Valve Me Up, Baby

My husband and I always wanted to go into business together. Admittedly, this wasn’t the kind of business venture I had in mind. We sell organs. From a van. No, not the church music kind. The sort that keep people alive… until they don’t. The bloody kind. The expensive kind. The kind that would make your average crime boss pause mid-kidnapping and say, “Bit much, mate.” Yet here we are. Driving around housing estates in a refrigerated van, a cheerful little jingle drifting from the speakers as though we’re selling raspberry screwballs instead of replacement body parts. Like some deeply fucked-up Mr Whippy franchise. Only instead of ninety-nines, we’re serving kidneys. Instead of sprinkles, we’ve got spleens. And instead of children chasing us with sticky pound coins, we’ve got pensioners clutching medical records and praying their remaining organs hold out until we stop. The jingle tinkles through the streets. Da-da-da-da-da-da-daaa… People emerge from their houses. Curtains twitch. Garden gates creak open. Faces appear. Waiting. Watching. Like we’re bringing salvation. Or addiction. These days, I’m not entirely sure there’s a difference. We pull up outside a row of pebble-dashed houses. The usual crowd gathers. Regulars, mostly. Loyal customers. Which feels like an unsettling phrase when your product list includes internal organs. “Morning, Mr Butterworth,” Mat says brightly from the serving hatch. “What would you like today?” Are you hearing this? What would you like today? As though he’s choosing a scoop of mint choc chip, not browsing a catalogue of human spare parts. Mr Butterworth pats his chest. “The old ticker’s playing up.” “Ah yes,” Mat says, nodding sympathetically. “We’ve had a few complaints about those lately.” A few complaints. Like hearts come with a manufacturer’s warranty. “One heart coming up, sir,” Mat replies. “Would you like valves with that?” Mr Butterworth grins. “Valve me up, baby.” They both laugh. Actually laugh. The sort of laugh typically reserved for successful barbecues or incidents involving a neighbour’s cat. Meanwhile, I’m standing in the back of the van wondering how we’ve reached a point in human history where that sentence exists. At what stage of societal collapse did “Valve me up, baby” become an acceptable thing for an adult to say out loud? It’s freezing back here. Not chilly. Not brisk. Arctic. The sort of cold that crawls beneath your skin and settles permanently into your bones. My fingers are so frostbitten they’ve practically become decorative. Ten little blue accessories attached to my wrists. Not exactly how I’d imagined retirement. I’d pictured cruises. Garden centres. Becoming mildly obsessed with birds. Not rummaging through frozen body parts while my husband upsells cardiovascular accessories. Still. If there’s one thing Mat has always possessed, it’s confidence. Unfortunately, confidence and good ideas have never been particularly good friends. This has all the hallmarks of one of Mat’s excellent ideas. I rummage through the storage crates. Each one carefully labelled. HEARTS KIDNEYS LUNGS MISCELLANEOUS I make a mental note never to unpack the miscellaneous box. Experience has taught me that anything stored under “miscellaneous” is rarely miscellaneous. It’s usually horrifying. Some questions aren’t worth answering. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. I pull a sealed bag from the hearts crate. Inside, a human heart drifts gently in preserving fluid. Like a goldfish. I always hated this part. Seeing body parts floating around. There’s something fundamentally wrong about a heart existing outside a body. A heart belongs behind ribs, tucked safely away in the dark, getting on with the business of keeping somebody alive. Protected. Hidden. Loved. Not bobbing around in a plastic bag waiting for collection. The sight used to make my knees weak. Back then I’d have to look away. Sometimes I’d feel sick. Once, I nearly fainted into a crate of pancreases, which would have been an embarrassing way to go. Now? Now I barely blink. Funny what people can get used to. Wars. Corruption. Reality television. Selling organs from a van. Human beings are adaptable creatures. Terrifyingly adaptable. And business is booming. Broken hearts are our bestseller by far. Literal ones, unfortunately. There’s a joke in there somewhere. A very expensive joke. We are, quite literally, making a killing. And there’s the irony, isn’t it? The more broken people become, the more business blooms. I try not to think too hard about where the organs come from. Whenever the question starts creeping in, I shove it away. Replace it with happier thoughts. Shopping sprees. Weekend breaks. Cocktails overlooking turquoise seas. A new kitchen. A bigger house. A life free from worry. Much better. It’s amazing what the human conscience will tolerate when it’s being distracted by granite worktops. The NHS died years ago. Not all at once. Nothing ever does. It was a slow death. Cuts. Compromises. Waiting lists stretching into years. By the end, people were performing surgery on kitchen tables with unsanitised utensils and YouTube tutorials. Nothing says societal progress quite like watching a man remove a spleen between betting adverts. Desperate people will do desperate things. And desperate people are excellent customers. “That’ll be twenty thousand pounds, sir,” Mat says casually. Mr Butterworth hands over the money without hesitation. No questions asked. No receipt requested. No warranty discussed. Just cash. A smile. And a fresh heart. We never see him again. Satisfied customers rarely become repeat customers. I tell myself that’s because he’s healthy now. That he’s at home enjoying life, pottering around in the garden, complaining about the weather and watching Bargain Hunt. I don’t let myself consider the alternatives. The van moves on. The jingle starts up again. Soon another queue forms. A woman appears. We call her the Kidney Queen. Not to her face, obviously. We’re organ dealers, not savages. She goes through