The Boy Who Gave His Heart Away: A Death that Brought the Gift of Life. Cole Moreton

a village to the west of Glasgow, a country girl who fell for the first handsome boy she met at her first proper disco in the local town, when she was just seventeen. His name was Norman but everybody called him Norrie.

      ‘We just clicked right away.’

      He was short and sharp, gregarious and funny, but not one for candlelight or flowers. ‘There was no romance. Never.’

      Within six months, to the horror of both their parents, Linda was pregnant. Norrie proposed. Sort of. ‘My granny and my father think we should get married because you’re pregnant. They’ll pay for the register office in Johnstone, which is £36.’

      ‘There were no violins,’ says Linda. ‘We were too young. I’d hardly been out with any boys. I hadn’t lived my life. I hadn’t even been to the dancing before and I had to stop anyway because of the baby.’

      Linda was seven months pregnant on the day they got married in 1981. The only witnesses were a couple who were their friends. ‘We had a meal. Then I went home and made my bed, cos I was knackered.’

      Leasa was the first child to arrive, a beautiful, very calm baby, who would grow up to become a strong young woman. Then came Darren and Ryan, both proper lads, destined to be a soldier and a professional footballer. Marc was next, the sparky little lad they all doted on and called over for cuddles. ‘Marc gave me the least bother. He was never ill and he never got in trouble at school. If there was a cat or a dog in the house it would go straight to Marc, he had a really good soul. Very laid-back and never complained about nothing. A wonderful brother to his sister Leasa, really dedicated to his brothers and his friends. A very caring son.’ He was very shy, though. ‘If anyone spoke to Marc he went scarlet.’

      Linda was proud of her kids, but seeing them grow up and get on with their own lives was a struggle for her sometimes. They needed her less and less. Marc became her ally against the passing of time. He was the one she could still hold close and keep safe, until a fifth child came along. ‘I was pregnant for the whole of the Eighties,’ she says with a laugh. ‘I kept trying for another girl. I was like, “Norrie, one more time, please?” I never got her!’

      The youngest, baby Daryl, was poorly with a hip disease for a while and had to be in a wheelchair at the age of four. ‘That probably stopped me having any more kids. “I don’t need a pram, I’ve got a wheelchair!”’

      By then Marc was away running with a pack of cheeky lads from the same street, with a river to swim in, a waterfall to jump over and a wood for games. But when all her own boys were home indoors, the house was a riot. ‘Darren was the funny, cocky one who made us all laugh. Ryan was the daddy who’d say: “I’ve got football in the morning, youse better stop making a noise.” Marc was the peacekeeper, the negotiator. He’d say to his brothers, “What did you say that to Leasa for? You need to go and say sorry.” What a wain.’ Leasa was like a second mother. ‘She’s one of the best folk I know in the world. She’s lost more than a brother. Leasa taught Marc to walk when she was five or six and he was just a baby.’

      Once the kids didn’t need her so much, Linda trained to follow her own mother Betty into the health service and started as a nursing assistant at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in 1991, working the twilight shift four times a week in the respiratory ward, doing everything a nurse would do except giving controlled drugs. That meant looking after people who were on diamorphine at the end of their life, as they succumbed to lung cancer. ‘I was very good at that, giving people respect in those times. Nothing prepares you for seeing your first dead body though, or having relatives screaming in your face. Or patients that have got cancer in their brain and they’re violent with you.’

      She soon saw a person die. ‘A wee old man called Robert. Nobody was sitting with him, so I did. After that, I couldn’t count how many people I was with in their last moments. We would strip the bed and get the person decent for their relatives to see. We’d get a vase – no red and white flowers in the same vase, it was bad luck – clear the room of any medical equipment, dim the lights and have it looking nice. Open the window to let the person’s soul out.’

      She means that. It was superstition, but sincere. There were leaflets with advice for the family and she would ask if they wanted her to call anyone. ‘We had good china, so I would get a tray and set it up for the relatives, get some good hankies, give them a wee pat and listen, if they wanted to talk about their loved one.’ She really cared for those people. ‘I loved my job.’

      Norrie was working hard as a roofer and if he had come straight home at night she would have been at the hospital anyway, so he tended not to. ‘He was only a young guy back then, so he was at snooker one night, football the next, the pub another and golfing the next. I thought, “D’ye know what? I earn good money. I manage fine. I don’t need a drunk man coming in at night, out ye go!”’ They split up in 1996 but are still friends to this day. ‘I could phone him for anything and Norrie would do it for me. Nobody will ever love or care for our kids the way he does.’

      The new machine at Newcastle saved Marc’s life, at least for that first day. It took old blood out of a tube in his leg, warmed it and removed the carbon dioxide, refreshed the blood with oxygen and pumped it back into him, taking over from his heart to manage his whole circulation. His chances of getting through the next day and night rose above one per cent now, but he was still as sick as any living patient the nurses in Newcastle had ever seen. And there was a serious catch. The longer he was on the machine, the greater the chance of an infection that could kill him anyway.

      A heart had to be found from somewhere fast.

      Ten

       Martin

      Nigel called the hospital at Nottingham again just before he boarded the plane to Pittsburgh very early on Wednesday morning in Las Vegas and he was answered by his mother-in-law, Joan. It was now the Wednesday afternoon in England, about twelve hours after Martin’s collapse. Joan said nothing had changed since the last call.

      ‘My wife wasn’t talking to me, she didn’t want to leave Martin to come to the phone, so I knew it was very serious. I was starting to get the feeling that this was not going to be a good outcome.’

      Nobody spoke to him on the four-hour flight across Middle America, as they passed from west to east over the deserts of Utah, the mountains of Colorado, the plains of Kansas, then Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and finally, Pennsylvania. The couple in the next two seats slept all the way, so the introverted Englishman was left alone, thousands of miles from home and five miles up in the air, with dark feelings of guilt. ‘I was in the wrong place. I couldn’t have been further away from him if I had tried. It felt wrong. I was thinking about the times when the boys said I was never home.’

      He loved them both dearly, more than they knew. His way of coping with all the time abroad was to crack on with work and try not to mope, but he gave them his full attention when he was home. Now the feelings that he usually tried to keep in check began to rise and threatened to flood over him. The wait at Pittsburgh International Airport was three hours. Nigel found a payphone and called the hospital straight after arrival and got through to Joan again, who said the same as before. He put the phone down, walked through the crowds to the departure lounge and found a seat in a corner. ‘That’s when it really hit me: I was going home to say goodbye and switch the life support machine off. They needed my authority. I put my coat over my head and just wept and wept, because I knew I had lost my son.’