The Promise: A Tragic Accident, a Paralyzed Bride, and the Power of Love, Loyalty, and Friendship (11 page)

CHAPTER 22

Wedding Plans

The February after I returned home, Chris and I decided
to go ahead and pick a wedding day. We chose July 22, 2011. Part of our decision to lock in the date was due to 1-800-Registry kindly coming forward, offering to give us our dream wedding. They’d seen the story on
Headline News
and called for my information. I knew it would be wonderful but very different than the wedding originally planned. I was nervous about being wheeled down the aisle, not walking, and I was pretty terrified that our first dance wouldn’t be what I’d always dreamt it should be. But I knew who my bridesmaids would be, and that gave me a lot of comfort.

Along with all the media attention came a couple of generous and interesting offers. In addition to 1-800-Registry,
Today
offered to pay for my wedding and cover it live. And
George to the Rescue
’s remodel of my home had made our bedroom a real oasis. It was suddenly green, with hardwood floors, and it had a roll-in shower and a low sink and granite counter I could roll under. The decor was beautiful, and they installed an elevator that saved me. The wedding was shaping up to be just as spectacular.

All of the girls of course knew they’d be in my wedding, even Britney, who hadn’t been a part of the original party. The good fortune of having the wedding sponsored meant I could include Britney, which I’d told her the night of my bachelorette party I wanted to do but couldn’t since we had nothing coordinating for her to wear. I was thrilled to have a second chance to include her. She had become such a good friend to me, and we had confided in each other a lot during my recovery. Our friendship had become so deep. Plus, the accident had made her part of the group. I wanted her to stand with the rest of the girls when I said my vows.

Originally, I was to have someone other than Britney standing up there with me: my friend Sandra. She hadn’t been able to make it to the bachelorette party, and that surprisingly had some heavy implications for our friendship. It all resulted in a terrible friendship-ending e-mail exchange. We had gone to college together and were really close, especially in senior year. I used to think of her as my Pirate-in-crime. After college she moved to Raleigh, and we drifted apart a bit. I guess when you grow up you start to become more aware of differences that in college you wouldn’t have noticed. Sandra and I discovered we had political differences. It wasn’t a huge thing, but we weren’t on the same page and we wound up not seeing each other as much as we once did.

Sandra had a birthday party one night and I decided to leave early, and she got kind of pissed off about it. A silent tension existed between us, and so the wedding came around and she didn’t attend my bachelorette party. She was visiting her cousin, who was going off to war the next day. It was understandable so I was okay with her absence, obviously.

By this point I’d actually been wishing Britney could be in the wedding, but I’d already ordered the dresses for the bridesmaids, and I couldn’t find one to match for her. I even checked eBay. I couldn’t ask for the dress back from Sandra, and I couldn’t ask for everyone to buy new dresses.

Then the accident happened. I was growing so close to these other girls, but Sandra and I were getting further apart. She lived fifteen minutes away and never really came to visit, and for whatever reason, that upset me deeply. Believe me, I appreciated that people had busy lives, but a friend is a friend and I had an expectation she’d show up when I needed her. She said I should have invited her, that she wouldn’t just appear, but it felt a little weird to ask someone to visit me at home. Mostly, people called and asked if they could stop by. They asked how they could help or if I needed something specific picked up. Sandra kept saying, “I’m going to stop by,” but never ever did. At one point I said, “Stop saying it if you’re not coming.” In her defense, we had already drifted apart. I thought that maybe she didn’t feel comfortable coming over. She supported me in the way she knew how. She did visit the hospital a couple of times and, after the accident, she threw a small fundraiser for me and I was grateful for both gestures. I just needed more friendship from her and she from me. There were some lonely days when I first returned home, and I needed a lot of support.

The tension broke, and it sounds so immature but we had a Facebook fight, and she said something that threw me completely off guard. She said that she was frustrated in the hospital that she had to wait so long to see me. She meant the night I broke my neck. My own family had to wait to see me; the girls who were actually there, who had to experience that traumatic event, hadn’t even seen me, and she was frustrated and had the nerve to tell me that. In retrospect, I think our argument got out of hand and we both reacted poorly. This happens to a lot of friendships. Our relationship just wasn’t strong enough to override the hurtful words we had both said.

