Posted on 04/01/2007 9:17:35 AM PDT by veronica
It was only a second, no more than a click of the fingers. In that time the lives of all of us in that packed Tube carriage were changed for ever.
It was as dramatic as being on a sunny beach one moment and finding yourself in the bowels of hell the next.
In the aftermath of the blast, I drifted in and out of consciousness. The air was acrid, saturated with dust and the stench of burning electrical cables in the twisted metal shell that had been the carriage. People screamed.
Then, after time, a man held my hand. He didn’t let go. I was so cold, but I could feel his warmth. He knew my name and said:
‘Stay with us, Gill. Come on, love. Come on, Gill, you have got to stay with us.’
His hand kept me connected, kept me alive.
I had only just made it on to that Piccadilly Line train on the morning of July 7, 2005. I was tired, having slept only fitfully.
My boyfriend Joe and I had argued the night before and, while it seems silly now, at the time I questioned whether we should go ahead with our plans to marry that December.
I had met Joe Kerr, a lecturer at the Royal College of Art, seven years earlier. At the time I was publisher of Blueprint, the architecture magazine, for which he wrote articles.
I had arrived in Britain in 1992 from my native Australia and now, aged 37, I had become a head of department at the Design Council.
I started banging things around in our bedroom – shoes, bags, anything that might annoy Joe.
After much deliberation, I grabbed my jeans and put on my favourite white, Fifties-style, patent-leather shoes.
By now I was running late for an appointment. I threw on a white T-shirt, a suit jacket and a scarf.
It’s funny how all these decisions were adding to the minutes that ensured my place in ‘that’ carriage. I also changed my route because there were problems on my regular line, so I went in through King’s Cross to make up time.
I ended up sandwiched between tall people on a packed train, which exasperated me. At five foot nothing, I feel strangers breathing on my forehead.
Then it happened. I have no memory of the actual blast, just the feeling I was falling into blackness. My body was tumbling in slow motion while thousands of tiny thoughts raced around in my mind.
I was certain I was having a heart attack. My fellow passengers were screaming at me, horrified I was dying. Something dreadful had happened.
I could hear someone saying: ‘Stay calm.’ Still the screaming continued. What had happened? Where did the train go?
A man reached down. I could see his arms coming towards me. I stretched out to him.
‘I need to stand up. Please help me up.’
The man bent down. I was slipping away. I couldn’t feel my legs.
The blackness lifted, replaced by shades of grey. A security or emergency light in the tunnel shone through what had been carriage windows, lighting my legs.
They resembled an anatomical drawing. I could see muscle, tendons, bone. And attached to these were my feet – still perfect, but dangling, as though they had been left hanging by a thread.
My dear God, my legs are gone.
The emergency services will be here soon, I thought. I need to be alert, to let them know that I am here, that I am still alive.
They will come with a torch . . . they will come. But did they know we were there? What if everyone above ground had no idea that we were trapped, waiting?
I couldn’t panic – I had to trust that they would know.
Was that a light? They were there – it was them. It had to be. I could just about wave and say:
‘My name is Gill, my name is Gill.’
And then I heard two of the best words I could ever hear – Priority One – and a tag was placed on me. I was a Priority One.
Joe was the first to be told my legs had been amputated. Only recently he told me that one of his strongest fears was of the loss of limbs.
Now, as he approached the intensive care unit at St Thomas’ Hospital, Central London, he was filled with visions of horror.
My face was shapeless. Angry dark bruises covered my usually pale, flawless skin, but he knew it was me. Then he saw.
The sheet covering me came to an abrupt end, simply falling flat on to the bed, highlighting the inescapable facts of the briefing he had just been given. There it was – the end of me.
Every part of his body was screaming with pain and despair. ‘My God, please,’ Joe was asking for strength, not only for himself but also for me.
Then a calm washed over him. Fear changed to profound revelation. It didn’t matter how horrific my injuries were or that I might be facing a life of physical and mental disability.
I was still his Gill, his lovely Gill. He would do whatever it took. He would spoon-feed me and care for me around the clock if that’s what I needed.
All that mattered was that I should live, that I should come back to him, in whatever form.
His every action and every conversation from this point on were with one intention: to save me, to keep me alive, to keep me fighting.
Late on Friday night, the day after the bombings, I returned to consciousness, in a panic. Every nurse and doctor there knew what I was asking – ‘Are my legs still there?’
I remember a soft voice telling me:
‘I’m sorry, Gill. They couldn’t be saved. I’m so sorry.’
I was hysterical. I didn’t want to breathe through a tube and there were wires all over me –I didn’t want them either.
By Monday, my fifth day in intensive care, I was calmer. Joe explained what had happened to me between King’s Cross and Russell Square stations.
‘Darling, my darling Gill, you were in a bomb, a terrorist attack.’
I wanted to pretend I hadn’t heard.
I couldn’t speak because of the tubes in my mouth, I couldn’t run as I had no legs below the knees and I couldn’t hide. All I could do was squeeze Joe’s hand.
