He had wanted that bike since he was a teenager. I hated it. Obviously. I’m his mother. The first time he rode it into our driveway, I said, “Wonderful. You spent thousands of dollars on something designed to turn you into a newspaper headline.”
Daniel laughed. Emma didn’t.
She hated that bike too. Remember that. It matters.
The crash happened on a Tuesday evening. A driver found Daniel by a country road about fifteen minutes outside town. The motorcycle had gone straight through a barrier.
His left leg was broken in several places, his knee badly damaged. He had a fractured wrist and a concussion.
He was lucky. Everybody kept saying that. Lucky.
There’s something surreal about hearing your child called lucky while you’re staring at him tangled in wires and tubes.
He had two surgeries, then another procedure. After a few weeks, the doctors grew cautiously optimistic. He would most likely walk again. Maybe with a limp, maybe without. Nobody could say when.
