Vulnerability. We are all vulnerable. Whether young or old we are in peril and may be struck down at any time. The young, especially, refuse to believe this.

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It cannot happen to me – this is the widespread notion, bolstered in the western world by an unsubstantiated belief in the transcendent power of the human will. Nevertheless, at heart we know ourselves to be vulnerable from the cot to the grave. So we set out to obliterate the truth, t0 place a stranglehold on reality, aided by the modern macho image which suggests that it is case-hardening to drink and drive, to drive without due regard for others, to lash out with fist and tongue in a show of unrepressed violence.

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I was one who was stupid enough to think it could not happen to me. Then suddenly it did.

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While cycling into town one chilly Sunday afternoon at the start of winter, I had come to a near halt at a crossroads, the traffic lights ahead having turned to red. There was little traffic about and a few pedestrians. But then there came a prolonged screech of tyres failing to grip, indicative of a car coming up fast, directly behind. Oh surely not in the same lane as me, not coming up fast on me. The screeching grew in volume. Then crash! An almighty jolt from the rear sent me hurtling onward out of control, then heavily down. Oh God!

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From the rough tarmac road I turned and said, to the indistinct form of a man standing beside a car in the background, “Why did you have to do this to me?”

I don’t know how long I lay in the roadway unattended, but at one stage I tried to struggle to my feet, only to be restrained by a young woman who had come to my aid, the first person to do so. I heard a voice say “Send for an ambulance”. This was the first intimation as to the seriousness of the occasion. I saw, as through a mist, the face of a woman who knelt beside me, and I gathered afterwards that I had been able to provide, falteringly, my name and address before losing consciousness.

Later I was told that the ambulance was late in arriving, the driver having taken a wrong turning. That would have to happen to me, not the luckiest of persons.

The next thing I knew, a uniformed nurse was arranging a tinsel-like wrapping round my frozen body while I shivered uncontrollably. Whether this was before or after surgery, I could not tell.

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My first clear recollection is of lying abed in a ward with a doctor sat beside me. Without preamble he said, “I have some bad news for you” It transpired that a hip had been broken and an elbow, and these had been operated on. “Enough for the time being”. My shattered shoulder could wait until later, all the damage being to one side, my left. Also, there were numerous abrasions and bruises.

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I was grateful for the doctor’s forthrightness. It was better for me not to suffer any delusions. Even so, his words made no immediate impact. I was dressed in a suit of pyjamas, not my own, for I had not worn such things in years. My left arm was in a sling, lying on top of the bedsheets. My left leg was numb and could not be moved. My shoulder lay out of sight, and the better so.

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It took fully three weeks for the enormity of my injuries to sink into my tired brain. Meanwhile I lived as in another world, not so much of pain as of sheer physical discomfort. Although the damage to my hip was severest of all in terms of lasting effect, my elbow was in poor shape, so much so as to necessitate a second operation. Even so, my shoulder gave rise to most distress whenever I caught sight of it inadvertently, reflected in a mirror. It seemed to epitomise a lost cause, for hitherto I had prided myself with possession of a body unmarred by a single breakage. Now there were many and it hurt me to feel that a lifelong regimen of strenuous exercises had been proved unavailing. The blow was only softened by medical and nursing staff’s remarks upon the obvious care devoted to my health, the general consensus being that I was fitter than most men younger than ten or twenty years. Nevertheless my shoulder vexed me, depicting as it did a fractured body if not a broken spirit.

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It was four weeks before anything like a normal pattern of sleep was restored. It was five weeks before my bowels functioned of their own accord; I thought they had gone on strike forever. It took longer for my memory to be restored. It had taken a severe battering in its involvement with the subduing of unendurable pain. The shock to my system had been so great that tufts of hair at the front, above my forehead, had turned white. What once had been black had turned beyond grey to white.

Quite honestly, I would rather have been run through and through with sword or bayonet by a wartime enemy than be mangled and left for dead by a peacetime motorist who stood in the background, unmoving, gazing down at me without coming to my aid or ever once visiting me in hospital.

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I am left with mixed feelings about war and peace. The bloodshed of war is no worse than the carnage on the roads. And what is to come of us if war should be outlawed and we are left to the manoeuvrings of power-besotted politicians and business tycoons who show no more regard for us than did the warlords of old, hastening the masses to their doom by means of sharepushing and other contrivances without ever leaving the plush comfort of their boardrooms.

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Of visitors I had only one during the first week or two. She was Vivienne, unknown to me until then. She came breezing in, smartly dressed and full of vivacity, and announced herself. To my astonishment she was the young woman who had been first to come to my assistance as I lay helpless in the roadway on that fateful day. She had gifts of flowers and homemade cookies, and thereafter came twice weekly despite work and other commitments.

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In the course of time we talked about all sorts of things, but she did not probe into my past. She accepted me as I was. We touched upon many topics, but not religion. As week succeeded week, I expected her to start proselytising, but no, she did not do so. It would have been disappointing if she had. I wanted her continuing good deeds to spring from the heart, without thought of accountable gain. And so it proved. She was Christian sure enough, thoroughly Christian, but it was not until she said grace before my first meal at her home that her Catholic leanings became known. Only a Christian would have come to my aid as she did on that dreadful day and go on rendering assistance. Although not a churchgoer myself, I like others to be so. This may be a selfish attitude, but I like to think not, because although I am not a worshipper indoors, I do a lot of communing with nature in my outdoor cathedral which is all the more dear to me due to the fact that it demands nothing for its upkeep except a give and take reciprocity. It rewards a true humility to an extent commensurate with the sense of oneness which it invokes.