He Will Provide

(Excerpts from Annie’s Reynolds journal)

27th June 2013

It’s been days since I found out and I can’t stop crying. Even now tears are blurring my vision and smudging these words. All my life I’ve heard people talk about heartache, I even thought I’d had it a few times, but this feeling, this horrific pain, couldn’t be summed up by such an innocuous sounding word. The pain in my heart is unrelenting. The only reprieve I get is when I wake in the morning and for just the briefest moment my mind is blank, the pain; absent. Then I remember and in the blink of an eye its back. I can’t fathom how such a perfectly healthy organ could be causing me so much pain.

I’m worried about how it will be at the end. I don’t think I can endure any more than this.

I’ve been trying to control my tears around Mum. She keeps saying I’m crying like she’s already dead. I just can’t get passed the fact that I believe she won’t survive. She’s fifteenth on that heart transplant list and she’s only been given six months to live. When I spoke to the nurse she said some people waited for years. This pain comes from the knowledge that she’s not going to make it. I’m sure of it. She will leave and my world will never be the same.

30th July 2013

Mum’s been on the list for thirty three days. During that time one person has come off, having received a donor heart, and one person has been added. Apparently they are a higher priority than mum so she remains in fifteenth place. I told the doctor this wasn’t fair. How was mum supposed to work her way up the list if people jumped the queue? Mum said, "It’s God’s will. If he wants me to live he will provide."

I’m having a hard time with the religious thing. I’ve always let her be with her beliefs before, assuming no harm could come of it. Now I know I was wrong with that approach. Instead of clinging to life (and me) with a positive fighting spirit, she is quietly accepting, trusting in some plan a fictional character has for her. It makes me want to tear my hair out. Yes I want to be a supportive daughter and I want her to be comforted but I am sick of sharing her heart with a myth.

4th July 2013

Went to visit mum today, her face is swollen from the meds and her skin has taken on a greyish hue. I faked a sore stomach and went and cried in the toilet. My mum is fading away and there is nothing I can do.

6th July 2013

It’s 3am and I still haven’t slept. I had a thought earlier and it won’t leave me alone. What if mum was further up the list? The people ahead of her are just as sick, if not sicker, than her, what if their hearts gave out? Mum had been warned to avoid exercise and undue excitement – what would it take to make a fragile heart stop? Is it considered murder if you scare someone to death? I don’t think it is.

7th July 2013

I got the list! I can’t bring myself to write down what I had to do to get it, but I got it. The Hippocratic Oath doesn’t hold as much sway these days as I hope it used to. 

10th July 2013

Today the pain in my heart is almost bearable. There’s an excitement building in me that is masking it nicely. I’ve taken action and that has given me the illusion of control. I had a moment, as the envelopes left my hand and disappeared into the red post box, when I was assailed by doubt. The contents of those envelopes could mean the end of someone’s life. I knew this, that was my intention, but once those envelopes left my hand I began to think of my potential victims as people and not just names on a list. People with families that wanted them to live as desperately as I wanted mum to. I can’t think like this – yes, they are people but they are not important to me, all that is important is saving mum.

13th July 2013

I am becoming obsessed with the obits. I’m buying every newspaper out there and scanning for the names on the list. Today three of them appeared. I thought I’d be consumed with guilt but I wasn’t, I was thrilled - it was like seeing my numbers come up in the lotto. Still, as I read the sympathy messages an uneasy feeling settled in my gut. It helped to dehumanise them and think of them as the numbers they were on the list. They are just obstacles in my path. It helped even more when I realised that the fake scratch cards I’d sent were only responsible for two of the deaths; numbers twelve and four. Number twenty six had died in a car accident. 

14th July 2013

Took mum for check up on her pacemaker today. Her Doctor told us she had moved up two places on the list. I said "Fantastic!" Mum said "God will provide."

How can she think that? If she believes in God’s will then surely he was the one that gave her the heart disease in the first place! 

I want to tell her what I’m doing, how I’m providing for her, not God but of course I can’t. 

15th July 2013

Today I paid two of the teens from the council flats down the road to dress in ‘Scream’ masks and target the list members in ground floor flats. They jumped out at them when they neared their windows. One of them had a retractable knife that he hit against the windows. I’m not sure how fruitful this action was, from where I was hiding I heard screams but none of them were followed up by ambulance sirens. I’ll have to wait to see what shows up in the obits.

17th July 2013

I’m concerned. Three more people have died from the list, though not in mum’s favour – numbers nineteen, twenty-three and twenty five. The obits sighted their causes of death to be car accidents. This just doesn’t feel right to me. Four people from the list have now died in car accidents. What if someone has had the same idea as me? If so, their loved one is lower on the list than mum which puts her in the firing line. I’m probably just being paranoid – Oh God, I don’t think I am!

20th July 2013

I’m scared. Number twenty four has died in a car accident. The funeral is tomorrow and it’s open so I’m going to attend and see what I can find out. 

21st July 2013

I really don’t know what to do. I managed to talk to number twenty fours cousin and the police are suspicious of her death. She didn’t have a drivers licence but she’d been found dead in the driver’s seat of a stolen car; the apparent victim of a hit and run collision. The suspicion came from the traces of a substance around her mouth which may or may not have been chloroform. I’m now convinced someone is murdering these people but I can’t go to the police without exposing my own intentions with the list. I can’t just wait until they try to get at mum, I have to do something. 

23rd July 2013

I think I’ve found him. The first victim was number twenty six on a list of thirty, leaving me three possible suspects. Number twenty eights brother was extremely over protective of her when I rang acting as a nurse from the hospital. He demanded to know what "we" were doing to save his sisters life and intimated he was the only one looking out for her interests. I’m going to go and talk to him. Maybe I can convince him to spare mum.

(Charing Cross Hospital 23rd July 2013)

Doctor Brown rushed into the consultation room where his patient was waiting. He knew she would be in shock, having had the news broken to her by policemen on her doorstep and then rushed over to the hospital. He noted her hands were shaking and he regretted he couldn’t give her time to deal with her grief but they were racing against the clock.

"Mrs Reynolds, I am sorry for your loss, but this gives us a great opportunity."

"I don’t understand." Mrs Reynolds cut in with a weak voice. "Annie couldn’t drive. She applied for her provisional years ago but she never learned. How could she have been driving that car?"

Doctor Brown cleared his throat, wishing he didn’t have to rush this fragile woman so much. 

"I realise this is all a big shock for you but that’s what I wanted to talk to you about Mrs Reynolds. On Annie’s provisional license she left the organ donation check box clear. As her next of kin you can authorise the donation of her heart but we have to move fast."

Mrs Reynolds blinked at him and then smiled slightly. "No Doctor."

"No?" Doctor Brown frowned.

Again, that slight smile. "Doctor Brown, if God wants me to live I’ll move up that list of yours, I’ve already gone up two places. I’m not going to jump the queue. God will provide Doctor. Give that heart of my daughters to someone that needs it more. That’s what Annie would’ve wanted."

By Dayv Metcalfe