The Boy Who Gave His Heart Away

by Cole Moreton

  As long as both families agreed to the trip, they were going to meet at last.

  Thirty-Two

  Marc & Sue

  ‘Why don’t you take a stethoscope? You could listen to his heart.’

  Sue laughed at the suggestion from one of the secretaries at work. She was not going to ask a boy she had just met to lift up his shirt so she could press a cold metal instrument against his bare chest, thank you very much. That would be too embarrassing and more than a bit weird. Her head was already swirling. What would it be like to hear her son’s heart beating away inside another boy, who was the same age as Martin and living the life he had been denied? She almost couldn’t bear to think about that. On the other hand, she couldn’t stop thinking about him either. ‘I did wonder how I was going to cope. At the back of my mind, I did wish Martin still had that heart. Of course I did. I wouldn’t be a mother if I didn’t feel like that.’

  Sue would have been nervous if they had just been going for coffee somewhere low-key, but this was turning into a big production. They weren’t meeting at a Costa in a service station halfway between her house and his. Oh no, that was too simple. They were going all the way to Canada, of all places. The McCays had accepted the same invitation and travelled separately, staying in a different hotel on the first night. But now they were in Canada and it was time for them to meet.

  ‘Marc’s inside. Are you ready for this?’

  The question came from the boss of the Rocky Mountaineer, who was giving the adventure of a lifetime. The long blue-and-gold train had a glass dome roof that would allow them to see some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. There might be eagles soaring overhead, fish leaping in wide lakes and bears in the deep forests and there would definitely be breathtaking mountains with high, snow-capped peaks to watch over them, mirrored in the wide lakes. All of that was very nice, but it wasn’t what Sue had come for. It wasn’t what got her really excited: that was the prospect of meeting Linda and Marc, who were waiting inside the vast, airport-style terminal at the train station. The train would not be leaving until the next day so the check-in desks were empty and there was nobody else about, it was just going to be the Burtons and the McCays, together for the first time. Sue knew Marc and Linda from photographs, so she instantly recognised the slight, pale boy with the sandy hair and his mother beside him, wringing her hands, smiling nervously.

  ‘We could see them in the distance, through the glass doors. They stood up when they saw us. I could sense Nigel falling back slightly behind me as we went in and I could see that Linda was doing exactly the same with Marc, so I thought, “Okay, mate, it’s you and me …”’

  Her first instinct was to open her arms and run over, but Sue had thought long and hard about this. ‘What do you do? This poor young man might not want some middle-aged woman throwing herself at him, he might not like that – I knew my eldest would hate it – so I was prepared to be quite calm.’

  The station hall was huge, with a high ceiling and light flooding in through tall windows. Sue forced herself to hold back, walk steadily across the polished floor towards him and let Marc take the lead. ‘I was determined not to be over-the-top, but as we got nearer he just ran for me and slung himself at me and hugged me and I was like, “That’s fine, mate. I can do hugs! I can do hugs, I just wasn’t sure you’d want to.” And he hugged me and he cried.’

  That was relief surging through him, said Marc afterwards. ‘I’d been getting more and more nervous about what I would say then Sue arrived and I felt the tears coming, so all I could do was shoot towards her. I didn’t know what else to do but say thanks and cuddle her and that was it.’

  Sue hugged him back, not knowing how to feel.

  ‘I remember saying to him, “Can I go and give your mum a hug now?”’

  The two mothers embraced for a long time, each feeling instantly as if they had found someone who understood some of what they had been through. They talked all afternoon, then they talked all night at a dinner for the families and they were still talking when the Rocky Mountaineer set off the next day. ‘Linda and I had so much to talk about on the train over the next few days that by the time we got to Lake Louise we knew exactly what had happened to each other and our families. We knew the whole story.’

  Marc was happy to let them get on with it. The shy lad from Renfrewshire watched out of the window as the train sped through valleys, over dizzyingly high bridges and by the sides of great lakes. When Marc felt like chatting he turned to Nigel, who kept it light. ‘We just talked about football, like guys do.’

