Donor, The by Helen FitzGerald Page A

lying on the floor. I’d imagined her often. I’d even scanned one of our old photos onto the computer and downloaded an ageing device to see how she might have changed over the years, like they do for missing kids. On the computer, she looked the same as she had but with lines. In real life, here, now, on the bathroom floor, she looked like an emaciated wretch. There was nothing left of the woman in our photo albums.
    ‘Mum?’ I said, moving towards her, kneeling beside her, touching her hand. It was an elderly hand, my mum’s; veined and liver-spotted and thin skinned. Still, I was holding it, and it felt glorious.
    ‘Mum?’ I said, touching a cheek that felt not so different from her hand. Too much sun, maybe. ‘Mum, I’m here.’
    I don’t know how long it took for me to notice the syringe beside her. Two seconds less than it took for me to notice the cloth tied around her arm.
    ‘Mum!’ I said more loudly, gently shaking her shoulders .
    All the while, the sunglassed movie star had been saying the same thing over and over. I heard it now. ‘Please tell me she’s not dead. Please tell me she’s not dead.’

22
     
     
    ‘Is she breathing?’ the sunglasses guy said. He was passing on instructions from the 999 operator.
    ‘I don’t know.’ Turns out I was one of those dumb arses who cry in emergencies.
    ‘She says she doesn’t know …’ the guy relayed my words … and came back at me with an instruction. ‘Put your cheek against her mouth.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Put your cheek against her mouth and see if you can feel anything.’
    ‘I can’t feel anything.’
    ‘She can’t feel anything …’ He paused. ‘Okay, put her on her back.’
    ‘She is already.’
    ‘She’s on her back …’ he said to the operator, listened to the response, then said, ‘Check there’s nothing in her mouth.’
    I put my finger inside my mother’s mouth. It was warm. That’d be good news, wouldn’t it? ‘It’s warm!’ I said.
    ‘Is her tongue there?’
    ‘Yes.’ I thought it was a stupid question but felt it best to answer. Where the hell else would it be? Of course later on I realised they wanted to know if she’d swallowed it.
    ‘Her tongue’s in her mouth … Georgie, stop crying . Georgie, listen to what I’m saying … Put the ball of one palm on top of the other and place them in between her boobs.’
    Did the sunglasses guy really say boobs ? At a time like this? Surely the operator didn’t say boobs ?
    ‘Yes, she’s doing that … Now press quite hard each time I count … You’re gonna count to six hundred, okay? The ambulance is on its way.’
    ‘One … two …’ Preston said. I couldn’t seem to do as he asked … ‘Three … four … You have to count out loud … Five … six … Georgie, count out loud! Nine … ten … Count out loud! No, she’s not counting …He says count !’
    I kept forgetting to count out loud. I couldn’t stop crying. Would I save her? Would she live? ‘Please live! Okay … eleven … twelve … Oh God.’
    ‘Count out loud!’ The sunglasses guy yelled.
    ‘Thirteen … fourteen … Oh God. Oh no. Oh please!’
    *
     
    I don’t recall what number I was at when they arrived. Not sure I got far beyond fourteen. I was pretty hopeless at following instructions. It must have driven the sunglasses guy mad.
    ‘My name is Preston,’ he said. We were in the back of the ambulance. She was breathing. Maybe she had been all along. Maybe I pounded on her chest for no reason.
    ‘Was it heroin?’ I asked.
    He shrugged his shoulders. The paramedic answered for me. ‘The stuff on the street’s too pure at the moment. We’ve had five deaths in the last week. Your friend was lucky.’
    Friend ? Is that what we looked like? ‘She’s my mother,’ I said, squeezing her aged hand as we bumped towards Accident and Emergency.
    ‘Preston, were you with her when this happened?’ I asked.
    ‘No. She asked me to leave her alone for a while. I went for a coffee,