Carey Mulligan credited as playing...
Kathy
- [last lines]
- Kathy: It's been two weeks since I lost him. I've been given my notice now. My first donation is in a month's time. I come here and imagine that this is the spot where everything I've lost since my childhood has washed out. I tell myself, if that were true, and I waited long enough, then a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field, and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy. He'd wave and maybe call. I don't let the fantasy go beyond that. I can't let it. I remind myself I was lucky to have had any time with him at all. What I'm not sure about is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time.
- Kathy: It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed. If I'd known, maybe I'd have kept tighter hold of them and not let unseen tides pull us apart.
- [first lines]
- Kathy: My name is Kathy H. I'm 28 years old. I've been a carer for nine years. And I'm good at my job. My patients always do better than expected, and are hardly ever classified as agitated, even if they're about to make a donation. I'm not trying to boast, but I feel a great sense of pride in what we do. Carers and donors have achieved so much. That said, we aren't machines. In the end it wears you down. I suppose that's why I now spend most of my time not looking forwards, but looking back, to The Cottages and Hailsham, and what happened to us there. Me. Tommy. And Ruth.
- Nurse: [Kathy has just discovered Ruth at the same donation clinic] Is that someone you know?
- Kathy: Yeah. Actually, we grew up together.
- Nurse: Oh.
- Kathy: How is she?
- Nurse: ...Were you close?
- Kathy: We haven't seen each other now for almost ten years.
- Nurse: Well, Ruth isn't as strong as we would hope, at this stage.
- Kathy: She's done two donations?
- Nurse: She has.
- Kathy: ...You think she'll complete on the third?
- Nurse: I think she wants to complete. And, as you know, when they want to complete, they usually do.
- Ruth: You hear things, don't you.
- Kathy: What kind of things?
- Ruth: Well, you know... Maybe after the fourth donation, when you've technically 'completed', you're still conscious in a way. And then you find out that there's more donations, plenty of them. Just no more recovery centers, no more carers. Just watching and waiting... till they switch you off... I don't think I fancy that.
- Kathy: I used to have these huge urges to have sex sometimes. Sometimes they'd be so powerful I just thought I'd do it with anyone.