The other blokes on the spinal ward said I should kiss goodbye to my marriage. So I offered my wife a get out of jail card
Martin was left paralysed by the Manchester Arena blast. Now he had to summon all of his resolve for a truly heart-wrenching conversation...
BLASTED by 22 pieces of shrapnel, Martin Hibbert’s only thought was to use his dying breath to demand his rescuers save his teenage daughter first. His account of the Manchester Arena bombing in yesterday’s Daily Mail will have made any parent shudder. Now, in the second part of this three-part serialisation of his book, he charts their gruelling recovery…
AS A little boy, growing up in a small, terraced house on the outskirts of Bolton, I’d be visited at night by a mystery lady who’d appear at the end of my bed, gazing inquisitively into my eyes until I hid under the blankets. When I peeped out, she’d be gone. I never told anyone about these spooky experiences, until one day my paternal grandfather, Bill, got the family photo albums out.
‘Here’s yer mam and dad on their wedding day,’ he said, but I was fixated instead on an older woman in the family line-up. ‘She comes to see me at night,’ I said, pointing at her with a chubby finger.
My grandad frowned. ‘Eh? What you on about?’ he asked. I looked up at him, describing her nocturnal visits. Grandad Bill’s voice became shaky. ‘That’s your guardian angel, lad,’ he said. ‘She’ll always look out for you.’
My secret visitor was his mum who died before I was born, and I’m convinced that she was watching over me when, more than 40 years later, my 14-yearold daughter Eve and I lay dying on the cold, hard ground at Manchester Arena.
We were six metres away from suicide bomber Salman Abedi who was completely obliterated in the blast which killed 22 poor souls – innocent kids, loving parents – as the Ariana Grande concert there came to a close. Those within a fivemetre radius around him didn’t have a chance. Eve and I were the closest survivors. Others who died were further away from us.
The blast tore mobile phones and wallets out of hands and pockets, causing huge identification problems in those early few hours. Other than me gasping ‘Martin’ to the security guard when he asked me my name, no one had the faintest idea who I was.
‘Martin’ is a name that Paul Harvey – the brilliant paramedic assigned to take me to hospital that night – could never forget. He must have shouted it hundreds of times in a desperate bid to keep me conscious.
I remember very little about the bombing or the days and weeks that followed, but Paul, who is now a close friend, tells me that – between episodes of bringing up blood in the ambulance – I kept asking about Eve. Where is she? How is she? Did she get out?
I was rushed to Salford Royal Infirmary and put into intensive care under neurosurgeon Mr Ankur Saxena who had arrived early for his day shift after being alerted to a major incident.
Abedi’s rucksack contained more than 3,000 nuts and bolts, packed tightly around the bomb, and I’d been blasted by 22 pieces of this deadly shrapnel.
One bolt that tore through my neck at high speed should have exited on the other side – virtually decapitating me.
But, by some freak, million-toone chance, I’d swallowed at the precise moment it was travelling through, and it ended up in my stomach, where it was recovered during surgery. Unknown to me, Eve was still at death’s door and the coroner’s office rang her ward each day for an update on her condition – preparing to make the grim announcement that the total list of fatalities had risen to 23.
On several occasions my family were summoned to her bedside to say their goodbyes as she wasn’t expected to see morning. I thank God that I wasn’t fully conscious as I don’t know how I’d have coped. I bought her the tickets for Ariana Grande as a Christmas present, and the guilt and pain – which still eats away at me to this day – has been bad enough.
Gradually I came round for longer periods and I sensed that people around me were walking on eggshells.
My wife Gabby worried herself sick that at any point I’d ask, ‘Why can’t I move my legs?’ and push for an honest answer. Finally, after ten days, doctors decided the time was right.
A group of them gathered around my bed that morning, wearing solemn expressions as one explained that my spinal cord had been severed and I would never walk again. Gabby’s grip tightened. No one spoke for a moment. So, this is it. This is what they’ve all been too afraid to tell me. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘OK, so what happens now?’ I said.
There were no tears, no pity, no cries of, ‘Why me?’ It’s hard to explain but, even as they broke the news, I knew that 22 people had lost their lives that night. Countless others like us had suffered horrendous injuries. Life-changing injuries.
But we were alive. We were breathing. Life was a privilege... a gift. We had to live it.
I was almost decapitated as one bolt tore through my neck
LESS than two weeks after the bombing, Ariana Grande’s One Love benefit concert took place. By then, I’d ‘graduated’ to the major trauma ward.
A TV magically appeared, my two brothers arrived with beers for themselves and I was hoisted out of bed and into a chair so that I could feel involved. The manoeuvre was incredibly painful but I felt as if I was rejoining the human race.
Tears pricked my eyes as I saw 55,000 people crowded into Old Trafford Cricket Ground, holding up ‘For Our Angels’ placards as Ariana launched into One Last Time, one of her best-known hits. The last time I’d heard it, I’d been standing behind Eve, my arms
fondly wrapped around her, as we belted out the words together. It seemed a world away now.
