A bump in the road

Two to three armed men stormed my student apartment while I was sleeping. I woke up with a sudden thud. I screamed and tried to run away when they picked me up. I have no memory of where they took me. The last thing I remember is being in a dark room, with no way to escape, while one of them pointed a gun at me with his finger on the trigger.

"That's it? Is this the end of my life at the young age of 24? Is this the end of all my dreams?" Those were the last waves of thoughts when I couldn't see any mercy in their eyes… And then I heard a shot.

"And now I'm going to die." I think that was my last thought before I woke up, realising that I had been shot in my ankle.

"You were involved in a road accident…"

"Who said so?" I didn’t even let my dad finish his sentence when they let me speak to him on the phone.

"We spoke to your doctors…"

"They’re lying," I interrupted him again, flustered. But I wasn’t able to say more than that because I was suffering from severe dysphonia.

"Why are these people lying to my parents, and what are they going to do to me?" I kept thinking about it for a long time after the call. It took me ages to solve that mystery, though.

I know reading random bits isn’t very interesting, but for me, piecing them together to understand my own story was even harder and it took me quite a long time. Anyway, let me tell you the made-up story I have now. Well, it’s a made-up story because I have no memory… no memory at all of what happened to me. But here is what the records say about what happened that day.

On a grey Sunday afternoon, the 14th of March 2021, many people might have noticed disruptions to various buses in Sheffield, numerous wailing police cars and ambulances, and an air ambulance taking off from St Mary’s Gate with a critically injured person on board.

"Emergency services were called to the incident on the St’ Mary’s Gate South lane, just off London Road, at around 3:05 pm on Sunday (14 March) after reports of a serious road traffic collision."

- The Star News reported

Many of the people who witnessed it probably ignored it and moved on with their day. But every incident we pass on the street has someone at its centre…sometimes untouched, sometimes slightly injured, sometimes fighting for their life, or sometimes ultimately losing that fight.

I had passed by many such scenes in my life.

Until this one.

"Yorkshire Ambulance Service and the air ambulance attended the scene. One man was taken by ambulance to Northern General Hospital with life-threatening injuries."

- South Yorkshire Police (SYP) stated

Many times when we hear the phrase "life-threatening injuries" in the news, we rarely know what kinds of injuries those actually are. In this case, however, I do.

As time passed, my score on the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) kept dropping. By the time the emergency services arrived, I was unable to breathe and had a GCS score of 10 out of 15. When they began CPR, I was already receiving 96-100% oxygen.

"Due to environement and multiple members of public very close to scene, decided to rapidly extricate PT using scoop and not delay transportation to NGH major trauma unit."

- Paramedics statement

Though I woke up in the Royal Hallamshire Hospital (RHH), a building I can still see from my apartment window. I didn’t know that I had first been taken to the Northern General Hospital (NGH). I only learned this later when I read my medical records, which showed that I had been transferred there by air ambulance, probably because of an intracranial haemorrhage.

"The nurse I spoke to told me that he had a pubic rami fracture. After a while, she added that he also had a rib fracture. Then she mentioned multiple facial fractures. It still didn’t seem like a disaster until she told me about the severe brain injury. At that point, I began to wonder if any part of his body had escaped injury."

- my colleague, who first contacted the hospital after hearing about the incident

Usually, your parents or siblings call you when they need to talk. If you miss the call, they leave a message. They might send you a text or a WhatsApp message. If you still don’t respond, they might try reaching you through your social media.

But that day was different.

It was the worst day of my life. My siblings even sent emails asking me to pick up their calls or to contact them. But I wasn’t even aware of myself, let alone able to do anything about it.

I can only imagine how painful it must have been for my family from the moment they received the shocking news that I had been hit by a car while crossing the road.

Then came five days of complete uncertainty: not knowing whether they were going to lose their most loved child…the youngest one…loved by everyone in the family.

"They said they weren’t sure. He might survive… or maybe not. Even if he does, he is likely to lose all memory of his past life."

- my brother, recalling his conversation with the doctors while I was in a coma"

But Alhamdulillah, I woke up. I remembered my past except for the incident itself. I didn’t remember going to Aldi, and I didn’t remember being hit by a Suzuki Jimny at 20-30 mph. The only thing I recalled was the post-coma delirium, which made me believe I had been kidnapped and shot. I was certain I hadn’t been involved in any road accident for weeks until I received my torn clothes from the police and found my Aldi receipt inside them.

I remember standing in front of the hospital bathroom mirror one day, leaning on the washbasin. I could hardly bear to look at my face: one eye completely closed, stitches in my eyebrow and on my head, and a heavy pressure in my frontal lobe. For a moment, I thought: What if I have to live like this for the rest of my life…with a complete ptosis and a limp?

Then I smiled and hobbled back to my bed. Well, you’re not going to be the first person in the world, I thought. But at that moment, I realised how many things we take for granted, things we never truly feel blessed for, until they are gone.

Well, there are millions of stories and countless memories to share, but that would make it very long. It was definitely a hard time. My PhD was always on my mind, even though my consultant and various doctors advised me to take a break because of my brain injury. My parents asked me to abandon everything and come back to them. I couldn’t. I really couldn’t. I knew it was their dream. I knew they were giving up their own plans for me, and I knew it was because of me. I had always been happy that my parents were proud of me throughout my life, among all of my siblings. I had always felt that I never caused them trouble…and then I did this. I felt that I had troubled them more than any of my siblings ever had.

Looking back now, if I were watching myself at that time, I would say that "crazy" isn’t even the right word for pushing the doctors to discharge me in less than a month (well, at that point, I didn’t understand much about the UK health system). I could barely walk a few meters, and I could speak only a couple of words in one breath. Yet, within another month, I returned to my PhD, continued my research, and published two research papers in my first year.

I remember feeling flattered when a colleague told me she was stunned by the guy who came out of a coma and was already publishing research papers…she joked that maybe my brain had been rewired by the injury. Of course, it wasn't me, it was just I had an opportunity…what if I had died that day? That's a legit thought though I always have; What if I had died that day?