BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS JENNIFER BENN

Fragility

My mother had a fall. Sitting in a hot, stuffy room, she fainted.

No sinister explanation. A small, crowded room; hot and stuffy. It happens.

But as she fainted she slid from her chair and broke a bone high up in her neck –the odontoid peg, as I later learned to call it.

Ambulance, A&E, hospital ward –the whole shebang. A surgical collar: eight to twelve weeks.

She listens as her sentence is handed down. Doctors’ solemn warnings hang in air like a sword of Damocles.

Her former independence glimmers in the distance – a faltering beacon beckoning her. Weeks pass. Her great-granddaughter is born.

Another fragile neck: old bones grown brittle; young bones still fontanelle-soft.

A strange design flaw: to put our most important part atop this delicate stalk.

COLIN WADEY Moving

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