Gurriers (97 page)

Had there been any traffic coming the other way - also through a green light - I would have smashed into it headlong
and upside down and been killed. But I was in shock, so the marvelling and wondering at the miracle of me still being alive would have to wait until later. All I was good for was aimless walking.

One witness to the crash was a truck driver who had been at the red light waiting to drive into the Ballycoolin Industrial Estate and had seen and heard everything.

He had begun to climb down from the cab of his truck as soon as I had come to rest, but when I got up and walked it was away from him (towards Symantec). He was unfit and over-weight and, despite him jogging and me walking, I had reached the kerb by the time he breathlessly caught up with me. I heard him before I saw him.

“Jesus…hold on. Ye can’t just….holy fuck…after that…hold your horses there, son.”

I stopped and he finally caught up.

“You can’t know how much you’re hurt. Here, lie down here.” He guided me into a lying position on a grass verge. Still very stunned and knowing that he was doing the right thing, I offered no resistance. He was obviously shaken by what he had witnessed.

“Never saw anything like that in my life. How could you walk after that? Oh, Jesus, what do I do? Are ye comfortable?”

“Ask me have I got problems breathing.”

“Have ye got problems breathing?”

“No. Gently open the helmet strap.”

His shaking hands fumbled so much that he had great difficulty with the strap, but he eventually got it.

“Ask me can I wiggle my fingers and toes.”

“Can ye wiggle your fingers and toes?”

“Yes. I don’t think I’m too bad at all. Sit me up.”

“No, no, definitely not! I know that you should not be moved or allowed to be move until the ambulance gets here. People that are moved have their injuries made much worse.”

“But I was walkin’ a minute ago!”

“And who knows what damage ye’ve done. Do any of you
folks have one of those mobile phones?”

By this stage several motorists and one courier had made it to us.

“I’ve radioed for an ambulance, they said they’d be here in five minutes. Is there anything else I can do?”

“Not unless you’re a doct-”

“Yes there is. In the box on the bike there’s an urgent package going to that building there-”

“Don’t move your arm!”

“Going to Symantec behind us.”

“No bother, man, I’ll take care of it. I have my base ringing your base also.”

“How d’you know where I work?”

“Signature sheets all over the road. I’ll tidy them up a bit and throw them in your box an’ bash ou’ yer Symantec for ye.”

“Is the bike bad?”

“Don’t be thinkin’ abou’ the bike, jus’ concentrate on yourself.”

“I think I’m all right. This man here is just following proper procedure. I think I could be up and about if I really wanted to.”

“Nah, don’t take any chances, man. Wait for the meat wagon.”

“I know, I’m just starting to feel like a bit of a plonker lyin’ here.”

“Oh, Jaysus Christ, I thought he was goin’ right. He just started moo-hoo- hoo-vin left.” The truck driver that had hit me made his arrival at the scene known by blubbering like a toddler.

“Get yer man over her to me, bud.”

The courier complied and in seconds the view through my visor from where I was lying included an upside down tear-streaked overweight truck driver.

“Listen, man, I’m only lying here motionless because that’s what the textbook says to do until the ambulance arrives. I’m not badly hurt. Sure, I walked over to here until this man caught up with me and forced me to lay down.”

“You were indicating right and then moved left!”

“That can all be sorted later.” I knew never to accept responsibility at the scene of an accident. “The most important thing is that I am alive and well. Things could be much worse, but they’re not. Have a smoke if ye smoke, a cup o’ tea if ye don’t and pull yourself together.”

“Okay,” he said, sniffling.

The ambulance that came was a fire brigade ambulance with a crew of three and all sorts of RTA equipment. They jumped to the same conclusion that everybody else obviously had on seeing the wreckage of the bike and assumed that I was badly injured. They badgered me about where I was feeling sore and what I felt until I eventually told them about the pain in my left ankle just to get them off my case. They then burst into action and chopped off a perfectly good motorbike boot to get to a bruised graze. The fuckers didn’t even try to take it off by opening the clips.

I was brought to James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown where the emergency crew that met the ambulance didn’t waste any time in assessing that I wasn’t in any danger of dying on them. Upon noticing how much calmer these medics were than the ambulance men I couldn’t help pondering whether it would have been different had they also seen the wreckage of my poor bike. I refused the painkillers that I was offered, despite the fact that the battering I took was having more and more of an effect on me as the shock wore off. I knew that I was just bruised, albeit very badly and my priority was to get myself out of hospital as soon as possible.

The biggest hindrance to this turned out to be the fact that I had landed on my head. It was insisted that I have my neck and back thoroughly X-rayed. This meant joining an hour long queue lying on the trolley in the corridor with my lesseningly woozy head totally preoccupied with the event that had put me there.

Two questions above all others, needed answering: how did the truck get so close to me without me realising that he was there and what had alerted me and undoubtedly saved my life?

To answer the first questions I retraced my steps all the way back to the roundabout where Blanchardstown Road North met the Ballycoolin Road, where I had taken the last exit to get
onto Ballycoolin and then put the hammer down and travelled very fast, without overtaking a single vehicle, all the way to the scene of the crash. I decided that the only possible way that the lorry could have gotten so close to me was if he had come down the Blanchardstown Road North at speed and hit the roundabout fast, coming from the opposite direction, just after I had left the roundabout.

In the absence of traffic he could have hit the roundabout at pace and taken the first exit, without slowing down much, with only a motorbike on the road ahead of him and this motorbike driving at a dangerous speed. I was under serious pressure after opting to drop Mulhuddart before Symantec, but I don’t recall doing anything crazy at the roundabout.

