The Pain

He couldn’t remember when he first became aware of his ‘gift’. Before he realised others were commenting on it. His parents grew quite used to their friends saying things such as ‘isn’t it odd how he never falls over’ when he was just a toddler. For him it was simple, he could anticipate pain, he could see what was going to hurt him.

So even when learning to walk he would see himself about to fall over and would stop to steady himself before it happened. At school he was able to avoid playground clashes by knowing when to walk away. He excelled at rubgy with his teachers thinking he was great at the sport. He wasn’t, he just knew when a tackle was about to hurt him. He understood he had appendicitis before it started and mimicked the symptoms to make sure he was at the hospital before it started.

As he grew older and began to care more about others and less totally about himself his ‘gift’ meant he could feel the pain loved ones were about to experience. However this started the sense that his ‘gift’ was in fact a curse, what good was feeling pain if you could do nothing to prevent it. He experienced his Father’s fatal heart attack half an hour before it happened but being before the time of mobile phones he was unable to do a thing to prevent it. He bore his Mother’s pains of sadness inside him for years.

Later the ‘gift’ began to presage major disasters. He saw the planes, the bombs, the natural disasters with a helplessness that slowly increased the sense of uselessness.

But then, the day. Waiting in the pub for his girlfriend and toying with a pint in anticipation of a wonderful night ahead he felt it. He felt the wracking pain of a car crash, his girlfriend’s Toyota crushed by a lorry, he felt her life ebbing away. This time he could do something. He picked up his mobile and called to warn her.

Driving along the motorway she heard her phone go from her handbag, she looked down to reach across taking her eyes off the road for a moment.