Donor by Ken McClure

said Sandy but he was inwardly appalled at how weak Amanda appeared. There was hardly a flicker of spirit about her, despite the fact she had been dialysed that very morning. He tried not to think about it but logic insisted that he recognize that the chances of a suitable donor organ coming up in time must be remote.
    Turner reappeared and ushered them out into the corridor to say, ‘I managed to see Dr Grayson and he has no objections to a formal request being made to Médic Ecosse. He’s left it up to me to take care of the paperwork so I’ll get on to it right away.’
    ‘We’re very grateful,’ said Kate. This was echoed by Sandy.
    ‘In the meantime, the lab people are ready for you, Nurse here will take you down.’
     
     
    ‘Do you really think she’s going to come through this?’ asked Kate as they drove home. ‘Honestly?’ Her voice had taken on a flat quality that Sandy hadn’t heard before. It unnerved him a little. He and Kate were finding out a lot about each other that they hadn’t known before the crisis. Sometimes he felt it was like being with a stranger. He knew false optimism wasn’t an option, even if he could have managed it; and that was in some doubt. ‘I honestly don’t know,’ he said quietly. ‘But if there’s a God up there, and he listens to hopes and prayers and knows just how much we both love her, then she’ll pull through.’
    Kate squeezed his arm and said, ‘You know, I’m finding it difficult to know exactly what to hope for. I don’t think we can count on a miracle that will make Amanda’s own kidneys better, and Grayson and Turner were less than optimistic about either of us proving a suitable donor, so where does that leave us? Hoping that some other child with the same tissue type will die soon? Are we really hoping for a fatal accident to happen to someone else’s child?’ She broke down as she said it and searched for her handkerchief. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
    ‘I think in the first instance we should be hoping that Médic Ecosse says yes and agrees to take her on as a patient,’ said Sandy. He wanted to put his arms round her but had to concentrate on his driving. ‘If they really have better dialysis equipment, as Turner says they have, Amanda should start to look and feel better very quickly. That in turn would help us to feel better. As for the kidneys, let’s leave all that up to fate and the doctors. What do you say?’
    Kate nodded and blew her nose.
     
     
    Back at the Children’s Hospital in Glasgow, Clive Turner was filling in the paperwork required by Médic Ecosse for patient referral with fee waiver. He was using Amanda’s case notes as a source of information. The further he got into it, the less likely he felt it was that Amanda would be accepted as a patient. He should have thought of that before he said anything to the Chapmans. You didn’t need a medical degree to see that Amanda was a bad risk publicity-wise, and he could sense from the questions that this was what the free-referral scheme was all about. Médic Ecosse needed some good publicity after all the bad stuff it had received from a local press keen to expose it as a facility for the rich, with all the emotional fall-out that that entailed. People were quite happy to embrace the notion of hotels for the rich, cars for the rich and a host of other things that went with having money, but when it came to health care some special egalitarian principle surfaced. Woe betide the politician who didn’t – outwardly at least – bend the knee before that particular totem.
    Common sense said that Médic Ecosse would be looking for patients they could mend or cure quickly and send on their way, preferably with press cameras waiting outside as they left the premises on the arms of delighted relatives. Prejudice against the hospital could be fought with proof of expertise. People respected learning and ability. But, as far as Turner could see, there was nothing to be gained in