  Sue missed a lot of the scenery, she was so engrossed in conversation with Linda and some of the forty or so other passengers on their part of the train who had their own experiences of organ donation. They were from Britain, Australia and the United States as well as Canada, although there was only one other case of a donor family and recipient being brought together. ‘We were on a high because of what we were doing. I think it’s the simple fact that when you’ve been through something so big and emotional, you actually thrive on talking about it, even though that sounds terribly exhausting. There was lot of partying …’

  A handsome young waiter caught the attention of some of the women, who got him to make cocktails for them, says Sue. ‘We’d be sitting there drinking Zac’s special cocktail, “Zac’s Surprise”, and making a lot of noise. There was a lot of laughter. It’s that camaraderie of sharing your story, and speaking to someone who’s been through something similar, that is actually quite strengthening. To actually know that someone understands.’

  Sometimes, though, she went off on her own to the open platform at the back of the train, for a bit of quiet. ‘My tears were clearly for my loss, clearly for Martin, who would have been the same age as Marc. I don’t think I could have met Marc any sooner, without really wanting it to have been Martin who was alive instead.’

  Linda was full of gratitude, saying she knew how lucky Marc was. ‘We could so easily have been in the same position as you.’

  Sue kept looking over at Marc, thinking about how well he seemed. Thinking about how Martin would have been at that age. ‘I did struggle with that at first but it was all right in the end, very different from what I had feared. Linda was lovely and it was amazing to see the person who had benefitted from our decision all those years ago. I was glad Marc was doing so well.’

  They met by the side of Lake Louise on their last day together: fellow passengers who had lost a father, mother, sister, brother, son or daughter and those who had been saved by a stranger’s heart, lungs or other organs. Each of them was asked to pick up a smooth pebble from a wicker basket, turn it over in their hands and think of somebody who was missed. Some kissed their stone before they threw it out over the water, watching the splash and the ripples. Every person there knew very well how the splash of the end of one life can ripple out to touch the lives of many others.

  When the short ceremony was over, the Burtons and the McCays went walking together by the strikingly blue lake. The water was still again now, reflecting the v-shape of the sky between snowy mountains that looked too perfect to be real. Marc was nervous once more, knowing there was something he wanted to do for Sue. They were getting towards their last moments together, before they had to go their separate ways and go home. It took him a while to pluck up the courage, but when they stopped for a photograph, the four of them arm-in-arm, he seized the moment. Sue was taken by surprise. ‘Marc suddenly just took my hand and put it on his heart. He was only wearing a thin T-shirt, while I was in a heavy coat. Obviously the heart keeps him warm!’ she says, hesitating over the memory even now. It was so quick, but it meant so much to her. ‘He put my hand on his heart. The skin was thin because of all the wounds he had there from the operations and I could really feel the heart beating. That was a very special moment.’

  Then it was gone. Somebody spoke, it was time to go and pack. The moment slipped by, all too brief and never to be repeated. Or so they thought at the time
…

  Thirty-Three

  Marc

  Marc is about to open the door. He should have died. By the old standards, he was dead on the operating table: his heart did not just stop beating, it was cut out and thrown away. Yet here he is, more than a dozen years later, in the doorway of his apartment on a cold, grey day. ‘You better come in,’ he says, with a handshake so shy it’s apologetic. ‘You found us okay? You need a car to stay here, public transport’s not too good.’ He lives in Lochwinnoch, a small village in lovely countryside twenty miles to the west of Glasgow, where the McCay children all grew up. ‘It’s in the middle of nowhere and when the two lochs join up in the floods we can’t get out, but I love it.’

  His voice is flutey, he’s clearly anxious. ‘I haven’t got the words,’ he says, but that’s fair enough. You can’t expect a young man of twenty-eight to have the language to describe a miracle perfectly just because it’s happening in his chest eighty times a minute, four thousand eight hundred beats an hour. ‘I’ve never talked to anyone about this properly before.’ This is the first time we have met, so why has he agreed to talk now? ‘Sue said you were okay. That’s good enough for me.’

