Tim Rushby-Smith - Looking Up: A Humorous and Unflinching Account of Learning to Live Again With Sudden Disability

Where to begin? Well, that's easy. I am lying on the roof of an old garage at the bottom of a garden. I am under a tree, looking up at the branches and the grey sky beyond, and I am confused as to what has just happened. I was working in the tree, six metres up and attached by rope and harness, preparing to come down after 45 minutes of climbing and pruning. Now I am on my back on a garage roof, and I can't feel my legs. So much for 'slow motion' the accident is over before I even begin to work out what is happening.

I shout out to my wife, Penny, who is in the garden calling to me, and trying to get through a tangle of shrubs to see me. She is five months pregnant. Out of the corner of her eye, she has just seen me fall and, until hearing my voice, had presumed me dead. It is 1 April 2005, I am 36 years old, and suddenly my life has concertinaed so that all the happy times and periods of gentle contentedness have disappeared into the folds, and my history has become 36 years of stumbling from catastrophe to disaster, as if I am locked into a very inefficient subconscious suicide pact.

There is a voice in my head. It is my voice, and it is saying, 'Well, you've really gone and fucked it this time.'

Outside, my voice is saying, 'Penny, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Pen, Pen, it hurts. I'm sorry. It hurts so much.'

Now, what's weird here is that I remember saying 'it hurts', but somehow I have no recollection of the pain. I remember thinking, 'it's going to hurt any minute now', and trying to put the pain off for as long as possible. I also remember howling like a banshee, so it must have hurt, but all I can remember is my legs feeling as if they are in a 'tuck' position, and I am unable to move them. I'm sure I can feel them, but they refuse to respond.

The 'thwup thwup' of the helicopter blades of the air ambulance cuts through the sound of vigorous spring birdsong that Penny has been getting me to concentrate on to keep me distracted. She has just scaled a six-foot-high fence into the adjoining garden, and is standing on their compost heap in order to be able to see me.

'Can you hear the birds? It sounds like a robin. Isn't it a beautiful spring morning?'

'I'm so sorry, Pen! Aww it really hurts! I can't feel my legs! Pen? Pen? I'm so sorry!'

'It's OK. It's OK. The ambulance is on its way.'

Penny is terrified that I will lose consciousness, so she keeps up a constant line of inane conversation, which is helping her to keep her own panic at bay, that sense of facing something monumental the moment when you know that the world is turning, and the events before you are totally out of your control. She keeps her focus, and every time I try and lift my head, she shouts at me to keep still, and changes the subject. She gets me to talk about Australia, where she is from, and where we were on holiday less than a week ago.

The first emergency service to arrive on the scene is the police. Penny explains that we are landscapers and that this is our client's garden. She shows one of the officers where to climb over the fence that she has scaled in her pregnant state, and the policeman adds to my bewilderment by asking me for my name and address.

Within twenty minutes I am joined by a paramedic, who has very bravely climbed onto the roof (which is of dubious structural integrity and most likely made of asbestos), and she has answered my pleas by shooting me full of I don't know what, but nor do I know much of anything now. The world drifts in and out of focus and the light filtered through the branches becomes brighter and more colourful, and voices around me swirl in and out, and I think: this is it, I'm dying. I'm dying. Except I'm not just thinking it, and the paramedic laughs and she says, 'You're not dying,' which comes as something of a relief, and so begins a two-week period under the influence of very strong drugs.

As I drift in and out of consciousness, I am put onto a backboard and someone tells me that they have to move me, and that they are sorry but it is going to hurt. I hear a voice inside my head telling me to scream, so I do, but it feels as if I am doing so merely to be polite and do what is expected of me, rather than because of any pain. I glimpse my brother among the various faces that drift past, and I have a very vague sense of confusion as to why he's here. I lose consciousness, and wake up in a hospital bed with a neck brace on.

From the outside, Penny has given me a more reliable account of what happens during this time. The paramedics arrive on the scene with an air of calm and friendly efficiency. The policeman is shooed back down into the garden, and after a brief discussion, the lightest paramedic climbs onto the roof so that she can assess me. Some firemen appear in the adjoining garden. As they are cutting off my clothes and harness, and Penny starts shivering with cold, fear and adrenalin, a familiar face appears over the shed roof. It is my brother, Chris. Penny is so confused at seeing him there that she forgets to ask how or why. It turns out that the neighbour is the mother of a good friend of Chris's, who knew that we were doing some work next door, and she telephoned him straight away. His presence is a huge help in preventing Penny from feeling alone. She also asks him if he could phone our mother, as the very thought of having to break the news makes Penny feel sick. He graciously agrees, but it is obvious from the look of concern on his face that he knows that it is going to be a terrible call to have to make.

I am lifted off the roof by the fire brigade using a sort of emergency platform that is extended from the back of a fire engine and delicately threaded through the branches of the trees. All in all, there are about eighteen people involved, and the whole neighbourhood has come out to watch. The London Air Ambulance lands in a nearby park, and I am taken first by the platform into a car park, and then on by ambulance to the entrance to the park, before being taken to the helicopter by gurney along a very bumpy path (more screaming, apparently), all the time accompanied by Penny. As we near the air ambulance, there is a man and a boy with a video camera, filming our approach. Penny shouts at them, and the paramedics ask them more politely to put the camera away. No doubt they are hoping to sell the clips to the world's media, and are disappointed that it's all just for some bloke who's fallen out of a tree.