Ghost Boy: The Miraculous Escape of a Misdiagnosed Boy Trapped Inside His Own Body (2011)

“I’m twenty-five years old, but my memories of the past only begin from the moment I started to come back to life from wherever I’d been lost.”

Martin comes to terms with the fractured nature of his life, disjointed by the “before” and “after” of his illness. Though surrounded by children in his care center, he cannot remember his childhood himself. This realization occurs just before going to his assessment with the speech therapists, after Virna’s insistence that he is cognizant of what’s going on around him.

“Have you ever seen one of those movies in which someone wakes up as a ghost but don’t know they’ve died? That’s how it was, as I realized people were looking through and around me, and I didn’t understand why.”

Here, Martin establishes the central image of his time in the care center—that he is a “ghost boy,” stuck in a purgatorial state where people barely acknowledged his existence or humanity. As Martin himself became aware of his illness, he had no way of asking those around him what was happening.

“I’ve come to understand the infinity of time so well that I’ve learned to lose myself in it.”

Without being able to talk or move, time became relative for Martin, as the minutes, hours, and days passed while he observed his life without being able to act or speak. While Martin was at the care center, he would wait out the time until he would go home to his family, the cycle then repeating itself daily, seemingly on an endless loop.