August 13th 2006

Today was supposed to be fantastic, I woke at 7am as I was due in Truro by 9:15am to catch a train to London. The day had been planned months in advance as my friend Jo and myself had saved up to see Madonna at Wembley (and at the prices she was charging for tickets we were determined to enjoy ourselves!!) The concert was fantastic and I phoned my Mum halfway through to let her hear the atmosphere, I didn't get a reply so thought she must have gone to bed and thought no more about it. We went back to the hotel after the concert and I left my phone in our room as I had no need of it at 12 o'clock and knew that no-one would be contacting me, we went down to the bar and got slightly sozzled until 2am. When we got back to the hotel room I went to the bathroom and heard Jo shout that my mobile was ringing, I replied "Oh yeah very funny" and she said "No, really Lee it is, hurry up" I picked the phone up and saw that it was displaying my home phone number, so sat down and answered it, it was my partner saying that there had been an accident. I immediately thought that it was our whippet who has a habit of escaping at night and said out loud "it's Eadie isn't it?" He then went on to tell me that it was Steven, my 20 year old brother, who had been involved in a car accident and it wasn't looking good at all. They say that shock sobers you up and I can definately say that this is true as within a few seconds I went into autopilot phoning hospitals and trying to get hold of relatives. I managed to get in contact with the Sister at the hospital who told me that Steven was in a very bad way and to expect the worse, he was being transferred to a specialist hospital but the chances of him surviving his injuries were very slim. My Mum had just left the hospital so I had to wait another 30 minutes before I could contact her at home, she only had my Aunt for support as my Dad works on the gas rigs and I was 300 miles away in London. When I did manage to get hold of her she was in a state of shock and could only manage to tell me that there had been a fatality and Steven was critical with brain injuries. I wanted to get home that night but had to wait until 1 o'clock the next day before our train left Paddington station, I planned to get off at Plymouth at 4pm and rush straight up to Derriford hospital where he had been successfully transferred. My Dad was taken off his rig at first light by private helicopter and managed to get to the hospital by 1pm. For a day that had started off full of happiness and anticipation it had ended in the worst possible way and turned into a day I will never forget.