A Sky Full of Stars

by Dani Atkins

  Wearing nothing except one of Alex’s oversized university T-shirts, now gossamer thin with age, Lisa still looked uncomfortably hot as they headed towards the lawn. Beneath a waxy yellow moon Alex could see the tiny rivulets of sweat running down her body, joining together like tributaries as they passed her now impressively large breasts and the even more impressive swell of her belly. Her face was glistening with perspiration and her hair was damp against her forehead. Alex didn’t think she had ever looked more beautiful.

  ‘You’d better not be thinking of giving birth out here by the flowerbeds, because I’m telling you right now, I’m vetoing any plant names for our child. No Pansy, Lily or Rose. Okay?’ He was desperate to say something to make her smile, and he succeeded.

  ‘I’m okay with that, especially as I’m convinced it’s going to be a boy anyway.’

  Alex ran his free hand over the dome of her stomach, realising this might be one of the last times he’d be able to do that. They’d both agreed they didn’t want to know the sex of their baby, but there seemed to be an awful lot of blue baby clothes in the collection of new-born garments Lisa had bought.

  ‘Maybe we could name him after a planet,’ she suggested after yet another contraction had shuddered through her.

  ‘If we call him Pluto, people are just going to think of the Disney dog,’ Alex reasoned, ‘and don’t get me started on the teasing he’ll have to endure if you name him Uranus.’

  Lisa’s laughter was snatched away by a gasp that sounded urgent. ‘You know what, maybe we should go back inside.’

  Fifteen minutes later, beside the open French windows through which the stars were still visible, their son had slipped quietly into the world.

  ‘I’d like to call him Connor,’ Lisa had whispered, the baby still wet and slippery against her naked chest.

  Alex’s heart had been so full, words were almost impossible. He’d looked down at the two people who were now his entire universe and nodded happily while the tears ran freely down his cheeks.

  11

  Alex

  These days, Alex worked from home far more than he’d done before, his work day frequently extending late into the night until exhaustion finally forced him to switch off his laptop before he made careless mistakes. Ironically, while the rest of his life felt as though it was quietly disintegrating, his business was actually thriving. Which was more than could be said for his social life, which comprised only time spent with Todd and Dee. It was all he’d been capable of coping with. Until now.

  Alex slipped the foil-wrapped parcel of meat Dee had given him into the fridge and then reached into the back of a tall kitchen cupboard and drew down a half-empty bottle of whisky and a tumbler. Without Connor to consider, it might have been all too easy to have developed an unhealthy relationship with Messrs Bean and Daniels. But Alex strictly rationed his intake to a single glass each night. To help me sleep, or so he told himself. Although, in fairness, falling asleep wasn’t a problem for him. His body was more than eager to relinquish consciousness at the end of each day. It was staying asleep that he struggled with.

  The ice cubes rattled in the glass like dice on a gaming table until he drowned them in several fingers of alcohol. He took the drink with him as he padded back up the stairs to the office he and Lisa had shared. Her desk looked the same. He couldn’t bring himself to either touch or clear it. It was the same story in the bathroom, where shower gels he would never use sat beside hair products he had no need of. He had no idea if keeping so much of Lisa around them was making it easier or harder for him and Connor. All he knew was that he was unable to contemplate a time when he’d open the wardrobe doors and see a line of empty hangers swinging there instead of his wife’s clothes.

  Whisky in hand, he entered the office and settled himself at his desk. But the file he reached for didn’t bear the name of a client or have anything to do with his PR company. The edges of the portfolio were gently curled, like a much-borrowed library book or a well-thumbed bestseller. But this was neither of those. Alex took a fortifying mouthful of his nightcap before opening the folder. Within it were a collection of coloured plastic sleeves, but he pushed those to one side to reach the document he’d first clipped into the file two weeks after Lisa died.

  It was a letter he could have recited in his sleep. He knew the position of every comma, every full stop. He’d read it a thousand times, and yet it still hit him like a punch in the solar plexus. He skipped over the opening paragraph, and allowed his eyes a brief rest stop on the sentence that always caught him like a tripwire:

  I am pleased to tell you that at the time of writing this letter, four people have received an organ transplant following Lisa’s donation.

  Almost unconsciously, Alex’s gaze flashed to the four coloured plastic sleeves. Was there ever a time this letter would be easy to read? The lump in his throat told him probably not. He drew the letter further into the pool of light from the desk lamp before reading on.

  A young man in his twenties who had been on the recipient waiting list for over one year received a double lung transplant. A gentleman in his thirties received a double cornea transplant. A woman in her seventies who had been on the recipient waiting list for over five years received a kidney transplant. And a young lady in her thirties received a lifesaving heart transplant.

  Four strangers. Four recipients of a priceless gift Alex would never stop wishing he’d given instead of her. These were the four lives Lisa had changed when her own had been lost.

  In flashback he could visualise himself in that small sterile room at St Mark’s, as Gillian, the specialist nurse, passed him the consent form to sign. There’d been a roaring in his head as his blood pumped too hard and too fast through his veins, just because it could. It had felt like an insult to Lisa. Through the roaring, Alex had vaguely heard Todd talking; asking the nurse some question, he guessed. Their words were hazy and indistinct, sharpening only as he set the pen to the dotted line and signed his name.

