The Seven Longest Yards

by Chris Norton

  “Grandma, can I help you with anything?” I asked her at one point.

  She sighed. “All I need is you, Emily.” I still replay that moment in my head sometimes.

  She made it through the night, but the next day she woke up struggling to breathe. Her oxygen levels were so low that my aunt, who’s a volunteer EMT, found an oxygen tank for her at the place where she volunteered. My mom and I realized that Grandma’s time was running out.

  My family and I talked my grandmother into going to the hospital. We called for an ambulance, and three EMTs and a police officer arrived, all trying to help her onto a stretcher. I couldn’t believe it when I saw them nearly drop her as they struggled to hoist her up. My grandma was terrified.

  “Stop!” I finally said, taking control. “Let me do this.” I marched in, looked my grandmother in the eyes, and said, “It’s okay, Grandma. Trust me. I can do this.” I then stood her up and transferred her onto the stretcher by myself.

  At the hospital, though, all the doctors could do was make her comfortable. She’d had a heart attack, and one by one her organs were shutting down. When the doctors gave us some privacy, I lay in her hospital bed next to her, my face on her chest, hugging her with all my might. I had stayed so strong up until that point. I took care of her. I transferred her. I kept her spirits up. I was upbeat for my mom, aunts, and uncles, who were devastated at the thought of losing their mom. After all that, I couldn’t take it anymore. I crept into the bathroom, shut the door, and sat on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. I knew everyone in the hospital room could hear me, but I was too upset to care. My grandma was mostly unconscious during the last days in the hospital. She woke up a few times. She was able to tell us she loved us, and it was nice because she still had her sense of humor. The priest came in to give her a blessing, and we asked her how it was. She said, “It was better than nothing.” We all cracked up! Now she had been unconscious for a while, and I kept praying that she would wake up just one more time.

  I still had a burning question I had to ask my grandmother before it was too late. I kept thinking about Whittley. She was still really struggling, and I felt so out of control since I was in Florida and she was in Iowa. I knew that if my grandma was Whittley’s guardian angel, I would feel more peace. And I knew my grandma would be the best guardian angel, since she was so strong. I was so thankful when she woke up, and I asked her, “Grandma, will you please watch over Whittley?” She looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Of course I will, Emily.” Those were the last words we shared, and she fell back asleep.

  Grandma Max passed away in that hospital room. I was with her the whole time, never leaving even to shower. I was going to be there for my grandmother no matter what. I got the chance to speak at her funeral and share how special she was to me. When I stepped down from the podium and took my seat, I could feel myself closing down again. I cried a little, but not as much as I normally would, considering how close I was to my grandma. I didn’t want to feel the pain and sadness. I wanted to be numb again. The wall I thought was gone had suddenly returned, just like that.

  As the fog set in again, I chose to feel anger instead of grief. I even got angry at my Grandma Max for dying. You could still be here if you were healthier! I thought. Now you won’t be here for my wedding. How can I get married when you won’t be here to see it?

  CHRIS

  Emily’s grandmother’s death sent Emily spiraling down into a new low. Just a few months earlier, Emily had almost seemed back to normal, laughing and smiling and pursuing a career that would ignite her passion. Within a few weeks, though, cracks began to form. An angry response here, a sluggish day there. When her grandmother died, Emily crumbled. I knew how much Emily and her grandmother adored each other. They were so much alike—deep, thoughtful people who love with their whole heart. The two of them had a strong connection. I knew Emily would be devastated, especially since it was her first experience with losing a loved one.

  Even so, it was hard not to be discouraged when the anger and personal attacks returned. I tried to be understanding, knowing I wasn’t the real reason behind her anger, but it wasn’t easy.

  Then Emily told me she got a job at the Hibiscus Children’s Center. This wasn’t like the group home where she’d done her traumatic internship but was instead a shelter for kids from the time they’re newborn to twelve years old. I was thrilled for her. For months I thought Emily simply needed to do something where she could use her degree and that ignited her passion. This job checked all the boxes. This could really help turn things around, I thought.

  At first the new job seemed to do the trick. Emily came home from work with a spark in her eyes. She told me about two girls, Cali and Sara, five and six years old. When they came into care, they were separated from their two younger sisters. Emily had an immediate connection with them, and I could already see that she cared a lot about these girls. She shared with me that one night Cali was struggling to sleep. No one was able to get her calmed down, but she opened up to Emily about how much she missed her grandmother who had passed away. Emily opened up about her grandma, and they cried together.

  Because Emily was working, I hired a caregiver who helped me in the mornings and drove me to therapy. Now Emily was not only doing what she loved but also was relieved of doing everything for me. I was very optimistic that we’d turned a corner.

  I shouldn’t have been.

  Emily and I still went around and around over whether I gave her the love that she needed or whether she respected me. It didn’t even help when her sister, Marisa, moved to the same apartment complex as we did, as did my friend A.P. I thought for sure that having family and friends around would help pull Emily out of whatever she was going through. We didn’t fight nearly as much because she just buried everything down deeper and hid how she was feeling. Things only got worse when her new job had her working crazy hours. She started working double shifts and sometimes only slept a couple of hours a night.

