"I think your expectations are a little unrealistic," one doctor told Matt.
Emily collapsed into tears.
"That was a reality check," she said. "Will he be able to go to college, to be a doctor? Will he be at home the rest of his life?"
Matt's doctors, his parents, even the dean of students, just presumed that he would take incompletes for the fall semester, skip the spring semester, and maybe, by fall 2009, be well enough in mind and body to return to school.
Not Matt. He registered for classes.
That same Tuesday, nine days after his accident, he wrote a note asking his father to swing by his apartment and pick up his books.
"Doctors would come in and he'd be reading and highlighting," his father recalled. "You could see it in their faces. They were blown away by that."
Said Matt's neurosurgeon, Jason Sheehan: "Physics was one of the books he had in the hospital - just a little light reading!"
There were troubling signs, too.
At 2 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 12, Matt texted Emily to "turn off the stove and put away the groceries."
In the morning, nurses explained to Emily that Matt often was confused at night. Maybe it was the brain injury, or maybe the narcotics he was taking for pain.
The next night at 1 a.m., Matt texted, "I miss you." Emily was there in minutes. And for the next two weeks, Emily spent every night in the chair next to his bed and held his hand.
As a 13-year-old, Matt had liked Emily and asked a friend of hers in the orchestra to find out if Emily would go with him to the eighth-grade semiformal. When he got word back that she'd say yes, he asked.
Matt made sure to find Emily for all the slow dances.
Days later, Matt asked Emily to the latest Star Wars movie. Emily is the oldest of four, and her mother, she said, made her hold a sign, "Emily's first date," and took a photograph. Emily's sister begged to ride in the car.
Emily hated the embarrassment. "I wasn't one of those girls who ever since sixth grade had to have a boyfriend," she explained. And she broke it off.
As Emily recounts it, Matt liked her through most of high school, but she wasn't interested, and they hardly spoke. Only in their senior year, "as I felt like he lost interest," Emily recalled, "I got interested again."
Their first high school date, for pizza, was Dec. 10 of senior year.
At the hospital that first week, Matt's grandfather had said to Emily that Matt would never look the same.
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