Chapter 1
Life and Death




The snow was falling hard as a car sped on towards the city. Due to regular plowing, the highway wasn’t as dangerous as it could have been. But traction wasn’t a worry for the driver, as he slowed to get his bearings. The snow was falling thick, so visibility was at a minimum.
He and his family, consisting of himself, his wife sitting next to him, and his six-year-old son who sat behind the passenger seat, were on their way into the city to meet a relative who had flown in for the weekend. Adam, the six-year-old boy, had never heard of his uncle Jack, but, according to his mother, he had met him several times when he was younger. He figured that he had met him at his Grandmother’s, and again at his Grandfather’s funeral, and must have met him a third time when he was sick.
When he was sick. But why is he here now? Adam thought to himself. And then again, out loud this time, “Why has uncle Jack come back? Is he sick again mommy?”
His mother turned around in surprise, not at her son’s question, but that he had broken the silence that had formed in the car. “Oh no, honey,” she said reassuringly “he is just stopping by for a visit. Actually, Adam, he came to see you.”
Me? Adam thought. Why me? I don’t even remember him, and now he comes from far away to see me? All I know of –
All he heard was his father’s curse, his mother’s scream, and the crunch of metal upon metal, glass upon flesh.
* * *

Six years have passed. Adam’s father was instantly killed in the crash. A stopped car had been in the lane, masked by the falling snow. Their car, and his father, had hit the stopped car at over 35 miles per hour. Adam’s mother survived, but had to have her leg amputated at the knee, and had to go though three years of physical therapy in order to regain her ability to move and talk. She finally got a prosthetic leg, and now could walk almost normally. Adam was paralyzed from the waist down. He could talk, do all brain functions, and everything a ‘normal’ 12-year-old could do, everything besides using his lower body. His mother, with the money from her spouse’s life insurance and her parents’ estate, had tutors come to the house. According to them, he was being taught at a higher level than the public schools, and was capable of much more.
Adam knew he was normal. No speech impediments, he had lots of friends, and he was fit and in control. Accept in his dreams. After two years of telling his mother about the dreams, he suggested that she take him to a psychiatrist to analyze him. She agreed, and the appointment was today. Adam was not nervous, but anxious. So, without another thought of it, he started his routine to get washed up and dressed.
Because he could still use his upper body, he could use a wheel chair. He could have used the wheel chair to go to school, but the public education board would not let him be enrolled into the ‘normal grades’, but instead they would place him in the Special Education Program. Adam had even gone to one of the meetings, took a test, and proved that he was just as smart, if not smarter than the other ‘normal’ kids. However, the school it’s self, which wanted him in the advanced placement program, was not in charge of this type of situation. And so Adam was home schooled.
He wheeled himself to the foot of the stairs. This is where it got tricky for him. He needed to fasten a sort of ‘clip’ to the tracks on the sides of the stair walls. After that, he need only to push a button on the banister, and he was on his way up the stairs. His mother always joked about how it looked as if he were riding a ski lift. His mother and he always joked about things like that, and Adam liked to speak freely about his paralysis. “There is nothing I can do about it,” he had once said, “and it is always going to be with me, so why try and act as if it doesn’t exist?” It was the kind of person Adam was. “Just like your father,” she would say “ to always look at the glass half full and half empty.”
By this time, Adam was already unhooking the clasps confining the wheelchair. When he had finished, he continued on towards his room. His room wasn’t as some people would have thought. One of his friends, when they had first met, had asked if he had a special bed, and Admin simply ask, “Why would I need a special bed? I can sleep just fine!” They had both laughed, and had never brought it up again.
Adam entered his room. He wheeled himself to the dresser, opened the dresser, and he got his clothes out. He hollered out “Mom, I’m going to get a shower now.” He needed to tell his mom, because if he slipped during his process of showering, his mom would be there, on the other side of the door, to help him up.
His mother, after all these years of going to physical therapy sessions, was mking her way up the stairs up with ease. Adam was already in the bathroom when she reached the door to the bathroom. “Will you need my help to undress Adam?” She called.
He, already half way undressed, wheeled to the door, and called through it “No, mom, I’m alright.”
“Okay.” She said as she went to get a chair and magazine.
The only possible way for Adam to take a shower was to have a special shower. In this shower, there was an outcrop of tiled stone, shaped as a chair-like block. Adam wheeled himself to this, and now down to his pants, slid off the wheel chair onto the block, and slipped off the rest of his clothes. He slid down farther into the alcove he called a shower, slid the shower curtain, called out to his mom that he was starting his shower, and turned the water on. After a while, washing himself became easy enough for him to do it himself. As he scrubbed, and the soap slid off his body, he imagined all the world melting away. Soon, he would understand why he dreamed.
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