Every fibre of my being yearned to see her, to hug her. But it was impossible... surely?
Finally, nurse consultant Stuart Wildman, another member of the team who is still a friend today, came back to me smiling. Yes, it would take some planning to get me to the ICU at Manchester Children’s Hospital, but it could be done. I was going to see Eve. The next few hours, the journey by ambulance, are all a bit of a blur.
Stuart tells me that Eve’s doctors explained that she was still in a coma and desperately poorly, with severe head injuries. They also warned us that she would look very different. She had a tracheotomy to help her breathe and her head was bandaged and very, very swollen.
Eve’s mum, Sarah, was already there, sitting at the bedside as Stuart wheeled me into the ward where my brave daughter was hooked up to countless machines, tubes and wires keeping her alive. I remember starting to cry and not being able to stop.
‘You were able to hold her hand, talk to her and just be a dad again,’ Stuart tells me now. ‘We stayed as long as you needed and felt able to.’
Before leaving, there was one final thing I had to do.
‘It was clear you weren’t leaving without giving Eve a kiss,’ says Stuart. ‘We managed to hoist and support you up into a position where you could lean over. You got to kiss your daughter’s cheek.’
I wonder, now, if she sensed me there. Felt my lips and hot tears. For a few seconds, I hovered, inhaling her presence. Then, weeping, I was lowered back into the chair and wheeled out. Deep down, I knew that Eve wasn’t expected to make it. I’d just said goodbye to my daughter.
ACCORDING to Stuart, that day was a turning point in my recovery. ‘Seeing Eve turned on a switch,’ he said. ‘Until then, you’d been relatively quiet. Suddenly, you were a different person. It was a case of, “I need to get right for my daughter.”’
After five weeks at Salford Royal Infirmary, it was time to take the next step on my journey. There was a bed for me at the spinal rehabilitation centre in the coastal town of Southport.
After Gabby first visited me on the all-male ward there, a few of the other patients wheeled across to introduce themselves and told me to forget about my marriage because their wives and girlfriends had either left them or hardly visited any more.
The next day, Gabby could tell something was up.
‘I didn’t sleep well,’ I said. Then I took a deep breath. This was going to kill me but I explained what they’d said.
‘So if you feel you need to go, I’m giving you a “get out of jail” card.’
My voice trailed off. I waited. Would she heave a sigh of relief, pick up her bag and wish me well? Her hand took mine.
‘Listen to me, Martin Hibbert,’ she said, firmly. ‘I love you and I’m going nowhere. Do you hear me? We are in this together.’ I gazed down at my lap. Thank God. ‘Well, if you change your mind,’ I continued petulantly, but she shook her head. ‘Enough. Now, how was your first night?’
The subject was closed.
I threw myself into rehabilitation because Eve needed me. She was my reason for getting up in the morning, pushing myself to the gym, working myself to exhaustion with my physiotherapists. Every Wednesday, the Red Cross picked me up for the two-hour round journey to see her in Manchester.
By then, she was conscious – but still desperately poorly.
I’d sit by her bedside for up to four hours. Unable to speak or even smile, she’d reach out her hand and clasp mine. Then she’d tap on the back of my hand with her fingers. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. Thinking back to those visits still upsets me. As a parent, you want to fix anything upsetting your child. But there was nothing I could do.
Maybe my medical team objected to my time away from the ward or the risk of something happening on the journey.
Several times I was stunned to be told, ‘Get Eve out of your head. You need to focus on yourself.’
On one occasion, a red mist rose. ‘Oh, f*** off,’ I snapped, furiously. The nurse fled – and refused to care for me from then on.
I apologised for my language – but not for the sentiment behind it. No one ever told me to forget about Eve again.
Immediately after the bombing, thousands of people donated to the We Love Manchester appeal in return for a tattoo of the Manchester Worker Bee, a historical emblem symbolising the city’s work ethic and sense of community.
My friend Kevin Paul – a tattoo artist who has inked celebrities such as Ed Sheeran, Rihanna and Harry Styles – agreed to help me become the first hospital in-patient to have a tattoo.
‘I love it,’ I breathed, admiring the large black-and-white bee across the base of my neck, with the number 22 etched on its body.
Some people believe numbers actually link us to celestial beings or angels and that number is so symbolic: the attack happened on 22 May, 22 people were killed by Abedi and I was left with 22 shrapnel wounds. My deepest wound had 22 stitches and I was moved to Southport Spinal Unit on June 22.
When I finally left in September there was no way I could return to our lovely cottage in Bradford, with its narrow doorways and steep stairs. So poor Gabby had to search for a new place suitable for a paraplegic husband and our cocker spaniel Alfie.
Eventually she found a house in Chorley, just outside Bolton, which had a downstairs wet room and bathroom. It was also closer to Bradford where Eve eventually returned to live with her mum, Sarah, the following February, after nine months in hospital. By
Eve wasn’t expected to make it. I’d just said goodbye to my daughter