Martin had started coming back.
Around the age of 16, about four years after he first fell ill, his mind began to wake up. By 19, he was fully aware.
"I was aware of everything, just like any normal person."
— Martin Pistorius
But his body didn't come back with him. "I stared at my arm, willing it to move," he said. It didn't.
So when his mother said those words, he heard them. He just couldn't answer.
"The rest of the world felt so far away when she said those words."
— Martin Pistorius
In time, he came to understand her. Every time she looked at him, he later wrote, she could see only "a cruel parody of the once-healthy child she had loved so much."
He tried to reach his father, too. Dad, can't you see? One night, as Rodney undressed him for bed, Martin tried with everything he had to show he was there.
"I want him to know, to understand that I've returned to him."
— Martin Pistorius
No one noticed.