"Be prepared for the worst-he might not make it,
" the consultant told Lisa. "There is a high risk that the patient may not survive this. He is still in multi-organ failure, with continual signs of infection. If he deteriorates further, there may be nothing else we can do, and he may die."
He doesn't remember the journey to hospital. Within a few hours of arriving, Paul was placed in an induced coma. He remained in this state for nearly 30 days, quickly facing a battle against pleurisy, double pneumonia, sepsis, a perforated colon, and kidney failure requiring dialysis. His organs were shutting down.
Does Lisa start planning a funeral or a welcome-home party?
Diagnosed with OCD and PTSD, these conditions controlled his life-the compulsion to steal only ham stock cubes from shops was unstoppable, and parking the car precisely within the white boundary lines of a bay was an exhausting obsession.
His mum doesn't know about his illness or hospitalisation. Eventually, he calls her after nearly two months of silence. They talk for a while. It is the last time they will ever speak-she dies four days later.
The prayers have been answered. Paul returns to his family and "Team Henderson". The nightmare ends-only for a new journey to begin.
One that leads to a horror story that doesn't end until he starts writing his experiences down. Or does it?