blood above his arm—all of them desperately hoping he could hold on, hold on just until they got there. None of them spoke apart from the basic terms of the attempt to resuscitate and trying to get more blood into him than was leaving him.
Attempts to resuscitate are, even with the most extraordinarily advanced equipment in the world, much more unsuccessful than not. People see miracle returns from the dead on TV all the time. They didn’t see this: the blood pumping out as fast as it could be pumped in; the lack of response in the pupils every time they checked; the artificial twitching and stimulation of the young body; the barked commands and steady listening for independent breath—the hot chaos of it all as the ambulance swerved and howled through the thick London rush hour, only one of many screaming sirens, helicopters, dispatches, attending to pain and blood.
“The doctors are going to call it,” predicted Ashkan, glancing at his watch.
“You can’t,” said Lissa.
Ashkan swore. The pointlessness of it. A hit-and-run that looked deliberate. On a child. He turned away and tuned in to the police radio for a bit, then even half smiled.
“They got him,” he said grimly. “The rest of the lads jumped on the car, wouldn’t let it leave. Smashed in his windows. It must have felt like a zombie attack.”
It didn’t register with Lissa at all.
“Carry on. More blood! Now!” said Lissa fiercely, and redoubled her efforts, hissing into the boy’s ear, “Come on, Kai! Wake up! Wake up!”
THEY HAD ARRIVED at Guy’s Hospital: the ambulance doors were hurled open without ceremony and two porters and an A&E doctor jumped aboard.
“Move,” said the young doctor, who looked about nine.
“I’m not finished here,” said Lissa strongly, as she continued to work the oxygen mask, shined light in his eyes, checked for vitals.
“Yes, you are,” said the doctor. “Let me look at him.”
“I can do it!” said Lissa. His face. His beautiful face. He was a child, a child asleep, still warm—or was that their efforts?—still sleeping, dreaming, losing his homework, wishing he were a footballer or a rock star.
“Stand back!”
“I can do it!”
Lissa didn’t realize she had screamed, didn’t realize everyone stopped to look at her, as Ashkan pulled her back gently, his face a mask of concern. The junior doctor was already moving in, ignoring her.
“Step back.”
“I just . . .”
It was unheard of for a nurse to defy a doctor in this way, even if this particular doctor looked like he’d drawn his mustache on with a pen that morning.
“Step back!”
But she couldn’t; she could only stand, as if she had absolutely no idea where she was, her arms reaching out uselessly, muttering, “Kai . . . Kai . . .” into thin air, still believing fervently, even as the doctor looked at his watch, shook his head; even as the blood was no longer dripping on the floor, was getting ready to pool, to congeal. The only thread to life was her.
“I can just . . . try one more time . . .”
“GET HER OUT of here,” the young doctor was muttering as the porters tried to move the body onto the gurney. Several other medics appeared.
“Is next of kin here?” yelled one of them, and Lissa recognized in horror the people—perfectly nice, professional people—whom, in day-to-day life, she admired hugely. The transplant team.
“He’s not even dead, you vultures,” she found herself screaming, and Ashkan really did move then, bodily pulled her out of the ambulance as she swore and thrashed away. “He’s not even . . . !”
“I’m calling it,” said the doctor. “Take him to the HDU.”
This was where they held transplant patients, in a twilight world between life and death, just holding on for long enough to get the necessary signatures, to beg and plead that a life taken in vain would not be entirely in vain.
“18:38,” he said. “Can we move it fast? We’ve a . . .” And his voice sounded so very, very weary. “. . . hit-and-run incoming.”
Lissa collapsed onto the pavement as it started to rain and burst into tears, deep racking sobs. She was a professional, had been doing this for four years, had seen road accidents, murders, every kind of horrible thing it was possible to see.
But it was a boy she knew whose name was Kai who broke her, at 6:38 P.M., on a totally normal Tuesday night.
Chapter 4
Ashkan tried to move her.
“Mate,” he hissed under his breath. “Mate, you have