Chapter the first: Getting there

The truck was moving over. I had a pocket to lay in to as he crossed the line so I did my scan and moved across too. The eighteen-wheeled car transporter held its path but then the shape began to seem wrong. The geometry of the wheels gave the illusion of pressing in towards each other and I realised the trailer was in some sort of skid. The cab was snaking back towards the left and the trailer was beginning to move across - a classic jack-knife. Ahead of the transporter was the cause, a small Fiat was being trashed against the central barrier by the front bumper of the truck. Most of the rear end was gone and the windows were crumpling in on themselves. The Ford behind me was out of harms way, if the old lady at the wheel was at least fast enough to jam on the anchors, but the Range Rover next door had a family of four in it...

I had two choices, either beat the cab to the gap at the concrete centre bar or cut back to the edge of the shoulder. Both were good options for me but which would the Rover choose? I toed-and-heeled the car to give me a slide to the right, heading to the back end of the trailer as it began to smoke from the edgewise tires. Rover, give him his due, made a good try at going for the best line for both of us. He was supposed to pass to my rear and follow me around but at the last moment, he bottled out and jammed over to the left. There was nothing for it but to take the punch.

And when it came it was a beauty; Full on the back passenger-side tire and heavy too. I tried to use the steering to hold the vehicle down but it managed to lift me, like being gored by a bull. The flip was enough to let the front dive into the roadway and that was it.

A friend of mine, with whom I often drove, used to talk about the vehicles ahead 'suddenly getting bigger' when we accelerated towards them. It was a good way to think of the field of view especially when one had to keep a picture of the other users around. Now the trailer very suddenly got very big. I had tipped a few cars in my time, but mostly intentionally and mostly in circumstances I was able to control. This time was definitely not a well-controlled moment. The major support beam to the back of the trailer was now directly in my path and I was approaching it fast, tipped over and almost broadside on. I cringed instinctively as our two vehicles met, but like it or not, I was totally unprepared for the noise. I saw the trailer, the road, the Rover (as I was upside down), the sky and then the green slope of the cutting which edged this part of the road. Two or three massive smacks to the side as I tumbled and then, upside down on the roof, I made out a white concrete post which suddenly got to be the very biggest concrete post I had ever seen. The glass and gravel and the plastic 'fixtures, ' the grass and mud and noise and dust immediately came to a stop together with me. I remember seeing the steering wheel leap up to knock me a good one across the top teeth and I recall my feet kicking the crap out of the dash board. My blood came out in a fine scarlet spray, sort of like a bar room sneeze when you have a mouth-full of beer. I was well interested in its red colour contrasting with the green of the grass which piled through the front window.

The seat belts held me well. They certainly saved me the dubious pleasure of waggling out the window like a rag doll, they just didn't bother to keep my ribs from snapping. I felt the weight of the car squeezing in on me and then 'pop!' At times like that, I guess I would have expected to find that everything suddenly went black as I passed into unconsciousness. But that really wasn't the way things went. All along, I thought quite clearly about the events and the fact the other cars must have had quite a time of things too. I knew it would be a matter of only minutes before somebody, anybody would be down to see me. I was hanging upside down in a banged-up motor with my best pearly whites mostly on the outside of my face. I knew my legs had something stuck pretty deeply into them and I had some sort of 'hibachi thing' going on in my chest. I guess the feelings I experienced could have been put down to the way my blood seemed to be leaving my body at a steady and probably unhealthy rate but the situation was never at all clouded by my condition.

There was no pain and because of that I started to panic; there was obviously something bad going on. Surely I should be feeling something?. Perhaps I'd broken my neck? I hurriedly checked myself mentally but I couldn't identify anything wrong with my body at all. It was like the old Dickens line: 'I think there is a pain in this room, but I can't be sure if it is mine or not.' What I did notice was something out of the ordinary, something out of even the extraordinary. I first saw it in the concrete post which now occupied most of the engine compartment and as a result, most of my field of vision. My nose was only inches from its grey surface. It was like one of those pictures which were so popular in the early eighties, the 'hyper-realism' stuff done with airbrush which were supposed to look like really detailed photos of a scene. The concrete had pores which I could actually see and I could even make out the grains of the sand which had gone in to forming the mix. I saw the strata of the different pours of the slurry which had gone into the post. Even in my rather unpleasant state, I realised this was something which was 'unusual.' I looked at the grass and there too, saw the depth of detail. It was as if I had placed the leaves under a fairly big magnifying glass and had a good old peek at the thing. I carried on for several more long moments (I was told later I was alone there for no more than thirty to forty seconds) and watched, fascinated, as the blood which was pouring quite liberally out of me, gave up it's details too. The platelets, the corpuscles, the plasma contents; at which point I reached some kind of 'critical mess' and the central core seemed to throw a few switches, one huge wobbler and it was 'good night from the band, thanks for coming.' After such a feeling of academic detachment which accompanied my crash, the next experience was, in my humble opinion, a bloody nasty way to come back to the world. Every one of my shallowest breaths was accompanied by one of the four painful horses of the apocalypse (carrying a cart load of pain behind it), my face was falling off into a bucket and, if there were hells especially for naughty knees, mine had done something really, really bad. There were bandages over most of my upper body too and it would appear my arm was in a sling across my chest. But I was obviously alive and although I was not too happy about the fact at that particular moment, I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that I guess I should be grateful.

I spent the following three or was it four days getting to know the inside of my hospital room, the visits from the police taking statements (and telling me I'd not be charged -- oh, thank you very much Mr. Plod Sir.) and the joys of regular pincushion sessions with a male nurse who'd evidently done his training on horses. He was there to begin the assessments for my recovery, I was glad to find there was no spinal damage and although I did have some fractures, things weren't life threatening. My face was pretty badly cut up and I had the devil's own job to get intelligible sounds out of my mouth. However, with a couple of small casts, one on my left ankle and one on my right elbow, I was pleased when I could get upright enough to hobble off to the can by myself instead of having to endure the ignominy of having Gary 'do for me.' When Gary informed me he was changing to a new shift rota and I would have to get used to someone new. I had mixed feelings, damn I'd probably have to learn to despise some other sadistic bastard all over again...

Of course, I was being too pessimistic as usual and even though I'd tried to set my face in a mask of bored determination, I'm sure I must have had a look of surprise when my new daytime nurse arrived on her rounds.

Even though my cheeks and brows were trying to see if they could swell enough to touch each other, I could still see through both my eyes. She was your typical nurse, meaning she was gorgeous. Well, OK, so it's a thing I have. Even some right old dogs can look rather attractive when you put them in a nice starched uniform. But believe me, she would have been worthy of a good few second glances even without the uniform. (OK, especially without the uniform!) She leaned across me to check the needle leading into the back of my hand and then flicked a couple of switches on the monitor at my bedside. She had a hand on the bedsheet next to me and I could detect the fresh scent of the soap she used to wash her hands.

"Shoo shmell nysh" I offered in an attempt to let her know I was awake and she did indeed smell lovely. I especially liked the way the scent seemed to form a halo around her neck and ears and a glow which formed a necklace down the front of her unifor... Wait a moment! I felt sure I was seeing things!

After checking; I was positive; I was seeing things and, what's more, they were really there too. I was struck it wasn't just that I could smell the scent, I could also see it. There was a sort of diaphanous glow surrounding her body!

"Shh" she said, obviously pleased to see I was conscious. "You'll hurt your mouth, the surgeon has had to do a bit of stitching in there to help you to heal better." The halo wafted around her and I could see it being drawn towards my nostrils as fine wisps.