by Chris Norton
“How could you, Emily?” she screamed into the phone. “I can’t believe you would do this to me! I trusted you!” Tears rolled down my cheeks as she shouted, “I hate you!”
I knew I did the right thing. I knew I had saved her life. At the same time, I thought, How long can I keep doing this? What would I have done if she killed herself right there on the phone? What would I have done if I didn’t call and just went to bed? How could I move on?
It’s so easy for each of us to think someone else will help. But so many times they don’t, and then what? Terrible things happen. We all have to step up and do what we can for others who are hurting. I knew that, but I wondered how long I could keep that mind-set. I wrote out prayers to God in my journal about this. I knew I couldn’t keep this up without his strength.
The close call with Sophia left me drained. I forced a smile in the days that followed and threw myself into Chris’s therapy and care. After all, he was the only stable force in my life, and I needed him. I needed us to meet our goal. I needed to succeed. But something was happening under the surface that even I didn’t understand yet.
CHRIS
About three months into my training, I came to the conclusion that my training at Barwis Methods plus all the extra work I was putting in wasn’t the magic bullet I had hoped it might be. Yes, I was making real progress, but it was slower than I had hoped. I wanted to walk across the stage completely on my own, unassisted by anyone or anything. By the end of March, I knew that was not going to happen. I had to have some help. At first I thought, Okay, I’ll use crutches. Walking with crutches got easier, but it was always clumsy. I simply couldn’t see myself walking on a graduation stage with them. Using the walker also wasn’t a real option.
As I thought about how I could possibly show everyone how hard I’d worked and how far I’d come, I slowly turned to Emily. I was more confident walking with her than with any crutch or walker. What could be more natural than walking across the stage with the woman I loved? She loved the idea. Our nightly walks to bed became practice runs for the graduation walk. By April, Emily and I were ready to go.
But in May disaster struck. Suddenly, the therapy exercises that were challenging before became impossible. Eventually, I couldn’t even lift my foot to take one step, Emily or no Emily.
When I couldn’t walk in therapy, I broke down in tears. “Are you kidding me?” I shouted in frustration. “My graduation is in a month. I’ve wasted the last five months working toward this, and now I’m going to fail.”
I finally decided to call Mike Barwis. I’m sure he could tell I was a wreck. “Why don’t you take a few days off?” he said. “You never take breaks. You even skipped your spring break. Maybe this is your body telling you to slow down.”
For the first time since moving to Michigan, I stayed home and rested for three days. But when I came back to therapy, I hadn’t improved. If anything, I’d gotten worse. Mike Barwis, who had come for that session to check on me, folded his arms as he watched me struggle to move my legs. “Has anything changed about your routine? Something’s got to be different,” he said.
In May I had started taking a nighttime supplement to help my body relax and go to sleep, so I said, “Just the nighttime supplement. But I didn’t think it had any side effects.”
“That’s got to be it,” Mike said. “Throw out the rest. Don’t take another pill. Then we’ll see how you do.”
Thankfully, Mike was right. My strength came back, and I was able to take steps again. Okay, Em and I are going to make this happen, I thought. I’m back to myself again.
11
The Graduation Walk
CHRIS
“You ready?” Emily said.
I nodded.
She helped move my feet from the footrests to the floor. I placed my hands on the sides of my seat cushion, leaned forward, and pushed to my feet. Emily held out her arms, and I rested my hands on her elbows. We stared at the floor, trying not to tangle our legs. Slowly, we moved together. Step. Step. Shuffle. Step. I looked at Emily and grinned. “We’re doing this.”
But I looked up too soon. Emily tried to step backward but couldn’t move. My foot was resting squarely on her long skirt. “Whoops,” I laughed. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Just pick up your foot.”
“Uh. I can’t.” We both cracked up as Emily knelt down to pick up my foot and move it off her coral skirt.
“Note to self: get my skirt hemmed,” Emily laughed. “Tomorrow let’s try it with a shorter dress.”
A few weeks out from graduation, we faced crunch time. We had the walking part down. Now we had to control for the variables that came with walking in dress clothes in front of an audience. In addition to my regular therapy and biking, Emily and I had a dress rehearsal in our apartment every night. I borrowed Emily’s brother’s graduation gown and put on the shoes I planned to wear for the actual walk—sturdy shoes that would support my ankles instead of your typical flimsy dress shoes. Emily tried different dresses and searched for shoes that would allow her to walk backward without slipping. I stepped on her sandal a few times, and her shoe fell off. Sometimes I stepped on her skirt. We kept pushing through. As Memorial Day weekend crept closer, we brought our graduation gear to Barwis Methods and doubled up on practices.
“I think we’re ready,” Em said one night after yet another dress rehearsal. We were on a hot streak. Multiple nights in a row, we had gotten through the walk without one hiccup.
I nodded slowly. “I think you’re right. I just wish we could practice with a cap.” It was the one piece of the graduation outfit we didn’t have.
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.” Emily was confident. “It’s not going to affect your feet. And I think I finally have the right skirt length and shoes. Your shoes are perfect. We’ve got this.”
