Friday 18th April 1975: First Steps
The nurses were kind. Two of them, both young, both practical. They were given the task of teaching me how to walk again. Not quite from scratch, but not far off. Crutches. Balance. Movement.
We started small—down the corridor, to the bathroom, back again. Each step was a negotiation between confidence and fear. My body didn’t trust itself yet. The leg, heavy in plaster, was a pendulum I had to learn to swing.
I was back in my pyjamas, which should have been a small triumph. But at the top of the stairs, with nothing to hold onto, I discovered the flies had come undone. My modesty had gone with it. The nurses didn’t flinch. “We’ve seen it all,” one of them said. They didn’t offer to fix it. That was my job.
I remember balancing the crutches, steadying myself on the bannister, and carefully tying the cord. I stopped listening to their instructions long enough to do what needed to be done, and then I resumed the lesson.
That moment—that fumble with the pyjama cord—brought something back to me. Control. Embarrassment, yes. But also self-determination. I wasn’t just a body anymore. I was a boy reassembling.
Downstairs, I practised again. A shuffle became a step. A step became a lurch. Eventually, with the crutches angled just right, I found a rhythm. I’m not walking, not yet, but I’m moving.
And moving meant I was going home.
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