Once we both cooled a bit, I wondered if it was simply too weird for her to see me in my new environment. The hospital actually might have been more comfortable in some ways. It wasn’t a new reality, just a stopover. It was possibly my first realization that people who had known me once as an able-bodied person might feel uncomfortable around me. Maybe she also held some guilt for fighting with me or not attending the party that night, which is crazy. But the strangest part is that I think she saw the five of us together, who were all at the pool, and she felt left out of that bond. It would have been hard to break through it; we had a shared experience. The stronger my friendship became with the girls by the pool, the more difficult it was to maintain the flimsier ones. The girls by the pool became the gold standard, and not just in how they treated me, but in how they treated each other. It was really unbelievable and admirable to have witnessed the growth of our relationship.

Then on the other hand I had Sandra actually saying things in an e-mail like, “You don’t know how singled out I felt, to be the one who wasn’t there.” Maybe I would have felt left out in the same situation, but she should have been happy that she wasn’t part of that event. I’ve learned that I really don’t know how other people feel or how they should react. It has all been a good lesson in empathy. You just don’t really know what people are actually thinking inside. Maybe the four who were there filled up so much room in a positive way that my friendship with Sandra was one of the casualties of this accident.

It turned out she did feel guilty, which she later revealed. She wrote, “I don’t wish I was at that party. I did at first because I thought, if I was there could I have done something to prevent it? I felt guilty for not being there . . . but I felt like I should have been there. I thought, if I had been there what would have been different?” In her final note to me, she wrote something that startled me. She said, “You have no idea what it feels like to be the one person who wasn’t there to witness what happened, who you don’t even speak to anymore. I’m sure you’ve called all the girls who were there, but you haven’t called me at all.” It shook me up and we never spoke again after that. I wasn’t sure if the bond with the other girls had grown so large that maybe it blocked up space for other people to enter that circle. Either way, Sandra sadly wasn’t included in the new wedding plans.

I called the girls individually to make sure the date was okay with them and explained that, since it was being paid for, we’d get new dresses, too. That, of course, was very exciting to them. They didn’t love the original dresses.

As we made plans to wed, I also scheduled surgery to have what’s called a suprapubic catheter put in—a permanent tube that was to be inserted into my bladder and attached to a bag strapped to my leg. I was told it would be convenient because I could open it up myself and go to the bathroom by myself. There was still a bag attached and it would be a 24/7, like a ball and chain, but I was excited at the forward momentum of everything.

New dresses aside, everyone was ecstatic that we were finally going to have the wedding, but there was one concern among all of us. We’d navigated the murky waters of the press, careful to keep our promise not to reveal exactly what had happened that day. We had done a good job in protection mode as a team. But a televised wedding meant more coverage and more discussion. It meant all of our faces would be on TV. Of course, one girl in particular felt panicked at this prospect.

Today
and 1-800-Registry decided to team up in a joint effort, and it was incredible that they’d both donate so much, but as we got into the planning, we learned that
Today
could air only a five-minute ceremony. Sadly, I realized that wasn’t for me. That was to be the most exciting part of the wedding, and I wanted to cherish it, not rush it for five minutes start to finish. I’d waited so long for it. I hated to miss the opportunity, but I would have rather had the wedding in the backyard than compromise the ceremony like that, despite how grateful I was for the show’s generosity. For me, the most important part was our vows. I didn’t want to be rushed for commercial break. A meaningful ceremony was far more important than being on television.

It also alleviated another concern—no faces live on TV. I told the girls of my decision and heard a collective sigh of relief.

I was sincerely appreciative of everything
Today
had done for my cause. They were the most wonderful people. And I was eternally grateful and happy that 1-800-Registry was still on board even if
Today
wasn’t part of the wedding anymore. So 1-800-Registry handled everything, and I was able to choose all of the details.

The planning began. Again.

