How I became friends with the man who was saved by my son's liver There was nothing we could have done. When the ambulance arrived he was in a deep coma. Soon Mrs Burton, a cost lawyer, would have to make a huge decision about the fate of her son. Her choice would save at least two other lives, and lead to an extraordinary meeting and unlikely friendship with a stranger, who was at that moment in another part of the country, expecting to die. But for now she was all on her own in a casualty waiting room, in the early hours of the morning, on 28 Aug 2003. Her husband, Nigel, was in America, serving with the RAF. Her eldest son was staying at a girlfriend's house. "Martin had just finished his GCSEs and was due to enrol on a course in electrical engineering that morning," she remembers. Martin had always wanted to be a nurse, but he was not academic. I still believe he would have found a way around that. He was a real boy, one you always knew was around. Very popular, and always helping people. His headmaster said he had a lot to say but was never in real trouble, and if the teacher needed any help his hand was the first to go up. Sitting beside her at their home in Grantham, where Martin collapsed, Nigel Burton remembers his frantic journey home from the States. There was a three-hour wait between planes in Pittsburgh. I was just a mess. I thought, "I'm going back to turn the life support machine off." I just sat in the airport and sobbed and sobbed. Meanwhile, Martin had been rushed to Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, with a police escort. When he came out of theatre on the Thursday morning his mother was waiting for news, with her parents. "The consultant came in with the brain surgeon and said to us, "We're really sorry but the bleed is just too extensive. There's nothing more we can do. At that point I knew we were going to lose Martin," says Mrs Burton. "He gave us a couple of minutes, then said: "Have you ever considered organ donation?"" That was brutal, surely? It sounds quite shocking. But if you think about it, you've got a distraught family who are going to go to pieces in a few minutes. If he had come back later, I don't think I would have been able to tell him my own name. I do believe he did it right, for us. What was her reaction? According to my mother, I didn't even draw breath. I just said "yes." Even at that point, I saw it as something positive that would come out of his death. That gave me a little bit of something to cling on to. They would have to wait for permission from his father. Then we were left to start grieving. That was awful. I cried a lot in bursts, and I sat with him. I just held his hand and refused to move. The nurses and doctors all worked around me. There was little sign of physical damage. He was still warm and pink, his chest was going up and down. He just looked like Martin asleep. That is what a lot of families struggle with. You've got to understand that death is inevitable, and the machines are merely working the organs, before you can accept donation. Mr Burton flew in to Gatwick airport on the Thursday morning and was taken up to Nottingham by an RAF driver. Within 10 minutes of his arrival, the organ donation coordinator had asked him to sign permission forms. "I hadn't slept, my body was shutting down, my brain was not functioning but I knew this would not change Martin's fate," says his father. And I knew it would be a terrible waste if his young organs could be used to help someone else but we didn't do it. Martin would have wanted us to. As three surgical teams were assembled, Mrs Burton said her goodbyes. "I think I said, "Sleep tight, we'll love you forever." Something really quite short. I couldn't bring myself to say any more at that point. I gave him a kiss, and held him one last time. The hardest moment of all was walking out of the room. Mr Burton says bleakly: "Her father and I had to drag her out." The surgeons took Martin's heart, lungs, kidneys, liver and corneas. The coordinator was able to give them limited information about what later happened to the organs. The corneas were frozen, so their recipients were not known. His lungs went to a middle-aged man, who died not long afterwards. We were told his family were grateful he'd been given a chance. One kidney went to a young lady, and enabled her to survive until a living donor became available. The other was given to an elderly man, who sent a thank-you card via the coordinator. Martin's heart went to a 15-year-old boy in Newcastle. Mrs Burton says: "His Mum wrote us a really nice letter. Her son Mark had been the top goal scorer at school the week before, then got flu, which can hit the heart. We know he had only a few hours to live. He's now had an 18th birthday and a 21st birthday party, which Martin never saw. I