Wildtrack

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They said I’d never walk again.

They said I’d be in a wheelchair till they lifted me into the box and screwed down my lid. I should learn a trade, they said. Something cripple-friendly, like computers.

They’d had me for damn nearly a year. They’d put a metal rod into my right thigh, and grafted skin where my thighs and arse had been burned. They did a mixture of rough carpentry and micro-surgery on my spine and, when it half worked—which meant I could twitch the toes on my left foot—they opened me up again and did a bit more. It had all taken months and still I could not walk.

You must get used to it, they said, because you’re never going to walk again. You’re never going to sail again. You’re a paraplegic now, Nick, so kiss it all goodbye. I told them to get stuffed.

“That’s not the spirit, Nick!” Doctor Maitland said in his no-nonsense voice. “There’s no stigma involved, you know. Quite the opposite!” He flipped the pages of a yachting magazine that lay on a pile of similar magazines beside my bed. “And you’ll be afloat again.

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