The Vow: The True Events That Inspired the Movie by Kim Carpenter, Krickitt Carpenter, Dana Wilkerson Page B

whether she would live or die. During the course of those uncertain hours, I had felt myself gradually but steadily trusting God with my wife’s life. Scott’s advice three months later was like a refresher course in putting my faith in God’s ability instead of in my own.
    The more I trusted in God’s wisdom and power, the more at peace I felt, even though I knew he might take Krickitt away from me at any moment. I was coming to a point where I had hopes of it working out, but I reached the conclusion that it may not. As painful as that thought was, I made a commitment to myself and to God to continue to physically be there for Krickitt until at least the day came when she no longer needed my support and could live on her own. Then I would ask her what she wanted. If her desires did not include me, I would honor her wishes and let her go. I knew I had made a vow until death do us part, but I also knew that I had to keep a real perspective. I often wondered when that day would come. I knew it was a day I would have to face, but I lived in fear of the possible outcome.

    From time to time there were tantalizing signs that Krickitt was beginning to accept her new life. One day I was talking to her mom on the phone and she mentioned that Krickitt had told the therapist she “missed that guy who calls and hangs around.” I was overjoyed that she remembered my visits and seemed to have a desire to spend time with me, even though she didn’t always act like it when I was actually with her.
    I did my best to call Krickitt every day I wasn’t with her. But one night I didn’t call at my usual time. A couple hours later the phone rang, and it scared me. When I answered the phone it was Krickitt’s mom. She said, “Kim, there is someone here who wants to talk to you.” I was ecstatic. She put Krickitt on the line.
    “Hi, this is Krickitt.”
    “Hi Krick, I’m really glad you called.”
    More silence. Then, “Well, I gotta go now. Good-bye.”
    Those were the greatest words I had heard in months. I believed right then that we were going to make it and that Krickitt felt something for me down deep, but she just couldn’t put the pieces together on the phone. This was the first of many times she’d call, say a sentence or two, and hang up. But I didn’t mind that those conversations were so short. They were just more confirmation that my wife was warming up to me.
    A few weeks after that first call from Krickitt, Mary called with some more encouraging news. Krickitt had been looking in the mirror, focusing on the place where her skull had been dented in the wreck. She touched it as she inspected it, feeling around it with the tips of her fingers.
    “Hmmmmm,” she said. “Maybe I really did have this accident.”
    Since Krickitt had first come out of her coma, she had kept telling us she felt like she was in a dream that we were all part of. She insisted there hadn’t been a wreck and she had never been married. She believed she was trapped in a nightmare and knew she would eventually wake up. Her reaction in front of the mirror was the first solid indication that she was beginning to realize that her dream world might be real after all.
    This realization was a promising sign and an answer to prayer, but Krickitt’s next trip to Las Vegas a few weeks later was anticlimactic. She came back to our apartment and looked at everything like she had before. She wasn’t as lost or disoriented, but that wasn’t because she ever remembered living there with me. She only remembered it from having visited just a few weeks before. So we went through the same motions we had the first time: looking at the china, the wedding pictures, and the wedding video. She seemed to like it just fine, but nothing helped her really connect with her past.
    Krickitt’s second visit home was the first time there was any coverage of our story in the media. That Friday, the local Daily Optic ran a story in the sports section about our upcoming