The gravel dug into my cheek, a million sharp little teeth biting into my skin, but that pain was distant, muted by the shockwave that had just shattered my spine. Above me, the summer sky of suburban Ohio was a blinding, indifferent blue. “Walk it off, stop being a baby,” my wife, Jessica, shouted. Her voice didn’t sound like the woman I had married five years ago; it was sharp, jagged, cutting through the humid air like a serrated knife. We were in the backyard of her parents’ house, a sprawling, manicured lawn in Oak Creek, celebrating her sister Emily’s...
Continues…