierceness of how she loved me. With my head against her chest, I could hear her heart hammering so furiously, it was as if it were trying to beat for the two of us.
“It’s okay,” she kept saying. “I love you. It’s okay.”
We were clinging to each other like we were lost in a violent swell, facing the waves, refusing to give in. We stayed like that for what could have been hours before we slowly pulled apart.
“There’s something else I need to tell you,” I said.
Amber kissed me softly on the forehead. “What’s that, my love?”
As calmly as I could, I began to explain about the living liver donation, watching Amber closely as what I said sank in. When I got to the part where I told her I might have found a match, she grabbed my hand.
“Who?” she said urgently.
“Well. It’s Theo.”
“Theo?” Amber breathed, incredulous. “What, your Theo?”
“Yeah,” I said, grinning. “My Theo.”
Amber cupped her hands over her mouth. “Oh my god, Joel, this is incredible. I can’t . . . I mean—”
“We don’t know if we are for sure yet,” I said, hope flaring in me despite my best attempts to suppress it. “We’re definitely a blood match, but there are other test results we’re waiting on.”
“And when do you find out?”
“Within the next couple of days. And if that’s the case, they can fast-track me for the operation given how . . . well, how advanced everything is.”
It was almost comic, the range of emotions playing across Amber’s face in those few seconds. It was like watching a time-lapse camera trained on someone watching a thriller. It sent a great wave of longing through me. Longing for a future with her at the center of everything. And that’s when something came to me.
“There’s another thing I wanted to say—but brace yourself, because I’m afraid it involves poetry.”
When We Were Young Page 27
