Read Online Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal - Free Book Online Page A

a cake, a film, an archive of digital sounds – the song of the goldfinch – ends up ditching, rewinding, leaving it aside and postponing, we’ll see later, but later never exists, later is a flow of full time all stirred up by irregular hours. And, seeing the hospital’s number on the screen of his phone, Thomas tends to feel both a pang of disappointment and a simultaneous sense of relief.
    The organ donation unit that he’s in charge of functions as an independent department even though it’s situated inside the hospital walls, but Revol and Remige know each other, and the young man knows exactly what Revol is about to tell him, he could even utter it for him, this sentence that standardizes tragedy for better efficiency: a patient in the ICU has been pronounced brain-dead. A statement that sounds like a concluding sentence, when it’s not so for Thomas, no, on the contrary it indicates the beginning of a series of movements, the launch of a process.
    – A patient in the ICU has been pronounced brain-dead.
    Revol’s voice recites the script to a T. Okay, Remige seems to answer, he doesn’t open his mouth but nods his head, instantly going over the ultracalibrated process he’s about to set in motion within a legal framework that is both dense and strict, a high-precision movement unfolded along a precise temporal line, and here he is looking at his watch – an action he’ll repeat several times in the hours that follow, an action they will all repeat, incessantly, up until the end.
    A dialogue ensues – quick, alternating sentences that lie alongside the body of Simon Limbeau, Remige polling Revol on three points: the context of the brain-death diagnosis – where are we with that? – the medical evaluation of the patient – cause of death, medical history, feasibility of organ retrieval – and finally, the family – has he been able to speak with them yet, given the violence of the event? Is the family present? Revol responds to this last question in the negative and then specifies, I just met with the mother. Okay, I’ll get ready, Remige shivers, he’s cold – he is naked, after all – remember?
    A few moments later, helmet, gloves, and boots on, jacket buttoned to the top and his indigo scarf wound round his neck, Thomas Remige mounts his motorcycle, sets off in the direction of the hospital – before donning his helmet, he will have listened to the echo of his steps in the silent street, paying close attention to this impression of a canyon, of a sonorous bottleneck. A flick of his wrist starts his engine, and then he zooms eastward following the straight road that divides this part of the city – a road parallel to the one Marianne took only a little while before him – diving into rue René-Coty, rue de Maréchal-Joffre, rue Aristide-Briand – names with goatees and moustaches, names with paunches and pocket watches, names with floppy hats – rue de Verdun and all the way to the freeway at the edge of the city. His full-face helmet prevents him from singing, and yet, some days, prey to this sort of overflowing based in both fear and euphoria, he goes full-tilting along urban corridors, visor lifted, and uses his vocal cords to make space vibrate.
    Later, at the hospital, Thomas knows this lobby with its oceanic dimensions by heart, this emptiness that he must cleave in one shot, drawing a diagonal across the space to reach the stairway that leads to his office, the organ and tissue donation unit, on the second floor. But this morning, he enters as a stranger might, as alert as an outsider, he arrives here the way he arrives at other hospitals in the area – establishments without the capacity to do transplants. Speeds up past the counter where two men wait, silent, eyes red, jeans and big black down jackets, lifts a hand in greeting to the woman with the unibrow and she, seeing him show up when she knows he’s on call, guesses that a patient in the ICU just became a