The smell of bleach hits him first, the second he pelts into the room.
‘Where’s Connor?’ Aidan looks frantically around, rushing over to Kieron when he spots his youngest son lying flat on a trolley. He lifts his limp hand. Presses two fingers against his wrist.
‘He’s fine,’ Lucy says. ‘I’ve given him a little something to help him sleep.’
‘Ryan?’ Aidan glances across the room, not wanting to leave his son’s side.
‘He’s fine too.’ Lucy soothes him in the same voice she has used over the years when he’s lost an animal at the practice, but this… this woman standing in front of him may sound like his wife, may look like his wife, but he knows from the calm detachment in her eyes that the Lucy he loves has been hidden. He has to find her. Appeal to her as a parent. A mother.
‘Melissa has been going frantic since Ryan went missing. Imagine how you’d have felt if it had been Connor. Is he here?’
‘No. He’s all right though.’
‘How do you know? I got home to find the house swarming with police, there was blood on the wall, the table knocked over. They think he’s one of The Taken’
‘I know he hasn’t been taken because I’m the one who did the taking. Not Tyler, I don’t know where he is. But Ryan.’
‘But Connor is missing—’
‘We had a row. It was vicious. He accused me of loving Kieron more than him. He was upset. Out of control. Screaming at me, asking how I’d feel if he went missing like Ryan. You know how angry he’s been since Hailey’s stroke. How he blames me. He’s staged his own disappearance to teach me a lesson.’
‘But the blood—’
‘Was only a smidgen. You know blood loss always looks more severe than it is. He probably pricked his finger with a needle and smeared it against the wall. He thought I’d believe he’d been taken by the same person that took Ryan, but…’ She gestures towards Ryan with one hand.
‘Lucy.’ Aidan doesn’t quite know what to say. Do. He needs to get Ryan out of here, but he’s already consumed by what comes after. The police. The charges.
The thought of Lucy in prison wounds him. ‘I don’t know what you’re thinking—’
‘But you do. That’s why you’re here. You opened the parcel of anti-rejection drugs I’ve bought. What did you think I was going to do? What was running through your mind as you came here? Really?’
‘I thought that you’d decided to carry out a living liver transplant, taking a lobe of Connor’s liver to save Kieron.’ It’s sickening saying the words, sickening that she doesn’t deny them, but he knows it is possible. It was something they had discussed as a possibility when they first realized that one day Kieron would need a transplant.
‘Partial liver transplants from a live donor are becoming more common,’ Lucy had told him one night as they’d sat in bed not long after Kieron had been diagnosed. She’d spent sixteen years training as a transplant surgeon and she was one of the best. Aidan often thought it a shame she’d walked away, retrained in orthopaedics after the time it took her to qualify but he understood why she did. Why she felt unable to carry on the life or death operations, not that any surgery was without risk, of course. She idly ran her forefinger down his wrist. ‘Although the first partial transplant was carried out more than a decade ago it’s still not standard practice but when they’re used it’s generally for kids rather than adults so…’
‘Kieron?’ Aidan had felt a smidgen of excitement. He’d tried not to dwell on what would happen when his son reached transplant stage, but it was hard not to allow dark thoughts to creep in. Although he’d be so grateful if Kieron received a new organ, the inevitability of explaining to Kieron that somebody had died which had enabled him to live was something of a heavy weight on his chest. ‘Are they as effective as a full transplant?’
‘Yes. Probably more so. It’s useful knowing when the surgery will take place so the recipient can be as best prepared as possible, and the donor and the recipient are in the same place so the donated liver portion is transported within minutes. The liver regenerates so quickly, within eight weeks generally it returns to its original size.’
‘So why don’t we use this method all the time?’ But as Aidan asked he knew the answer. ‘Who are the donors?’
‘That’s the thing. Would you donate a piece of your liver to a stranger? Most donors are family members or friends. Unlike heart and kidney transplants, livers don’t need to be tissue matched, although both blood groups need to be compatible.’
‘I’ll do it!’ At last, something positive Aidan could do, but Lucy shook her head.
‘You wouldn’t be able to. Not only do livers need to be roughly the same size – an adult’s liver would never be used in a child – but you have a family history of diabetes.’
‘And your liver is too big as well?’ Aidan guessed it would be.
‘Yes, but anyway, I’m a blood group B which isn’t compatible with Kieron’s O.’
Aidan fought to keep his next question contained, but it sprung from his lips anyway. ‘But Connor’s blood group is O. He could do it?’
‘In theory, he’s fit and healthy, but you can’t donate in this country unless you’re over eighteen.’
‘Even if—’
‘No exceptions.’
They hadn’t discussed it anymore. They hadn’t needed to. Kieron didn’t require a liver then, unlike now.
This is why, when he saw the parcel of anti-rejection drugs, he had thought she’d snapped and brought both his sons here, to St Mary’s, the operating theatre where she’d been based until Wheatfield General opened. To take a piece of Connor’s liver for Kieron.
He knows he’s got the right scenario.
Right scenario. Wrong donor.