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  Carissa’s Law

  Copyright © 2018 by Defiance Press & Publishing, LLC

  First Edition: May 2018

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  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author and publisher. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review. The author and publisher retain the sole rights to all trademarks and copyrights. Copyright infringements will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-948035-01-9 (Hard Cover)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-948035-10-1 (Paperback)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-948035-00-2 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018932284

  Published by Defiance Press & Publishing, LLC

  Printed in the United States of America

  Editing by Janet Musick

  Cover designed by Nathaniel Dasco

  Interior designed by Deborah Stocco

  Distributed by Midpoint Trade Books

  Bulk orders of this book may be obtained by contacting Defiance Press & Publishing at

  http://www.defiancepress.com or Midpoint Trade Books at http://www.midpointtrade.com

  Publicity Contact: www.defiancepress.com OR (713) 429-4366

  This book is dedicated to my parents, my brother, my husband, and all those throughout my life who believed in me.

  Chapter 1

  Carissa Schultz pulled into the parking lot at the front of the huge university campus in Houston with what she hoped was plenty of time to make it to her 8:00 a.m. class. Still, she sat for a couple of minutes, wondering what her future held. What would it be like to change hundreds of years of ignorance about people like her? What would it take to change minds and hearts? Could she even do it? Was she strong enough? Well, today was the beginning of what she knew could be a momentous journey.

  Finding her class was step one and she needed to make it on time. A glance at the schedule laying on the console reminded her of the room number. “College Algebra, Room 163, here I come!” She’d googled the campus layout the night before, and knew that Room 163 was in the math/science building.

  If her pre-law degree hadn’t required it, she would have steered away from algebra but, if math was necessary to meet her goals, she would tackle it, just like every other problem in her life so far. She’d seen her share of obstacles in her first eighteen years. Because of ADA laws, she knew the campus would be easily accessible, though she wondered if she’d have trouble finding the ramps that went from the parking lot to the buildings.

  She grabbed the lightweight wheelchair from the passenger seat, pulled it over the top of her, and placed it on the ground outside her car. Snagging her backpack out of the back seat, she tossed it over the handlebars, then slid over into the seat.

  She used this chair in her everyday life; it had been custom-built for her and was as comfortable as a wheelchair could be. It was manual and, because it was a hot, humid day, it might be a tough push. That’s all I need, she thought, to arrive damp and sweaty for my first impression on the university world. Oh, well, minor problem.

  She pasted a big smile on her face. “Change the world,” she murmured. “Change the world, one quadratic equation at a time.”

  When she reached the math/science building, she pushed up the ramp and, as she rolled through the university hallways in search of her death room… ahem… classroom, she felt the familiar heat of all eyes on the girl in the chair. She should be used to it by now. It happened everywhere she went. Carissa, The Live Show, showing all times, day and night, for your viewing pleasure. Free, for a smile. Double price if you make a racecar joke.

  There it was—Room 163—the Doom Room. She was a bit early, but that gave her time to settle into the new surroundings.

  Rounding the corner, she spotted the most dreamy guy she had ever laid eyes on. Ever. Brown hair, brown eyes, chocolate skin, short but stocky. Definitely able to lift her… ahem… or other things, if needed.

  She realized she’d stalled in the doorway like some kind of idiot, and he was looking right at her.

  “Hi,” he said, peering up from his notebook. “Looking for Algebra?”

  “Uh… yeah, Algebra. Looks like I made it.”

  She rolled in, moving across the room from him to take a spot near the back. “Oh, my God, Carissa,” she thought, “you have no chill. You see a cute boy and can’t remember how your face works. How are you going to change the world?”

  She did a quick survey of the classroom. Whiteboards covered three of the light gray walls. A short wooden lectern sat squarely on a long white table at the front of the room. The classroom chairs were silver metal with black plastic seats, lined up in neat rows of six at more of the same long tables. The rest of the class filed in, taking seats randomly. Her classmates were an eclectic mix of boys and girls: a couple of white kids, a trio of Hispanics, several blacks―including the cute guy she saw when she entered the room―an Asian couple and a girl from a Middle Eastern country. Some wore nice jeans and polos; a couple of the girls and one boy wore khaki shorts with tee shirts, and one guy wore bright, rumpled pajamas, looking like he’d just rolled out of bed.

  The professor entered the room, wearing a harried frown and toting an oversized briefcase. He strode to the table with the lectern, ignoring the students, and set the briefcase to the right of the lectern. He was a short chubby man with steel-rimmed glasses, and what was left of his salt-and-pepper hair was pasted to his head as perspiration poured off his red face and down into a sparse black beard. Plopping a notebook on the lectern, he peered at the class over the top of his spectacles.

  “Answer when I call your name,” he ordered, his voice gravelly, as if he smoked a lot of cigarettes. Opening the notebook, he read a list of names, making checkmarks on a page as students responded.

