The time had come. Time to go. I was told the evening before that my bed at Sheffield spinal unit had been secured and that I would be transported the following morning. 54 days after my injury. I knew I had outgrown what could be offered to me on HDU; I was having neuro-physio twice a week (once a week more than I was supposed to: my physio had taken a particular liking to me) and there were limits on what could be achieved. I had reached them. In a way, this whole story, my life, is about reaching limits.

I had been told some very positive things about the spinal unit; that it was much closer to a hotel than a hospital (which I was very happy to hear: I had had very little true privacy in the last six weeks) and that they worked you with boot camp style efficiency.

I was desperate to apply my work ethic in a way that could let me escape; a modus operandi that I had relied heavily upon my entire life and that I still had an almost indomitable faith in. I had quietly harboured an infantile belief that with the right help and the correct application of myself I could defeat this. I would be the one. “Man defies all odds and walks again”. “The doctors said it was impossible,” perfectly neurologically sound man says, “but I’m just that good”. Now, I didn’t water this little optimism plant, I kept it in the old dark brain basement potted up in sad serious soil, but I did go down there every now and again in the middle of the night when all of the realistic thoughts were asleep, and despite everything, the scrappy little bastard wasn’t dead yet. I had conquered the ventilator ahead of time, why not continue? Just like Genghis Khan, but my own spinal-cord instead of the entirety of central Asia.

Those noctambulous expeditions were occasional at best and my morale went unwatered for long stretches: most of my time was not spent in the basement-or even in the house- but the sewer. I had been flushed. Rinsed. For most hours of the day and most days of the week I considered my life essentially finished; the film was over and I just needed to get through the end credits, thank everyone for coming out and let them know not to expect a sequel.

The basement and the sewer had one thing in common; I went there alone and tried my best not to be seen: it was just easier that way.

The morning came and I was loaded up onto a trolley and loaded into an ambulance along with the now usual assortment of medical equipment. Like cargo. An anaesthetist and one of the ITU nurses escorted me to make sure I got to Sheffield still breathing. They were worried about travel sickness and are considering giving me medication. I told them it would be fine. I had lived a life blessed in the fact that many hundreds of times before, a million miles away, I had said “it will be fine” and it was. And it was. I could see out of the window. I remember being struck by the perturbing realisation that these were the first cars I had seen in six weeks. The last car I saw nearly killed me. We filled the hour with banal words while places I knew, roads I had trodden hundreds of times year after year rolled on by behind the glass; I even recognised some of the curbs, some of the signs, some of the graffiti: the past five years of my life etched out in all of the little stories, baked into the bricks, spelled-out in concrete, incomplete, but finished. I was being shown my history, an urban flip book with my memories intaglioed on every page. It was all so grey. Alien, almost. When would I see this place again? That hour holds a certain significance in my mind, but I’m not sure why; perhaps I just feel it is supposed to. Some hours have that mysterious staying power, that resonant quality that stays with you, changes you.

I’m writing this knowing that it is not happy or easy reading, but I wanted to be honest and to do my memory justice; to show you with savage clarity what that time was like.

I got rolled out of the ambulance at the spinal unit. I was laid flat and so could only enjoy a view of varied ceiling tiles and tired lights as I went up a lift and onto the admissions ward. I remember being disoriented, without being upright it was very difficult to know where I was; it was only weeks later when I could get up that I understood the layout of the place I was living in. Imagine being in a house for weeks and not knowing where rooms are, or how they’re connected. It’s not like Hogwarts, with magical moving staircases and mystery and adventure: it’s more like a disturbing, unsettling delirium.

I was slid from the ambulance trolley to my new bed, my new home at least for the next few weeks. It is very strange to be moved around by strangers, touched and handled without being able to feel it, just knowing that it is happening by the change in scenery in front of your face. You should try lying down completely flat, and by only flexing your neck see how much of your body you can see. Spoiler: it’s not very much.

Two ward staff were checking me in with thick Sheffield accents and I struggled to understand them. The anaesthetist who had ridden with me from HDU quietly joked at the confusion; “do you want to come back with us?” with a smile. I couldn’t smile back. He was speaking to me from across an ocean of anxiety. My escort left me; job complete. It was all very perfunctory: healthcare is a busy world and work is always in motion and there’s always another job waiting for you. I was now on the other side of that world.

A doctor came to assess me; she was only one year further through her training than I had been and could not have been much older than me. She had arrived to clerk me; the process of taking an initial history and making sure all the admission paperwork was in order. This process is a dance every junior doctor knows the steps to and one they perform multiple times almost every shift, and only six weeks before I was probably doing the exact same thing with a different patient and in a completely different universe to this one. Despite all of that it took me a fair while to realise what was actually happening. I couldn’t get the steps right from the other side; I only knew the other half of the dance. Halfway through answering the exhaustive list of questions about myself it dawned upon me that this was the first time I had actually spoken about my injury in this way, with all of my previous conversations being with people who knew as much or more about me than I did. I didn’t like it. The sterile information drifted between us: all facts, no feelings. She looked at me like I was a bomb site, or radioactive, or both. I think I felt the same way. Soon enough it was done and the healthcare conveyor belt continued, with my little bombsite box trundling onwards.