dazed

“I was covered in blood; the police arrived and spoke to me in French, but I had no idea what they were saying. I was 17 and it was a disaster. They came to pick me up in an ambulance because I was a wreck. I called my teammate to ask him to come and get me. At the hospital they stitched me up because I wouldn’t stop bleeding, but obviously they didn’t do anything about my nose. The next day I had a race at Paul Ricard and I went with a broken nose and could barely breathe. One eye so swollen I could hardly see. The team were furious with me. They even operated on me without anaesthetic because I had another race the following weekend; if they’d given me anaesthetic, I’d have been a bit ‘out of it’ that week. It was the most painful thing that’s ever happened to me."