One Size Fits All

One Size Fits All

 

‘Hey, Anabolic Steroids, is that what makes you so fat?’ Chrissie Johnson shrieked and her four cronies joined in.

 

‘Hey Porter, your name suits you, you need a porter to carry all of your spare tyres.’ They were still high fiving and clicking their fingers like black ganstas when the bus pulled into the stop.

 

Although Annabel was before them in the queue, she made no move to get on the bus, there was no point; she knew from experience that they’d only jostle her out of the way. She stood on at the bus stop, freezing cold with rain lashing in a harsh crosswind into her face. She wished she could stand there all day and let the bus go on to school without her. Being bitterly cold and wet was preferable to the cruel taunts and physical assaults that she suffered every day at school.

 

It was relentless, even at home in the evenings she’d turned on her computer to find cruel photos of her taken on mobile phones throughout the day, usually in her gym kit, and once in the shower block, with spiteful captions and nasty remarks on her facebook page. Today was no exception.

 

U r a fat waste of space.

 

 Nobody likes U.

 

We know you fancy Jason Hargreaves, but he sez u r a munter. U make him puke.

 

Ur a fat ugly bitch.

 

She looked at herself in the mirror, Mum said that she wasn’t fat, she was just chubby, and that it was just baby fat and that she’d grow out of it. But Mum didn’t have to get on the bus with Chrissie Watts.

 

Her mum had been to the school but it only made things worse, she’d been to see Chrissie’s parents and the other families, things might calm down for a day or two and once Chrissie and the other three were suspended for a week after the naked photos of Annabel in the school showers were posted on the internet, but it only made things worse. Her mum’s car was scratched the next day and Chrissies mum gave Annabel’s mum dirty looks in the Post Office.

 

Jane Porter knew when she opened her eyes that something was wrong. What had woken her? A mother knows, it’s a silent siren, something deeper than sound that alerts her to her child in trouble.

 

She launched herself out of bed. She didn’t wake John, this was mother stuff and he had to be up for work at six, no point in waking him when it might be nothing. But Jane knew as she raced along the corridor, pulling her dressing gown belt tight around her slim waist that when she burst into her daughter’s room, without knocking for the first time in over ten years, that he wouldn’t see Annabel’s chest rising rhythmically with her soft breathing, her golden curls wouldn’t be spread across the pillow and her fifteen year-old would not be sleeping peacefully with a half smile on her face and one dimple visible in the pale glow from the landing light.

 

She ran to Annabel slumped half on and half off the bed.  A small pool of vomit had soaked into the carpet leaving only the solid waste and the acrid smell to fill the room. Jane’s hand went to her mouth to stifle the scream and she turned it into a shout for her husband.  She ran to her daughter and lifted her head fighting the panic that was threatening to turn her into a zombie. She could be useless later when Belle was safe. She was still shouting, screaming for John to ring for an ambulance, she heard his footsteps in the hall.

 

Morphine, they said. She’d been to her Grandma’s and had taken it. That indicated premeditation, why hadn’t she come to Jane and talked about it? Grandma blamed herself. Why hadn’t Jane followed her instincts to take her child out of school until something was done once and for all? So many why’s but only one mattered? Why was her daughter pronounced brain-dead when he heart still beat and her eyes still moved? 

 

She was on life support. The term was a kick in the stomach. There was no life, only a tumble of stubborn, healthy organs that refused to stop working. The doctors said it could take over a week once the breathing tube was removed. It had been five days now and her beautiful daughter lay peacefully with the metronomic blimp of the monitor confirming for Jane that the doctors were wrong—Annabel lived. Could she keep her like this forever? Have her to hold and talk to for the rest of her life in this clean, white bed where her daughter looked so alive in her death?

 

They’d been patient and sympathetic at first. ‘Take your time. There’s no rush. Gather the family and say your goodbyes.’ And so a steady stream of visitors came and cooed and talked in false staccato. Later they came from the school in groups of four, with class made cards. Chrissie didn’t come but her name was on one of the cards, with a smiley face, mocking. ‘We’ll miss u sooooo much xx,’ smiley face.

 

They all cried, the children, but not one of them had befriended her. Nobody had stood up for Annabel against the bullies.  She didn’t want them there but didn’t care enough to stop them. The teachers spoke about what a wonderful pupil Annabel was.  Was, not is, already a was to them. They said the children needed to come as part of the grieving process and Jane stared at her. What did she care about their grieving? What did she care about anything?

 

Chrissie didn’t come, but Jasmine did, wet eyed and bursting with health and pretty features. Jane wanted to tell her that Annabel was pretty too. She was raging inside. She wanted to grab the girl and punch her until somebody pulled her off but she didn’t have the energy to do or say anything. What was the point?

 

Jane agreed to the organ donation. She wasn’t thinking clearly and saw it only as a means of keeping her daughter artificially alive for a little while longer, just until a recipient was found. She reasoned that it was what Anabel would have wanted, they’d even discussed it once, ‘Just think how awesome it would be, Mum, if somebody else could live through me after I’ve died. It would be as though I wasn’t really dead.’ Her words replayed in Jane’s head, she could hear her daughter’s voice as she’d said it and it comforted her.

 

Chrissy took drugs, that ecstasy stuff. Of course her mother said that she was spiked. It was in the papers and on the news. Annabel’s story hadn’t made the papers, not even the local rag.

 

They met—again—a scheme the hospital said that they’d found mutually beneficial to the families of both parties. It was a chance for the donor family to give and for the recipient family to say thank you.

 

She’d almost changed her mind when she found out. How could Annabel’s pure, generous heart be put into the bony, flat chest of somebody that horrible? Wouldn’t it shrivel and harden until calluses formed and everything that was good about her daughter became soiled?

 

The operation was held up, the doctors talked about the time element, they were agitated, tense. They didn’t care about Jane’s reasons, they only wanted to save a life, notch up a quota, ride the league table. Chrissie’s mother will have known, of course. She must have. How could she expect the mother of the girl that her daughter had driven to suicide to save her child’s life? But she did. She was desperate. She sent a letter via the consultant, begging, pleading, mother to mother for her daughter’s life.

 

And she apologised.

 

Jane thought that was nice, but she would wouldn’t she? Apologise.

 

Jane hoped that Chrissie would die while she agonised. Would that be her fault?

 

And then she heard Annabel’s voice, ‘I’ll make her good Mum, I promise.’

 

Promises were sacred, they must never be broken.

 

They met after the operation when it was all smiles and gratitude. Jane was sick of hearing thank you.

 

‘I did it because it’s what Annabel wanted,’ she said, in a voice as flat as Chrissies chest. ‘It’s a good job that one size fits all, don’t you think?’