Chapter 7 - LAUREN’S LETTER
Lauren wrote to me from prison three years later.
I almost deleted the scanned letter.
Then read it.
Not for closure.
Curiosity.
She wrote:
I know everyone thinks I stopped loving you when you stopped walking.
I paused.
That is not exactly true.
Then:
I stopped knowing how to be near you because every time I looked at you, I saw the life we were supposed to have disappearing.
Ugly.
Honest.
Instead of grieving that honestly, I turned you into the person who ruined it.
There.
She admitted avoiding my legs.
Avoiding therapy appointments.
Avoiding intimacy.
Not because paralysis made me less of a man.
Because she had built her identity around the version of me that stood beside her at galas and controlled rooms.
When that version changed, she had no relationship underneath the image strong enough to carry us.
Then Dominic gave her an alternative.
Power.
Money.
Control.
She wrote:
I told myself the mattress would only influence evaluations. I did not think of pressure wounds as wounds because you couldn’t feel them.
I stopped reading for several minutes.
That sentence was monstrous.
Also revealing.
People often confuse inability to feel injury with absence of injury.
Lauren finally understood.
Too late.
She did not ask forgiveness.
Good.
Her final line:
I hope one day you believe the chair did not make you less. I am ashamed that I helped convince you it did.
I put the letter away.
Tessa was at my condo that evening.
We had been dating eight months.
Slow.
Separate homes.
Separate finances.
She knew I received the letter.
“Want to talk?”
“Maybe.”
She waited.
I told her the last line.
Tessa nodded.
“Do you believe it?”
“What?”
“That the chair didn’t make you less.”
I looked down at my legs.
Thinner than before the shooting.
Feet positioned carefully.
Hands resting on the push rims.
“I believe it more often.”
“Good.”
Then:
“Not always.”
“Also normal.”
She never demanded inspirational certainty.
That was one reason I loved her.
I did not say it yet.
Not because I was afraid she would leave.
May you like
Because I wanted the words to be about us now.
Not what happened then.
