September 15, 2015 was like any typical Wednesday, until it happened.

This place was illuminated by bright white lights, and you can hear the crying of distraught parents. In this place you could feel almost every single emotion from every single person the grief and the depression is what stuck with me.

It came in flashes as I was in a place where I never thought I’d be, it was strange that the last time I had seen my sister was this morning,  who would have thought that when I come back from school I find out she has been backed over by a truck. Evelyn, my sister, 4 years old was in a potentially life altering surgery. 7:32PM she was in immense amount of pain, so much pain I cannot even string the right words together. Shortly thereafter, Evelyn was in a neck brace and she had swollen black eyes as dark as night.  In surgery the doctors fixed the road rash from the broken pavement and impact then, they went on to fix her fractured pelvis that came with a thick ugly scar to remind her of potentially the worst day of her life. I had been through a lot in the last 13 years but this, this I could not handle her shrieks of pain destroyed me from the inside out, so much so the waiting room became my new home the next 2 weeks.

From there it only got worse the doctors told me that “she is going to get worse before she is going to get better”. The physical therapy was grueling she did little bits every single day. For the first week Evelyn had to be in a wheelchair which she absolutely hated almost as much as I hated seeing her suffer through something that was as traumatic as this. The doctors were even afraid she was slipping into depression because she was hardly eating and she hardly ever smiled anymore. It was almost as if the bright bubbly girl who love to smile and play for hours on end was just gone. The wheelchair made her feel like a freak she didn’t even want to leave her.

The next week the doctors started to get Evelyn up on her feet, taking a few steps every day.  She was so determined to get out of that ghostlike wheelchair, Evelyn would go the extra mile when it came to practically learning how to walk again, normally, and when the doctors would try to put her back in the bright, white, hauntingly sterile sheets she would shout “NO”! She made so much progress that she got out of the wheelchair within a few days as other kids would have taken week’s maybe months to reach the amount of progress that Evelyn achieved. In a situation where Evelyn had a 25% chance of actually coming through surgery and an even lower chance of walking normally again she came through the other side, she IS an inspiration.

,In conclusion, her journey, the strength that she displayed was and continues to inspire me every single day. To appreciate life and all that it gives you, to never give up when life kicks you down. To persevere even when the going gets rough. Evelyn’s recovery was miraculous, her smile restored and for that I am eternally grateful.