One cold February day, too many moons ago, I rushed out of a Cork shopping centre and took a sharp corner. Hitting the ground, I screamed, wailed, “My ankle, I can’t move. I can’t move.” I looked down, at my high healed, black boot. My foot throbbed and flopped, unmovable underneath.

A blanket arrived. Then sweet, milky tea. On my first sip, another took it away, “No, no, she can’t drink, they may have to operate.” Tears of embarrassment and excruciating pain. I tried to move, I was expected on the other side of Cork, and I was already late. My head spun, blurred. I awoke to a crowd flocking over me, as a uniformed man, gently removed my footwear. Panicking, I screamed. From the stretcher to the ambulance became a haze. I giggled as I covered my nose and mouth with a black headed snake. The gas was good. I was dragged on, a moving bed, then suddenly left in a half-curtained unit. Soon people and pain returned. I screamed with every touch.

Injected, laced in morphine, I soared. My eyes followed screeching, red swirling, alarms, as mangled bodies paraded before me. One, not moving, was left at the foot of my bed. His arm ripped out of place, a white sheet swamped with blood, draped to the ground into black puddle. Could he be dead? Suddenly a flutter of blue medical coats and he was gone. Rushing unforms pushed new bodies, through his blood. In time the gentle throbbing intensified, but all was quiet. I watched a small woman, create the stink of disinfectant. Yellow water swirled and consumed their remains, as I began to yelp.

Reinjected, I found myself having to pee into a cold, silver potty, which was slid beneath me.

In the early hours of the morning, my waling screams were reprimanded. I saw, I heard, arrays of voices, faces, strangers. Injected, I tried to turn away, but I still did not settle. Tablets and further doses of morphine came. Finally, someone noticed, I kicked off my covers and revealed my pain. I’d reacted to the metal plate. My leg swollen up larger than the cast. It bulged and throbbed as the blood blocked. My purple swollen toes pulsated and lapped over the plaster. I was rushed back to theatre and they it cut from me.

The next morning, with a new far to lose plaster, I felt so much better. Please to hear my friends had already found me and visitors would come that afternoon. I washed my hair in a sink, but soon they whipped me off, back to theatre. It was all too much, a new sense of fear rose from within me, as they again cut and replaced my cast. On my return to the ward I felt exhorted and finally slept. I was woken by nurses pulling me into a sitting position to eat. I began to notice the surrounding women. There was a friendly repour going on as we sat, in our beds, did nothing and got served. When I realised, I was being ignored, I beamed at my surrounding ward mates, but they only frowned back. Gradually one after another informed me how nobody had slept, because I’d arrived in the middle of the night and screamed for hours.

My friends arrived, and my ward mates told them the tales, but we quietly smiled back as we ate chocolates and fruit, then giggled some more. My car got driven to safety, away from the expensive shopping centre, but to our surprised all the parking charges were waivered, my friend laughed, “You must have screamed that place down too.”

Since the accident I had not seen my boyfriend, Steve. He’d got a promotion and moved off to Dublin. He returned when a tall, young Irish solicitor, Phillip Coffey, was by my bedside. Phillip’s brown, wild hair and green eyes accompanied a coarse Kerry accent and that soft fallow skin, had already mesmerized me. Together they’d walked out of one of my romantic novels. Or better still, I had Patrick Kavanagh standing behind his Tarry Flynn, in the ballrooms of romance. I was still high on morphine, but not enough to realise that there was one too many profoundly handsome Irish men by my bedside. There wasn’t a woman in the room who wasn’t looking our way. Embarrassed, I sent my boyfriend off on chores. Phillip and I had taking to do. I obediently told him everything, to the exact spot that I had fell.

As time passed, I met Phillip a few times, always professionally, but that wild-eyed Kerry man delighted me. He explained the gradient on that corner was too steep, so we had a case. I was in my early twenties, independent and hard-working, but alone. My family lived across the sea and my boyfriend in Dublin. It was all too much. It was a nasty break I could not drive or work. I could not do anything, but my world depended on my hard earned money. Within weeks I found myself packing up and returning to England.

I kept up some delightful correspondence, but despite both men telling me I must. I did not return to the life that failed me.

The owners of the shopping centre were keen to settle. Steve told me they’d blocked off that sharp corner, by placing heavy concrete plant pots there. I was offered three thousand pounds for my pains, but I needed to return, to agree. Over a year passed. Phillip phoned and we arranged a date in September, but then I cancelled, and a court date was set. They offered six thousand to settle. Phillip said, “That’s double, any court would pay for an ankle. You must come.”

In the meantime, my parents returned to Ireland and expected all of us, home for Christmas. I wrote to Phillip. He asked me to meet him, inside Cork Court House. I arrived late, straight off an all-night ferry.

Phillip’s smile, he was deep in debate. He ushered me over to the other side of the room and instantly offered eight thousand pounds. I laughed and peeped across. I saw them glaring back. We looked at them. He said, “Wait a minute,” and wandered off. He returned, “Ten.”

My jaw dropped, I smiled across at them. We turned away and I said, “Ten thousand pounds, just like that?” then I joked, “Can’t we make it twelve?” To my horror, he walked back over.

He paused, “They don’t want it to go to court. They’re worried about the bad publicity. They have another case going on. They need you to go away quietly.”

On the 8th January 1996, I went to Phillip’s office and picked up a check for £20,000 pounds.