Hello there

In early December 2006, Laura got a call from her friend Valerie's Aunt Maryann. It was last-minute, but would Laura like to take Valerie's place on a trip to Maui?

Laura, a nurse at Hahnemann Hospital, jumped at the chance - a spur-of-the-moment decision that would change her life.

Maryann and her boyfriend, Jim, had planned the trip to visit Jim's son, Nate. And Maryann said Laura could bring her cousin Steffany. All stayed in Maui at the apartment Nate shared with his cousin Scott.

Scott was busy. Since moving to Maui from Seattle, he had been teaching in a program for troubled youth and waiting tables at a restaurant. But the gregarious and adventuresome Scott eventually became the group's tour guide.

At first, Laura thought Scott was kind of annoying. "He was a goofball - he still is. But by the second or third day around him, instead of being annoyed by his goofiness, I started to be attracted to him because of it," she said.

Scott was into her, too. And about halfway through the vacation, with the prompting of a bit of drink, he kissed her.

Three days before Laura was to leave, the whole group was at the beach. "I remember saying, 'I know we both have this feeling, so let's just express it in the open,' " Scott said. They began holding hands in front of the group. Then, they were kissing goodbye in the airport.

While Laura was still in Hawaii, she and Scott realized they had both spent their childhoods in Erial, Gloucester County.

As soon as she got home, she dug out her first-grade class picture. "Out of the whole class, he was the one kid I didn't know," Laura said. She e-mailed it to Scott. And thus began a flurry of e-mails, texts, and phone calls.

About a month after Laura got back to New Jersey, she received a gift from Scott - the book The Alchemist. That night she spoke to him on the phone from work, saying they could talk more about the book the next day.

That would never happen.

Scott had been sick with the flu, but feeling better, he decided to ride his motorcyle to meet his cousin and a good friend at a bar. He still felt sick though, and decided to leave early.

"I got about three-quarters of the way home, and that's when I crashed," Scott said. "I don't really remember it."

A man and woman were driving by the spot where Scott lay in a drainage ditch. "They were yelling out, and I yelled back. They found me," Scott said.

After finishing her shift the next morning, Laura pulled up to her mother's house to have breakfast with her and her sister when her phone rang. "It was my cousin Steffany. As soon as I said hello, I could tell by her voice something was wrong." Doctors would put Scott into a medically induced coma to help him heal. Laura was getting regular updates from Nate. The hardest one to hear: Scott was paralyzed from the chest down.

A month later, the night before Laura's birthday, she and Steffany went out to dinner. "I remember us sitting there and my phone started vibrating on the table," Laura said. "It said 'Scott Jones.' I hadn't seen that name on my phone in a month."

While Scott was in a coma, he was on a breathing tube. As a nurse, Laura knew what that did to his throat. She was overjoyed to hear his whispered voice, but began to cry knowing how much talking must have hurt.

Near the middle of March 2007, Nate told Laura that he had to go on a business trip, and he dreaded not being around for Scott. Laura got on a plane to spend 2 1/2 weeks with him.

Scott felt better just knowing Laura was coming. But he also was worried about what his new life as a person with paralysis would mean for them as a couple. "I knew how difficult it would be, and that it would be forever."