Shattered Lives: Motorcyclist David Orr's world was turned upside-down when he helped a neighbour to fix his bike, he tells Ruadhán Mac Cormaic
David Orr sits in his wheelchair in the bungalow's front room, a cigarette tucked neatly into the fold of his woolly hat, and looks out on the drab, treeless, young estate. At this time of the morning, the toys sit still in the front yard and the place is silent, save for the fire alarm in the kitchen venting its battery-cry every few minutes.
You should see it around here in the evening, he says. Five kids and all of them under nine and not a minute to think or brood or stare at the empty road outside. It's the daytime that makes him yearn to be back at work.
He tells the story of the time a man came selling cameras door-to-door, around this time of day.
"He came around and asked me did I want one, and I said: 'Listen, I've no money on me today, I might get one off you Wednesday.' So he called back to me Wednesday anyway, and he said it was €80. I was getting the money out of my wallet. Then he just grabbed the whole lot out of my wallet, jumped over the wall and drove off. I was fairly steaming all right, but there's no point in letting it get you down too much."
He believes it too, about not letting it get you down. He knew another young girl who was left paralysed after a car crash and just gave up; the last time he went to the hospital for a check-up, he heard she'd died.
"I never really got depressed," he says. "Certain things would get you down, like the kids asking you to play soccer, stuff like that. It hits you then all right. But there's no point in getting depressed over it; that isn't going to help anyone."
David broke his back four years ago, a month after his fourth child was born, six months after he married his girlfriend of 11 years, a few months before he and Marie had planned to take their honeymoon.
He'd been stripping motorbikes since he was old enough to ride one. That morning in February 2002, a local lad had brought his bike over to David's house. There was something wrong with the engine: would he take a look? David was nearly sure it was the distributor, but said he'd take her out on the road to see for himself.
"So I literally just hopped on it. Driving out the gate, the brother-in-law handed me the helmet, I threw it on, and [ went] straight up the road." Less than 500 yards from the house, a dog ran out in front of him on the road.
"I should have just drove over the dog, but I swerved to avoid it. I wasn't used to the bike - the riding position is different - so when I went to swing around the dog I went too far out and I wasn't able to pull back." He came off, skidded along the surface and smashed straight into a stone wall.
He knew straight away. Relatives of his had died on bikes and he knew a few others who'd been left in wheelchairs. A few years before, his cousin had been decapitated when he ran his bike into a van.
"I went to touch my legs but I couldn't feel anything," he says, "and I knew then."
When we meet, it's only two weeks since David came home after a second stretch of almost a year in hospital, the result of a second accident indirectly caused by the first. Having no shower in the small family home in Ballinakill, Co Laois, he had got into the habit of shaving while in the bath. One day while applying the razor he felt a chill and so instinctively went to run the bath's hot water tap. The crash had left him with little sensation from the chest down, though, so he never noticed that the water was scalding: he let it run and run. It was only two days later that he noticed the damage that was to require four operations and almost a year in hospital.
"When you have your accident, it's not just an accident where you recover and that's it. Your whole life has changed. That's it; you're not going to go back near the quality of life you had before."
Now 31, David had worked as a builder since he was 16, but his disability has left him with no immediate prospect of returning to work. There was a computer course he started in Abbeyleix, but arranging for taxis to get him there and back brought him such hassle that he had to give it up.
"If I ordered a taxi for three o'clock, the taxi would either come at two o'clock or he'd come at 3.30pm. He'd never be on time. And then you have to wait for one to get home again. It was head-wrecking. You're sitting there in the wheelchair on the side of the road with nothing to do. You couldn't exactly just go thumbing."
With five young children to support, the loss of his income has made it a struggle to get through the week, and because the motorbike he was riding at the time of the crash belonged to someone else, there was no insurance to cushion the financial hit.
His wife Marie works as a chef, but her weekly wage combined with the disability allowance of €160 a week barely cover running costs.
He says: "€160 wouldn't even buy a week's shopping. Then you've got clothes, bills, school costs, stuff like that. It's hard enough. If I want to go anywhere and my wife is working, I have to try get a taxi, but to get to Portlaoise costs about €50." There are grants he can claim, but there's so much red tape and so little guidance on offer that he doesn't know how to access very much of it.
For the past few months they've been saving for a new kitchen with lower presses, but David reckons it will be a while yet before he can get anything done in the kitchen without calling for one of the kids to help. And as for an adapted car? A family holiday? Dreams, nothing more.
Of course, if he had the money, the first thing he'd do would be to bring the family to a new home, "in the middle of nowhere, where you can do what you want and nobody's looking at you". It's not that people haven't helped - "there are a lot of people who would be genuinely concerned for you" - but in a small village like this the squinting curtains can start to oppress. He mightn't bother with the gossip, but when it hurts his wife it grates on him badly.
And if only the gossip was the worst of it. His second-youngest son - "a nutball, just a really hyperactive child" - can climb out the window in his room, and once or twice he managed to leave the house and make for the other side of the road before his parents could catch him.
"So the social workers got called out to us. Stupid things like that. That sort of thing has happened several times, people reporting you. They've nothing else to do. It's a small town; if someone doesn't like you, they'll think of anything to annoy you."
David was never much involved with the community - he was never into the GAA and can't remember the last time he went to Mass - but his friends are good to him. He and his wife take turns going out at the weekend, and now and then it can feel that nothing has changed at all.
"But then the worst thing about being in a wheelchair is having no bladder control. It's just so head-wrecking when you're out having a few drinks and if you're not watching yourself you're going to get wet; that's definitely at the top of my list of the worst things about being in a wheelchair."
He worries sometimes about getting older and losing his strength. But with all the noise about stem cells and cybernetics, who knows what might turn up between now and then.
"If it happens it happens," he adds. "That's my outlook on life. Get on with it; you only live once, there's no point being pissed off for half of it. Enjoy what you can."
Series concluded
