I broke down on the threshold.
We built a new life out of nothing.
I went to community college instead of my dream school.
I worked part-time in coffee shops and retail.
I learned how to help him transfer out of bed. How to do catheter care. How to fight with insurance companies. Stuff no teenager should know, but I did.
I convinced him to go to prom.
“They’ll stare,” he muttered.
“Let them choke. You’re coming.”
We walked—okay, rolled—into the gym.
People did stare.
A few friends rallied. Moved chairs. Made stupid jokes until he laughed.
My best friend, Jenna, rushed over in her sparkly dress, hugged me, and leaned down to him.
“You clean up nice, wheelchair boy,” she said.
We danced with me standing between his knees, his hands on my hips, swaying under cheap lights.
I thought, if we can survive this, nothing can break us.
After graduation, we got married in his parents’ backyard.
Fold-out chairs. Costco cake. My dress off a clearance rack.
No one from my side of the family came.
I kept glancing at the street, half-expecting my parents to show up in a storm of judgment.
They didn’t.
We said our vows under a fake arch.
“In sickness and in health.”
It felt less like a promise and more like a description of what we were already living.
We had a baby a couple of years later.
Our son.
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