The Promise

  The Promise

  The Promise

  A Tragic Accident, a Paralyzed Bride, and the Power of Love, Loyalty, and Friendship

  Rachelle Friedman

  Guilford, Connecticut

  An imprint of Globe Pequot Press

  skirt!® is an attitude . . . spirited, independent, outspoken, serious, playful and irreverent, sometimes controversial, always passionate.

  Copyright © 2014 by Disability Possibilities, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, PO Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

  skirt!® is an imprint of Globe Pequot Press.

  skirt!® is a registered trademark of Morris Publishing Group, LLC, and is used with express permission.

  All photos courtesy of the author unless otherwise indicated.

  Project Editor: Lauren Brancato

  Layout Artist: Kirsten Livingston

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  eISBN 978-1-4930-0900-8

  To anyone dealing with a spinal cord injury and to all of those fighting tirelessly for a cure, this book is for you.

  To my alma mater, East Carolina University, and the Pirate nation for all of your support. Once a Pirate, always a Pirate.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Meeting the One

  Chapter 2: From Friend to Soul Mate

  Chapter 3: The Bachelorette Party

  Chapter 4: The Accident

  Chapter 5: Paralyzed

  Chapter 6: Barely Breathing

  Chapter 7: One Day at a Time

  Chapter 8: Support from Friends

  Chapter 9: Rockin’ Rehab

  Chapter 10: The Proposal

  Chapter 11: The Big Day, Take One

  Chapter 12: Finding Peace

  Chapter 13: Love and Sex

  Chapter 14: Getting Through

  Chapter 15: My Competitive Spirit

  Chapter 16: On My Own

  Chapter 17: Adjusting at Home

  Chapter 18: The Ugly Reality

  Chapter 19: The Pact

  Chapter 20: Turning Down Oprah

  Chapter 21: Laughter and Tears

  Chapter 22: Wedding Plans

  Chapter 23: One Year Later

  Chapter 24: The Rehearsal

  Chapter 25: The Perfect Wedding

  Chapter 26: The Finish Line

  Chapter 27: Paradise

  Chapter 28: My New Reality

  Chapter 29: Let It Be

  Chapter 30: Buckets of Love

  Chapter 31: What If

  Chapter 32: Keeping My Head in the Game

  Chapter 33: Marriage

  Chapter 34: The Big Shift

  Chapter 35: Being Heard

  Chapter 36: The Positive

  Chapter 37: My Mother’s Birthday

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Group Guide

  About the Author

  When a soul is sent down from heaven it contains both male and female characteristics. The male elements enter the baby boy; the female elements enter the baby girl; and if they be worthy, God reunites them in marriage.

  —The Zohar

  The names of all of the women by the pool the night of my accident, and of some of my friends, have been changed to protect their privacy. Some details about their identities have been slightly altered.

  Prologue

  My head hit the bottom of the pool and I heard an excruciatingly loud crack. Whether it was my neck snapping or my head hitting the concrete floor, I’m not really sure. I just remember that sound above all else in that moment. My eyes were open underwater, but I couldn’t process what was happening. I simply floated, suspended in time. In those few seconds I didn’t see a flash before my eyes. I didn’t see a rush of memories. I felt frozen, as if someone had hit a pause button. I couldn’t figure out anything. That crack was the only thing I heard.

  When you’re underwater it’s usually so quiet and peaceful. But this moment didn’t feel peaceful—it simply felt stuck. I felt no panic or even fear. No gasping for air and taking in water. Just my frozen mind. My body froze, too. I knew I was in water, but I couldn’t feel the wetness of it; that was the strangest thing. My mind—knowing I was immersed—and my body weren’t syncing up. I couldn’t feel anything. I was just floating, still and nearly lifeless, toward the surface.

  I had no idea when I crawled out of bed that morning that it would be the last time I’d be able to do it on my own, without help from another person. My world was about to change, as was that of my fiancé and parents.

  There was another life that would unexpectedly be robbed of its joy, its ability to laugh, and it would be rocked to the core, maybe more so than mine.

  CHAPTER 1

  Meeting the One

  Our plan was to have everything we ever wanted: the perfect house, a rich and happy marriage, a baby boy and a baby girl. We saw the house as the foundation of our goals and dreams. In the summer of 2009, Chris and I bought it together; it’s where we were going to live our wonderfully and carefully planned life, in Knightdale, North Carolina, a small town three hours from where I grew up in Virginia Beach.

  It was the Friday of my bachelorette weekend, a month before my wedding. We were home in the morning before work, scrambling to take off for fun but separate celebratory weekends. Chris was packing for his guys’ camping trip. He was loading his fishing gear and clothing into the car: rods and reels, tents, all of the things you need to camp. It was all neutral colors—browns, beiges, and greens; we certainly couldn’t have been packing for two more opposite events. I was preparing for a seriously girlie weekend, and he was getting ready for an ultra-guy weekend of roughing it.

