Maybury High School

With everything peaceful and ordinary, Josh's first year at high school was a success. However, change was thrust upon him in an abrupt and seemingly untimely way. When you know what pain really is for the first time, this can change a man. Change just sometimes is, and whether it is good or abrupt might be judged 5 years later, but known gradually over a lifetime.

Maybury high school sat in a semi-suburban valley, awash with large trees and defined by curvy and twisting tarmac and concrete. The school bus would fill 30-40 students clad in navy blue jackets, sweaty white shirts, black ties and laced shoes which became trip hazards almost every step. The bus driver was an old man with greasy, disheveled hair and grey rimmed spectacles who meticulously analyzed the 50p fares as they slipped from his large, wrinkly left hand into the leather collection pot.

Josh's first year at school was very exciting for him. His main friends, who were also very close to his other family members, were Jacob, George, Josephine, Sara and Ralph. The 6 of them, all aged 12 or 13 sat together in the form period, and Jacob Jonas and George West would sometimes be finishing off pieces of homework as the register was being called out by the teacher Mrs. Theribule. Mrs. Theribule was a very tall woman, in her mid to late 30's, who was an excellent history teacher. One day Jacob and George were told very strictly that homework should be done at home.

The pair of them had a rivalry when it came to just about anything. They were both physical in stature and argued repetitively over who was to achieve the best grade, win the game in PE, or make the best joke. Sometimes, the arguments would extend to physical violence where the joke gradually faded, and the group conversation would change topic. In comparison, Sara and Ralph were quiet, organized and focused when it came to academic study, and would often laugh and join in the light-hearted jokes at dinner time. Josephine was a tall, beautiful young 13 year old with green eyes and the warmest smile.

One day, Josh had been in an English class prior to a rugby lesson. The English class finished, and Josh walked with Josephine through the precinct area which was clad with concrete and rustic brick. The setting was a large campus of rusty red traditional style buildings, port cabins, sports pitches of many kinds with an ebb and flow of trees and turf to the boundaries of a large playing field. This created the epic setting of Mount Cragmoor College. The two of them separated off before Josh's PE lesson.

The whistle blew, and the oval shaped subject was thrown by the swirling unpleasant gusts through the lifeless hands of 30 or so adolescents, skinny as the skeletal torso in the B3 biology classroom. The rugby lesson carried on through the morning, with never-ending patterns in the soft grass bed. One tall, iron frame amongst the rest, and destiny is a flurry of steps. A side-on rugby tackle executed perfectly, the line defended with shoulder against what was oncoming. The 1 inch studs jammed into the gooey turf, and what felt like a wobbly sensation. He fell.

Softly, scared and staring across the void, a voice said 'Get Sir'. Lying, distorted, and eyes can see different blurred shades of green. It's a strange, relaxing experience when time slows down and can happen when you know your life isn't going to be the same. When you get out of bed, brush your teeth and sit down somewhere, it seems like the day moves like a steady, peaceful and flowing mountain stream.

'Obviously today we will have to cancel PE. These are fairly rare circumstances but can happen. With any sport there are risks and we will have to keep Josh in our thoughts', said Mr. Denbush. He was a medium height teacher, with a black and blue tracksuit and grey hair that was combed over from one side. He thought, with the pupils, that maybe a dislocated knee could be rolled back in again. Unfortunately a broken femur needed much more than that. When Joshua was much older, he was told that this type of injury can be life threatening.

The 28 other students, aside from Jacob and George, were given the rest of the PE lesson as free time. Mr. Denbush asked George to go to the administration department to collect as many blankets as he could carry to keep Josh warm whilst the ambulance was arriving. At first, Joshua thought that the injury wasn't quite as bad as what it eventually turned out to be. Just after the accident happened, he couldn't feel any pain although he couldn't move or feel his right leg.

Jacob and George were both standing over Joshua whilst he lay lifeless in a heap on the grass, kept warm with two large camping blankets. Often in the traumatic events we discover who are true friends are. Jacob said cheerfully, 'You're going miss a lot of school! You're lucky really!'

After what seemed at least one hour of lying in the middle of the cold and soft playing field, Joshua, George and Jacob were all relieved to hear the sound of the oncoming ambulance. Then marching across the green, from the concrete path connection to the car park, were three paramedics with a stretcher trolley and a variety of medical equipment. When Josh was younger, he banged his head on a concrete floor and went to hospital with concussion. However, up until the point of the fracture he cannot claim to have known what real pain is. Whilst the paramedics were moving him onto the stretcher, the loose ligaments were stretched and torn by the dismembered bones. Eventually, after many screams and feeling close to unconsciousness, Joshua required nitrous oxide to enable his transition to the ambulance. When the leg was finally supported, in a normal lying position in its broken state, the seizures began. The fact that the pain endured was minimal, in real terms, is testimony to our health service. Unlike many, Joshua is a very lucky individual.