Vehicles taking the first exit off a roundabout can do it a lot quicker than vehicles taking the last exit; so, provided he came from the other side, he could well have made ground on me there, keeping up his momentum in the process.

As for me not realising that he was there, I had no left mirror and a head full of all the crap that I had been through that day. I now know for a fact that the left is the more used of my two mirrors. I distinctly remember noticing several times that the forefinger of my left glove had the beginnings of a tear in it, indicating that I looked to that side a lot.

I’m not totally sure, but I think I looked to my left at least once on Ballycoolin Road. If I had had a left mirror I would have noticed the truck behind me and the crash wouldn’t have happened. If I hadn’t been under so much pressure, if I hadn’t had my head so far up my own arse, if I hadn’t been disregarding the rule that the vulnerable should never let their guard down for an instant, if, if, if. I could “if” all I want but the fact of the matter is the crash did happen and I was alive.

The second big question wasn’t ever going to be as easily explained. I wrestled with what I knew I had felt and tried my damndest to apply logical reasoning to convince myself that it was my own warning system that had jolted me into looking behind me and that the shock of the crash had distorted this to
make it appear surreal to me.

To this day, a part of me still insists that my life was saved on Two Crash Day by a guardian angel, that my departed bro somehow intervened from the other side to keep me alive. I’m a scientifically minded sceptic when it comes to things supernatural and have always managed somehow to manufacture some logical explanation to fit scenarios that others might convince themselves could only be a greater force of some kind.

To this day, I have not been able to convince myself of any such logical explanation about whatever saved my life on Two Crash Day.

My mobile had fallen out of my pocket and smashed during the course of the crash, so the base had to revert to old fashioned ways to find out how I was.

The next courier out my way was instructed to drop in to the hospital to see how badly injured I was - such was the report of horror at the scene that had been relayed via somebody else’s base controller.

I was lying flat on my back on a trolley in the corridor with my head held motionless by straps and dense foam moulds, waiting to have my neck X-rayed when I deduced a distant conversation to be a radio. Within seconds of honing in on the approaching noise I had deemed it to be far too frantic to be a .police radio. There was a courier approaching! Then the nearest door crashed open and I could now clearly make out the voice that blared into my own ear all day - Aidan. One of my own was here to see me.

Then the fat little blackened face that I know and love so well came into the drab view of the ceiling that I was by now so sick of. It was Ray. I was delighted to see him.

“For fuck’s sake, are you the best they could send to me?”

“You’re in Blanchardstown, Shy Boy. Only couriers tha’ piss off Bollicky Balls or go aroun’ smashin’ receptionist’s fuckin’ ginger nuts get sent ou’ this way, man. D’you feel as bad as ye look?”

“Worse. I feel as bad as you look! What’d you do to get this
run?”

“Nothin’ really, I don’t mind it ou’ this way too much if he loads me up. Rarely get an’in goin back into town, so it can be good for the aul’ early finish. Little pop along the M50 for home an’ it’s feet up at the fire for the start o’ the news. Rumour has it that yer bike’s good an’ smashed up.”

“Yep”

“An’ you?”

“Don’t mind all this shite, it’s just a precaution ‘cos I landed on my head. As soon as I’m X-rayed I’m outta here.”

“Two crashes in the one day, eh?”

“Yeah, well, as far as crashes go the first one was a bit of a disappointment. Made up for it in the second one though.”

“Landed on yer head?”

“Kicked out from under the bike when it was upside down in the process of doing a backward somersault.”

“Fuck off!”

“I’m going to deserve all me pints tonight!”

“You goin’ to the pub?”

“Fuckin’ sure I am and make sure to tell all the lads as well. You’ll be there yourself, of course.”

“Well, if you get to the local after havin’ two crashes an’ I’m not there after havin’ none, it won’t look very good for me at all now, will it?”

“Damn right, it won’t. And make sure all the others feel the same!”

“I will. So what happened?”

“I left town with five on board….”

One hour later I was eventually given the all clear to leave hospital. The nurse gave me a pamphlet about precautions that should be taken with neck injuries, three days’ worth of Diffene anti inflammatory painkillers and a stern warning to avoid alcohol for the next few days before finally letting me limp my way out of A & E.

I had only ever driven away from Blanchardstown main street
up to the hospital and so had it measured in my head as a short distance. I was quite disgruntled by the time I reached the bus stop after a 20 minutes’ hobble down the “short” driveway.

I was in a proper foul mood when the bastard of a bus finally arrived a further 20 minutes later and positively fuming getting off the thing on College Green an agonising 45 minutes later again.

By this time it was almost half six in the evening and I considered going straight to the pub despite the state of me, but opted to get the bus to Windy Arbour to change into civies and then come back in.

The filthy, ripped jacket and gloves, the broken-visored and scratched helmet and the scuffed leathers were bad enough, but I just couldn’t go to the pub with my left boot only held together by a bandage that I had persuaded a nurse to wrap around it to hold it on. Bastard Fire brigade ambulance men!

The first thing I did when I got back to the flat was to skin up a fat, strong joint. I found a beer in the fridge and cracked it open before sparking up the joint. I smoked half of it voraciously and gulped down a long swig of beer before slowly and gingerly removing my motorbike gear.

I stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom in my jocks and socks and examined the selection of new bruises and scrapes that adorned my legs. I knew that my upper body contained even worse ones, but there was no fuckin’ way was I going to put myself through the pain of taking off my jumper and t-shirt just to see them.

I necked something akin to three times the recommended dosage of Diffene before attempting to put on a pair of jeans without bending my aching legs. All the while I could feel my joints and muscles stiffening up. I gulped down most of the remainder of the beer and lit the stabber of the joint to smoke, as I searched for the one pair of slip-on shoes that I owned.