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"    Men have roles \u2014 at work, as a father, as a husband, as a friend \u2014 and those roles have rules. But then there&amp;#039;s the other stuff \u2014 when suddenly there are no rules and everything is out of control. The Oh Sh!t Guide to Being a Man &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; Published in the June/July 2013 issue Here&amp;#039;s what I remember: The color of the bruises under her eyes (eggplant purple). The nauseatingly chemical smell of that Miami ICU. The white neck brace cupping her chin.  I remember she wasn&amp;#039;t crying when she told me. She was smiling \u2014 a sad smile, no doubt, but also a this-happened-to-me-and-I&amp;#039;m-going-to-make-the-best-of-it smile. I remember wanting to climb into that hospital bed to hold her, but I couldn&amp;#039;t \u2014 thwarted by the bed rails and the tangle of tubes.  I remember my reaction when she said the words: certainty. Surprising clarity. I&amp;#039;m not a decisive man, but for once I had no doubts: I would stay with her. Despite her severed spine at the twelfth thoracic vertebra, we were meant to be together.  I was twenty-four years old, working as a reporter at a tiny newspaper in San Francisco. Elizabeth and I met while helping a mutual friend move apartments. We dated for eleven giddy months \u2014 and then she left on a six-week pre-law-school trip to South America.  While she was away, we talked on the phone once a week. I wrote her gooey, pining letters.  On a Tuesday night in May, I was jolted awake by a phone call from my sister \u2014 who coincidentally was living in Peru. Elizabeth had been in a bus accident in Cuzco, my sister said. The bus had lost its brakes and tumbled over a cliff.  But she&amp;#039;s okay, right?  They think so, my sister said. She&amp;#039;s banged up pretty badly, but the Peruvian doctors don&amp;#039;t think it&amp;#039;s permanent.  Thank God, thank God.  Elizabeth was medevaced to Miami. Would I be overreacting if I flew to Florida to see her? Should I just wait till she gets back? I chose to fly.  I learned later Elizabeth&amp;#039;s parents and doctors were waiting in the patient lounge, planning to intercept me and break the news. But when I got to the hospital, I got lost in the corridors, bypassed them, and ended up at Elizabeth&amp;#039;s bed.  She told me the Peruvian doctors were wrong. The spine was broken. She&amp;#039;d be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She could have children, but she was paralyzed below the waist.  My choice \u2014 which didn&amp;#039;t even seem like a choice \u2014 wasn&amp;#039;t out of selflessness. I was deeply in love with this woman. A drunk twenty-something love, Nicholas Sparks stuff. She was beautiful, funny, equally obsessed with Keanu Reeves and Susan Faludi.  I had the youthful overconfidence: Nothing can stop our love. Also, and this barely rose to the level of consciousness, but I&amp;#039;m sure it was in my cerebral cortex at that moment: I thought to myself, What kind of a soulless, morally bankrupt ogre would break up with a woman after a car accident?  The weeks that followed the moment are blurry, too. I took a leave from my job and stayed in Miami while she recovered. I remember our favorite nurse, a sweet, short-haired Brit. And the hours spent playing Tetris in the hospital room while Elizabeth slept. I learned to pop wheelies in her Quickie wheelchair. I shifted her increasingly thin legs every hour to prevent bedsores.  And I remember Elizabeth, who never descended into &amp;quot;Why me&amp;quot; self-pity. The closest she came was talking to stunned friends: &amp;quot;Yeah, it really sucks,&amp;quot; she&amp;#039;d say, and then laugh.  The only way to keep from being overwhelmed was to go small. Focus on the tiniest of details, and try to make myself useful. I read books on spinal-cord injury and talked to any experts who&amp;#039;d return my call. I brought Elizabeth magazines and oatmeal-raisin cookies. I asked the doctor too many questions. It wasn&amp;#039;t just one day at a time, it was one task at a time.  When Elizabeth had recovered enough to fly, we moved back to the Bay Area and lived together for two years. I went back to writing about local seafood festivals at the paper. She started law school.  And then doubt crept in. I began to slowly fall out of love. After several weeks of back-and-forths in my mind, on a January night, sitting in bed, I broke up with her, forcing my lips and tongue to say the words. It was horrible for her and sent me into months of guilt, depression, and Paxil bottles.  But I soon learned I had an inflated sense of my importance. I was far from the end of her world. Within the year, she fell in love with a brilliant man from India, the owner of a software company. They have two ridiculously gorgeous girls, and just threw a party to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of her accident. The cake was chocolate, with a little bus sculpted from marzipan going over a cliff. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/advice/a22931/paralyzed-girlfriend-aj-jacobs-essay-0613/>