  My friend Britney and I had gone shopping days beforehand for a fun white dress I’d wear the next evening, and I was carefully packing my dress, curling iron, makeup, and all that I’d need to primp and party the next night. I was so worried I’d forget something, I kept reviewing what I had laid out. I was so consumed by all of the little details that were a big deal to me at the time and seemed so important. None of it turned out to be all that important in the days that followed.

  Chris left before me that morning and made a point to kiss me good-bye. He was leaving for his camping trip straight from work, so I wouldn’t see him until that Sunday night.

  “I love you. Be safe,” he said.

  “I love you, too,” I responded.

  He went to work and so did I.

  I was completely unaware it would be my last day of work ever. I was a program coordinator at an active seniors facility, and I had planned a Senior Prom for the members of the center. I dressed up in a satin polka dot dress that flared out when I twirled. I had the residents line dancing and slow dancing, and I remember dancing so hard myself. It was a fun morning. One of the couples was celebrating their fiftieth anniversary. We played a special love song for them and had them take the floor like it was their first dance. I remember looking at them and thinking, “I can’t wait for this to be Chris and me.” I imagined our first dance at our wedding and years of growing old together. It was a magical visio
n.

  When I arrived home later that day, I changed out of the polka dot dress and threw on some yoga clothes for the long car ride back to my hometown. Britney picked me up that afternoon. When I left our beautiful home on May 21, 2010, I left a few dishes in the sink, the bed unmade, and a bunch of outfits on the floor that I had torn out of my closet to pack and never put back. I figured I’d clean up when I returned home. I was too excited to waste time. I had set my bag right at the door, so I could just zip in and grab it after work.

  Britney and I headed to my grandma’s house for our big Saturday. It’s the place I always go when I head to my hometown. It’s easier there. My room at my mom and dad’s had been turned into a storage office, but my grandma had a real room for me still, so I liked it there. I was celebrating with my girls; Chris was celebrating with his dad. Soon, we’d be husband and wife, a day I’d waited for my entire life.

  Chris and I met at East Carolina University in Greenville at a party in 2004, during my freshman year. It was October, and Halloween was a serious weeklong affair there. In fact, it’s apparently one of the biggest Hallows’ Eve celebrations in the country, almost like a mini Mardi Gras. This was a Friday night, October 29. But two days later, on Halloween night, all the streets would be full of people shoulder to shoulder.

  It was an outdoor party, part of the festivities that we’d heard about through the grapevine. None of my dorm mates in Tyler Hall knew the guys hosting it, but we had heard it would be fun. We all got ready together, trying on a bunch of different outfits, clothes scattered everywhere. I settled on light capri jeans, a brown silky halter top, and some dangly turquoise earrings. I had my hair pulled sort of halfway back, so that you could see my jewelry.

  My roommate, two other girls, and I set out in the early evening to find the place, which was all the way across campus, but we made a stop along the way. The main part of campus was designed like a square, with everything essentially no more than one mile away. I lived on College Hill, across from the main campus. We stopped at a guy friend’s place first, and we began playing beer pong. With a few more people in our crowd, we headed to the party, located close to downtown Greenville. We knew we were getting close as we walked, because we could hear the din of the party blocks away. It was one loud constant noise. We walked around to the backyard, which was full of people—every square inch covered. This was by far the biggest party I’d ever attended.

  My friends and I edged our way through the crowd and found our way into the house; we bought vodka and orange juice drinks before heading back outside. I saw this guy Mike that my roommate had already met, and we were all introduced to his two roommates, Chris and Tom. I thought Mike was really cute when I saw him standing there. My roommate Mary was interested in Mike, too.

  I kind of flirted with all three of them that night. I was a flirtatious girl then, and it was fun to have that attention. We were all chatting and laughing over drinks. Mike, it turned out, was Chris’s cousin and roommate, and as we were all standing there talking, I couldn’t stop thinking about how cute he was. I didn’t notice Chris as much, because I was so drawn to Mike initially. I was talking to the group of them really, not just one person. We talked for a while, getting bumped around by passing partygoers. Mike headed through the crowds with my roommate, so they could chat with some other people. I wound up sort of isolated, alone with just Chris at that point. Since the music was playing and I loved randomly teaching people to salsa dance, I grabbed Chris’s hand.

  “C’mon, let’s dance. I’ll show you how.”

  He was totally up for it. It was crowded, so we were moving in a tiny space as we danced.

  “Where are you from?” I asked.

  “Virginia Beach,” he said.

  “Me, too!”

  I had been drinking and, after a couple of songs, took a break. I turned to him and said, “So, where are you from?”

  He answered again. We laugh about this, but I asked him twice more that night. He finally said, “The same place you are from!”

