Lucky Break?

Begins.....

Had there been any witnesses, it would have looked the silliest accident. For one thing, the road was empty and dry. There was no traffic, no sharp bends, no wet leaves, no oil slicks, no sudden obstructions. Just a glorious July day on a gentle stretch of country road between the Surrey town of Hindhead and the nearby village of Churt.

The motorbike was on the small side: a blue Honda 175cc CD. Driving it was a youth of 19 called Neil Slatter. He was six feet tall, broadly built, wore a plaid shirt, denim jacket, jeans and boots. On the back was a friend, Tim: slightly older, slightly heavier, nursing a bag of groceries from a shopping expedition to the local store a mile up the road.

The bike slowed for a series of gentle bends. Then, abruptly, Neil felt the balance of the bike change. He tried to look round, sensing that Tim might have fallen off, but already the bike was out of control. "It just went on without me..." he said later, "...as if I'd collided with some kind of invisible wall."

Neil hit the road with a bang. The force of the impact drove the breath from his body and when he opened his eyes there was nothing, just blackness and a faraway whistling in his ears. Mentally, he tried to take stock, to check what hurt, and where, and how badly, but in the darkness it was hard to come to any definite conclusions. The bike had gone, and his shopping with it, and here he was flat on his back wondering why.

Slowly sensation returned, and with it a sharp pain where his right hand had scraped along the road. Still in total darkness, he flexed it. Where the nail on his little finger had punctured the flesh on the next finger, it hurt even more. He tried blinking, but nothing happened. Whatever he did with his eyes, the darkness wouldn't go away. Confusion gave way to fear. He began to panic.

Next came the noises. He couldn't be certain but it sounded like a bus. The bus stopped. There were footsteps, a woman's voice, then a sudden weight on his chest. He gasped and tried to talk but the voice above him was insistent.

"Don't move" it said, "Whatever you do, don't move."
Then the weight had gone again, and with it the voice. Only the darkness remained.

Sometime later, seconds perhaps, or minutes, or even longer, there came more voices, the clunk of car doors, footsteps, people running. He lifted his arms to his head and found his helmet wedged over his face.

"Get it off." He pleaded, "Get it off me. I can't breathe."

Someone knelt beside him, asking him if he was OK, and he said yes, get the helmet off, please get the helmet off, the words muffled by the shattered polycarbonate. Then he felt hands at his head, easing the remains of the helmet back over his face, letting in the daylight and the fresh air.

"It was extraordinary." He said later. "All the pain just suddenly went. Everything. It was as if someone had turned it off like a tap. It was like having gas at the dentist. One minute it all hurt like hell. The next minute there was nothing, just peace. It was incredible."

It was exactly at this moment, mid-afternoon on a country road in Surrey, that Neil Slatter's broken neck began to turn into paralysis.