The Decision

         Nora was shaking as she stood in the kitchen. It was getting worse. Wallace was bigger and stronger every day; one of these days she might not be able to stop him when he was like this. He was quiet now, probably would sleep for a while, but then what?

         She had resolved long ago never to put him in 'one of those places,' but she was out of options.

         Wallace could be so sweet and then change just like that. They told her it was a form of epilepsy, psychomotor seizure. He couldn’t help it, he didn’t know what he was doing. In the beginning they told her he would never walk or talk and the sensible thing was to put him in a place. Well, he could walk and talk although it was in single words.

         Arthur gave up trying to persuade her to agree to sign him into a hospital. She was angry with Arthur for leaving; Wallace was his son, too!
He said he had enough. Life was too short to live it this way, in a house with locked cabinets and doors and hardware cloth on the windows so Wallace couldn’t break them and cut himself.

         Arthur coached Little League with normal little boys who were not like the one at his house. A man wants a strong manly son to follow in his footsteps. Not like the one she gave him. He was angry with her, as if somehow she had failed him.

         Arthur's mother said "It must come from your side because there's never been anything like this in my family.”

         Well lucky you, Nora thought.

         She had to get his things ready. The ambulance would be coming soon. After all her resolve never to do this, Wallace was going away today.