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Raleigh wouldn’t think of it, though. Not with her favorite student shining in the spotlight.
***
A few days later, I stood at the podium and called out Morgan’s name.
“Morgan Leigh Bryce, your senior spokesman for this year’s graduating class!”
Morgan had changed quite a bit over the last year.
Time had definitely been in his favor.
Though he still was quite literally bound to his wheelchair, he was making great progress.
Morgan rolled his wheelchair—he refused to have a motorized one after the low battery incident where he fell out of his chair—and came to a stop at the steps.
When I realized what he was about to do, I stiffened with pride.
Then he did the unthinkable.
He moved the brakes on the wheelchair in place and then started to stand.
The entire two hundred and eighty-nine students, who knows how many faculty, and parents here gasped in shock as he made it to his own two feet.
Morgan was a good kid, and well liked all around. His accident had rocked our entire community, and there wasn’t a single person in the entire room that didn’t know his story.
When I saw him stand, my eyes automatically went to my wife in the side row where the faculty had come to witness the senior night.
Morgan and Raleigh had been through a lot over the last couple of years, but the year that I’d met her and made her mine had definitely been the most trying. Raleigh had been there for him when nobody else had thought to look at him twice.
Nobody else would’ve seen the sadness in his eyes—at least not someone that didn’t have that bleakness in their own.
I hadn’t realized the extent of both of their anguish until I’d seen them talking out in the hall all those years ago—the day I realized that I wanted to date her. That I wanted her to be mine.
And now, seeing how far that Morgan—and Raleigh—had come made my heart full.
Morgan took his first step up onto the platform, and I heard Raleigh burst into tears.
Consequently, so did Morgan, who turned to her with a smile on his face.
He winked at her, and then turned back around to continue climbing.
It took him a lot less time than I would’ve expected.
Forty seconds instead of the minutes that I’d seen him do the night before.
Then he was taking slow, measured steps across the podium until he reached me.
I held out my hand the moment he was close enough to reach it, and then shook his before I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I threw my arms around him and hugged him hard. “I’m so fuckin’ proud of you, kid.”
Morgan squeezed me back. “Thanks, Coach.”
Then I stepped back to surrender the microphone to Morgan.
When I took a seat at the rear of the stage, I watched, just as everyone else did, as Morgan began his speech.
“You might not have known it, but two and a half years ago, I was well on my way to committing suicide.”
There were more inhaled gasps.
Raleigh and I were likely the only ones in the entire place that realized there’d ever been something wrong with the kid.
“I was in a bad place. I didn’t like getting up and facing a day where I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t get into the shower without help, and not a day went by where I didn’t think about how much easier it would be on me and everyone else if I wasn’t there to need to be taken care of,” Morgan continued.
“But then Mrs. McDuff, previously Ms. Crusie, changed my life.” Morgan’s gaze turned to Raleigh. “She said something to me…told me a joke…and I couldn’t figure out why I was laughing, but I was. She said, ‘What is a soldier’s least favorite month?’ and then told me ‘Allich.’”
The crowd laughed.
“And I spent the rest of the day thinking about that laugh that she coaxed from me.” He looked at my wife, who was still looking really run down.
But, since it was senior night and Morgan was our well-loved water boy, she’d come to support the seniors.
“She didn’t know that she saved me,” he said, sounding happy. “But she did.” He looked back over the crowd. “Mrs. McDuff was that teacher for me. The one that changed my life. The one that parents always hope that their children have. The one that makes sacrifices and spends her own hard-earned money on school supplies. The one that comes to games even though she hates them. The one that will do anything in her power to make sure that you excel in life. And I have a feeling that I won’t be the only life that Mrs. McDuff changes.”
No. Morgan definitely wasn’t the only one that my Raleigh had changed.
She’d changed me.
She’d made me a better person.
She’d been there when I hadn’t even realized that I’d needed a person to lean on.
