By mid-afternoon yesterday, the blue lettering from the ‘Save Alfie’ banners outside Alder Hey Children’s Hospital was running in the rain. The posters were sodden. The candles from Monday’s all-night vigil had long burned out and the clusters of purple, gold and blue balloons were sad and deflated.
But unlike Monday, there were no violent scenes. No 200-strong crowds of Alfie’s Army protesters limbering up for a fight. No supporters running at the main doors of the hospital, blocking the road, trapping an ambulance and chanting ‘Save Alfie Evans’ before police officers intervened.
Just wet clusters of supporters smoking heavily and waiting silently in the hope that judges in Manchester might grant a last-minute reprieve to Alfie.
Alfie Evans lay in his mother’s arms after being taken off a ventilation machine
The same little boy who, despite all the odds and exceeding all medical expectations, has clung on to life after his ventilator was turned off by court order on Monday night.
Yesterday morning his thin, drawn and incredibly young father Tom announced to crowds outside that Alfie was breathing on his own. ‘[Alfie] is now on oxygen. It’s not changing his breathing but it’s oxygenating his body,’ he said. ‘Doctors are gobsmacked!’
Alfie is still in Alder Hey Hospital and is on oxygen
Which wasn’t quite true – many terminally ill patients continue to breath unassisted for hours, days, even weeks after their ventilator has been switched off. But the crowd cheered enthusiastically.
Of course they did. They had come from all over – locally but also from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, the south coast – hoping and praying for the same thing: that Alfie’s life would be saved and Mr Justice Hayden would grant an extraordinary 11th-hour legal plea for him to be airlifted via helicopter and Italian governmental private jet to Pope Francis’s hospital in Italy. There, his short, difficult life would be prolonged. Some, such as Hayley Alderson and Heather Duncan, who had come from Darlington – a five-hour round day-trip – were mums with their baby sons in prams.
‘It struck a chord,’ says Hayley, 28. ‘We’ve got young lads and we’ve sat at home reading about it at night and crying because we think what the Government and the courts are doing is wrong.’
Many more appeared to be linked with the Christian Legal Centre, the pro-life outfit behind Alfie’s legal team that has been supporting Alfie’s parents, Tom Evans, 21, and Kate James, 20.
Yesterday morning his thin, drawn and incredibly young father Tom announced to crowds outside that Alfie was breathing on his own
Inside the hospital, family members and supporters huddle round smartphones to look in awe at a photo of Alfie – free, for once, from tubes and medical paraphernalia – lying peacefully on his mother’s chest, posted on Facebook by his mum with the words: ‘How amazing is he. How beautiful does he look? No matter what happens he has already proved these doctors wrong.’ The photo gives no inkling of either Alfie’s desperately serious illness or the drama surrounding his short, brave little life. Not the ‘Alfie’s Army’ Facebook account with more than 332,000 followers, the Twitter presence, the Justgiving accounts set up in his name.
Alfie’s parents and Alder Hey must reach an agreement to work out a palliative care plan in the lad’s best interests
Or the tweets of support from the Pope, the granting of Italian citizenship this week, the offers of transfer to a hospital in Rome and the endless legal wrangles over whether he should or should not be allowed to live, however poor his prognosis or extreme his disabilities.
Alfie was born with a rare undiagnosed degenerative neurological condition and, for more than a year now, has been in a semi-vegetative state.
In a series of hearings in the High Court, Supreme Court and European Court of Human Rights, judges agreed with the Alder Hey doctors that there is no hope of him getting better and that it would be ‘unkind and inhumane’ to keep him alive.
But quality-of-life concerns got little traction in the hospital forecourt yesterday. ‘It’s not about the quality of life. It’s about being alive,’ says Ray, 68, a retired homeopath.
At 6pm, everyone was watching the clock – and not just for the results of the hearing in Manchester. ‘He’s proven he can breathe,’ says Ray. ‘If he passes the 24-hour mark, we’re told the hospital has an obligation to try to keep him alive!’
Finally, word seeped through that a judicial decision had been made. It isn’t popular.
Alfie’s parents and Alder Hey must reach an agreement to work out a palliative care plan in the lad’s best interests. So there will be no ventilator, no helicopter, no private jet, no Vatican-approved hospital after all. And when, at 8.45pm, a tired and pale Tom addressed Alfie’s sodden army and promises to fight on for permission to take his son to Italy, it is clear there will be no immediate solution to this tragic situation, either.