  His eyes are a clear, striking green. His mother was right: Marc is a good-looking guy. All the operations and pills have reduced his strength, slimmed him right down and at the same time made his face a little puffed and blotchy, but despite all of that, he remains handsome. He’s made an effort to look good today, with his box-fresh blue sneakers, crisp jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt with a vintage skyline of Manhattan and the words Twisted Soul. That’s a label, not the state of his being. Marc is cheerful and friendly, despite his nerves. The rented apartment is simply furnished, with plain walls and not much furniture apart from a black sofa and a matching armchair and a big television screen with games console underneath. He shares the place with a friend, who is out just now. They play a lot of combat games, pretending to be battle-hardened, super-fit troops. He likes online poker to get through all the restless nights when his body groans and complains and keeps him awake. He’s happy enough, he says. ‘Life is good. I have a great time with my mates and my family. All these years when I shouldn’t have been here, there have been some great laughs. I’m like Rangers, my football club: on the up again after not doing so good for a while.’

  So we start to talk about what happened to him. I know more than he does about where his heart came from and the bravery, compassion and love that came with it, but I want to hear things from his point of view. ‘I never had anything wrong with me in my life before I got sick. Nothing. I never even knew what sick was, to be honest. I was at that age where you didn’t think of stuff like that – you just wanted to go with your life and play sport and be the best at everything.’

  On the day his mum rushed him to hospital in August 2003, the stomach pains overtook him faster than the fear. ‘I was just taking paracetamol, thinking, “It’ll go away in the morning.” My mum said, “You need to go the doctors.” I was in agony. I was being sick. We couldn’t understand what was wrong at all.’

  He was just unlucky, I say. Marc smiles and shakes his head. ‘No, I was lucky. The doctor told me, “You better start doing the lottery. Fifteen out of forty million people a year get this virus, so that’s really bad luck, but only four of those survive. So if you make it, you’re really lucky.”’

  Maybe he should buy a lottery ticket?

  ‘I don’t want to use up all my luck, I might need it.’

  He doesn’t recall much of his time unconscious in hospital, for obvious reasons, but Marc does remember hearing his mum crying – or greeting, to use the Scots word. ‘I heard her greeting, non-stop. I can remember that, but I don’t know how. It was weird to just wake up round all these English people. It was a bit crazy, all these accents, a different country. I had a big ventilator down my throat, I couldn’t even ask any questions. I was lying flat. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak. Nobody I knew was near me.’ That’s when he had the hallucinations. ‘I woke up and a woman was injecting stuff in me. I was scared she was trying to kill me.’

  Even when he began to come round properly, it was a while before he recognised that his mum and dad were in the room. ‘They had to explain to me what had happened and at the same time I was only fifteen, I was thinking, “What the hell is a heart transplant?” I didn’t know. Then I was just thinking, “Okay, cool, can you let me out? Can I go home?” It was the weirdest thing in the world ever.’

  They told Marc how close he had been to death. ‘I must’ve been as close as you can get, I reckon. My heart was enlarged three times bigger than it was meant to be and that was crushing all my organs inside my body. Getting the heart transplant, having my heart taken out, I must have pretty much died.’

  Does he know what had happened to his old heart?

  ‘I never asked.’

  Move on, look to the future, that is his way. The flabby, swollen heart was probably incinerated at the hospital mortuary. The most highly regarded part of his body was destroyed long before his actual death. Strange to think of the ashes going up a chimney to scatter in the air above Newcastle, a long way from his home, like a human sacrifice to some distant god. Losing your heart was the definition of death for eight thousand years, until medical science intervened and people like Marc became living, breathing marvels. According to the traditional understanding of several faiths, his soul should have left his body when his original heart stopped beating. Yet here he is, still Marc. His accent has not mysteriously changed to English. He hasn’t started supporting West Ham like Martin. He hasn’t developed any of his donor’s lovely puppy dog enthusiasm, an idea that amuses him. ‘I am a really laid-back person, so I kind of just get on with it. I try to stay positive. My mum says she is glad it happened to me and not one of the other brothers as they aren’t as laid-back as me. One of them is scared of needles, he can’t be in hospital. He got paranoid after what happened to me and got chest pains as well so he was really freaking out, but it turned out to be anxiety. All my family got tested and everyone else’s hearts are fine.’

