Wave Maker

MIDDLEBOROUGH -- It's Saturday night, but State Police Sergeant Ric Teves and Trooper Ellen Engelhardt are not going out to dinner. They're not snuggling in their Marion home to watch ''Law & Order," and he's not giving her one of the foot massages she loves.

Instead, he parks his 1990 Volvo with 288,000 miles on it, and he walks through the frigid night air and into the lobby of Middleborough Skilled Care Center, past the receptionist and past the bubbling fish tank. As he makes his way down the hall, the knot tightens again in his stomach, as it does every day when he visits the woman he calls his best friend.

''Hey, honey," he says, walking into Room 206, where the television is tuned to ''Everybody Loves Raymond," and there she is, sitting in a wheelchair, paralyzed, her head tilted back, her eyes to the ceiling, her mouth agape, her hands and feet encased in plastic to control spasms.
This is the prison to which Engelhardt and Teves have been sentenced as the result of one horrific moment shortly after 6 on the morning of Saturday, July 26, 2003. While Engelhardt was parked in the breakdown lane of Route 25 in Wareham, her cruiser was rear-ended by a car driven by a drunk teenager that was traveling in excess of 90 miles per hour. The impact thrust her vehicle forward at a speed of 50 miles per hour, and it thrust Engelhardt back, into a catatonic state in which she can no longer walk, talk, eat, or communicate in any way.
The crash fractured a cervical vertebra, her larynx, and her jaw. She required two craniotomies and one lobectomy. She lost part of her skull and part of her brain.

Can you see where this story is going?

Read it. You will come away with an awe and respect for Rick Teves, and the love of his life, that will make you cry.

And I am not going to contemplate where the story might head in the years to come. Not now. Not today. Hopefully, not ever.