New Story 'Victor' parts 1 & 2

This may see a slow start, but it is alll necessary for the development of the story. I hope you will stick with it.
Puppyscoot




I couldn’t remember anything of the accident. Apparently it was one of this motorway pile-ups with about a dozen cars crashing into one another at high speed. I read about it later of course and discovered that five people had been killed and a number had received serious injuries, but those bland statements tell nothing about the realities either for bereaved families or for those trying to make a new life after being injured.

I was one of them – the injured, that is – had I been killed I’d be unlikely to be writing this.

My first memories are of drifting in and out of pain, drugged and unaware of what was happening, then one morning finding myself awake with a nurse sitting beside my bed.
“Doctor decided that you had recovered enough to discontinue some of the drugs. Are you in pain? Doctor will be here very soon – he asked to be informed as soon as you woke up”

I was not in pain. I was profoundly uncomfortable and felt very strange indeed, but the bad pain I half-remembered from earlier had gone. I told the nurse this and asked her what had happened. I could see that my hands were swathed in bandages but I couldn’t lift my head to see anything more. She told me to wait for the doctors and lifted my head and gave me a cold drink.

The door opened, but it was not just the doctor – there seemed to be a whole crowd of people. One of them – the doctor I discovered – asked how I felt and I told him as accurately as I could “I feel as if I am in a dream world, presumably because of medication you have given me. There is no pain but I suspect again that it is suppressed through drugs. But my main problem is why am I here and what has happened to me”

“You can’t remember anything?”

“If I could I wouldn’t have asked.”

One of the others in the group came forward. “There was a pile-up and a fire on the motorway with a dozen cars in a heap. Your car was in the middle of it all and you were underneath other cars and a lorry. A lot of people were killed and many others injured, some seriously. It’s a miracle that you survived You were
Badly injured and part of the damage was a head injury which has probably led to this amnesia. That is common with head injuries. Can you remember other things?”

“Yes” I told him. “The last thing I remember before waking up here was that I was running late for a business meeting and would have to rush. Where am I and what has happened to me?” By this time I was getting angry at their apparent stonewalling.

“You were among those with serious damage. The head injury seems to have cleared up completely apart from the amnesia, but there were severe injuries which we thought at first you would not survive. Doctor Wilson and his colleague risked their lives to get you free before everything went up in flames, but there were limits to what they could do. Your general health now seems to be fine, but I’m afraid there had to be some amputation. They had to cut you out of the wreck.”

At this point I was terrified. What had they taken away? I was too scared to ask in case they told me something I didn’t want to hear.

The guy who had spoken – a staff psychotherapist I discovered – went on.

“You lost both hands and part of both legs, which were trapped and crushed under a huge truck. The only way to get you out was to amputate, They got you out about thirty seconds before the explosion; otherwise you would all three have gone up in flames. It was a tough call but the only way to save your life, and they managed to save enough that it will be possible to fit prostheses so you can live a more or less normal life”

“How ‘more or less’? “ I asked “Shall I be stuck in a wheelchair? If my hands have gone can I feed myself or dress myself? Am I stuck as a total invalid?”

“Only time will tell” he replied “but you are young and fit and with determination and hard work you can make the best of things. Wonderful things can be done nowadays with artificial limbs. Remember, it’s more important to make the best of what you have than mourn what you don’t have. I know that sounds like a platitude but it is the secret of a good life.”

That was the beginning of a tough fight to rebuild my life, and I have to say that all the medical staff were marvellous. I had fittings where my hands used to be that enabled me to do quite a lot of things, but since both hands had gone I needed help to put them on.

Eventually the big day came when I was allowed to try on my new legs. It was a disaster. The moment I stood up I was dizzy and wanted to throw up. The staff helped me to sit and I was fine, though even sitting upright made me a bit queasy.

“It’s just because you haven’t been upright for a bit” they told me. Sit up straight and we’ll try again. We did and the same thing happened again, and kept on happening every time.

It turned out that the head injury had damaged the part of the inner ear that controls balance and I was told that it might go away in time but could be permanent. There was no treatment.

This was the point where I broke down and cried. I had kept going with the goal of getting artificial limbs and learning to use them and try to live a normal life, but those hopes were destroyed by damage to a set of small semi-circular canals in the inner ear. I despaired, I had nothing to look forward to and all my hopes were dashed.