When lying on the bed in accident and emergency, Josh was told that everything would be back to normal in two or three months. Joshua's parents joined him having followed the ambulance from leaving work. After seeing Joshua, Patricia joked that she had spoken to Alex Jonas and he had incorrectly heard over a phone conversation that 'Joshua had broken his jaw'. It was unfortunate that laughing at this joke only made the pain worse for Joshua. From the accident and emergency room, Josh is then transferred to a children's ward nearby.

It's amazing what the advances in modern healthcare have meant, for what would have been desperate situations. In the cold isolation of two rows of white and grey beds for young patients, Josh could see seven pure, broken and young people awaiting their next contact from their loved ones to come forth, through the wind rippled curtains that were casually tossed and aggressively pulled tort. Immediately to Josh's left was a young girl, and this indicated to Josh the nature of suffering he wasn't experiencing. The girl had burns that spanned the length of her body.

Josh is taken from his hospital bed to the x-ray theatre on a stretcher. Whilst being x-rayed, his thigh bone, broken just above the knee, flails loose whilst the lower leg scrapes the muscles and layers of skin, that form the outer casing of a beige sack of sharp knives. The bones rattled around and pierced the inner wall, like a tunnel being excavated. Josh bore the pain for a month before his operation. Wires and tubes networked the outside of his slender torso, and injected clear gulps of morphine from a clear plastic carton on a stilt.

Grandoaks hospital was like a sprawling estate of yellow brick elevations that were heavily fenestrated. Often the imposing facades, of this almost institutional setting, surrounded soft, square, green open spaces with an array of ponds and outdoor sitting areas. From the hospital bed, to the black-padded wheelchair and then to rubber and titanium crutches, Josh would gaze down the sub-divided rectangular maze of corridors that occasionally narrowed and gently twisted with the shape of the 1930's style building that gradually moved with age.

'Now Josh, the operation will involve re-setting the leg by internal mechanical means, rather than by using a pinned structure from the outside. This means that after the operation, you will have a metal plate and seven screws in your leg which will have to be removed in 2 years time', the surgeon said in his most reassuring tone. At this point, Josh was in a mixed state of exhaustion whilst in the midst of a searching inward journey. For the first time in his life, he was worried about his own future, as he thought that maybe it wasn't going to be what his dreams used to tell him. The searching was through a void within him, which ultimately would make him stronger. I think that this is the journey that we all must take. When we face up to our searching, we discover love in its beautiful fullness. We know the importance of love within the family and friendships. Have you ever found an absence of love in the world, for it perhaps then to be rediscovered?

Before the operation, Josh had a long conversation with his mother. Throughout the course of their lives, these conversations have been crucial for both of them. Sometimes love is a two way conversation, and Josh considers the de-valuing of the mother and son relationship a scandal of modern, society-led and brutal tyranny. A force of giving and receiving is crucial even when love has seemed to diminish in our ever changing, proud and worldly culture.

'Will I ever get out of here?' Josh said, whilst eating his dinner, on a dark mid-December Monday evening.

His mother replied and held his hand lovingly 'Josh, all these professionals know exactly what they are doing. They've said to me that the operation is low risk, and you will be out of here about 3 days after it'.

'But what if something bad happens? What if I can't play sport again?' Josh replied, which caused tears to come to Patricia's eyes. She was a warm, dignified and caring woman, and always had been. She loved her family intensely.

'Joshua, you are so brave! We're so proud of you! Yes, you will get out of here. Although it might not seem like that now, but yes, you will', and she kissed the 12 year old patient on the forehead before leaving.

Hospitals are lonely places, for anybody that has to visit one. Josh would see the warm, loving figures of his mother, father and family members and feel some kind of blessed comfort in a desperate circumstance. Hospitals are also strange places as well really. When people walk through the corridors, which lead to their loved ones, I imagine that the sounds they hear create an almost eerie feel to the walk itself. They walk past many rooms, with many people and the people that are relied on almost every minute. They could be seen as changing places which ebb and hum, before the fluorescent ceiling tile lights create the impression of locations, which could be likened to illuminated indoor cities. Transitional places.

Lying in an unknowing discomfort, Josh would struggle to sleep with the pain before setting off the alarm for the nurse to arrive and sometimes he was in tears. In those hours without contact from his family, this was an introduction to the world we have. A place where love is the force that keeps people going, and most of the time this is the love of a stranger. But in those times with those nearest to him, they all made the most of it as they had to.

Josh was anaesthetized and was awoken to searing discomfort, having been operated on. The operation lasted 3 hours, and Josh initially came out of the operating theatre with several layers of bandage to hold the supported structure of metal and screws together. Whilst in hospital, he was visited by Jacob and George, who offered much needed support.