  The recovery process was just like a footballer working hard to return to fitness; that’s how he tried to think of it he says, only it was a bit more extreme. ‘I couldn’t even walk or anything. I had to learn again. All the muscles inside my legs had disappeared so I had to build them back up: go in a swimming pool and walk length to length. I got out of breath so easily, but other than that, everything went fine. I was worried about taking all the pills, thinking, “I’m never going to get used to this.” But it got easier as the days went by.’

  Now, let’s ask the question that so very few people in history can answer. What is it like to have somebody else’s heart inside your body? ‘I try not to think about it.’ He gives a weak little smile and looks away, but I don’t believe him. Not one bit. Sue briefly felt the scars and the damaged, thin skin on his chest and was shocked at how easy it was to feel his heart underneath, so come on, surely he puts his own hand there sometimes and wonders at it all? ‘I do that, aye. If I’m lying in my bed at night on my own I can feel it beating, in a way I don’t think other people can. I’ve asked them. They just let their hearts get on with it, they never know what’s going on, like I was before all this. Can you feel yours?’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ I say. I try, while I’m sitting here with him, but there’s nothing.

  ‘Okay, well, most of the time there’s nothing for most people, right? But I can feel it all the time. When I lie awake, I feel it strong. I know when it mistimes a beat. Sometimes it feels like it’s popping out of my chest. It’s insane to think that this is in me now when it was in Martin before.’

  He’s got his hand on his heart now, flat against it. Does it feel like part of his own body or something else, something extra? ‘Something else. Definitely. I mean, I couldn’t live without it and it’s part of me but it’s like they opened a door and put the heart in and it’s locked in there, helping me out.’
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br />   All this makes his head spin. ‘It is a lot to cope with. You get some patients who think about the heart transplant and the operation all the time and it just puts stress and worry into their head thinking something’s going to go wrong and they’ll need another one. I think people worry too much instead of just getting on with it and enjoying the heart they’ve got. I try and forget about it. I don’t mean forget about Martin and his family, of course not. I just mean try to get on with your normal life.’

  Would that have been easier if the two mothers had never made contact and he had never found out so much about his donor? ‘Aye, I think so. But I don’t mind. I’m glad for them.’ What then did he think or feel when he first saw a photograph of Martin? ‘It was weird, he reminded me of myself when I was fifteen. We were a bit similar, with the blond hair and I was stocky like him at that age. He was into his football like me, like any young boy. We were alike. It was kind of crazy.’

  Does he talk to his heart? He laughs, as if that is a crazy idea, but I tell him that Andrew Seery sometimes talks to his liver and calls it Martin. ‘I don’t know how to react to that,’ says Marc, looking embarrassed. Something is nagging at him, I can see that, but he changes the subject for now. We talk about religion, which is so much part of the place where he lives and grew up. Rangers versus Celtic, blue versus green, Protestant versus Catholic, all those old feelings that his great-grandparents defied when they fell in love but that still burst into life sometimes in punch-ups and bar brawls or worse. ‘I had all that. I went to Sunday school when I was a kid but I never really thought about it and what happens next – you know, if there’s a heaven and that – until I had my dream.’ That was when he met his father, his grandfather and old John McCay, who was a stranger to him at the time. ‘When I asked about him they told me he died twenty-two years before. That was really weird, it did freak me out, because I know I had never seen him before in my life but when I saw a photo it was the same person. So deep down now, I do kind of think there is something there after we die. Hopefully, aye.’ Not many of us get so close to finding out as he did. ‘Aye, exactly. The dream made me think there’s something out there. I feel as though I’ve been there. That’s what makes me think something else the way I do, which is really personal but I do believe it.’ He looks away again, shy. What does he mean, what is it that he believes? ‘That Martin is here with me too. Really. All the time.’