kidneys the way normal people go through underwear. Honestly, at this point I’m beginning to suspect she has more kidneys than the average body can comfortably accommodate. “Two kidneys, please.” “Of course.” I hand them over. She nods approvingly. “Lovely colour.” As though she’s choosing avocados. She’s even given one a gentle squeeze through the bag, which somehow makes the entire transaction worse. I’ve never discovered what she does with them. I suspect she has a side hustle. Possibly several. Nobody needs that many kidneys. No one. But we aren’t here to ask questions. We’re here to make money. The world stopped asking questions years ago. That’s why we’re thriving. The afternoon rolls on. A pair of lungs. A liver. A gentleman in a tweed jacket purchases a pancreas and asks if we do loyalty cards. Three corneas. Someone enquires whether we’ll be getting any “fresh stock” next week. Another customer spends ten minutes comparing spleens before deciding to think about it and come back later. Someone orders a gallbladder for reasons I don’t fully understand. I stop trying to understand around lunchtime. It’s easier that way. Besides, once you start pulling on certain threads, there’s always a risk the entire jumper falls apart. Then, as I’m reaching for yet another heart… I hear it. Scratch. I freeze. At first, I think I’ve imagined it. The refrigerator unit has always made odd noises. Groans. Rattles. The occasional last gasp of life. Then it comes again. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. The sound comes from somewhere behind me. A large wooden crate sits in the corner of the van. I’ve never noticed it before. Which is strange. Because it’s enormous. Far too large to overlook. Large enough to fit a… No. Surely not. Scratch. My stomach tightens. The scratching continues. Slow. Persistent. Deliberate. Like something trying very hard to get out. Or very desperately trying to be heard. Suddenly my own heart doesn’t feel particularly reliable. Thump. Thump. Thump. Funny. We sell hundreds of hearts, yet mine chooses this moment to malfunction. The sound pounds inside my ears. Every instinct tells me to leave the crate alone. Close my eyes. Walk away. Do what I’ve always done. Ignore it. Pretend. Count the money. Listen to the jingle. Think about holidays. Granite worktops. Anything except the thing sitting directly in front of me. But something has changed. Because now I can’t stop hearing it. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. The sound seems louder now. Or perhaps it’s simply impossible to ignore once you’ve acknowledged it’s there. A bit like guilt. I move towards the box. One cautious step at a time. The air somehow feels colder. The scratching grows louder. My hand trembles as it reaches the lid. I stare at it for a moment. One lid to lift. That’s all it would take. One answer. One truth. One mistake. For a moment I hesitate. Then I lift it. And everything inside me stops. Curled amongst the ice is my daughter. Phoebe. Shivering. Terrified. Barely able to move. For a moment, my brain refuses to understand what my eyes are seeing. Because daughters don’t belong in crates. Daughters don’t belong on ice. Yet there she is. “P-Phoebe?” My voice breaks. She looks up. Her lips are blue. Her eyes fill with tears. “Mum…” The word barely escapes her. I grab a towel and wrap it around her immediately. “Oh my God.” My hands shake. “What the hell are you doing in there?” Even as the words leave my mouth, I realise how absurd they sound. As though there’s any reasonable explanation for finding your child in a box of ice. Phoebe doesn’t answer. She just stares at me. Then I see it. The tags. Attached to her wrist. Her ankle. Her neck. Inventory labels. Like stock. Like merchandise. Like product. Not Phoebe. Product. And suddenly the entire world rearranges itself. Every heart. Every kidney. Every liver. Every bag. Every transaction. Every smiling customer. Every time I’d looked away. Every time I’d chosen not to ask. Every time I’d accepted the money. The answer had always been there. Sitting in plain sight. Not hidden. Not buried. Not locked away. I just didn’t want to see it. Because seeing it would have ruined everything. The holidays. The shopping. The profits. The comfortable lies. The version of myself that could still pretend I was one of the good people. The scratching hadn’t started today. It had been there all along. In every bag I handed over. In every customer I smiled at. In every question I decided it wasn’t worth asking. I just hadn’t listened. And that is the moment I realise the most terrifying thing of all. Not where the organs come from. Not what we’ve become. But how unbelievably easy it was. To convince myself that somebody else’s child mattered less than my own. That somebody else’s family was simply the cost of doing business. The queue outside continues to grow. I hear customers chatting. Laughing. Waiting for their turn. Waiting for their replacement parts. Waiting for us to open the hatch. Waiting for somebody else’s bad luck to become their good fortune. The jingle keeps playing. Bright. Cheerful. Endlessly cheerful. The soundtrack to a nightmare masquerading as a service industry. Mat slides open the serving window. “Who’s next?” he calls. A voice answers immediately. “I need a heart.” And just like that, the world carries on. For the first time since this business began, I finally understand what we’ve really been selling. It was never organs. It was permission. Permission not to ask difficult questions. Permission to believe that if suffering happens out of sight, then it isn’t really happening at all. Phoebe grips my hand. Outside, the queue stretches further down the road. Longer than I’ve ever seen it. Past the houses. Past the corner shop. Out towards the main road. And every single person is waiting patiently for a piece of someone else’s life. The really frightening part? It isn’t that they don’t know. It’s that, deep down, I think they do. They’ve simply decided not to look. Just like I had.