IT'S not easy to pick the most harrowing part of Curtis Granger's tragic tale, writes Lee Marlow.
It could be the night it all happened. Friday, July 20, 2012. 23-year-old Curtis, an unsuspecting young man on a night out with a mate, punched to the floor by a lad he didn't know just because the lad "didn't like his jacket."
Or the phone call to his mum in the early hours of Saturday morning. "Your son is in accident and emergency, Mrs Dickens. You better come now."
It could be the grim warning of the doctor a week later. A different hospital but the same prognosis. A crowd of concerned specialists, all thinking the same thing - that Curtis Granger wouldn't survive the next 24 hours.
A succession of family and friends lined up to pay their last respects, but Curtis clung on, not just for one day, but the next day and the one after that. He won't survive the next 24 hours, the doctors said, shifting the goalposts, re-siting the misery. And yet he did. He always did.
But that's not the worst part, says Vanessa Dickens, Curtis's mum. She knows the worst part. It happens every time she visits him.
Curtis lives in a hospice in Northampton. His needs round the clock care. Curtis can't walk. He struggles to talk. He is incontinent. His skull has been cut away and rebuilt in titanium.
"I sit with him," says Vanessa, "and I talk, I tell him what's been going on at home, what's been happening in the news and he looks at me and he says:
"Where am I?
"Why am I here?"
The same two questions.
And they tell him.
"Someone hit you, Curtis.
You have a head injury.
You're in a care facility in Northampton."
And Curtis sighs, as if he can't quite understand how unfair it all is or why this had to happen to him.
"You can see it's such a shock for him," says his sister Elle Granger, 22, "and then, gradually, he seems to accept it."
He'll look round. At the thin NHS curtains and the stark, flourescent lighting, the busy nurses and the beeping and the ever present smell of hospital food.
And his face falls. Every time, his face falls.
It lasts for a minute, maybe two. This is who he is. This is his life.
And then it's gone. You can almost see it vanish. Gone, like everything else, except for the questions. The same two questions, over and over again:
"Where am I?
Why am I here?"
They never disappear.
"If I sit with him for three or four hours he must ask me those questions a thousand times," says Vanessa.
And she tells him, every time.
And Curtis forgets.
On it goes. Hour after hour, day after day.
This is not just Curtis's life. It's his family's life.
You imagine how that feels, says Vanessa Dickens. Imagine that every time you go to see your son, your innocent, beautiful son, in a hospital bed, mentally and physically disabled by a lad he had never met merely because he didn't like his jacket, because of a stupid fight he didn't encourage or take part in.
Imagine that.
And then, when you do, see if a small part of your heart doesn't just break inside.
CURTIS GRANGER was a quiet boy. Quiet at school. Unsuspecting. If you didn't know him, you wouldn't have noticed him.
Curtis had a small band of friends but no enemies. No-one disliked him because there was nothing to dislike.
He went to South Wigston High School and Guthlaxton, doing well in his GCSEs and staying on into the sixth form. And then Curtis was diagnosed with Crohn's, a crippling condition of the digestive system.
It was bad; so bad that Curtis was in and out of hospital and his studies suffered. He quit the sixth form and gave up on his A Levels.
It took a long time to get better, says mum, Vanessa.
Curtis was always thin but he went down to eight stone. "There was nothing on him," says Vanessa. "We were worried about him."
It took the best part of two years for the Crohn's to clear. When it finally did, Curtis began to piece his life back together
He got a job in the accounts department at Cromwell Tools in Wigston. He made new friends, who all liked going out, and they dragged Curtis out, too, which Curtis loved. It was the making of him, says Vanessa.
He started spending his money on designer clothes – "£90 for a t-shirt," says Vanessa, "I was scared to wash it" – and nights out in Leicester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Manchester.
Finally, it all seemed to be coming together for Curtis. A new job, new friends. A growing sense of independence. "He was coming out of his shell," says Vanessa. It had taken a long time. But it was heartening, she says.
On Friday, July 20, 2012, Curtis went out for a night in Leicester. A few pubs; drinking, dancing, music, laughter. Maybe a club, and then home, a bit worse for wear, probably. That's what usually happened.
Not that night. It was the night Curtis's life-changed forever.
THE FIRST part of that Friday night was spent at Bistro Live in Charles Street, eating and drinking and dancing with his work colleagues.
Curtis left shortly before 11pm to meet up with some old school friends who were heading to Republic nightclub, off Church Gate.
What happened next is still not entirely clear. Curtis and his friend, Nathan, left Republic at 3.30am. They walked along Church Gate, up to McDonalds. A group of five or six lads followed them.
There was a stand-off, a bit of jeering and finger-pointing. You could see that much on the grainy CCTV coverage. Apparently, the group took exception to Curtis's smart, suit jacket. They called him a 'geek'.
Curtis and Nathan walked on. Nathan went inside McDonalds, Curtis stayed outside, on his phone.
A few yards away, on the pavement outside Irish Menswear in High Street, a fight broke out between some other lads. CCTV cameras which had been following Curtis and the trailing group of lads swirled round to hone in on the fight.
"By the time the cameras came back to Curtis, he was on the floor," says Vanessa.
The row had escalated. It went from Curtis's jacket to the group wanting his iPhone. There was a scuffle. It would be wrong to call it a fight. A fight requires two willing participants. Curtis had never had a fight in his life.
