WHO’S YOUR

They’re the unsung health workers who transform lives — and here, to launch our awards campaign, one of the victims of the Westminster terror attack gives his first interview to nominate his champion: the surgeon who helped rebuild him... physically AND m

TODAY, the Daily Mail proudly launches our 2017 Health Hero Awards to honour the men and women in the NHS who go the extra mile for their patients. Too often we hear bad stories about healthcare, yet so many more positive things are done every day in the NHS by countless unsung heroes — doctors, nurses, care assistants, porters receptionists, volunteers — whose compassion and skill make a real difference. Over the next four weeks, we want you to nominate the health workers you believe deserve recognition. Five finalists will be honoured with an all-expenses-paid trip to London to receive their awards from the Prime Minister. The winner will also receive a £5,000 holiday. Here, we tell one nominee’s truly inspiring story . . .

Stephen and Cara Lockwood are a deeply private couple; married just over a year, they are so content in each other’s company that they rarely go out.

‘We don’t have a complicated social circle. We’re best friends who love each other very much and we love hanging out together,’ says Steve, an hGV driver.

the couple live in Oxfordshire and met ten years ago at work.

‘I was a chef, Cara was front-ofhouse, and we just clicked,’ says Steve. ‘We love fine dining. It’s our little treat once a year to go to a Michelin- starred restaurant, so we’d saved hard and for my 40th birthday on March 22, we booked into the Berkeley hotel in Knightsbridge, where Marcus Wareing is head chef. It was going to be a really special night.’

Cara, 29, who now works in the finance department at the University of Oxford, had not wanted to use the Underground because she was worried about terrorism, so after dropping their bags at the hotel in Knightsbridge, they got a taxi to the London Aquarium. they scuba-dived with sharks — Steve’s birthday treat.

Just before 2.40pm they made their way up the steps onto Westminster Bridge to hail another taxi. they were walking on the south side of the bridge, towards the houses of parliament, when 52- year- old Khalid Masood launched his terror attack.

he ploughed a hired 4x4 car into pedestrians at 76mph, injuring 50 people. Four bridge victims died, while a fifth, policeman Keith palmer, was fatally stabbed before Masood was shot and killed.

Despite many requests from newspapers, this is the first time Steve has spoken publicly about what happened. Still deeply traumatised, he has not even talked in detail to Cara about that day because, more than seven months on, it remains too painful.

But he is determined now to champion the nhS heroes who looked after him, particularly trauma specialist and plastic surgeon Shehan hettiaratchy, who, he says, ‘not only saved my life but rebuilt it, and continues to look after both Cara and I to this day’.

Steve recalls little of the moment the car hit him. ‘I remember a loud bang and pain running up the back of my kneecaps to my lower back, that’s about it,’ he says. the impact sent Steve flying: he landed 20 metres down the road, injuring the right side of his upper body and left of his lower body. HIS

left leg was shattered below the knee, both bones broken and the soft tissue ripped away down to the bone. he also had a fracture to his eye socket, a broken and splintered collar bone, five broken ribs, and his lower back was broken in two places. ‘I tried to get up, but obviously I couldn’t,’ he says. ‘And that upset me because I thought: “Broken leg, I can’t work.” then suddenly Cara was by my side.’ pictures of Cara emerged, tenderly bending over Steve, cradling his head and waiting for paramedics, but Steve recalls nothing after this point.

‘My next conscious moment was lying on a hospital trolley thinking: “the Berkeley hotel is rubbish . . .” I didn’t lose consciousness, but I must have been in such deep shock, my brain has wiped everything in between.’

Steve was taken by ambulance to St Mary’s hospital in paddington. he remembers first thinking the incident had been his fault.

‘I thought I might have stepped out into the road. then for some reason I asked a doctor: “Was it terrorism?” And he said “yes”. And that was too big, too frightening for me to process. there was a lot of emotion, a lot of tears.

‘I couldn’t really hold it together. I just couldn’t comprehend how anyone could feel such hatred to other human beings.’

Mr hettiaratchy, affectionately known as ‘Mr h’, has been dubbed ‘the magician’ for his extreme