  Chris and Tom and I all left the party together at the end of the night. Although our other friends headed straight back to Mike’s place, we went to Alfredo’s to get pizza. There was a standing joke in Greenville that the pizza was edible at this place only if you had been drinking. We waited for what seemed like an hour for our pizza, then headed back to Mike’s to hang out for a few more hours, all of us just talking and laughing about the night. This was my freshman year, and looking back I realize that it was the most important night of my life.

  Like many of those college crushes, my roommate was over Mike by sunrise. He must have done something to turn her off. Back in our dorm I asked her, “Do you mind if I go for Mike?”

  “Go for it,” she said.

  We hung out again on Halloween, two nights later. Mike and I were flirting with each other and even holding hands, but it didn’t go anywhere beyond that night.

  But by December that year, Chris and I were buddies. I had a lot of guy friends then, so I didn’t think much of it. We were both going home for the holidays, and he offered to give me a ride. He picked me up in his Buick Le Sabre. We lived about two and a half hours away from school, both from the same town (as we’d by now laughed about many times). We talked about a lot of things on that drive, but honestly, since I wasn’t even remotely thinking about him romantically, I don’t remember much of the discussion.

  To me, it was just a ride home. But I do recall that he implied he was having problems with his girlfriend, that things hadn’t really been the same with the two of them. I wasn’t in a place to give advice, since I hadn’t ever been in a serious relationship in my life. He said that he was looking forward to a week apart from her to think things through. The term “breakup” wasn’t a part of our conversation, but he suggested they’d assess things when they returned to school in the New Year. I may not have known much about relationships, but I could tell he wasn’t happy. As his friend, happiness was all I wanted for him.

  While I didn’t have those kinds of special feelings about Chris, I was struck immediately by the fact that he was a really awesome, stand-up guy. It was something you could just tell, especially as we rode together that day and I listened to him talk. It sounds so corny and general, but it became obvious to me that Chris was a crazily honest and extremely genuine person. I could tell from the very beginning that he would never intentionally hurt someone, or purposely lie or be mean. He was just always so nice.

  He took me to my house, and that’s when we figured out how close we lived to each other. I knew he was in Virginia Beach, but I had never bothered to ask him where exactly. So when I gave him directions to my grandmother’s house, we were shocked that his home was literally in the same neighborhood, and we could have walked to each other’s houses. We did learn that our paths had crossed before college. We had the same dentist—my uncle. Chris had been to my dad’s army-navy surplus store, too. Basically, he’d met several members of my family before ever meeting me. I used to go to the pool in the community when I was little, in the summers, and he said he was there every day for years, as was I, starting at age three. Chris was four years older than me, a big difference then. We’re not sure if we played together, but we might have. Virginia Beach is not a small place. It’s not a big city, but it’s spread out, so to discover we’d been in the same neighborhood was pretty crazy.

  He helped me bring my stuff inside and met my grandma for the first time, and she’ll tell you to this day that she never saw me look at a guy like that before, that she saw our future right there. She saw it well before I did. I didn’t see that at all.

  CHAPTER 2

  From Friend to Soul Mate

  I jumped out of bed the next morning, so excited thinking about the bachelorette day ahead. My friend Britney had stayed overnight with me at my grandma’s house in Virginia Beach. It was like a sleepover. We stayed in one room, and my grandma
made us my favorite breakfast that morning: pancakes and scrambled eggs.

  There was so much to do. My day was jam-packed with plans and appointments and last-minute shopping. I was getting my final fitting for my wedding dress; having lunch with my mom, Bubbie (my dad’s mom), and Britney; and then heading off to celebrate my pending wedding with my other friends. Lauren was still making her way to town, and the other girls were busy prepping and planning the night ahead, so they didn’t join us for lunch. It was my bachelorette party. I was going to marry my Prince Charming, the man of my dreams: Chris Chapman. This day was all part of the celebration leading up to that.

  I was excited to hang out with this group of girls because we would all be going out together for the first time. They knew of each other, but we hadn’t spent too much time together as a group before. Lauren, Samantha, Carly, and Britney—all from different periods of my life—would finally really get to know each other and spend time together to celebrate with me. Just the five of us. But before the evening’s festivities, the group from lunch went to the bridal shop, so that I could try on my wedding dress for the very last fitting.

  I had gone shopping for my wedding dress two weeks after I got engaged. All the girls were there, and each one went and grabbed a dress off the rack. Lauren pulled the one I ultimately chose. It was just beautiful. I tried on only four, but I fell in love with that one immediately. It was a strapless dress, corseted at the top and laced down the back. The skirt flowed from there, and it had an incredible train. My mom had seen it when I first picked it out, but when she looked at me in it all fitted and ready to wear, she was overjoyed. She said it looked like it was made just for me. She had wanted to buy it for me and I accepted, knowing how happy it made her to do that, even though she’d have to work very hard to do so. Everyone thought it was beautiful.