'Everyone's thinking about you Josh!' said Jacob whilst giving the young man, who was sat up in bed, a card which the whole PE class had signed. He then said 'We all thought it was a really good tackle! At least he didn't score a try!' Over the next few weeks Josh's family and friends were crucial to his recovery, with fun and humour an essential attribute. He would be visited by physiotherapists who would use positivity and strict encouragement to bring Josh onto confident crutch walking. After two weeks of being at home, Josh returned to school.

Like a structure surrounding an old building. Or a dilapidated figure carrying something heavy around that distorts each step. A red leg length cast, modern with a hinge at the knee. Adjusted life for the next 3 years, and dreams put to the backseat with scattered surroundings. Some people don't have the support they need in times like this, in a complex modern high rise and low reaching society. But still Josh had to clamber out of bed, carry the unwieldy loads, make mistake after mistake, learn from them, not learn from them and dream in the daytime of what dreams used to be.

After all this had passed, Josh was able to walk again and he did a lot of swimming for exercise and pleasure. He discovered when he was 16 that he really enjoyed artwork as a hobby, but also for something to concentrate on as a project. In fact he was very good at it. In what turned out to be his final year at school, Joshua was a quiet mid-teen that felt at home with a pencil crayon or paint brush in his hand.

The school he went to was like a labyrinth of bricks and shrubbery and outside the swirling leaves formed a slippery carpet amongst four to six foot high dark queues of young students. From the high seated hockey pitch one can look through the window of an art studio dressed with crinkly drawings and paintings. For inspiration Josh looks out of the glass, whilst compiling in mixed media on thick white A3.

'Your little bits of genius', says the impressed tutor whilst walking through the laminate desks. Sometimes an hour when your mind is taken off the everyday is what you can benefit from.

Students would walk through dark elongated corridors, along dusty chipboard cupboards with thumbed and battered books of all kinds to the large interior assembly room defined by a jet-black painted frame laden with tennis and volley balls. Ambitious young doctors, lawyers, historians and engineers of all kinds listened to readings to stir progressive and expansive minds.

'So today, we're going to talk about good and bad art. A sculpture can be considered by someone appreciating it to portray something positive or negative', Mrs. Jones the tutor, a middle aged woman with wavy black hair and glasses says whilst introducing the lesson. She passes around some photographs of famous paintings, sculptures and installations. "What do you think?'

Josh looked carefully at each picture. It occurred to him that maybe this wasn't a trick question. What you can see in these works would automatically show something good or evil. It's never that simple. Consider the most grotesque image that was designed so that those in appreciation would be aware of an injustice. Or you experience something beautiful that makes you want to go and tell everyone you know.

People have experiences that don't make sense and that defy the laws of physics. The canvas starts out completely blank, and then colour is added. The colours are then mixed together before grainy white separates the faint workings, that irregularly show the patterns which they yearn for. After the lines are dramatically sharpened, one stands back and sees that the finished article is small compared to the room, walls and ceiling. Joshua and his friends can't fill in the gaps, on a cold November morning.

Joshua's bedroom was quite small, but big enough to feel homely and he spent a lot of time in there just by himself. The Smith family lived in a semi-detached house built around 1900, in a suburban area close to the centre of Maybury town. Josh wakes up and looks through the flowery patterns of the silver net curtains out onto the streets with swirling leaves deflecting up from the imprinted pavement borders. He could see no colour other than black and grey on the queues of parked car encasements which lined up on both sides.

'I think we'll go for a day out', Josh's father Jonathon says whilst slurping a coffee and flicking through the morning paper, 'It's a cold day but good for a walk in the fresh air'. This was at a time when Jonathon was right in concluding that occupation and change of activity was important in the life of the young teenager. So they set off.

With boots, thick socks and padded coats the mud from the car park splashed up and painted the soft cladding. Purple depressions under each eye lid as a forlorn young figure is gradually awoken by the harsh breeze that swept through the shades of green surroundings. Through curved steel gates, that marked leaf covered limestone and barely visible newly trodden paths on rugged ground, the walk continued. Then up towards the imposing facades of an old king's hall which looked out across the ancient and majestic fields.

Past the ancient ruins, adjoining the varied colour of the mazy house gardens, the path leads to a boundary gate and then divides a large open expanse of ground.

In the distance, Josh sees two figures on a fairly straight and undulating route towards deep forest. Running towards them, and then as he got closer he recognized a woman with a padded white coat and silvery hair as someone that he once loved. He kept running on the rough stony limestone ground, until he was close enough to talk, and then the woman was someone else who he did not recognize.

Josh's mind was consumed with worry and his head was spinning whilst sensations of expansion, contraction and relief were felt throughout the course of a typical day. Over the course of his life this would eventually settle down, but would often be like waves which he had no control over. He had a constant strange sensation around his torso, which would be calmed and soothed. The day went on, and in the evening Josh received a phone call and was told 'If you keep your spirits high you can get through anything', by Sophie Jonas in a broad north-west accent. He remembers those words to this very day.