Sitting before me, Wanda was frail. Looking at her, I couldn't utter a single word. She was perhaps once beautiful, but long confinement had leached the life from her. A blanket draped her legs, thin, almost frighteningly so, atrophied from disuse in the wheelchair.
"Hello, Ms. Parker. I'm glad you came to see me."
She was much calmer than I expected, almost ethereal. I forced a smile. "You look so young. How old are you?"
"Twenty."
"That 'is' young. I still feel like I'm seventeen."
She told me her story with Christian, a first love shattered by a car accident. This woman, from seventeen to twenty-seven, the most vibrant decade of her life, spent bedridden. She had been a ballerina, now unable to stand.
"I understand," I said, trying to compose myself. "I'm leaving for school soon.