  A hand was laid on his arm, too light and soft to be his brother’s. ‘If you’re willing,’ the nurse said, ‘we’d like to write to you within fifteen days to tell you how Lisa’s donation has been used. Donor families often find this a great comfort. And in time, some of those recipients might want to contact you themselves, to thank you directly. But you don’t have to decide right now if you’d like to receive those messages. And please don’t feel you’re under any obligation to say yes, Alex. Not tonight, nor anytime in the future.’

  His head had shot up, and even though nothing was making sense in his life any more, even though the world as he knew it had ceased to turn, about this one thing he was completely certain.

  ‘Of course “yes”. Absolutely. I want to know who Lisa has helped. I want to know everything you can tell me about them.’

  Perhaps Gillian had warned him at the time that the information he’d receive would be limited. He really couldn’t remember. But she’d definitely emphasised it several times since that day. Alex hadn’t known the care from the donor-family service would be ongoing, but it had been an unexpected and tremendous support. Not quite so helpful were their strict rules which prevented him from being given any further information about the people Lisa had helped.

  ‘Some patients take months or even years before they’re ready to contact their donor family. Some are never ready,’ Gillian had warned him. Alex already understood that any message he received would be vetted before it reached his hands. And he was okay with that. But as the weeks slipped into months and still he’d heard nothing, a new despondency took up residence. What if he never knew? What if no one ever reached out to him and Connor? It would be like losing Lisa all over again. Four times over.

  He was pinning too much on hearing from the recipients – a quiet, sane, part of his mind realised that. But knowing that, somewhere, a piece of the woman he loved lived on was all he could think about.

  The nights were the worst. He’d wake after only a few hours’ sleep to
find his arm searching for her on the empty half of their double bed. He’d glance across at her pillows, smooth and forever un-dented, and the loneliness he managed to keep at bay during the day would threaten to swallow him whole.

  The summer had been long and hot, the nights sultry and uncomfortable, and even though Alex now slept with the windows wide open – something Lisa’s moth phobia had never allowed – there never seemed to be enough air for him to breathe freely. Not anywhere.

  It was only in the garden, under a canopy of stars, that he felt a small measure of relief. Luckily they weren’t overlooked, so Alex was free to pace its confines at night, with chest and feet bare. Sometimes he’d lie down on the cool damp grass, letting it tickle the space between his shoulder blades like a caress against skin that would probably never be touched again. With arms folded behind his neck, he’d look for answers in the stars, the place where Lisa would surely leave them for him. For this had been her world, this was the passion that came second only to Connor and him. This was where she lived. It was the closest Alex could get to her, but as he stared up at the Milky Way there was only one question he could ever think to ask. Why? Why Lisa? Why her?

  The peace of mind, heart and soul he’d so casually taken for granted in the years they’d shared was starting to fade. What if Lisa faded too? Alex was terrified of the day when he wouldn’t be able to remember the smell of her, or how her nose wrinkled when she laughed or the way her body fitted so perfectly against his, as though they’d been cast from one mould. How could a love they swore would last forever – ‘with every beat of my heart’, she used to tell him – be gone in an instant? Snatched away in a moment of senseless tragedy.

  ‘Just give me a sign that you’re still here, that you’re not gone,’ Alex implored the velvet-black sky. ‘Show me how to find you again, baby, please,’ he begged, searching the constellation above him for a shooting star until his eyes watered from the effort. Eventually, feeling ridiculous, he’d got to his feet and padded back through the silent house to their empty bed.

  The first letter had arrived the next morning.

  *

  The whisky in his glass was gone, although he had no recollection of drinking it. He reached out to the four plastic sleeves fanned out like a poker hand on the desk before him. As ever, he felt an almost magnetic pull towards the red one. It was the one that held the letters from Molly, the woman who’d received Lisa’s heart. He slid the collection from the sleeve, surprised by how thick the bundle of handwritten letters had grown over the last four months.

  Her first letter had been both the best and the worst thing he’d ever received. It had made him want to howl like an animal in pain as he read it with knuckles pressed against his lips to muffle the sound of his sobs. Her words were beautiful, but, like poetry carved with a razor blade, they sliced into his soul.

  Dear Family,

  This is the hardest letter I know I’ll ever write, and I’m sure it will be equally difficult for you to read. Before thanking you, please know how deeply sorry I am for your loss and how nervous I am about saying the wrong thing and causing you even more pain. That is truly the last thing I’d ever want to do.

  My name is Molly and your wife saved my life when she decided to be an organ donor. Eighteen months ago my heart was attacked by a virus and, despite the doctors’ best efforts, the only chance I had of living beyond my early thirties was if someone, someone I’d never know, were to give me a gift I could never repay.

