The Final Date Ever

She heard his voice through the bathroom wall they shared. She couldn't make out what he was saying. Sometimes, even after all these years, she still had a difficult time understanding her first born.
He repeated himself more slowly when she leaned against his bathroom doorway and he had taken the toothbrush from his mouth. "Will this get me a real job?", he repeted. The yearning sound to his voice echoed back the memory of the little tow haired boy hanging on the side of the pool she had bought him for his exercises. She had found a cheap little medallion at Walmart and had presented it to him for his swimming efforts. It was the first time he had been given an award and was delighted, but all too soon realized it was not real. "Will this help me to get a real metal?", her cherub had asked with the same longing.
The doctors had labeled him with those ugly words she did not want to hear. She would never limit him to them. But yet she had no answer ready for him then, and she didn't have one now. She had no idea how he would ever win a genuine trophy. And now he wanted a job more than anything.
He had been awarded his own real metal alright. On his own. And if it had been left up to her, he never would have gotten it.
She thought of the countless doctor visits to the children's hospital, and all the painful tests and surgeries he had gone through. The nights she would sit outside his bedroom door and listen to him toss around in his bed, vieing to find a comfortable position for his heavy legs to rest, waiting for the sound of velcro as he finally removed his casts to sleep. She would steal in a half hour later, when he was asleep and put them back on his legs and hope they would grow straight and strong as he slept. When the specialists recommended intensified therapy, she had put her own foot down and said no more.
He wasn't wearing his casts when he had listened outside her bedroom in the middle of the night and phoned the emergency unit and he didn't wear his braces when he unlocked the doors before he lead the EMT's to where she lay unconsciously convulsing on her bedroom floor. Without his braces, he had kept his baby brother from throwing himself on top of her, when the paramedic couldn't find her veins. He had even hid the Teddy bear the police officer had tried to distract the baby with, unknowing to the fact that stuffed animals terrified the youngest member of the family. He did even let the dogs bite the lewd officer who just stood watching the naked lady grand mal in front of her terrified kids.
He did however lean on his crutches when he received his heroism award,given to him by the chief of police in front of the entire school. When the news camera showed his spiderman brace, he was down right mad.
That night in the church the young man had worked non stop as he stood in one spot doing the dirty job of separating and scraping plates into the garbage before passing them across to Mrs. Krentz, his old third grade teacher to wash. It was the same mean old bitter woman that had ignored him and pretended he did not exist in her class room and had humiliated and antagonized his little brother. There had been a time when the mother would of gladly killed the old bitty, before she had realized the teacher had died long before, her souless shell just too lazy to fall over. The teenager had just pretended the corpse loading the dish machine to be invisible and had worked much faster than she so he could build a wall of china between them.
She wanted to tell him yes, you will get a job someday. And it will be a hell of a lot better than washing dishes. But she did not have the answer he wanted to hear yet.
"Have a nice time tonight with Mrs. Krentz?", she asked him instead.
"I tried to get her to shake my dirty food covered hand but she wouldn't, just like I planned", he said with a gleam in his eye.