Have a Little Hope

4. Have a Little Phone Call

Hiya lovelies! I hope you're enjoying HALH so far :) please do let me know what you think, I love to hear your comments and thoughts! Side picture is of Belle, and this is the same Belle from Belle's Dreamer too :)

Saturday morning and I do not feel like P. Diddy as Ke$ha so eloquently wrote. Instead I feel like the walking dead, but immediately regret my thought. That’s not even funny. That’s just plain cruel. These past couple of weeks have shown me my mind is my biggest enemy. It really is. I used to never believe that, but what I would love to do more than anything is rip my brain out and forget what has happened these past few weeks. Amnesia seems appealing, because living with the memories are too tough to bear. They’re all I can seem to think about. Even in the middle of my psychology exam, I was there over analysing everything that has happened before walking out in tears and sobbing in the toilets for the last twenty minutes.

I walk into the kitchen, running my hand through my tousled pink hair to see my Nan is tirelessly cleaning, when she says, ‘We need to go back to your house and sort your stuff out, Hope.’

Opening the fridge, I pull out a bottle of cool orange juice, before looking at her. ‘What do you mean ‘sort my stuff out’?’

‘Well, it can’t just hold all your stuff like self storage. You’ll need to move it and we’ll need to start clearing everything out of the house.’

I stare at her dumbfounded. Is she kidding? She wants me to go back to my home and rip it to pieces? I am not okay with that. Not at all. That is the last place where my dad was living and I am not going there. It just feels wrong, insensitive almost, like walking on his grave where he last was.

‘How can you be so, so, pragmatic?! How can you even think about that, Nan?’ I ask her dumbfounded. ‘It’s my home!’

She glances across at me and sighs. She finishes putting the plates in the cupboard before saying, ‘I’m clearing that house regardless, Hope. I’m not paying a mortgage for somewhere where you’re not living anymore. We can’t afford to, so no discussions.’

I glare at her as she continues swiftly, ‘Now, would you like to look at the people’s information?’

‘Have you looked?’ I ask cautiously. I don’t know if I want her to have looked or not.

‘I have, yes,’ she answers. She reaches behind a photo frame of me, Eloise and James playing together as children and brings out a brown envelope with the files in. She signals for me to sit down on the small paisley sofa in the living room, and I do. Should I look at these alone or not? She hands over the papers and sits opposite me, waiting for my reaction.

‘What did they use?’ I ask before breaking the seal.

‘Heart, lung, kidneys and liver,’ she says quickly.

I inhale deeply. It makes it sound so carnal, so raw, taking those parts of him. Cutting his body up like a piece of meat and donating his organs to someone else. Before my Dad, I had never even considered organ donation, I had no view on it, but now? Well I wish I didn’t have to deal with the consequences of losing my dad for other people’s joy.

‘That’s my Dad,’ I say weakly. ‘They’ve taken my Dad, Nan.’

Tears begin to well in my eyes, but I furiously wipe them away. I will not break down. Not now, I need to read who has parts of my daddy keeping them alive when I couldn’t keep him. My Nan nudges over the tissue box, but I ignore it and ask her to tell me about the people.

She summarises what she knows and briefs me on each of them before I look for myself.

28 year old man, Ben. Received the liver after experiencing hereditary liver problems. He has waited for fourteen months and is making a good recovery.