Everyone Thought He Was Gone. He Could Hear Every Word.

South Africa. The 1990s.

A young man sits in a wheelchair at a care center.

On the TV in the corner, Barney the purple dinosaur is singing. For hours. Every day.

The staff move around him. They talk over him, as if he isn't there.

Doctors have told his parents he has the intelligence of a three-month-old baby.

They are wrong.

He understands every word.

He has even taught himself to tell the time by watching the shadows move across the floor.

And he has no way to tell a single person.

"Everyone was so used to me not being there that they didn't notice when I began to be present again."
— Martin Pistorius

How does a boy end up locked inside his own body? And would anyone ever notice he was still there?