The doctor pulled his parents and me aside. “Spinal cord injury,” he said plainly. “Paralysis from the waist down. We don’t expect any real recovery.” His mother sobbed. His father simply stared down at the floor.
I went home entirely numb.
My own parents were waiting at our kitchen table, sitting there like they were about to negotiate some kind of formal plea deal. “Sit,” my mother said. I sat.
“He was in an accident,” I told them. “He can’t walk anymore. I’m going to be at that hospital as much as—”
“This isn’t what you need right now,” she cut in sharply.
I blinked. “What?”
“You’re seventeen,” she said. “You have a real future ahead of you. Law school. An actual career. You cannot tie yourself down to… this.”
“To what?” I snapped. “To my own boyfriend, who just got paralyzed?”
My father leaned forward across the table. “You’re young. You could find someone healthy instead. Successful. Don’t go ruining your entire life over this.”
I actually laughed, because I genuinely believed they had to be joking. “I love him,” I said. “I loved him well before the accident ever happened. I’m not walking away simply because his legs no longer work properly.”
My mother’s eyes went completely flat. “Love doesn’t pay any bills. Love won’t lift him into a wheelchair for you. You have absolutely no idea what you’d actually be signing up for.”
“I know enough,” I said. “I know he’d do exactly the same thing for me.”
