Sleep had stopped feeling natural inside the Prescott home long before anyone admitted it out loud. Each night, when the quiet streets of Lake Forest, Illinois finally dimmed and the neighbors’ lights flickered off, Maxwell Prescott lay awake staring at the ceiling as if it might answer the questions he had been asking for two years.
The house was beautiful, being modern, spacious, and carefully designed down to the smallest detail. However, none of that mattered in the dark because every night there was a soft, steady roll of wheels gliding across hardwood floors.
The sound came from the hallway from his seven-year-old daughter’s wheelchair. Sometimes it was the faint squeak of motion as she tried to adjust herself and other times it was the gentle clink of metal as his wife, Bridgette, repositioned the footrests.
That sound had become something heavier than noise because it carried a truth Maxwell couldn’t escape. Doctors had given him phrases like “permanent condition” and “low probability of recovery” which he had memorized the way he used to memorize business strategies.