  There is so much I want to tell you about me, to reassure you that I’ll spend the rest of my days trying to be a worthy custodian of this heart. But there are rules I must follow. What I can tell you is that my life immediately before my transplant was very different to how it is now. When I got sick I was forced to give up my job as a primary school teacher, even though it was all I’d ever wanted to do. I watched my elderly mother live in fear that she’d outlast her only child, which broke my already failing heart.

  But because of you, because of your wife’s gift, I have the chance to rewrite my future. It’s not just a heart I’ve received, it’s hope, and that was something I didn’t dare have for a very long time.

  In the years you’ve granted me, I hope that I’ll be lucky enough one day to find someone to share the rest of my life with, perhaps even to have a family of my own. And if there are children in my future, please know that I’ll tell them about the woman who allowed me to be their mummy.

  I grieve for the person you lost, because even though we never met, I already know she was incredible. Anyone who donates so willingly to a total stranger belongs in a league of heroes.

  I will honour this heart and carry it with pride for the rest of my days.

  Thank you,

  Molly x

  Alex wondered how many versions of the letter there’d been before Molly had found the words he must have read over a hundred times. For him, one of the best things was learning that Molly was a primary school teacher. That had felt absolutely right. Lisa had always loved children, so it felt good knowing her heart would still be surrounded by them.

  ‘There’s no need to reply to the letters,’ Gillian had told him. ‘Sometimes the best gift they bestow is that of closure.’ Perhaps that was what some families were looking for, but not Alex. He had replied the very next day. And Molly had written back to him a week later. And so it had begun.

  Over the following months, their letters became more relaxed and natural. From them, Alex learnt that Molly loved many of the things that Lisa had also enjoyed. They even liked the same food! Instinctively he knew that if the two women had ever met, they’d have liked each other, maybe even have become good friends. But fate had made sure that would never happen.

  Almost as though Molly had opened an invisible floodgate, the letters from the other transplant recipients had followed in quick succession. Despite being vetted by the authorities, the letters still revealed clues that jumped off the page, or at least they did to Alex, who spent more hours than he probably should have reading and rereading them. Todd, who was already worried about the continued correspondence, would have worried even more if he knew just how many hours they were talking about.

  Molly’s letters were handwritten on thick, cream-coloured writing paper that looked expensive and carried a vague scent he could never quite place. The two male transplant recipients both sent their letters electronically, although Alex had printed them out because words on a screen weren’t a close enough connection. He needed something more tangible to anchor him to these last pieces of Lisa.

  Alex would have been able to figure out the age of the young man who’d received Lisa’s lungs even if Jamie hadn’t revealed it. His emails were peppered with text and messaging abbreviations and even the occasional GIF. There was an untamed exuberance in the way Jamie wrote that reminded Alex of himself at that age. Traces of a daredevil nature fluttered like red flags as Jamie wrote about all the things he planned to do and the places he was going to visit as soon as he was fully recovered. Either he was extremely well off or a big dreamer. Whichever it was, it didn’t really matter, because Alex liked the sound of him.

  The image Alex had of Barbara, the elderly woman who’d received one of Lisa’s kidneys, was so vivid, he felt sure he could have picked her out of a line-up. She wrote to him on notelets covered with images of cats. He learnt from her first message that she’d been widowed ten years ago and had never been blessed with children. Reading between the lines – which looked so straight, they must surely have been ruled – Alex guessed there were no close family members in her life. Well, no human family. There was regular mention of a great many names, but Alex suspected these were her pet cats. He liked to think that his writing back to Barbara made her world a little less lonely than it had been before her transplant.

  The person Alex felt he knew least about was Mac, the man whose sight had been restored after receiving Lisa’s corneas. His folder was far sparser than any of the others. His first communication ha
d started with him expressing his heartfelt condolences to Alex for his loss, before going on to say how grateful he was for Lisa’s generous donation. But after that, the emails had dried up. Alex was pleased that this thirty-six-year-old man could now return to his profession as an architect, that he’d be able to drive a car again, travel and do all the things his blindness had stolen from him, and he told himself he didn’t mind that Mac didn’t elaborate on how he had felt at each of those milestone moments. Alex reluctantly accepted Gillian’s cautionary warning that not all recipients felt comfortable sharing personal details with their donor family.

  *

  ‘This is not something we recommend, Alex. It’s… It’s pretty irregular,’ Gillian had told him after she realised Alex and the transplant recipients intended to keep writing to each other. Alex got the impression his lack of conformity sat uncomfortably with all of the Donor Family Care Team, but perhaps with Gillian most of all.

  He liked to think she had a soft spot for him and Connor. She checked in on them far more regularly than he suspected her job spec required. And those phone calls weren’t just to alert him when they’d received another letter. She really seemed to care about them.

  Alex had thought he’d left his old rule-breaker self firmly in his past, so it was quite surprising to find that facet of his personality re-emerging now. He briefly wondered whether Lisa would disapprove. Given the circumstances, he thought not.

  ‘I understand why you’d prefer to keep acting as a conduit for the letters,’ he’d said, picking his words carefully so as not to cause offence or appear ungrateful. ‘But if both sides want to communicate without going through your offices, what harm can it do?’

  ‘Plenty. These people are fragile, Alex. You’re fragile.’