We built a life from nothing.
I enrolled in community college instead of my dream school. I worked part-time in coffee shops and retail. People stared.
I learned things no teenager should know—how to help him transfer from bed to chair, how to handle catheter care, how to argue with insurance companies.
I convinced him to go to prom.
“They’ll stare,” he muttered.
“Let them choke. You’re coming.”
We walked—okay, rolled—into that gym together. People stared, just like he said they would. But a few friends moved chairs, cracked jokes, and made him laugh.
My best friend, Jenna, rushed over in her sparkly dress.
“You clean up nice, wheelchair boy,” she teased.
We danced with me standing between his knees, his hands resting on my hips as we swayed under cheap lights.
No one from my side of the family came.
I told myself: if we can survive this, nothing can break us.
After graduation, we got married in his parents’ backyard. Fold-out chairs. Costco cake. A clearance-rack dress.
No one from my family showed up. I kept glancing toward the street, half-expecting my parents to arrive in a storm of judgment.
They didn’t.
