What's Yours Is Mine (30 page)

The nurse at the NICU smiles when she sees me at the door, and quickly buzzes me in. “Haven't seen you in here for a while,” she says, briskly leading me down to the viewing gallery. “Have you been away?”

“I didn't want to cause too much disturbance,” I say, “now that her mother is well enough to come and see her every day.”

“Shame. You just missed Mum,” the nurse clucks. “She was here not five minutes ago.”

I didn't realize I'd cut it that fine. I don't want to see Susannah until long after this is all over; she has to think I have nothing to do with the transplant. That was my only condition, when I spoke to the transplant team. She must never know I'm the one who gave her a kidney. As far as Susannah is concerned, her donor is nameless, and faceless. Some unlucky soul who met with tragedy and had signed a donor card and just happened to have the same rare blood group as she does.

I rub my hands with antiseptic gel, and put on my face mask, then follow the nurse over to Ava. To my surprise, she's no longer in the incubator, but an open Perspex cot, with some sort of warming light above it. I can't believe how much she's grown since I last saw her. She's six weeks old now, though she's still more than a month from her due date. She's small, but despite the wires and tubes still present, she looks pink and healthy, and she's breathing on her own.

Her legs and arms have filled out, and her hair has grown in thick and curly. It has a distinct reddish tinge.
Tom's hair
, I think.
Tom's daughter. A little miracle
.

“Would you like to hold her?” the nurse asks, reaching into the crib.

I gasp with pleasure. “Really?”

She laughs. “Ava loves a cuddle. It's good for these tiny ones, to feel some human contact. It helps them thrive.”

It helps us all thrive
.

Gently, she places Ava in my arms. I gaze at her, drinking her in. She's so light, a featherweight wisp of warmth and sweetness. I put my finger in her palm, and she curls five tiny fronds around it. My heart twists. She's perfect. The best of Susannah and Tom and me.

My longing for her is visceral. I feel it in my belly, in my chest, in my fingernails. I would give everything I possess for this child to be truly mine.

But she has a mother, and it isn't me. At least now she will never have to go through the pain of knowing she was given away. Does any child truly recover from that? I drop a soft kiss on her forehead, breathing in her smell. I would do anything to protect this little girl, anything at all. Even let her go.

I hand her back to the nurse and quickly leave, my throat aching with unshed tears. I stumble back to the lift and go down to the surgical floor. The transplant team will be waiting to admit me and run their last-minute tests. In another room, perhaps no more than feet away, Susannah will be waiting for her own pre-op checks. In less than four hours, if all goes well, it will be over. She will have her life back, and I will be left to get on with what remains of mine.

All the pre-surgery evaluations have already been done. Naturally, I scored top of the class. A human kidney has a set of six antigens: substances that stimulate the production of antibodies. Donors are tissue matched for zero to six of the antigens, and compatibility is determined by the number and strength of those matched pairs. Blood-type
matching is also crucial, of course. I scored a powerful six out of six. An identical twin couldn't have done better.

In the past week, I've been tested for kidney function, liver function, hepatitis, heart disease, lung disease, and past exposure to viral illness. I've had X-rays, an EKG, and a CT angiogram, during which contrast dye was injected into my bloodstream. I passed every test with flying colors. I always do.

Mark Jaylor has already explained the actual procedure to me in detail. You can survive perfectly well with just one kidney, apparently. It just steps up to the plate and performs the job of two; rather like a single mother, I think ironically. He's planning a laparoscopic nephrectomy: instead of simply cutting me open, he'll go fishing for my kidney with long narrow rods through four tiny incisions in my abdomen. It all sounds quite extraordinary: first he'll pump in carbon dioxide to inflate my belly so he's got more room to see. Then, using a videoscope, he'll maneuver his instruments into me. Once the kidney is freed, it'll be secured in a bag—rather like turkey giblets, I imagine—and pulled through a fifth incision just below my navel. And then, while my kidney is rushed through to Susannah, he'll sew me up and, in no more than a day or two, I'll be able to go home.

