Then he lunges forwards. My defence is pathetic. It happens too quickly and I’m too shocked. I try to outmanoeuvre him; to get him into an arm bar and subdue him. I’m trained for this shit. But I can’t stop this man. This animal. He grabs my head and slams it against the doorframe. The next second I’m on the ground. My head throbs with pain and confusion. Blood clouds my vision.

I realise he’s standing over me but I’m too dazed to do anything other than stare into his cold and heartless eyes.

I see the stone ornament in his hand. I see it hurtling towards my head. The heavy object smashes into my skull with a horrific crack and squelch…

My head shoots up from the pillow. I’m panting. Sweating. It takes barely a second for me to figure out where I am. The hospital. Where else?

The memory, the daily nightmare, still flickers away even though I’m now awake. The look on his face. The sound of the impact. The feel of it… so strange because it wasn’t pain, but almost a warm, wet feeling, like someone was enveloping my brain with a cosy towel.

Slowly I manage to push the thoughts, the memories of Ben and what he’s done, away.

I’ve been in here for ten weeks now, and every day starts with this same routine, the same nightmare for me. But today is going to be different as it’s the first day I’m making an entry in this diary. Just another of the many elements in my seemingly endless road to recovery.

Seventy-one days. That’s how long I’ve been in this damn hospital already. Just over ten weeks ago, at the hands of my twin brother, I suffered a traumatic brain injury. TBI for short. A cerebral contusion that caused severe damage – bruising – to the frontal lobes of my brain. That’s the area of the brain that governs my speech, personality, movement and memory. The doctors say what comes next is unpredictable, though it’s likely I’ll never fully recover.

Short and long term memory loss. Short attention span. Mood swings. Depression. Confusion. Restlessness. These are just a few of the symptoms that will pervade my rehabilitation, possibly the rest of my life.

I’ll never be the same as I was and nor will my life, even though the doctors say I’ve made incredible progress already. In the last few weeks I’ve already had to relearn how to breathe on my own without a ventilator, to eat and drink without pipes, to walk, to talk again. I’m officially a TBI survivor now.