  Then anxiety set in. She became paranoid about everything I did, like if I texted her that my plane was about to take off. If I didn’t take off within seconds, she’d text back, “Well why couldn’t you talk to me right now? Clearly you haven’t taken off yet.”

  “The plane is ready for takeoff, but we’re not yet in the air,” I’d say. In the three minutes before I turned off my phone, a major fight would ensue.

  “Oh, you don’t want to talk to me? You obviously don’t care about me.” she’d say.

  I was baffled. Now she scrutinized everything I said or did. Everything always came back to whether I really loved her and cared about her. Her doubts about how I felt left me beating myself up and feeling guilty that I wasn’t better at expressing my love for her. I knew I needed to do a better job. If I could show her that I loved her and how much I appreciated her, perhaps at least half of our fights could be avoided.

  But her blowups only became more unpredictable. One day I went grocery shopping with one of my friends in an attempt to take something off Emily’s plate. When I came back, she went through the grocery list and carefully compared it to the items I’d brought home.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, holding up what looked to me like bananas. “These are plantains. Why the heck would you buy plantains?”

  I took a closer look at them. Now that she mentioned it, they did look a little different from the bananas I was used to eating. But since I had zero experience with grocery shopping, I had no idea that there were different types of fruit that looked like bananas. In my head, a banana was a banana, so I grabbed the first bunch I saw.

  I laughed as I tried to explain. Emily was not amused. “I asked you to get bananas, Chris,” she snapped. “That’s pretty much the most basic thing on the planet. How can you possibly get that wrong!?”

  “Wait, are you really upset?” I thought she would see the humor in the situation too. Apparently, I was wrong. “We can pick up something else. It’s not a big deal.”

  “It is a big de
al, because you don’t listen to anything I say. You don’t care about me. You don’t care about what I want. Why even go grocery shopping if you’re going to buy the wrong stuff just so you can get out of there as fast as humanly possible?” She looked at me disgustedly and shook her head. “You can’t do anything right.”

  Is this really happening? I thought. Why are we fighting about bananas?

  All along, I kept thinking that if we just tried one more thing, just crossed off one more box, then things would get better. But the boxes were running out. We moved to a new place. Emily got a job. She wasn’t responsible for all my care anymore. And yet nothing was better. If anything, it had gotten worse. I wondered if all relationships went through times like this. I had little to no experience to draw from. I tried reading blogs and listening to podcasts, looking for a nugget of inspiration.

  Slowly, though, I began to lose hope. And that’s not a normal posture for me. I’m the guy who was determined to beat those three percent odds, the guy who worked out five-plus hours a day just to walk when everyone said I couldn’t. I knew to focus on the positive, to concentrate on what I could do instead of what I couldn’t. But now I’d done everything I knew to do. I didn’t know how to stay positive when nothing helped. I felt completely unable to control the situation, and it was infuriating. I didn’t understand how our relationship falling apart or Emily’s depression was part of God’s plan. Honestly, this time in my life was even lower than when I went through my spinal cord injury.

  There was, however, another line of help we’d forgotten about. Emily and I were far from God at this point in our lives. We had never gotten involved in a church community since we had moved to Michigan together; we didn’t pray together or seek God’s help with much of anything. Our faith had been so important to both of us when we first started dating, but now it had faded into the background. Deep down I knew that was the opposite of what we should be doing. I was trying to keep from doing anything that would add to Emily’s plate, and going to church seemed as if it would be one more task and responsibility that would overwhelm her. I was looking for a quick fix. I didn’t think mere service attendance would be enough to address our issues and problems.

  It turned out we needed God even more than I thought, because our lives were about to take yet another wild turn.

  15

  Instant Parents to a Seventeen-Year-Old

  EMILY

  “Emily?” The sniffling voice on the other line was hoarse from sobbing. I sighed. A tearful call in the middle of the night could only mean one thing—Whittley was in trouble again.

  “What’s going on, Whitt?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to know.

  “It’s really bad this time,” she whispered. “I’m in big trouble. My sister kicked me out. The cops are involved. They’re putting me in a group home. They might even send me to . . . to . . . to juvie!” Her voice broke into sobs as she choked out the dreaded J word.

  I closed my eyes. This was much worse than usual. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”

  “I can’t go to juvie, Emily. I’m so scared. You don’t know what they do to people there. I’m never going to have a normal life if I end up there.”

  “Okay,” I said, my mind racing.

  “Emily?” Whittley said, then hesitated. “Will you and Chris be my foster parents?”

  I was caught off guard, but I wasn’t surprised because I knew Chris and I were her only good option left.

  “You know me better than anyone,” Whittley continued. “You believe in me. I know that if you take me in, I can actually turn my life around. Otherwise, I’ll be stuck in group homes or juvie until I turn eighteen, and then who knows what I’ll do?”

