Kathy ends her tenure as Tommy’s carer

Kathy ends her tenure as Tommy’s carer when he asks her to find a replacement as his fourth donation approaches. The decision tests the boundary between professional care and private love: Kathy has returned to Tommy partly to care for him, but Tommy believes that facing the final stage of donation may require a carer who is not also his closest companion. Their parting is negotiated rather than imposed by a quarrel, and its quietness gives their last visits the character of a deliberate goodbye.

Background and renewed care

By the time Kathy becomes Tommy’s carer, she has worked in the role for more than eleven years and expects to continue until the end of the year, making her service almost exactly twelve years. She takes pride in helping donors recover and in recognizing when to comfort them, leave them alone, listen, or encourage them to move on. The work is emotionally demanding, however, and she acknowledges that carers have limited patience and energy. The chance to choose donors, which she has had only during the last six years of her career, lets her reconnect with people from her past.

Kathy had chosen Ruth at a recovery centre in Dover, where their shared upbringing at Hailsham made their old disagreements seem less important beside the memories no one else could share. Later, Ruth urged Kathy to become Tommy’s carer. On Ruth’s final visit, after her second donation, Kathy sat beside her and held her hand; during a brief moment when Ruth recognized her, Kathy promised she would take care of Tommy. That promise shaped the meaning of the role before Tommy asked her to relinquish it.

Tommy’s request and their disagreement

The immediate conflict takes place at Kingsfield, where Tommy asks Kathy for a different carer. His fourth donation is nearing, and he points to recent kidney trouble as a sign that more difficult experiences lie ahead. He says the request is not only about the approaching donation. He also does not want Kathy to see him through everything that may come, and distinguishes this need from Ruth’s wish that Kathy and Tommy should be together.

Kathy answers that helping him through this stage is precisely why she came back, and insists that she is the person who should care for him. Tommy counters that Ruth would have understood his wish to handle the last part differently because Ruth had been a donor herself. His appeal to their different experiences wounds Kathy: she feels that he has again placed a divide between her and the donors, including himself and Ruth. She walks away, but the disagreement does not become a major fight. When Tommy follows her to his room, they cool down, make peace, and begin discussing how to arrange the change.

The dispute is connected to their unspoken fear about what a fourth donation means. Tommy has described how donors are treated with special respect when they reach that stage, while wondering whether anyone can know for certain that a donor will complete. Kathy dismisses the speculation rather than discussing it with him. In retrospect, she recognizes that Tommy had been raising questions for which neither carers nor medical staff had certain answers. His request for another carer thus comes amid an approaching transition whose outcome remains uncertain, not simply from dissatisfaction with Kathy’s care.

Agreement and final visits

After they reconcile, Tommy asks whether Kathy ever tires of being a carer and wishes that she would receive her own notice. She says that she does not mind and that good carers matter. Tommy accepts that she is a good carer, but says she would be the perfect one for him if she were not herself. He imagines two people struggling to stay together in a powerful current, then being forced apart. The image gives their practical disagreement a larger emotional shape: affection does not remove the limits imposed by their circumstances.

Kathy apologizes for losing her temper and agrees to speak to the people responsible for arranging a replacement, trying to ensure that Tommy gets someone good. The weeks before the new carer takes over prove unexpectedly tranquil. Although other donors in North Wales keep Kathy away from Kingsfield more than she wants, she still visits Tommy three or four times a week. They spend time talking, and Tommy listens while she reads; sometimes he works in his notebook on new animal ideas. The weather grows colder but remains dry and often sunny. Their closeness continues, but the visits are no longer organized around resolving the disagreement. The remaining time passes without another major confrontation.

Farewell and significance

Kathy’s last visit comes on a crisp December afternoon, just after one o’clock. She half-expects some visible change in Tommy’s room, but everything appears as usual. Neither has a pressing subject left to discuss, and both seem reluctant to begin a conversation they cannot finish properly. When they leave, Tommy walks down the stairs with her, which he does not usually do, and crosses the Square with her toward her car. The sun is already setting behind the buildings.

At the car, Tommy recalls a private childhood habit from playing football at Hailsham: after scoring, he imagined that he was running through shallow water as he returned to his friends. He had never told anyone about it. The memory brings a final piece of their shared past into the farewell, not as an explanation for the separation but as something intimate he chooses to entrust to Kathy. They share a small kiss. Kathy drives away while Tommy remains standing there, waving before turning toward the covered walkway. In the rear-view mirror, the Square disappears from view.

The end of Kathy’s tenure is both a transfer of practical responsibility and a separation between people who have loved one another throughout their lives. Tommy’s request protects a boundary he needs as he faces further donations; Kathy’s agreement honors his choice even though she had returned to care for him. Her later insistence that her memories of Ruth and Tommy will not fade sets the farewell against the losses that define her life. The carer’s work ends, but the remembered gestures—the notebook, the football story, the small kiss, and Tommy’s wave—remain with her.