Joshua Smith was a 19-year-old kid from Beaumont Leys on a night out with his mates. The police don't know if he started the taunts about Curtis's jacket, or if he tried to take his phone.
What they do know is that, for whatever reason, Smith punched Curtis in the face.
When the case came to court, Smith's solicitor insisted her client had punched Curtis just once. Curtis's family say they still find that hard to believe.
Smith and his friends ran off. Police caught them and Smith was arrested that night. Following his arrest, Smith texted his friend. "I punched him so hard I knocked him unconscious, no word of a lie!"
Vanessa, Elle and other members of their family went to court. "I felt like I had to be there, I had to see him," says Vanessa. "But I found it hard to look at him.
"His defence lawyer claimed he was sorry for what he'd done but he showed us no signs of remorse. He didn't apologise for the devastation he had caused us. There was nothing."
Smith pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm. He was given credit by the judge for his early guilty plea and sentenced to two years in detention.
He served six months.
By the time Smith was a free man, Curtis had suffered a stroke. His skull had been removed. He was still in a coma.
THEY TRANSFERRED Curtis from the Leicester Royal Infirmary to the Queens Medical Hospital in Nottingham, which specialises in traumatic brain injuries.
For a week, Curtis was in excruciating pain. "He was conscious. He knew what had happened. They gave him the strongest pain killers they had but he was vomiting constantly and crying in pain."
A week after the original incident, Curtis had three seizures. His brain swelled. They could see from the scans and x-rays that his brain was swelling, says Vanessa. They thought it would go down.
It didn't.
Curtis had three seizures. On the operating table, he suffered a stroke. For seven hours, some of the best surgeons in Britain battled to save his life. Curtis's brain was so engorged, they had to cut away his forehead to relieve the pressure.
For a week, Curtis clung to life. Three times in three days, doctors predicted he wouldn't see out the night, that death was imminent. Each time, he defied them.
His internal organs were failing. His liver was struggling. His lungs couldn't cope. His heart was barely beating. This became their biggest concern. They wondered how he could go on.
A queue of family and friends lined up at the hospital, waiting to pay their final respects.
But Curtis's heart wouldn't stop. His spirit wouldn't give in. Curtis refused to die.
Curtis didn't wake up again for another seven months.
HE WAS transferred from one hospital to another. Unaware of each move, each change in circumstances, Curtis lay in a deep coma.
His family followed him around hospitals and hospices across the East Midlands, silently hoping for the best but fearing the worst.
"We came in to see him one day and the doctor sat us down and said he thought Curtis would never wake up," says Vanessa.
And when they look back now, they wonder how they got through it all – the weeks and the months, sitting by his bed, watching his motionless face, wondering when their son, their brother, this decent man who had done nothing wrong, would die.
But Curtis wouldn't die.
Curtis woke up. He opened his eyes, scanned the room, said then nothing, closed his eyes again. Slowly, Curtis emerged from his coma.
He recognised his family immediately. Mum, dad, sister Elle. He didn't need to be told. He knew. They were overjoyed.
"He can remember things from years ago, when he was a boy, things we did as a family - but his memory seems to stop around 2011" says Vanessa.
2011, a year before the incident. He doesn't remember the night it happened. That's no bad thing, really, says Vanessa. They're relieved about that.
CURTIS HAS made progress since then. He's in a wheelchair but he's out of bed. He can feed himself. The feeling in his left hand, his left side, is returning. He can do things, and that's something
"The damage he suffered is in the front of his brain," says Vanessa. "His short term memory is non-existent. He can't watch a film, or the TV. He can't retain it. A conversation is difficult.
"I can sit with him - talking, chatting, trying to entertain him - and then I can leave the room, go to the toilet or fetch a drink, and he thinks I've just arrived."
Will he improve?
Who knows? They don't. They wish they did but even the experts shrug their shoulders and look bemused.
"They've told us that he will always need some form of care but I'd like to bring him home," says Vanessa. "That's my ambition."
They try not to hope any more. It's the hope that kills you. So they just exist, taking one day at a time. "Hoping for the best and keeping positive and determined and all that - it all sounds very nice, but it doesn't work."
Curtis lives in a unit full of people with serious brain injuries, unsuspecting men and women, who were out and about, living their life when their lives were changed forever.
Like the girl who was out celebrating her 18th birthday who had a car crash that night, the night of her 18th. She's 23 now. She's still in a coma.
Then there's the young builder who fell from the scaffold on a building site and suffered brain damage. Years later, he's still in a coma.
"You have to get used to it," says Vanessa. "This is our life now. We've become that family you read about. This is how we live.
"I haven't worked since it happened. It wasn't just Curtis's life that was ruined that night – it was all of us. There is no end. The pain is indescribable. It's always there. It hurts and hurts.
"I know Curtis will never work again. He will never buy his own place. He will never marry or have children. It's such a waste.
"So I get used to that. I have to. But I don't feel, still, like I've accepted it. I still haven't accepted it. It feels so bloody unfair."
* Friends of Curtis's are raising money for him.
Ollie Bray is running the Leicester Marathon and Sharna Matthew-Hanley and her friends are competing in the Cummings Solicitors Half Relay Marathon.
Both events are on October 26.
http://www.gofundme.com/e4djf4.
