Gurriers (49 page)

By the time I was going past the John of Gods, I was in top gear, though not at high revs because of the heavy rain that persisted in beating down, making conditions on the wheels very hazardous.

I knew to ease off and not to go for the gaps as I would in the dry weather but the pressure was on and I had to move as fast as I could under these conditions, the end result being that I drove slower than in better conditions but faster than I knew I should in the rain. I didn’t have time to put my leggings on over my leathers either, and the stitching needed redoing on my leathers (getting on and off a motorbike so many times a day is more strain than a pair of leathers can take, so the stitching needs to be re-done every now and again) so they quickly let the rain in at the crotch. Lovely. I felt the first cold wet trickle at the bottom of my balls as I was going past Esso on the main Stillorgan Road, causing me to give it a little more on the throttle out of the frustration of the discomfort and the expectation of a lot more discomfort before I would be able to stop for the minute
or so it would take me to put my water proofs on.

A quick glance at my clocks coming up to Whites Cross told me that I was doing 70 mph on a wet surface through heavy traffic. On looking back, I can almost remember the warning bells that were ringing in my head being pushed aside by my anxiety to get there quick. I feel that I went against my better judgement. I know that I learned a lesson. I also know that I got what I deserved.

Screaming between two almost stationary lines of cars and squinting ahead at the lights I saw no red lights so I didn’t slow down. This was mistake number two (mistake number one being the speed under the conditions). There was no red light, but there was no green light either – the lights were broken.

Instead of going in the absence of red, I should have stopped in the absence of green. I saw traffic on the far side of the junction so I presumed we were all (the traffic I was moving through and me) going through - mistake number three.

Southbound traffic was at a standstill and the stationary traffic I had seen on the other side of the junction had been there a while, but the junction was clear for traffic from my right (coming down the Leopardstown Road headed for Blackrock) to proceed.

Also, it is always wrong to presume anything when it comes to traffic, and for driving in general. Hope for the best but always prepare for the worst. I failed to do this, hence mistake number four. When I realised that the lights were broken I did slow down slightly, but not full on brakes and determined to keep going since I was in no doubt that I was on the bigger road - a three lane major route versus a two lane road - mistake number five. According to the rules of the road in Ireland you must give way to traffic on the right when lights are broken at a junction – as if there is a roundabout in the middle of the junction.

Looking back at this plethora of errors I can feel a burning sense of shame to this day, and rightfully so. What happened was, of course, a crash.

I was maybe six cars back when I realised the extent of the danger and braked a little but not enough. I saw what I thought was a clear way through and across and onwards. It wasn’t until I was only two or three cars from the broken lights that I saw the dark green Ford that was heading towards Blackrock on a direct collision course crossing my path. Had I listened to my instinct I would have been going slow enough to take evasive manoeuvres. If I had had better knowledge of the rules of the road I would have given way to my right instead of ploughing on. If I had noticed earlier that the lights were broken, if I hadn’t been letting the pressure influence my (usually) good judgement, if…if…if. If I knew then what I know now I wouldn’t have crashed, but I did, and hard.

It seemed as if time was altered somehow once I realised that I was going to hit; slowed and distorted at the same time in order that I felt and understood completely and unforgettably the unique horror of crashing a motorbike. As my bike sped towards the car across the clearing of the junction I did react, I know I reacted because of what I felt and how the bike went and because I am alive and not dead – but I don’t remember reacting. I have a theory that when reactions take over, which always happens in a crash situation, the nerves jump in and take over the body, controlling it through the emergency to help get it out of the danger with minimal damage (also maybe including the anesthetic properties of the state of shock in the process). I believe that at the moment of impact the nerves are controlling the body and therefore the actions taken do not go into the memory. Lots of weird stuff happened in (and to) my head during this crash, but I know that I braked and swerved – even though I don’t fully remember it.

I might have been on autopilot as far as reactions were concerned, but I remember everything else vividly about the crash, right down to the smells (the predominant one being of the foam on the inside of the helmet as it mashed into the side of my face – that damp and musty unique smell will stay with me to my dying day). The first thing I remember feeling was a deep
and dour sickening feeling about the whole situation that totally engulfed me instantly, obliterating everything that had been in my consciousness and replacing it with the black sensation that something so very terrible was happening to me. This was bad, bad stuff. Raw naked out and out terror like no other, the terror that is felt at the moment of death.

‘I am dead’ terror.

This terror is of such clarity and enormity that, even though it only lasts an instant in real time, it is never to be forgotten. This instant of terror that is so complete it appears to last an age – being seared so vividly on the top of the still present sickening realisation of doom.

Then there was the noise. I never thought I could have such foreboding about any sound until I heard the crash of me and my beautiful bike smashing into a car at speed. It’s a complex noise, made up of many parts – each one horrifying in its own right, all combining to make the absolute worst sound a man can hear, with the whole being that much more terrible than the sum of the parts. There’s the crunching smash of glass (the head light) breaking, the amplified thud of the car body work crumpling as it gets hit, the grinding searing screech of the metal at the front of the bike buckling, the pop of the fork seals on the suspension bursting as the forks bent, the squeal of tyres, the bang of the collision and sometimes the snap of bones breaking.

With the noise, of course, comes the impact. The irresistable force meeting the immovable object with me crushed in between, helpless and fragile and suffering at the mercy of the gods. I had managed to get my bike almost sideways (thanks mostly to the back wheel slipping on the wet surface under the strain of full brakes) but had failed to jump off the machine before the actual impact, so I took the impact collision on my right hand side. The image of being clattered by a gigantic iron bar jumps to mind when I think of the moment of impact. The feeling of smashing into a car like that is a horror that will live with me forever.

