There’s no forgetting terror
As Julie Rogers helped victims from the wreckage of 7/7, she had no idea she’d be the next one in need of help.
I woke with a start, the screaming in my head suddenly silenced. Dripping in sweat, I tried to breathe away the panic. I could still see the girl slumped in pain, the other smoke-stained faces, smell that smell. But the worst part of all was that this was nothing new.
Night after night the nightmares came back, playing over in my head - that feeling of terror, the sights and smells, each moment as real as the day it happened.
I sometimes think back to how life was before. The morning I’d got up, showered, dressed and travelled to my job as a travel consultant at Kings Cross. Life was great. My fiancé Mark and I had just bought a house and were planning our wedding. And that morning, the sun was shining.
By 8.30 I was sat happily behind the counter, greeting people as usual. At 9 the reports began on the radio - there was a power surge on the underground. Next came the alarm, blaring through the station. We knew what to do, followed the drill, but as soon as we got outside, the first-aiders were told to return. I was one of them. I had no idea what was happening but went back inside.
‘They’re bringing them up,” a colleague told me. “Who?” I asked, confused. “The injured,” he replied. Seconds later, the first faces appeared, all black with smoke, followed by an endless stream of people covered in soot, scratches and scrapes. They just kept on coming.
Without thinking, we began pouring cups of water, handing out paper towels, cleaning dirt from hands and faces.
Everywhere I looked, there were more frightening scenes, people shaking, panicking, someone with an eye hanging out. We did our best to calm people down.
Everything was dirty, the smell so strong, like burning chemicals. And the whole time the alarm kept on. We asked again and again for someone to turn it off - it was causing more distress, but it just kept ringing.
It didn’t drown out that one girl’s screams, that noise I can’t describe. She’s in my head a lot, this girl, her cries, the memory of her like a rag doll, slumped and screeching in pain. I’ll never forget the horror of that sound. She had a punctured lung and a hole in her leg, I found out later. No wonder she was screaming.
Time flew by. It wasn’t until hours later, staring at the departures board at London Bridge, that I started crying. “Are you OK?” a security guard asked me. I don’t remember what I said, but words came tumbling out. For the first time, everything that had happened suddenly seemed real.
I slept that night like never before. But when I woke up, for me it was just the beginning, the last decent night’s sleep I can remember.
Back at work the next day, it was eerie. Nothing looked the same afterwards. Everywhere I went - the supermarket, cinema - I scanned for fire exits, extinguishers, risk assessing and imagining all the things that could go wrong. I became obsessed with the news, anything morbid or sad.
I should have been the happiest girl in the world - I had a wedding to plan and a gorgeous fiancé – but I was miserable. A year went by before my boss suggested I had time off, that I see my doctor.
“Have you had a car accident, a relationship break-up, lost a relative?” the nurse at the practice asked. I plucked up the courage to tell her. It was then I learned I was suffering with PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Over the next few months things gradually improved. But it wasn’t down to the tablets they gave me or the counselling, which hadn’t seemed to help much. I put it down to my Mum - my backbone and my rock. I don’t know how, but she can literally take my pain away. And, of course, my husband Mark – he makes life seem worth living. Planning our wedding really pulled me through. And then there was Foxy, my faithful friend. I can’t remember when exactly, but I gave it a look one day and I’ve never looked back. It’s not just about bingo for me, it’s the atmosphere I love, the players. It must be one of the nicest places there is to chat with people.
By the time Mark and I married in June this year, I was back at work and 7/7 couldn’t have been further from my mind – I was beaming. “You were like a Cheshire cat all day,” my mum told me. I was in heaven, thought I’d never look back.
And I didn’t until those car bombs went off in London in July. I flicked on the TV, heard the words ‘terror’ and ‘attack’ and everything spiralled.
My stomach churned, flipping again and again and I felt the panic rising. Breathe, I thought, just breathe, but it was like fighting a tidal wave. I grabbed the phone. “I can’t come in today,” I managed to stutter to my boss.
And all those images are back now. I’ve had to stay off work, fighting every day just to feel normal. “If only I could swap it for a broken leg,” I said to my doctor, “something people could understand.”
But now there’s hope on the horizon – a referral to Primary Care: specialist cognitive behavioural therapy. It’s supposed to work well with PTSD and I know it sounds silly, but I think I’m more excited about that than the holiday I’ve got planned. I’d do anything to feel OK again.
But for now, whenever Mum and Mark aren’t there, it’s Foxy that gets me through, always there, a listening ear. It’s like having a pool of friends right at your fingertips. If I’m not on Foxy every day, I get asked, “Where have you been?” It’s such a support - like a therapy all of its own.
[ends]