My right foot—the heavy, unresponsive deadweight that had mocked me from my wheelchair for eight long years—rested slightly askew against the footrest. The tiny twitch was gone, but the phantom burn of it lingered in my nerves like a live wire.

For the first time in my life, I wasn't watching the world from behind tinted glass or the wheels of a chair. I was walking right beside it.

Lily gripped my hand tightly in her small palm, her eyes wide as she stared up at the towering Ferris wheel against the night sky.

"Can we ride the big one?" she asked, tugging on my coat.

"Only if you promise not to scream louder than me," I joked, raising an eyebrow.

"Deal!" she laughed, pulling me toward the entrance queue.

As we stepped into the brightly lit carriage of the Ferris wheel, the doors clicked shut, and the mechanism slowly lifted us up into the night air. Higher and higher we climbed, until the entire city spread out below us like a sea of glittering diamonds.

Lily pressed her face against the glass, pointing down at the sparkling harbor lights in the distance. "Look, Dad! You can see the whole world from up here."

I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, pulling her close, feeling the warmth of her small body against mine. I looked past the glass, past the city lights, and out toward the dark, endless horizon where the ocean met the stars.

I had been broken. I had been betrayed, buried, and left for dead.

Ninety-nine doctors had declared my legs dead, and the people closest to me had quietly buried every reason I had to keep fighting.

And yet, here I was.

Standing tall. Breathing free. Holding my world in the palm of my hand.