I crashed into it with a crunching “Ooomph” as the air was
forced out of my lungs, and every part of my right hand side from my foot to my shoulder smashing into the now stationary car (he hadn’t been going fast and had jammed on the brakes instantly when he noticed me hurtling towards him). My head (above the level of the roof of the car) was flung violently to my right and over the roof of the car with such force that I could feel the aformentioned foam of the helmet mashing into the side of my head. It was a blessing in disguise to have my head endure this abuse, however, because due to this trauma the last thing I remember is the “Ooomph” of the air leaving my lungs. The gods were kind to me; I mercifully blacked out on impact.

Bright lights above me and frenzied activity around me. This was a truly alien environment for my poor fuzzy senses, as I drifted downwards into my own body – the centre of the attention of the person who was orchestrating the activity in this small cramped medical environment that seemed to be swaying from side to side.

“You’re with us! I thought you were a DOA.”

DOA – Dead On Arrival. They thought I was dead. The word dead reverberated through my head as the descent into my body was completed. At that particular moment it didn’t actually seem unusual to my stunned senses that I was (apparently) descending from somewhere into my own body, but I have put many hours contemplation into it since and have developed my own theory. I believe that what happened to me was the typical out of body experience that thousands of people have claimed to have had, except in my opinion there was nothing mystical or surreal about it. I draw an analogy between what happened as I regained consciousness in the ambulance and waking up from a very deep sleep (as most of us have at one stage or another), when the defining boundaries between real and imaginary are not as clear as they usually are. The mind has a habit of playing tricks on itself by weaving threads of reality with threads of dreams to form a bleary pseudo–reality that has to be waded through slowly during the dragged out waking sequence. Because my head received such a bang (more powerful than it ever
received before or since), knocking me unconscious instantly, I believe that my mind played similar tricks on me, but in a way that I had never before experienced, which added to the illusion of reality– thereby convincing me falsely that I was having an out of body experience. And it was all there too; the bright lights, the sensation of movement, the reluctance to go back, the eerie feelings of weightlessness and transparency. All figments of a confused imagination inside a dazed mind that was inside a bruised brain, which just happened to be inside a smashed head. As somebody who has had an out of body experience I can safely say one thing: - they aren’t real.

This whole experience, although it seemed to last a reasonable length of time, was actually only momentary and I was back to reality, albeit dazed and shocked, in no time. Things were not good, however, and as reality became clearer and clearer, the horror of my situation came rushing back. The word dead bounced around and around my head looking for some purchase on an idea or notion as if it was seeking a reason for being. It found one “I’m so badly smashed up that they think I’m dead!”

That was it, the floodgates opened; I bawled. Imagine you were just going about your business some day and the water-works just turned on out of the blue and you ended up crying your eyes out uncontrollably for no apparent reason; well, that’s what it felt like except I happened to have the turmoil of adrenalin with doom piled smotheringly on top of a weakened consciousness that was frantically trying to grapple this plethora of commotion into feasible fact while still reeling after (apparently) taking leave of the body and simultaneously struggling with the attention grabbing question of, “What the fuck am I crying for when I’m not even injured?”

Then the notion of shock hit me. “Oh shit, oh fuck.” The realization that shock blocks pain crept nauseously over me. I dared to wonder what damage had been done and just how much pain the shock was shielding me from: toes wiggle – check; fingers wiggle – check; tense elbow joints – check; tense
knee joints – check. Hope was beginning to get a hold of me.

“You must be injured gobshite – you’ve just crashed a motor-bike,” the voice of logic seemed to roar even though it was just a thought and, of course, there was silence.

I was relaxing a little now which helped me feel more as I mentally scouted my body for pain.

“Ribs – pain in the ribs.”

My ribcage on the right hand side felt as if it had just been punched.

“Nothing to worry about – I doubt if I’ve even broken one.”

At this stage of my life I had never broken any ribs and had them categorised as minor breaks as far as bones go, with my imagination accrediting very little pain to the occasion of breaking a rib. Since this particular crash I have broken my ribs and I can assure you, having now experienced the ungodly amount of sheer agony involved, that I am never in any doubt as to whether or not any of the fuckers are broken. In this case, amazingly, they were all intact.

“There could be internal injuries.” Doom’s voice within me was little more than a whisper as hope surged over my – hopefully uninjured – body.

“Pain - right hand.” There was a twang of pain at the base of my right thumb, near the joint, that got my attention. By moving my arm gingerly and my head slightly (they had left my helmet on because I had been so deeply unconscious), I was able to make eye contact with the source of pain. One solid pigment of car window glass had buried itself in my thick leather glove at that point with such force that it had penetrated the glove and entered my thumb deep down to the bone. I slowly moved my left hand across and nudged the piece of glass with my forefinger. It hurt like hell. Pain – the full pain, no shock! That could only mean one thing: I was all right! I was Okay, with just some bruised ribs and a cut on my thumb: happy days! I nudged it again just to make sure.

A sharp pang of pain confirming that I was not at all smashed up. Miraculously, I had escaped almost uninjured! A wave of giddy euphoria washed wonderfully over me and I laughed. It
started as a giggle but grew with each breath as the full enormity of the escape I had lifted my – not really bashed at all – spirits ever higher. My left hand continued to nudge my right and the pain invoked only heightened my delight at the turnout of events. By the time the ambulance reached Loughlinstown Hospital, I was in convulsions.

I later wrote the following poem about my experience.