jmgoyder

I have just remembered a weird coincidence in light of this blog; the first ever short story I wrote as an adult was entitled ‘Wings’. It wasn’t published for years and it wasn’t published with that title, however its wings motif was, and still is, a powerful memory for me, an etching in my psyche.

I was a new nurse and ‘Simeon’ was the patient for whom I was primarily in charge when I was on duty. It was a hostel for multiply disabled people, primarily children. I was 23 and so was Sim but he was the size of a small, skinny child; he looked about eight years of age.

Sim’s diagnosis was complicated. He was deaf, mute, epileptic, quadriplegic and he had a severe deformity of the spine. Having never received adequate physiotherapy, his body had contractured into the fixed crookedness of a series of triangles. He looked a bit like a mathematical model; his elbows and knees were bent inwards and were fixed that way. It would have been impossible to straighten any of his limbs without breaking them, so the only way to keep him comfortable was to position him on a beanbag.

Simeon did not look like a human being; he looked like a broken bird.

There is more to tell about Simeon but I will save that for another post. It has been strange to all of a sudden remember him – just today. He died five years ago.