Man has strived to mimic the birds, and quickly realized that strapping on a pair of wings just wasn’t going to do the job. Icarus proved that one. The problem is that to take to the skies man needs a lot of material and machinery around him, such as an aircraft, and that takes away some of the feeling of freedom that the birds must enjoy. Even to fall slow enough to enjoy the sensation, man needs a parachute, and has little control of his movements. Yet still, he yearns for that feeling of flight.
It therefore seems incredible, that once mans ultimate dream of unhindered flight has been achieved, he suddenly yearns not to be in flight, but to be back on the motorcycle from which he was launched prior to this experience.
Don’t get me wrong that feeling of flight is still fantastic, but thrown from a motorcycle travelling at high speed suddenly stopping thanks to an oblivious car driver, the enjoyment of the flight is marred by the realization that the landing is likely to be uncontrolled and painful. For anybody that has not been involved in a life threatening accident, I don’t know if the warping of time is something you would have encountered. You may not believe this if you have not experienced it first hand.
It is in this moment of flight that we meet our main character. Gregory Shephard, your typical 19 year old boy, travelling at about forty miles an hour leaving behind a crumpled Suzuki motorcycle embedded in the side of an old Morris Marina. He saw the car pull out of the side street, but it was far too close to do anything about it. In his head he had though of the options he could take, swerve to the left, or the right. Pull on the brakes, or throw the bike to the side and try to dive clear. Physically none of these options was possible, and the only option available was to push himself up on the footpegs and do his best to jump over the car as he hit.
That was the best he could have hoped for, and yet time had slowed right down, allowing him to experience in the minutest detail every millisecond of his flight. He noticed the shocked face of the driver looking at him, at the drivers daughter as she flew forward from the back seat toward the windscreen. He was aware that as he was passing over the car, the cars windscreen had popped out and was erupting up toward him in a cascade of tiny nuggets. He went through the cloud of glass and noticed he was coming down face first onto the roof of the car, so put his hands out to spring clear. One worked perfectly but he saw his left arm twist and buckle at an impossible angle. Even in mid flight he thought “Oh well, that’s broken then.”
Then followed the heavy landing on the road, to indicate the accident was over. With legs outstretched in front of him, he landed on his backside, slid briefly and stopped. Stunned and sitting in the middle of the road. Gregory was thankful that he had survived. It had seemed dreamlike, he had felt no pain, although he was quite aware that he had not escaped unscathed. He looked at his left hand first, his glove had gone, and although it appeared to be in the right position sticking out of his leather jacket, there was a lot of blood flowing. Gregory stood up and made his was unsteadily to the side of the road, where he could lean up against the metal barrier. He glanced back over to the wreckage. His bike looked as if it had been crushed to about half it’s original size. The side of the car was stoved in, and it was quiet. He looked up the road to see a couple briskly jogging down toward him, but apart from that, nobody else seemed to be around.
As they reached him, the man took Gregory’s arm to steady him. “OK, we saw what happened, now just sit down here” he said. “We’ve sent somebody to call an ambulance and the police.”
“I’m alright thanks” Gregory replied “I think my arm’s broken though” He turned to the lady “I’m a bit of a mess though aren’t I?”
“A little bit” she said, which caused the man to react quite sternly “Nurse Jones, you should know better than that, you could send him into shock”
“It’s OK” Gregory cut in. “I sort of know”. He was aware that his face felt wet and sticky, and that when he closed his eyes it didn’t seem quite normal. Knowing that he had gone through all that glass, he was bound to have suffered a few cuts.
More forcefully the man told Gregory to sit down. “I’m a doctor up at the hospital, so just do as I ask and you’ll be fine. Now does it hurt anywhere else?”
Of course, anywhere else it would have been incredible for the first people on the scene to be medically trained, but this happened on Hospital Hill, named because the military Hospital was just at the top.
“Well” Gregory started hesitantly, “My balls ache a bit.”
Before he could stop him, Doctor Williams had grasped the crotch of his trousers and ripped it open.
“Ohhh.” Exclaimed Gregory “I’ve only just bought this suit!”