Chapter 2

Whilst all this had been happening life was still going on outside the hospital. I was lucky enough to have a house which my parents had left me, a large house converted from some old farm buildings. The rooms were big so that it would be easy to get a wheelchair in and it was all on one level. At the back was a walled garden which gave privacy, though the house was in the country so it didn’t matter too much.

This gave rise to a set of problems. Who would look after the house whilst I wasn’t there and who would look after me when I was there?

The solution to both of these problems was easy to find. I have no family and few friends since my life had been taken up with work, and after the first rush of duty visitors once I came round, there was just one regular. Colin and I had been friendly at school and had kept up our friendship in a casual sort of way, so I was surprised to see him at my bedside every day. He helped to feed me and did anything he possibly could to make life easier. Eventually I had to ask him.

“Colin, how is it that you are here day after day? How do you get the time – aren’t you at work?”

He explained that he had left school with no real qualifications and was unemployed and living at home with his parents. They didn’t get on and he was glad to have somewhere to go so that he didn’t have them nagging at him all day every day.

“Do you want a job? With accommodation. I shall need a full-time carer for a while, someone who can drive me around, cook, look after the house and garden and look after me. How does it sound? I can manage a fair wage and it will get you away from home.”

We agreed on a trial, and that he would move into the house immediately to get it cleaned and ready for when I could return. I paid for him to take a cookery course and the hospital gave him some training in basic nursing skills and we were in business.

Fortunately I wasn’t short of cash. My parents had left me pretty comfortably off, and with insurance etc from the accident I turned out to be quite wealthy – at least I could be unhappy in comfort. My lawyer looked after it for me and paid all the bills out of my money, as well as giving Colin his salary and enough for the day to day running of the house.

And I was truly unhappy. All my plans and hopes had been built on the assumption that I could have new legs and would be up and about like everyone else, but the balance problems meant that it was impossible. In fact this seemed to be getting worse and even if I was sitting straight up I felt sick and dizzy. In order to be comfortable I had to be leaning forward or leaning back.

The ‘hands’ were OK as far as they went, but I couldn’t dress myself and I had to be lifted on or off the lavatory and carried into the shower, so I would certainly need care for the foreseeable future and would be stuck in a chair. I hated it all.

The turning point came when Colin brought home a Labrador. Not a puppy since it would be too complicated to train a puppy; he was a grown but young dog.

“I thought he might give us an interest outside ourselves and will certainly give us a reason for a walk each evening, even if it is just round the garden”.

He was right. We called the dog Labby – a temporary name that stuck – and watching him and joining in his games as best I could from a wheelchair gave me something to occupy my mind other than self-pity. I began to remember what the doc had said to me, to make the best of what I had instead of whinging about what I hadn’t got.

The first new thought came to me whilst I was in bed one morning. I was waiting for Colin to come in to help me get up and dress since I couldn’t do this myself, and suddenly I thought “Why do I need to get dressed?” We never had callers except for a few business callers and they always rang first, so I could see no reason at all why I shouldn’t go naked around the house, and from that moment on I did away with clothes and all the bother of putting them on and taking them off. It was a liberating moment. Colin made some towelling covers for the wheelchair and there were no problems at all. The only side effect of this was that Colin said I seemed so comfortable that he would join me, and most of the time we both went bare.

I was, of course, still stuck in the wheelchair, but then, the really big idea. I was watching Labby play and I thought “What does he have that I haven’t? He has four limbs that work well and because of that is free to do whatever he wants. I can’t stand up because of this damnable balance problem, but neither can Labby. He has workable feet which I don’t, but perhaps something might be possible”

I got down on to the carpet - more accurately I fell down on to the carpet – and stood on all fours. It was uncomfortable because my stumps had no padding. But in every other respect I was free to do what I wished,

I shouted for Colin. During my time in hospital I had become friendly with Harry, the guy who made the artificial limbs, and I asked Colin to get in touch with him and ask him to call. Col was a bit shocked to see me on the floor and tried to help me up but I told him my great idea, and though he was very dubious about it he agreed that it might just possibly work. I think he was humouring me.