I haven't told anyone what I'm doing, not even Tom. I don't want him to come back because I've given Susannah my kidney. I want him to come back because he's as lost and bereft and miserable without me as I am without him.

I can see now what I didn't see before. I treated Tom as if he didn't matter, as if he was of no account, when the truth is, he's
all
that matters. I want a child more than anything, yes—anything except
Tom
.

I don't want him back because I've finally done the right thing, but I can't help hoping that somehow, doing the right thing will put Fate back on my side.

And give me back my husband.

IT HURTS, BUT
not as much as I expected. I wake after the surgery feeling groggy from the anesthetic, and the catheter isn't exactly inspiring, but within half a day I'm out of bed, and once Mark Jaylor has established my remaining kidney is working fine, I'm discharged.

He says the surgery went well for Susannah too, though of course they can't tell yet if her body will reject the kidney. That could happen straight away, or years from now. She'll be on immunosuppressants for the rest of her life. I can't imagine living with chronic ill health the way she has for so long. For the first time, I have a glimmer of what it must be like for her. To know your own body is a failure at the most basic level: sustaining life.

There's no one to drive me home from the hospital. I've told Claudia I'm working on a complicated forensic case in Normandy. Tom moved out of the B&B and is staying at a friend's London pied-à-terre while the friend is on a sabbatical in New Zealand, so there's little chance of running into him in the village. Dad's too preoccupied
with Mum, and no one else is likely to think twice about me. I shall go home and keep the lights low and the curtains drawn, and lick my wounds in private.

Gingerly, I fasten my seat belt, feeling as if I've done ten rounds with Mike Tyson. I take it very slowly, and stay off the motorway. The wintry Oxfordshire countryside around me is bleak and gray. Bare branches are silhouetted against the looming November sky. The air of barrenness and desolation matches my mood.

I haven't driven this way for quite a while. I notice that many of the villages I pass through have weather-beaten
For Sale
signs outside cottages that would normally have been snapped up. Even this prosperous pocket of England has been hit hard by the recession. Tom and I will be lucky to get back what we paid for our fairy-tale castle, I realize, especially when we take into account the amount we spent fixing it up. Once we have cleared our mortgage, there will barely be enough for two small flats, even in this depressed market.

The thought startles me. It's as if there are two people in my head: one making cool, rational decisions about the practicalities of separation and divorce, and the other watching and listening to her in disbelief, totally unable to believe any of this is real.

Separation. Divorce
. I shake my head as if to clear it. Tom and I were meant to be together forever. How
can
any of this seem real?

As I pass the B&B where Tom was staying, I automatically slow. I'm surprised he hasn't taken his car with him,
I think, as I see it parked in the driveway. How else has he moved his things to London? He can't have taken them all on the train.

Then the door to the B&B opens, and Tom emerges, and my heart judders in a way it hasn't for years.

He's lost weight. Quite a bit: his clothes are hanging off him. His normally ruddy hair seems flat and dull, and he's walking with the heavy gait of an old man. I recognize that air of puzzled bewilderment from my own mirror. It's as if we both woke up one day and found ourselves in a foreign country, with no idea how we got there.

Just one short year ago, we were looking forward to our upcoming trip to New York to celebrate Thanksgiving with one of Tom's college friends. It turned out to be one of the best holidays we'd had. We spent hours strolling through the Village, picking out Christmas gifts for friends and family and each other. We skated hand in hand at Rockefeller Center, and snuggled against each other in the cold as we marveled at the tree. We even took a touristy carriage ride in Central Park. It was like our own rom-com holiday montage, all
Jingle Bells
sound track and picturesque white snow. We might not be honeymooners, but we could still play at loved-up with the best of them.

Neither of us wants this
, I think, hope rising unexpectedly in my chest. Tom isn't happy without me. I've never seen him look so miserable. Maybe we can still find a way back to that couple kissing and giggling and eating hot chestnuts in Times S