  This wasn’t the first time I’d considered fostering Whittley. I hated watching her bounce from house to house, group home to group home, never getting the help she needed. The idea of her aging out of the foster care system without a real family scared me. I hated to think what might happen to her if she was left to her own devices.

  My knee-jerk reaction was to say yes. Everything inside me screamed, We’ve got to do this! But I also had to ask myself, could I handle it? I knew I had changed dramatically in the past few months. Investing in Whittley, even long-distance, was exhausting, as I slogged my way through this never-ending fog. But what choice did I have? Her life literally was on the line. But what would Chris say? He was just as caring as I was, but he was also the realist in our relationship. He would have questions, to say the least.

  “I’m not saying no,” I said slowly. “Chris and I have a lot of talking and thinking to do. But Whitt, even if we want to, I don’t know if it will work. We live in Florida, and you are in Iowa. We can’t just drive and pick you up. Both states require lots of classes and other hoops to jump through before we could be licensed to take you in. Even then I don’t know if the state of Iowa would let us bring you here.”

  “I know, I know,” Whittley said, as if she didn’t hear anything beyond me saying I’m not saying no.

  “But I’m not saying yes either,” I said. I didn’t want her to get her hopes up only for them to come crashing down. “You have a lot of work to do if you want to come live with us. You have to stop hurting yourself and quit all the stuff that keeps getting you into trouble.”

  “I will!” Whittley sounded desperate. “I’ll do anything!”

  “I’m serious. I will not put up with anything like that in our house. You need to show me you’re serious and start working on this now.”

  Chris looked completely confused as I hung up. I turned to him and shook my head, wondering where to begin.

  CHRIS

  I wanted to help Whittley as much as Emily did, but I was hesitant. Obviously, on paper, Whittley needed a dramatic change. Even with Emily and me stuck in a rough place, we could still provide Whittley with a better home environment than any other option she had. But Emily was fragile right now. Many times she had told me that she could not handle anything happening to Whittley. While that would be bad enough from a distance, I wondered what might happen to Emily if Whittley attempted suicide while living with us. A traumatic loss like that could completely destroy Emily.

  Then there was the idea of becoming a dad to a seventeen-year-old at the ripe old age of twenty-four. Just typing out that sentence reminds me how insane that sounded to me then. It still does now! How could I possibly parent a teenage girl when it wasn’t that long ago that I was a teenager myself? What would my family and friends say and think? They would all think we were crazy, which, hey, I thought it too. Yet I didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand. Emily and I decided to take our time with this decision and talk it over during our vacation to Aruba with my family.

  The trip was great. Both of us were able to relax. The problems with which we’d lived for what felt like forever seemed to disappear. We were both ourselves again. In the middle of this dream vacation, while relaxing on the beach, Emily turned to me, looked me in the eye, and said, “We’re her last hope, Chris. We’ve got to do this.”

  I knew she was right. If anyone could help Whittley, it was Emily. I imagined Emily throwing herself into getting Whittley here and doing everything she could to make sure Whittley graduated from high school and started down the right path. We might not just save Whittley, I thought. This might just save Emily too.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m in. Let’s do it.”

  Emily threw her arms around me and held me tight. When she finally pulled away, I saw tears running down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she said simply.

  “So how do you want to tell her?”

  “Oh, we can’t tell her. Not yet.” Emily was already all business. “We can’t say anything until we’ve checked off every single box. She would be beyond devastated if it didn’t work out for some reason. We can’t risk it.”

  I nodded, impressed yet again by her wisdom. I felt certain that if anyone could make this work, it was Emily.

  “I wonder what my parents will say,” I wondered alo
ud. I didn’t have to wait long to find out. When we told them what we were thinking about doing, my family was skeptical, to say the least. It’s not that they didn’t want me to help a girl who desperately needed it. Since my injury, though, they were overprotective and overly concerned about everything I did. My parents asked if I’d thought this through—I’m in a wheelchair, we’re not married, we live in an apartment, and we’d be taking in a seventeen-year-old with a laundry list of behavior issues. I assured them I had, but they still worried about me. Emily’s family wasn’t surprised when we told them. After all, she tried to talk them into fostering Whittley when Emily was still in high school.

  When we returned home from spring break, a tear-stained letter from Whittley awaited us in our mailbox. She spoke of how deeply she wanted to turn her life around and how moving in with us would give her the fresh start she needed. Emily read and reread the letter multiple times before she sat down with her laptop, that all-business look on her face. I couldn’t help but smile. It looked like this decision was already paying off for Emily.

  We were up against a tight deadline. Whittley had contacted us at the end of March, and our goal was to move her into our apartment in time to start school that August. Navigating the foster care system and the approval process was more time consuming than either of us expected. We had to take classes in which other couples always looked at us, shook their heads, and said, “God bless your souls,” which is Southern code for “we think you are nuts.”

  Once we finished all the classes, we still had to wait for the Florida and Iowa Departments of Human Services offices to work out the details between them. Waiting on our approval to come through was agonizing. Meanwhile, we still hadn’t told Whittley what we were doing. All we told her was that we would try to figure something out and that she had to keep making good decisions in the meantime.