“They were burnt through anyway, just got to check to make sure you haven’t done any serious damage.” He paused briefly, “No, it looks OK, I don’t think you’ve done any lasting damage there.”
The ambulance arrived before the police did, and Gregory was laid on a stretcher and driven the short distance up to the hospital.
If Gregory thought that his life had taken a rather odd twist when he crashed into that car, he had no idea, just how much of a change it would actually mean to him. In his naivity, he thought that the doctors would patch him up and send him back on his way the same evening. At the moment it was little more than a rather amusing distraction. The nurses were fussing about him, asking questions, and cleaning him up.
“Let’s just take this jacket off” One of them said. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut the zip, it’s split all the way up. I’ll try to be careful of your arm.”
As she snipped away the zip, another nurse asked if there was anybody they could contact.
“Oh, yes, could you ring my friends please. We were going to a gig tonight and I’ve got the tickets.”
The nurse took down the phone number and said she would ring up, but continued. “I actually meant, can I phone your parents, to let them know.”
“Yes of course, but they’re not expecting me for a while yet. My mates are waiting for me, and need the tickets now. Is it OK to ring them first, then my mum and dad?”
She agreed and left the room, as the other nurse carefully removed the leather jacket. It was removed from the right arm first, the very gingerly slid down the left arm, to cause as little pain as possible, she then turned to place it on a chair. Although he knew it was broken, Greg was totally unprepared for what happened next. As the nurse turned his hand dropped, and with lightning reflexes, he caught it in his right hand about three inches below his arm. There was still no pain, yet the sight of his hand all but detached from his arm was very surreal.
“Erm, I think you’d better put this back please” he said, as she turned back. She appeared to be slightly more shocked than Greg, but very quickly composed herself and carefully wrapped a bandage and padding round his wrist so that it was as close to it’s correct position as possible.
Greg was made as comfortable as possible in a ward while an operating theatre was prepared and a team of surgeons assembled. The wait also ensured that the anaesthetic did not cause any adverse reactions due to his last meal. He had been patched up enough to ensure he was out of any immediate danger. Although it didn’t feel like it, Greg had actually escaped with relatively light injuries. Apart from his arm, which was a bit of a mess, the only other injury was a broken nose and a series of cuts of various shapes and sizes around his face from the cars windscreen. Although one of his eyelids had been lacerated, both is eyes were undamaged, and no bones in his face had broken, not even a chipped tooth.
Greg’s parents arrived just before he had gone into surgery. His mum was distraught to start with, but was soon reassured that her only child had not been mortally wounded. He was still in a bit of a mess, but in good spirits.
“I was so worried about you Greg.” She exclaimed. “Especially after you joking about that funeral procession just before you left.” Greg recalled the conversation earlier that evening. He came downstairs in his suit, and donning his leather jacket over the top as he came in to say goodnight to his parents. As he came in, the news was reporting on a big Gypsy wedding in London
“I don’t want you going to all that expense when I die” he said, “just tow me down the canal on our old dinghy and drop me off to float out to sea.
Only a half hour later the phone rang,leaving Gregs mum with an uncomfortable premonition that something was wrong, even before she picked it up. She had been right to be worried, as it was the police to say Greg had been in an accident, but could give no more details than that, and that he had been rushed to the nearby hospital.
Whilst his parents were there, His friends Danny and Jim arrived to collect the tickets. They couldn’t stay long, but said they would pop back later and wished him the best.
Gregs parents also met the policeman who had been on the scene. He told them he was quite surprised by what he had seen.
“We came up the road, and saw the mangled wreckage of the bike and the car, and thought I would be scraping another motorcyclists corpse off the road. I was amazed to see him sitting on the pavement talking.” He continued. “He actually hit the hardest part of the car, right where the windscreen meets the body, it was because of that he was catapulted over the top, if he’d hit the door, he would have just be thrown into the car.”
Late that night, a team of surgeons worked for about three hours to re-attach Gregs hand. Everything else was cleaned up and eventually, in the early hours of the morning, he was taken back to the ward and made as comfortable as it is possible to be lying on his back with one arm suspended on a metal jib.
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