He was still concerned I could have brain damage. I had suffered two heart attacks and been starved of oxygen for extended periods.
By Tuesday I was free of one major tube, allowing me to whisper. Father Kit, the priest with whom we had discussed our wedding plans, visited.
When he came close I sat up, stared him in the eye and declared:
‘I will walk down the aisle in December, Father, you can be sure of that.’
I was now able to converse with the nurses, the doctors, even share a joke. And I was proving to Joe and to my older brother Graham, who had arrived from Australia, that I was not brain-damaged. I was coming back.
I wanted to know every detail about the bombing –to see who did this, his name, his face. Joe showed me the newspapers.
I stared at the picture of the suicide bombers. There was 19-year-old Germaine Lindsay, the boy who bombed my carriage and killed 26 people. I had been standing close to his explosive-laden rucksack.
My physiotherapy began almost immediately: I had to sit up in bed and practise catching a ball of bandages, to my brother’s amusement.
Graham likes to tell people how bad I am at sport, but to his astonishment I was able to catch. It was amazing – I couldn’t do it before.
I became desperate to see the outside world again, but first I needed something done.
I wanted to let the medical team know who I really was – a young, sassy, fashionable woman who would never dream of leaving the house without lipstick, or worse, with filthy hair.
A visit to the hospital hairdressers was duly arranged. I knew I was turning the corner of recovery because these things were starting to matter to me.
Before I knew it, we were outside with the sun on my face. Joe bent down, squeezed my hand and gave me my first coffee since the bombing.
After two weeks in intensive care, I was transferred to the vascular ward, where I would be with other patients who had lost limbs. There I enjoyed another first: a shower without legs.
I was desperate to wash away the residue of the bomb and with it the memories of being trapped underground.
The shower, however, was no easy task to accomplish: I had to be sat in a plastic chair in the cubicle while Karen, my nurse, turned on the taps.
It was another moment marking the beginning of a new normality.
There were more. On Wednesdays, Dr Luff, the rehabilitation consultant, did his ward rounds. He was the first person to raise the possibility that I might be able to walk, when Joe and I had met him in intensive care.
We thought I’d be confined to a wheelchair, so what Dr Luff said was a revelation. He told me:
‘You will walk out of here, Gill, I guarantee you that.’ Who was I to argue?
On hearing this extraordinary news, an idea was planted in Joe’s mind: maybe our wedding plans wouldn’t have to be abandoned, perhaps we might not even have to postpone the date we had set, five months away.
My recovery continued. I was delighted when my catheter bag was removed but I soon vowed never to use a commode.
Instead Joe picked me up and carried me to the lavatory. The next area of my privacy to reclaim was the shower; again Joe helped me.
I could never have foreseen a time when I would share the most intimate areas of my life with him. We were close, yes, but this was different.
This was a degree of unity I never imagined possible, but I never had to doubt Joe’s commitment or his love.
Less than a month after the bombings, I started gym sessions, beginning with exercises to strengthen my core muscles: balancing on a large ball, push-ups, all with the encouragement of Graham.
My physio Matt asked what I wanted to call my stumps. I decided on Stumpingtons and imagined them as twin boys, born poorly but with an optimistic prognosis.
Matt and his colleague Nichola started making each training session a little harder. I had never had this intense relationship with my body before.
I watched it adapt and repair. I watched my skin as the wounds healed: these were my own miracles.
By mid-August I was ready to have my left prosthetic leg fitted. Such a momentous event demanded the right footwear.
I put on a black and white striped patent shoe, one of my ‘Rebel Without A Cause’ numbers like the white patent ones I was wearing on the Tube that morning.
Slowly I rose from my chair watched by Joe and Graham. This would be the first time that I had been upright since July 7.
‘Joe, Joe, look at me – I’m standing, I’m standing.’
I couldn’t hold back the tears. I was like a newborn foal taking its first steps. I hugged him – a proper hug, not a wheelchair hug.
I was taller now than my natural height. I remembered Dr Luff measuring my arm span to gauge my original height; I had stretched my fingers, trying to distort the measurements.
‘Will I be able to return to my career as a supermodel?’ I had asked. ‘I was nearing five foot nine.’ But Joe had intervened:
‘Now Gill, tell the truth, you weren’t much over five foot, were you?’ Then I leant over to Dr Luff, saying quietly:
‘Actually I was hoping to be a little taller, maybe two inches?’
btt
Thank you for posting this. Too bad some politicians can't relate to this courage.
My son was in London that day. He should have been on that same train, but he over slept and was still standing in the Gloucester Rd Station when the explosion occurred. I was in Arizona at the time and woke up in the middle of the night and for some reason, went straight to the computer and read of the explosion. I grabbed my cell phone and reached him in the train station, he didn't yet know what had happened. He just knew that the trains weren't running.
bttt
Your son is blessed.
Aussie Aussie Aussie!
<listening>
Stunned. Astonished. Well done, Gill!
I remember you posting that day about your son in London. Praise God, he was spared!
It makes me want to throw a call into the White House tomorrow and demand we start bombing Iran.
L
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