  Next, he reached into the briefcase and pulled out a thick paperback book. He held it up. “If you haven’t already purchased this book for my class, pick it up at the Student Union bookstore by tomorrow.” He turned and wrote the name of the book and the author on the whiteboard directly behind him. “And here’s your assignment for tomorrow’s class.” He wrote a chapter number and a page range under the other information, then began the lecture abruptly. Kids started taking notes.

  Before long, the lecture started to sound to Carissa like it was coming directly out of a scene in a Charlie Brown special. Wah waaah, wah wah wahh, wah wah. X? Y? Carissa had never understood why the alphabet had decided to get into a long-term relationship with numbers. The whole thing seemed doomed to fail. After what seemed an interminable amount of time, the professor ended the torture session and she was free to go.

  Gathering her books, she could see the boy who’d welcomed her before class collecting his notes and shoving them into a backpack. He caught her gaze and smiled, revealing white, even teeth. He walked over to her. “Hey, rough hour, huh? Could that guy be any more draining?”

  “Yeah, it was pretty boring. I don’t think I could have sat here another minute, even if I could get up,” she laughed. She was relieved when he didn’t look at her like she was some sort of alien with two heads. Most people did when she joked about her disability, but she couldn’t help it. It was part of her, a part she was comfortable joking about. It was the world that was uncomfortable.

  “Great sense of humor,” he grinned. “Are you headed to another class, or…”

  “Oh, no, I’m done
for the day. I figured math was enough torture for Mondays and Wednesdays. I torture myself with English on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

  “Well, I was gonna get some coffee and go over the lecture in the food court. You wanna study?”

  What? Dude, I can’t even remember my name right now. “Carissa,” she blurted.

  “Um… what?” He frowned.

  “My name is Carissa.”

  He held out his hand. “Oh. I’m Isaac. I probably should have said that sooner. So… study?”

  She gave his hand a firm shake. “Yeah, sure,” she said.

  They made their way to the food court, wending through the crowded tables to the coffee bar, and the stares came again. Boy, if she thought rolling solo was a magnet for looks, this dreamboat wasn’t helping things at ALL.

  She grabbed a coffee and, before she could make her way to the cash register, he had paid for it and bought her a chocolate chip muffin. So much for the Miss Independence pants she thought she had put on today.

  “Thanks. You didn’t have to…”

  He gave her another one of his contagious grins. “Oh, a beautiful girl should always have a nutritious breakfast. It’s important.”

  She glanced up at him. She couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious.

  He seemed to sense her discomfort. “What’s your major?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “Pre-law,” she answered. Whew, something she could talk about without turning eight shades of tomato. “I want to change things for people with disabilities, help make things easier on the next generation. So many people have the wrong idea about living with a disability. I want to change minds. I mean, it may not happen in my generation, but I’d like to know I did what I could. My life is good; it’s different, but it’s good. I want people to understand my life is worth it, and so are the lives of others like me.”

  “Wow, big goals. Well, I’m pre-med. My mom was injured in an accident right after I was born. I was in the car, but was uninjured. She ended up with a T-6 spinal cord injury. She never walked again, but it didn’t stop her from raising me. She’s my inspiration for becoming a doctor. I want to go into physical rehab. She thinks I’m crazy. She’s not wrong.”

  “Looks like I’m not the only one with big goals.”

  Before long, they had discussed everything under the sun, including her spina bifida, and he hadn’t flinched. Maybe this college thing would be okay.

  Chapter 2

  Carissa went immediately to her room after getting home from school. She wanted to avoid her parents, at least for the time being. She didn’t want to talk about Isaac. And they would know. Mom would know. Mom could always read her. She didn’t have time for that right now. She had to figure Isaac out first. And she had to figure out College Algebra, too, because there had been no studying, only talking to Isaac. She settled in for a long, boring afternoon of Xs and Ys, and some whys.

  Later, Carissa heard a knock on her bedroom door. “Carissa, dinner! Come eat, and tell us everything, girl.”

  Oh, boy. This should be fun. Everything. Um… maybe just the math things. Subtract the boy thing.

  She made her way down the hallway, wondering how she would hide the Isaac thing until she was sure there was a thing. There was no need to talk about a thing if it wasn’t a thing, right?

  She took her seat at the table as her mom brought over the mashed potatoes. Her dad sat across from her, and his direct gaze would make it hard not to tell him everything. Direct face line! Maybe she could hide behind her plate if she put it in front of her face just right. Who needed food? Her plate would be a shield now.

  “So, kiddo, how was school?” her dad asked cheerfully. Jim Schultz always got right to the point, which made him a good car salesman. He was tall and broad, with striking blue eyes and silver hair. She’d probably contributed to the silver.

  “Uh… great. Pass the potatoes?” she replied, reaching toward the bowl.

  He passed the potatoes, and her mom brought over the star of the show, the meatloaf. Boy, Mom could cook a meatloaf.

  Sarah Schultz was short, and she wore her glossy brown hair in a cropped, swept-back style. Carissa noticed mild signs of aging on her mother’s face, frown lines on her forehead and laugh lines around her mouth.