“Yeah.” I was confident too, but I couldn’t shake my nerves. The truth was, I had something else on my mind. The graduation walk wasn’t the only major life event I had planned for Memorial Day weekend.
EMILY
The time finally came for Chris and me to drive down to Decorah. We had talked about graduation and practiced for this moment for so long that I couldn’t believe it was finally here.
Chris had agreed to speak to a group of graduating senior athletes Saturday morning, which seemed crazy to me. I thought it was insane to add one more thing to his already busy schedule, but he was insistent. Afterward, we stopped at Culver’s to get some lunch. I devoured my sandwich, but when I looked at Chris, he hadn’t touched his burger. “What are you doing, Chris?” I was dumbfounded. “Tomorrow is one of the biggest days of your life, and you’re not going to eat? You’ve been training for years for this moment!”
He shrugged and looked away. “I guess I’m just not hungry.”
“But you know it matters what you eat the day before. You need to get some good food in you!”
“I promise I’ll eat dinner tonight.”
“Oh my gosh. You always eat and eat! This doesn’t make sense.”
I knew better than to keep pushing, but it was so unlike him not to fuel his body before a big day. He finally ate a few cheese curds to make me happy. Wow, I thought, he must be more nervous about the graduation walk than I thought.
Back at our dorm room, Chris’s mom and sisters told us they were about to go shopping.
“I think I’ll go too,” his dad said.
I stared at him. “Terry, why are you going shopping? You hate shopping.”
He looked around nervously. “Oh, sometimes I like it. It’s a nice day; it might be fun to walk around.”
“Okay . . .” I said. This graduation walk must be getting to everyone, because no one is acting like themselves, I thought.
Chris told me someone was coming to interview us at Luther before dinner. “It’s going to be on camera, so you might want to dress up.”
“No problem. I brought an extra dress anyway.” I put on makeup and straightened my ha
ir before helping Chris put on his tie.
“Is it okay if we stop by my friend’s restaurant first?” he asked. “She told me she has a graduation gift for me. We just have to pick it up.”
“Sounds good. Just tell me where to go.”
Chris barely said a word as we drove to the restaurant. Given how nervous he’d seemed all day, I didn’t push him.
The restaurant was closed when we pulled up, and the owner met us out front. She hadn’t opened yet, so the main dining room was still dark. “I have your present in the banquet room back here,” she said, motioning for us to follow her.
When I walked through the doorway, my jaw dropped. Our song—“All of Me” by John Legend—was playing softly in a dimly lit room. What? Could this be what I think it is?
I tried to wrap my head around what was happening. I looked around the room. A sign hung from the ceiling and was decorated in sparkling letters that read “All of me loves all of you.” Tables draped in black tablecloths were sprinkled with rose petals and twinkling candles. Photographs of Chris and me were everywhere. My heart raced. This could only mean one thing. And then I saw the final touch: rose petals and candles had been strategically arranged in the middle of the room, spelling out the words, “Will you marry me?”
My hand flew to my mouth as I laughed in surprise. When I turned to Chris, he had a velvet jewelry box sitting in his lap. I could see tears shining in his eyes. Never in a million years did I expect this. For the past four months, we’d spent every day focusing on Chris’s graduation walk, and now he had pulled off the surprise of a lifetime! I knew I wanted to marry Chris, but I wasn’t thinking about that now. To my great surprise, this amazing man who had never been the most romantic guy in the world, had now hit one out of the park.
“I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” he said, taking my hand. “There’s no doubt in my mind.” His voice was thick with emotion. I knew he meant every word.
“You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met. Will you marry me and share the rest of our lives together?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Yes!” I cried. He grinned and opened the box to reveal the most beautiful ring I had ever seen. He lifted the box up, and I knew that was my cue to take it and put it on my finger. I sobbed as I slipped it on my left ring finger.
“I love you so much,” I managed to choke out between sobs. Bending over, I held his face in my hands as I kissed him. I had known for so long that I always wanted him by my side. Now it was official.
Suddenly, our parents and siblings came rushing out of a supply closet down the hall, where they had apparently been hiding. Even my grandparents were there. I was shocked—I thought they weren’t coming until Sunday because my little brother David had a state track meet in Des Moines. “What! What are you doing here?” I cried in disbelief. One by one, they greeted us with hugs and congratulations. I noticed both of our moms wipe away tears. I had never seen so much joy in one room. All the anxiety and depression about my future that I’d dealt with over the previous six months seemed like a lifetime ago. I was happier than I’d ever been in my life. I’d always told Chris that I wanted a memorable proposal. He exceeded my wildest dreams. Oh, I could not wait to marry this man!
CHRIS
We celebrated our engagement with our families at dinner, but I called it a night early. I needed as much rest as possible to make this walk happen. On our way back to the dorms where we were staying, I checked my phone and noticed an alert. “Hey, they’re moving the graduation inside,” I said. “It’s supposed to rain all day, so they can’t have it on the football field anymore.”
“Oh nice, what a blessing!” Emily said. She was right. I had worried for weeks about how well I would be able to walk on a hot day. Since my injury, my body has trouble regulating my internal temperature. I can’t sweat anymore. I have no way to keep my body cool when I overheat. Instead, my body shuts down and doesn’t respond. Even if the gym got hot, it would be better than sitting outside with the sun beating down on me.