am really pleased about that. She has had to work at this. "There's no point me saying: "That isn't fair, her son is alive and mine isn't." It isn't fair, but resentment can come in very easily when you lose a child. It's something that you have to fight. Then there was the liver. It went to Cambridge, where surgeons were waiting to operate on Andrew Seery, a 34-year-old hairdresser and father of two who was close to death. "I was down to six stone four, in a wheelchair, being fed on a nasal drip and very weak," says Mr Seery, who had suffered since birth from an enzyme deficiency that made his skin blister in sunlight. Lately, his liver had begun to fail because of it. I had been cutting hair at one of my two shops in Basingstoke when I started getting pains in the side. The next day I was yellow. Doctors at Addenbrooke's in Cambridge told him a liver transplant was his only hope, but the wait was nine months at least. They didn't think I would last long enough. I knew then that someone had to die. That was weird. Before, if I saw an ambulance, I would say a prayer for the people in it. Now I was thinking: "That could be my chance to live." When you've got an eight-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son, you start to get a little selfish. He was on a home visit in Winchester when the phone rang at four in the morning, 48 hours after Martin had collapsed. "The coordinator said, "We've got a liver for you." The wife drove me up to Cambridge. I went in to the operating theatre. Rejection of the liver seemed likely at first, but after six months or so his body settled down. "This liver has given me nine years more life, and they have been more fruitful than any before," says Mr Seery. "I prayed, "Lord, let me see the kids grow up." Now I've got to stay around to try and get them through university. Robert is 19, Charlotte is 17. At first all he knew was that the liver had come from a teenager. "When they said it was a young lad, I was like: "Oh no." The fact he was so young inspired me to get the most out of the time he had given me. It was never just a body part: I've had this sense of living two lives. He wrote a very moving letter to the donor's family, whose name he did not know, but then also asked to meet them. That is usually considered unwise, but this time the coordinator said, "That's interesting, the mother has been asking about you."" Sue Burton had become heavily involved in a charity called the Donor Family Network, and learnt how reluctant some recipients were to get in touch, because of guilt. "I met one mother who said: "How can I tell them that their decision has given me my daughter back? It will rub salt in their wound. I said: "It won't you know. They need to know some good has come of this."" Inspired by that conversation, she wrote an email to Mr Seery. "I looked on the computer and saw Martin's face for the first time," he says. That was pretty daunting. Seeing the face and hearing about the life he had planned, I did cry. He had talked to his new liver, from the beginning. Mad, isn't it? You've got to cope somehow. If things were difficult, I would say, "Come on, we've got to get through this."" Now he began to call it Martin. I still do. It helps, although if you think about it too much you could go over the top. There was one guy in hospital who flipped and tried to take his out. I get a little wobble now and then, but I think: "It's not Martin. His soul's gone."" Meeting up was a huge moment for him and the Burtons, who came to his home in Winchester four years ago. Sue was in a bit of shock. I felt like she was looking through me to Martin. We had got on OK on the phone but it was harder face to face, at first. They were here for a few hours. We talked about Martin. They helped me with some of the guilt I was carrying. Mrs Burton remembers the meeting. It was a very emotional day all round. We took an album of photos, which he found quite hard and upsetting. We said, "You weren't waiting for Martin to die. That was going to happen anyway. All you were waiting for was for someone to have the courage to ask us the question, and for us to have the courage to say yes. They have met up again since, and keep in touch by text and Facebook. "When our granddaughter was born I texted him and told him," says Mrs Burton. I don't think of him as part of my family just because he's got Martin's liver, but he is definitely a friend. We have the positives of knowing that at least two lives have been saved, and we have made some wonderful friends. I hope we've helped Andrew to deal with this bit of him that isn't him. I can't imagine what that's like. I find it very hard to get my head around the fact that Martin's heart is still beating in someone else. Someone is seeing their life through Martin's eyes. Amazing, isn't it?