The Accident

One minute we were cruising along the road, tyres hissing in the wet, the muffled roar of motorway traffic, white lines emerging out of the darkness towards us. Calm, safe; normal. Then everything disintegrated into chaos.

I didn’t find out until much later what had actually happened. For a long time, my world was pain and blood and staring at a patch of sky through the crazed and shattered remains of the windscreen. There were voices coming and going around me, paramedics sticking their heads in at crazy angles and telling me I was going to be OK. Liars. I’ll never be OK again and somewhere deep down I know it already. I can’t feel my legs, and that’s never good. Plus, there’s something about the focused calmness of the paramedics when they speak to me, and the care they’re taking with getting me out. I lay there and tried to distract myself. What had happened? What did I remember? Where was Chris? I knew he had been driving, but as far as I could tell there was no-one in the shattered car but me. Time drifted past. The paramedics were there all the tine now, holding my head and asking silly questions - did I know the year, the date, the name of the Prime Minister? I answered through gritted teeth. They put a collar on me, and I added ‘why are these collars so damned uncomfortable?’ to my list of questions. Then there was a sudden roaring noise, a screech of metal, a shower of sparks and I jolted backwards and down. The pain was indescribable. Red hot ice lances stabbing through my entire body - except my legs. There was that disturbing lack of feeling again…

They told me later that I blacked out. Probably a good thing, they said. Apparently, the pain of being removed from the car would have been horrendous. I didn’t wake up until the hospital - lying on a bed in the serious end of A&E - the bit they send you to when you’ve really buggered yourself up. There were people all around me, working frantically on something and completely ignoring me. I tried to speak and nothing came out. Tried again. Same lack of result. Summoned every bit of willpower and courage I could find, and managed a small croak. Someone, a man,, was standing by my head, and they heard. For a second, all work stopped. Then a very careful, neutral voice said

‘Hello, Stephen. Do you know where you are?’

I croaked. Couldn’t they see that I couldn’t speak?

‘That’s OK, take your time. There’s no rush. You’re in St. David’s hospital. You’ve had a bit of an accident.’

Croak.

‘We’ll be sending you off for a scan in a minute, but until then I’m afraid we have to keep the collar on. Sorry.’

Croak.

‘Just hang on. You’re doing really well.’

Croak. Water. Water would be good, but my croaking didn’t seem to be having the required effect. I tried not to panic. Scan, he’d said. That didn’t sound good. And the number of people standing around me didn’t look good either. I wondered hazily whether I’d done some serious damage to myself. The sense of doom I’d had in the car had vanished. All I was conscious of now was pain - in my chest, in my arms, in my hips. Still nothing in my legs, though. I tried not to worry about that.

There seemed to be some kind of pause. Everyone except the man at my he’d stepped away and then suddenly the bed was moving. I panicked, rolling my eyes frantically and trying to sit up. I couldn’t move, at all. It felt like I was tied down. I croaked again.

‘It’s OK Stephen. You’re lying on a back board, in case you’ve damaged your spine. We’ll know more after the scan.’

Who was this guy? My guardian angel? And why was he spending so much time on me? I rolled my eyes again, trying to convey thankfulness. I felt someone - him? - take my hand. To my surprise, it helped, a little.

My bed trundled along a brightly-lit corridor. I watched the ceiling panels go by overhead. Then we turned left, through an open pair of doors, and then right into a room with a huge piece of machinery in the centre. I knew what this was. A CAT scanner. I’d been in one before, when they suspected I had gallstones. I wondered vaguely how I ws supposed to get into the machine, but they solved that problem by neatly lifting me across. They were quick and careful, but it still hurt.

I lay in the machine as it hummed away to itself. No-one told me what was happening, and I tried not to panic. Again. Then everything went dark.

This time, I wasn’t in A&E. It looked like I was on a ward. I could turn my neck again - no collar and, presumably, no back board = and I could see beds to either side of me. I wriggled a bit. My arms hurt, but they moved. Ditto my hips. OK. Now for the legs. One at a time, I tried to shuffle my legs sideways. Nothing happened. I tried again. Still nothing. I took deep breaths, trying to calm the panic rising inside me. I couldn’t move my legs. Why couldn’t I move my legs? I was on a ward, I was no linger being intensively treated, so surely I should be better and my legs should move? I called out, relieved to find that my voice was working again, and someone came around the edge of my cubicle. It was the same man I’d seen in A&E. The one with the careful voice. He smiled at me.

‘Hello, Stephen. How are you feeling?’

‘My legs. I can’t move my legs!’

‘It’s OK, try to relax.

‘Relax? I can’t relax! I can’t move my legs.’

‘Yes, I know. The doctor will talk to you about it in the morning.’

‘What? Why? Why can’t they talk to me now?’

‘It’s three in the morning. You’ve been unconscious for over twenty four hours. Try not to worry, try to get some sleep, and the doctor will see you in the morning. Do you want me to stay with you?’

Mutely, I nodded. It was going to be a long night.

The doctor came the next morning, as promised. She was kind and considerate, taking the time to talk to me and answer my questions, but the only thing I really wanted to know was why I couldn’t move my legs. She looked at me for a moment, and sighed.

‘You have a fracture in your spine.’

‘What? You mean I’ve broken my back?’

‘Yes.’

‘But why can’t I move?’

‘Because the break in your spine has caused damage to your spinal cord, leading to loss of feeling and muscle function in your legs.’

I stared, unable to take it in. What did she mean, I’d broken my back? How could I have broken my back? I tuned out what she was saying, and existed in my own little world of panic for a while. When I tuned back in, I heard the words that would define the rest of my life. They were unfamiliar and strange, part of a language that I didn’t yet speak, but they would come to be as familiar to me as my own heartbeat.

‘Complete fracture of L1. Total paralysis of lower limbs.’