Never Say Die. Lynne Barrett-Lee
I wasn’t just praying for myself. Despite my growing terror about what the future had in store for me—Would I ever see home again? Would I be crippled and useless and incarcerated for ever? Would I ever see the outside of some grim institution?—none of this felt quite as bad and unrelenting as the ever-present guilt about my parents. They had done nothing to deserve this. They had adopted a healthy baby girl (my mother often used to comment how lucky we all were; there were so many disabled babies up for adoption, after all. How wonderful, they’d agreed, that I was perfect in every way) and now, just fifteen years later, they had a six-foot useless great lump for a daughter, one that would be totally dependent on them all over again. It wasn’t just my own life I’d thrown away by my recklessness. I’d thrown all that love and care back in their faces as well.
The place where I’d been billeted for the next stage of my treatment was called Rookwood Hospital. It was a large Spinal Injuries Centre in Cardiff that took patients from South Wales and the South West of England, and about which I knew nothing whatsoever.
As was the case with my parents. Their only exposure to the business of spinal rehabilitation up to now had been the much fêted and publicised Stoke Mandeville Hospital, at that time inseparable from its then most famous patron, Jimmy Savile, whose tireless support and incredible energy had put the place firmly on the map. Working on the eminently sensible basis that somewhere so famous and so widely supported might be just the place for their daughter, they petitioned to have me sent there. After all, if I was going to have to spend God only knew how big a chunk of my life away from home, and in a totally alien environment, at least they could push for the best, and best-loved, one. The one, though they hardly dared voice their desperate hope, that might still offer some tiny chance that I would one day manage to walk again. But their reasoning fell on deaf NHS ears.
In rehabilitation terms, as Mr Davies was swift to point out, I would be equally well served in either place. And being sent all the way to Stoke Mandeville made little sense. Not if I wanted to see anything of my family. Stoke Mandeville was over 100 miles distant, Rookwood, in Cardiff, just 30. Besides, it was the centre intended for our region, and as with hospitals and schools one tended to go where one was told. So though Stoke Mandeville would come to figure later in my life, for now Rookwood, it was decided, it would be.
I was terrified. I’d been terrified from day one, of course, but as my final week at Neath General ticked by and 2 June got ever closer, my terror took on a new intensity.
By now I had settled into a routine at Neath General and trusted the staff looking after me—the very personal parts of me. I’d been eased through the metamorphosis from my old life to my new one by powerful tranquillising and painkilling drugs. Now I was about to be dragged off to an institution where I wouldn’t have such support—not to mention my mother’s constant presence through the nights. Did people ever come out of institutions? Weren’t they places where you went to die? It didn’t matter much to me that Rookwood was closer than Stoke Mandeville. It was still far away, and would be full of equally terrifying ‘inmates’. Who would want to travel and visit me there?
My terror became a constant, unwelcome companion. It visited me every time I let my guard down for an instant and crept into bed with me at night. Up till this point I simply hadn’t time for such terror. Too many routines. Too many distractions. The days full of people and things to be done, the nights eased by the comfort that was the presence of my mother, breathing softly beside me, just an arm’s length away. All this was to stop. To be replaced by—what? It didn’t help that none of my nurses knew anything about Rookwood either. The only person, in fact, who had ever been to Rookwood was my consultant, many years back when still a junior doctor, and presumably because he hadn’t heard of any murders, mass lynchings or other criminal atrocities, he was completely satisfied that it was the best place for me to be.
As with any lack of solid information—a small testimony from a grateful former patient would have done—Rookwood soon acquired the status of a terrifying unknown, a situation not helped by my increasing conviction that the reason no one admitted to knowing anything about it was because it was going to be so grim and dreadful they dared not speak of it in my presence. Even the name conjured dark forbidding images of tar-black flocks of huge angry birds roosting and cawing in malevolent forests; a Dickensian nightmare made real.
The departure itself was protracted. Once aboard my trolley to retrace, for the first time, the route I’d taken in reverse just three weeks ago (apart from my trip to theatre for my op, I’d not seen outside the ward, much less sniffed fresh air) I was soon joined by a procession of staff. Almost everyone in the hospital turned out to say goodbye—even off-duty nurses, who’d come in specially to wish me well. There seemed not enough words to convey my gratitude to everyone, much less space in my throat for the lump that was lodged there; it really did feel as if I was being uprooted from a substitute home that I’d only just got used to and being taken away to a strange place full of strangers for an indeterminate period of time—and that was assuming I survived. I didn’t know much but I wasn’t stupid, either. A long life was no longer something I could take for granted. How could I when so much of me no longer worked? The human body was not designed to be like this.
Perhaps if I could just hang on in A & E long enough, they’d forget why they were gathered and we could all go back in and pretend it wasn’t happening. But it wasn’t to be. All too soon, the ambulance had backed up into the porchway to admit me, and suddenly it was just me, Staff Nurse Liz, who had been given the responsibility of escorting me, and my small bundle of possessions, on our way to the big city and whatever we’d find there. I stared at the ambulance ceiling, my throat sore, my eyes puffy and my head full of regrets. The last time I’d visited Cardiff, I recalled, was to have the tattoo of Aldo’s name removed; my grand gesture towards a bright shiny future as a model. Now some other girls’ future. Not mine.
The ambulance shuddered into life. Liz settled herself into her seat beside my trolley and took my hand. ‘I’m not sure if this is a privilege or a torment,’ she confided. There had apparently been no shortage of volunteers to undertake this particular away-day from the hospital, about which I was touched, but all had also agreed that the prospect of delivering me into the hands of the people at Rookwood, depositing me there and then travelling back alone, was not one they viewed with any relish.
Nurses see patients come and go all the time, of course, but in hindsight what human could fail to be moved by the plight of a vulnerable teenage girl, so horribly disabled, who was about to be packed off into the unknown?
Once again, the ambulance was to proceed agonisingly slowly. Though it had been decided that my back was now strong enough to cope with the transfer, it was still on the condition that the journey be as smooth as possible. As the M4 motorway had yet to snake its way this deep into the South Wales countryside the route took in mostly trunk roads and lesser ones. As a result we caused lengthy tailbacks of traffic, most cars (either out of deference or caution) seemingly unwilling to overtake. Perhaps the sight of the ambulance moving so slowly made them think a little more before hitting the gas. They must have wondered who was in there and what terrible fate had befallen them. I couldn’t see myself, of course, but from what Liz kept relaying, our procession must have looked a little like a funeral cortège.
Somewhere, caught up in this tailback, were my mother and father, ensconced in the family’s aged Morris Minor, which they’d had to bring along, rather than ride with me in the ambulance, as the latter had to return to Neath almost immediately, while they would stay at Rookwood for a while to help settle me in. Having no idea where Rookwood was, much less how to find their way there, they had elected to follow us. My greatest fear on that journey, when not engaged in being terrified for myself, was that at some point we would lose them altogether. Without sat nav or mobiles or a map (Mum couldn’t read them), they were entirely dependent on keeping us in sight. But with many junctions and roundabouts and traffic lights involved, this was, even on a journey this slow, a challenge. And given Mum’s almost legendary navigational history, I had a very real fear that they might never get there and be doomed to patrolling the streets of Cardiff for all time.
It wasn’t hard to germinate such panics. During my time at Neath, Liz and I had become great conversationalists.
Despite