The Boy Who Gave His Heart Away: A Death that Brought the Gift of Life
‘Gripping … so powerfully emotional that at times I had to put it down to wipe my eyes’Mail on Sunday‘How do you say thank you to someone for giving you their heart? It is the greatest gift a person can ever give.’Marc is a promising young footballers of 15, growing up in Scotland. A few hundred miles away in England, Martin is a fun-loving 16-year-old. Both are enjoying their summers when they are suddenly struck down by debilitating illnesses. Within days, the boys are close to death.Although their paths have never crossed, their fortunes are about to be bound in the most extraordinary, intimate way. One of them will die and in doing so, he will save the other’s life.This is a deeply powerful and dramatic story. It is extremely rare for the family of a donor to have any personal contact with the recipient of their loved one’s organ. Yet remarkably, the mothers of these two boys meet and become friends, enabling the extraordinary, bittersweet moment in which a mother who has lost her son meets the boy he saved. Reaching out and placing her palm flat against his chest, she feels the heart of her son beating away inside another. Her boy, the boy who gave his heart away.
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First published by HarperElement 2017
FIRST EDITION
© Cole Moreton 2017
Cover design and illustration Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780008225728
Ebook Edition © April 2017 ISBN: 9780008225711
Version: 2017-09-20
Contents
This is the true story of two boys who never met, but who are bound together in the most astonishing way. Marc was fit and fast, a star player in his local football team. Strong and brave but shy and gentle, he had a sharp face, sandy hair and striking green eyes. Martin was big, bright and breezy, a loving lad who was always up for a laugh, with a mop of brown hair and a friendly face that made everyone smile. Their names were alike and they were more or less the same age, either side of a sixteenth birthday, but they lived hundreds of miles apart in Scotland and England and never even knew each other existed. Then, one summer, they both fell down. Just like that, without warning, they were taken seriously ill at the same time. That’s where we begin. One of these boys will die. And without ever knowing it, he will save the other’s life.
This is also the story of their mums, Linda and Sue, who will go through grief and worry enough to break most of us. I have got to know the families, the medics and one of the boys well over several years and this book is based on their own accounts of what happened, which are terribly sad but also inspirational and full of wonders. Towards the end of the telling, the mother of the boy who was lost will meet the boy who was saved, now grown into a man. She will reach out and put her hand flat against his chest, to feel the heart of her own poor son still beating away inside him. Life will have sprung from death, miraculously. But before that extraordinary moment can happen, there must be a tragedy. Marc or Martin. One of these boys is about to give his heart away …
We are not meant to touch hearts. Hearts are away, hidden, at the centre where they can’t be got at. Protected. Vital. The seat of the soul. If a heart is touched, it can only be a miracle.
Louisa Young, The Book of the Heart 2002
One
Marc was in agony, writhing around on the back seat of the car and calling for his mum. She was driving as fast as she could, up to the hospital and over the red warning lines, straight into the ambulance bay, blocking the way for everyone else. Linda didn’t care. She thought her son was dying. She was right. She leaned on the horn again and again and the loud, flat sound echoed under the canopy, an alarm and a plea for help. ‘Come out! Come on! Where are you?’
Marc couldn’t walk and there was no way she could carry a hefty, dazed teenager out of the car and all the way through the doors to Accident & Emergency, but surely somebody in there would hear the noise and wonder what was going on? A hospital porter came striding over with an angry face but Linda shouted at him: ‘I’m not moving. Not until my son gets seen!’
The porter was confused, he knew her as a friend and a nurse who worked the night shift. Then he looked into the back of the car and saw Marc in a terrible state.
‘Holy crap, Linda – is that your boy?’
Yanking open the car door, he swore loudly and waved at a colleague for a trolley. Marc didn’t answer his questions and Linda couldn’t get the words out right. ‘Just help him, please.’
The porter took hold of Marc under both arms to lift him out and tried to be reassuring. ‘We’ll take him, hen. You get this thing moved, yeah?’