CHAPTER 23

One Year Later

On the first anniversary of my accident, I was on the way
back from an Abilities Expo in New Jersey. I had met the people at Colours Wheelchair, who had sponsored me and agreed to donate a really amazing wheelchair to me. I had attended the event to meet Rick Hayden, who ran the company and whom everyone called Big Daddy. I was going to choose the details for my chair. He was nice and hilarious and was the one who had asked me to be part of Team Colours originally, months earlier. I selected a blinged-out chair with spinners and suspension and was fitted, because anyone with an injury like mine needs a customized chair. They’re quite expensive, and I was honored to receive such a lovely gift. Also, I had hoped it would give me confidence because it was so pretty, with Aztec designs and bright blue colors, but the experience with the other girls I met on that trip tapped into some insecurities I hadn’t realized existed yet.

I was feeling a little shyer than usual meeting these beautiful Colours Girls. They were all paraplegics, and it was hard being the only quad among the little group. I remember feeling self-conscious, because I needed so much more help than all of them. I was fascinated by what they were able to do: They could easily transfer in and out of their chairs; they could lean over and just grab something off of the ground; they’d go to the bathroom together like any other group of girls. Their bodies didn’t even look paralyzed. They just looked like able-bodied people sitting down. They had no quad pooch, which I had developed; my belly protruded due to inactivity, and it made me look pregnant. And obviously their hands weren’t balled up like mine were.

What made me most self-conscious was that their hair and makeup were perfect. Mine used to always be perfect. I knew that if I could do my own hair, I could look just as nice. I knew how to do my hair better than anyone, obviously, because it was my hair. So while it was a great experience, it was also just a reminder of how disabled I really was. We all went out to dinner the last night, and I felt so
not
cute. My mom was there and she tried hard to help me get through it, but that night I was probably more sensitive than usual, and even though my hair did look nice, I felt insecure. These girls all looked hot. I wanted the use of my hands so I could look just as hot.

We came back from Jersey, and I was relieved that I was going to be able to see some of my friends. My mom brought back a giant cannoli from a New York–style deli, and we celebrated her birthday. Admittedly, there was a bit of sadness and negative energy in the room as we celebrated her birthday, but as I had hoped, the new chair eventually gave me a lot of confidence.

Looking back at the year that had passed, I knew a lot had changed and taken its toll on all of us, but through it all, I was certain my love for my family and friends had grown. Chris and I became more aware of what we had as well. We’d always been affectionate, but in the wake of the accident, after a year of being in it together as a team, we’d learned to be so grateful for each other and our love. After we returned home from rehab, Chris got into the habit of hugging me as soon as he walked in the door, a gesture I greatly anticipated each afternoon. We’d mindlessly done it before, but after the accident we did it with intent. At night, as we lay in bed, he would say, “I love you, sweetheart” and then I would rub his back gently until he started snoring. Each morning, he made my day by saying, “Good morning, beautiful.” We never left each other without a kiss and an “I love you” exchange. None of that routine was lip service either, and I knew in my heart it would always be our way. The year that brought us so much tragedy had also enriched our lives. We never let one day pass without our special moments. We’d become painfully aware of how quickly and drastically life could change. No one knew what the next day would bring, so neither of us wasted time not loving one another fully or taking our love for granted.

Chris and I reaffirmed our love for each other. I was amazed by how many people found this difficult to believe. It made me think that many people, those who questioned whether he would stay with me, just don’t know love. Love clearly wasn’t as common as I thought it was. It was hard for me to imagine that just because of a physical problem, a perfect relationship between two people who loved each other wouldn’t work. I only wished more people had that love for each other and could understand what we had. If you asked someone who has lost a spouse to cancer or some other terrible disease if they’d take their deceased loved one back if they were in a wheelchair, they’d say yes without question.

I never set out looking for our love to be tested, but I was glad—and not remotely surprised—that it survived. I never expected my strength in general would be tested or that I’d be forced to push the limits of that strength, but I was given no choice. I was always a careful girl, and I thought I was doing everything right. I was safe, or I tried to be. I really didn’t have to think about strength before, whether I was or I wasn’t strong. If you’d asked me as a twenty-four-year-old, “Hey, how would you manage being a quadriplegic?” I’d have said, “I wouldn’t want to know. I don’t think I’d handle it well.” You just don’t know until you need to know.