So he learned. He watched the nurses, then copied everything they did. Wrote notes in a beat-up notebook. How to roll me without hurting me. How to check my skin. How to lift me like I was heavy and fragile at once.
The first night home, his alarm went off every two hours.
He shuffled into my room, hair sticking up.
“Pancake time,” he muttered, gently rolling me.
I whimpered.
“I know,” he whispered. “I got you, kiddo.”
He built a plywood ramp so my wheelchair could clear the front door. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.
He fought with insurance on speakerphone, pacing the kitchen.
“No, she can’t ‘make do’ without a shower chair,” he said. “You want to tell her that yourself?”
They didn’t.
Our neighbor, Mrs. Patel, started bringing casseroles and hovering.
“She needs friends,” she told him.
“She needs not to break her neck on your stairs,” he grumbled, but later he pushed me around the block and introduced me to every kid like I was his VIP.
He took me to the park.
Kids stared. Parents glanced away.
A girl my age walked up and asked, “Why can’t you walk?”
I froze.
Ray crouched beside me. “Her legs don’t listen to her brain. But she can beat you at cards.”
The girl grinned. “No, she can’t.”
That was Zoe. My first real friend.
Ray did that a lot. Put himself in front of the awkward and made it less sharp. When I was ten, I found a chair in the garage with yarn taped to the back, half braided.
“What’s this?” I asked.
