Читать книгу The Boy Who Gave His Heart Away: A Death that Brought the Gift of Life - Cole Moreton, Cole Moreton - Страница 13

The police car rode the hills like a speedboat on the waves. Pushed back into his seat by the force of it all, Norrie felt sick to the stomach and gripped the hand rest with fright. He didn’t dare look at the speedometer. They were plunging into deep space, with the blackness wrapping back around them in the rearview mirror. The ambulance was just about in their slipstream, but suddenly they were slowing down.

‘What’s up? What are we doing?’

‘This is England. We have to stop.’

The ambulance passed by at speed as they pulled over and Norrie was alarmed. ‘You’re not gonna let them leave me behind?’

‘No way. See?’

Another police car sat in the lay-by ahead, this time with the markings of the Northumberland Police. ‘Come on, Norrie, let’s get you swapped,’ the officer said as he grabbed the spare oxygen bottles out from the back seat, letting in a rush of cold air. Norrie quickly tried to climb in the back of the next car but the door wouldn’t open.

‘No, Jock,’ said the driver, an Englishman on his own in the car. ‘You sit up front with me.’ Norrie would have got cross if anyone else had called him Jock, but he wasn’t going to argue with the only man who could get him to his son. The ambulance had disappeared over the hill but the driver saw him looking after it and grinned. ‘Don’t worry, Jock, we’ll catch them.’

What happened next was a shock, says Norrie. ‘I swear it was like being in a plane. We nearly took off. I thought, “My god, he’s bombing it!”’

They had been going fast before, north of the border, but this was something else and it made Norrie laugh. He was getting hysterical with the grief, the stress and the fear, but he was elated, too – they were doing something for Marc at last, going somewhere fast, getting the best help they could. At least they were trying, all these people – the doctors, the nurses, the paramedics, the cops – all on his son’s side. They were hurtling through the dark again now, but he knew they were heading down through the open country of the Northumberland National Park. ‘I could see the ambulance far off in front, but there were hills, so the tail lights would pop up red in the distance then they’d disappear.’

The lights started to get closer but Norrie suddenly began to feel really sick.

‘Are you all right?’ The driver must have heard him groan.

‘Not really. Can I have a cigarette, to settle my nerves?’

‘What? No, pal. You’re in a police car!’ The driver was concentrating on the road but he must have thought about his passenger and how there would be nobody else to clear up the sick, because he changed his mind. ‘Special circumstances? All right, you can.’

The window next to Norrie opened just a crack and the wind raged in his ear, but it was clear what he was expected to try and do. So he lit his fag, took a drag, craned his neck and tried to blow smoke out of the window. They were going at more than 100 miles an hour. The wind blew the smoke back in his eyes and the ash in his mouth, all over his face. The driver laughed. ‘Nice one, Jock.’

Norrie laughed too, high on adrenaline. It felt like seconds before they were in among houses and street lights again and the shop signs suggested they were on the edge of Newcastle, where two other patrol cars joined them. ‘My mates are going to play tag,’ said the driver, meaning that one car would race ahead and block off the road for the ambulance to pass through, then the other would accelerate away to the next junction to do the same. ‘I felt like I was in a movie,’ says Norrie, who had never seen such driving. Jock or not, he was grateful. ‘I couldn’t thank those guys enough for what they did that night.’

Still, when they got to the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle the distractions of the drive fell away and he was hit again by the full force of what was happening to his son. Norrie expected to walk into the hospital and be told that Marc was dead, but there was nobody there to meet them. The English policeman led the way up the stairs, but as they were going up he saw the doctor and nurses who had ridden with the ambulance coming towards him. There were four women and the older man, the medic he recognised from before, looking exhausted now. The man’s face was wet with tears, and Norrie felt a rush of despair, as he realised what that meant. It had all been in vain. Marc had not made it.

But as they passed on the stairs, the man reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. Norrie braced himself.

‘Your son’s a fighter. He’s still with us in there …’