Back at the dorm, we set our alarms for 4:00 a.m. Obviously, graduation didn’t start that early. But most days my body didn’t respond nearly as well first thing in the morning as it did after I’d been up for several hours. I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to wake up my muscles and get my body ready so I had the best chance for success.
But sleep was hard to find. My mind raced back to everything that had just happened. I had asked the woman I loved to marry me. Emily wasn’t going to walk across the stage with me as my girlfriend anymore. She was walking with me as my fiancée. I couldn’t have imagined a better scenario. Now the graduation wasn’t just a symbol of my hard work or how far I had come. It was our celebration. These few steps would be the beginning of our journey together, a plan only God could have created.
And that journey was going to start very early the next morning.
EMILY
I am definitely not a morning person. Normally I would pull the covers over my head if my alarm went off at 4:00 a.m. On graduation day, however, I was awake long before the alarm went off. I was too excited to sleep. This was it. This was the day we had waited for.
“How are you feeling?” I asked Chris. “Muscles feeling good?” Chris’s body still wasn’t back to one hundred percent after that supplement had set him back a few weeks before, and I couldn’t help but feel a little scared. Did we get up early enough? I wondered. Did we give ourselves enough time?
Chris nodded, without a trace of grogginess on his face. “I feel great,” he said. “I’m ready.”
After getting Chris up and dressed, we got ready for the graduation walk with some stretching. I pulled Chris’s knees into his chest and straightened them out, over and over, then rolled his ankles and helped him lift his feet and toes. After standing for a bit and catching his balance, we took a few steps together. We had to be careful not to overdo it, though. He needed to warm up and get ready, but we did not want him to tire out before the walk.
“I think you’re in good shape,” I said. “Why don’t we take a break and eat breakfast?”
Over the next few hours, other friends staying in the dorm cluster woke up and came out into the family room. They kept Chris occupied as I fixed my hair and makeup. My stomach churned, and my hand shook slightly as I brushed on eye shadow and mascara. More than anything, I simply wanted this day to go smoothly. Please, God, let this work, I prayed. Chris has put so much into this moment. Don’t let our nerves get the best of us today.
CHRIS
The gym was already packed when we arrived well before the 10:00 a.m. ceremony. Emily helped me find my spot as a professor lined us up two-by-two in alphabetical order.
“Wow, good thing your last name doesn’t start with Z,” she whispered in my ear, which made me laugh. Just having Emily there helped me breathe and push away the nerves.
I looked at the huge line of students all waiting to graduate that day. Every single one of them would be able to glide across the stage with no issue and quickly grab their diplomas. My walk would take at least ten times longer than anyone else’s. I’m going to stick out like a sore thumb, I thought. Are people going to be mad? This ceremony is already going to be so long, and now I’m going to make it even longer.
“Hey.” Emily interrupted my thoughts. “Don’t worry. Everyone is going to be so excited for you. I promise.”
I nodded, trying to believe it. “You’re right. I know you’re right.”
One of my classmates who also had a last name that started with N planned to push me to my spot in the gym, which allowed Emily to take her place with my family at the front. We had told the school about our plan, so they reserved a spot for my family near the podium. “I’ll see you out there,” she said.
“See you out there.”
A few minutes later, I heard the opening notes to “Pomp and Circumstance.” Game time. I felt exactly like I had before a football game all those years before. I was an athlete about to take the field. N
ow I just needed all that practice to translate into a good performance.
My classmate pushed me into the gym, and I scanned the crowd, looking for my family. There were no empty seats. This was not some huge arena like major colleges have. Luther College played its basketball games in an honest-to-goodness gym, and it was packed like a sold-out game. I felt my heart beat faster, and I took a deep breath. You can do this, I told myself.
We took our spots in the middle of a long row of seats—a chair had been moved out of the way so my wheelchair would fit. I locked in on the graduation stage and looked at the ramp leading up to the platform and podium. Time to visualize. I closed my eyes and imagined myself wheeling up the ramp, pushing out of my chair, and taking that first step with Emily. I hope this works.
I wondered if I would be able to enjoy the ceremony at all. Luckily, our speaker, Mike Danforth, was a welcome distraction. He was a 1995 Luther graduate who was now a senior producer on National Public Radio’s “Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!” He was funny and entertaining and before I knew it, my shoulders dropped and I relaxed. Mike talked about how it’s okay not to have a plan for your future. Everyone laughed as he described his poor grades and his lack of plans for after graduation. His words resonated with me because the plan I had for my life when I started at Luther College had drastically changed over the past four years. I loved how Mike told us not to panic but to keep working.
Then, just like that, Mike was done, and the first row of graduates stood and made their way to the podium. I listened as the announcer read each student’s first, middle, and last name. Here we go, I thought.
Getting through all the graduates was a long process. I could see people checking their watches and fanning themselves as the ceremony dragged on. The body heat from thousands of people canceled out the gym’s air conditioning. Everyone is going to be so annoyed by how long I take. What if this is a mistake?