  “Looks amazing, Sarah,” Jim told her, love in his eyes.

  Those two gave Carissa hope. Married twenty-five years, still just as much in love as she’d always remembered. Not everyone made it this far. Carissa knew from watching her friends’ parents split up that her parents were a rare and beautiful breed. She was blessed to have them.

  “Say the blessing, hon?” Sarah said. Her mom kept the dinner table a place to pray and share the day as a family.

  “Uh, sure,” Carissa responded. “Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You for all our blessings. We ask that You continue to bless us as we do our best to serve You and Your Kingdom, and love people as You love us. Please bless this food, and allow it to nourish our bodies, and bless Mom’s hands for preparing it. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Jim and Sarah chimed in.

  Carissa scooped some potatoes onto her plate. The faster she could serve herself, the faster she could stuff her face and avoid saying anything about Isaac.

  “So, how was math, Carissa?” Jim asked, filling his plate with food.

  “It wasth mapth. It wasth hard,” Carissa answered through a mouthful of meatloaf. If she strategically shoved meatloaf and potatoes into her mouth between questions, she could avoid talking about most anything. Surely that would work. And it did. Dinner was done, without a single mention of the thing that might not be a thing.

  When she finished, Carissa took her plate to the sink and started back to her room, relieved.

  Sarah called after her. “Carissa, don’t forget that tomorrow you have your doctor appointment after class.”

  Oh, yeah. Her yearly urology testing. That was always a blast. At least with all the medical things she endured, this was one she knew well. She knew what to expect and how it would go and, most likely, she even knew what the results would say. “Neurogenic bladder, consistent with myelomeningocele spina bifida, level L1. No change since last year.” Yep. She knew the drill, and she knew her body. This test was a piece of cake. It was the ones that might find something new that really scared her.

  “Got it, Mom. I’ll be there.”

  She continued down the hall to the bathroom to take all her meds and to do her nighttime medical routine. Besides being time-consuming and annoying, at least it kept her healthy. She was blessed to have been born in a time of such medical advances. Generations of people with spina bifida before had not had it so easy. Maybe that’s what drove her… the thousands of people who had come before her to make her medical life easier, resulting in a longer life with less difficulty. It was her turn now.

  She finished her routine and went to her room to catch some television before drifting off to sleep, thinking about Isaac, her future, and the future of those like her who might benefit from everything she had her heart set on. She didn’t have it all figured out yet, but she felt a heart tug toward a career in government, making the world a better place for those with disabilities. She didn’t know where it would lead, but she knew she was on a path to something great. She was just trusting God to pull all the details together.

  Chapter 3

  Tuesday morning began with the same irritating alarm clock bing as the day before, piercing Carissa’s eardrums. Moaning, she rolled over to slam it off.

  “Here we go,” she mumbled, transferring from her bed to her chair.

  She made her way to the kitchen, where she gulped a bottle of water for her kidneys and crammed a piece of toast in her mouth, before flying out the door for school. Secretly, she craved another chocolate chip muffin.

  At school, she parked in the same spot as yesterday. Perhaps she was the only one using the handicapped spots. Could she be that lucky? One could hope. She lifted her chair out of the driver’s side door, grabbed
her bag, and set off to find her classroom. She had always been a skilled writer. English, no matter what level, should be a breeze.

  Carissa found her classroom at the end of a long hallway in the Humanities building. Another girl, chubby, with bright red hair and freckles, was already seated at one of about fifty chair-desks, wearing jeans and a white-and-red striped tee shirt.

  “Hi,” Carissa said.

  “Hey,” the girl replied.

  “I’m Carissa.” She extended her hand.

  “Amy,” her new classmate answered. “What’s going on with your legs?”

  Forward, wasn’t she? Carissa was never quite sure how to respond in these situations. Car wreck? Spina bifida? Like she’d even know what that was… None of your business? It felt kind of intrusive. I mean, here was this stranger, and the first thing she wanted to know was the most personal thing about her. Sometimes Carissa wished her disability didn’t stick out like a sore thumb. Maybe then people would get to know her, and not her chair.

  “Uh… I was born with a hole in my spine,” Carissa said. “My spinal cord was coming out of my back. It paralyzed me.” There, that usually covered it. People didn’t usually ask questions after the brutal, honest truth. She had been born with her spinal cord literally protruding in a bloody mass outside her back. Her mother had described it as a big, bloody bubble. Carissa had never seen it. There were no pictures. Her parents had been too traumatized in the moment to take any.

  After everything they were told that day, Carissa didn’t blame them. It was a miracle she had survived at all, according to her doctors. The doctor who delivered her explained that Carissa was paralyzed from the waist down, that she would never walk. She also would have bowel and bladder issues to go along with the paralysis and would need lifelong care for those. All this was if they could get a tube into her brain in time to relieve the crushing fluid—hydrocephalus was the medical term—that was sure to make her a “vegetable” if she lived through it at all. Yeah. She was blessed. She was alive. She was paralyzed, but she was alive. And life was good.