My best friend married my sister, who has Down syndrome — while she was fighting for her life, he gripped my hands and said, “Now it’s time for you to understand why I really married her.”
My sister, Nadia, is a year younger than me. Growing up, some kids avoided her, or treated her like she was somehow less than the rest of us, because she has Down syndrome.
But not my best friend, Marcus.
“Nadia, you’ll always have me and Marcus,” I used to tell her, back when we were kids and that promise felt like it could fix almost anything.
