I'm what you would call a savant.

Numbers appear like shapes to me.

For instance, if you were to ask me, what is the square root of 3,365?

I would immediately picture 3,365 as some sort of three-dimensional hovering pyramid.

By studying its shape and even its pale pink color, I can almost immediately tell the square

root of 3,365 is 58.009. The math, it just clicks into place.

It's really hard for me to explain, but I can use my imagination shapes to process almost any equation.

I've always been able to.

The mental talent of mind is what's landed me, my many scholarships, Bursieries.

I'm even on track for a pretty cushy

10-year position at a university.

Life's been pretty generous overall as a result.

And I wish it could have stayed that way.

But then I had the car accident.

And my ever-useful imaginary shapes became something more awful.

I was driving back from Seattle, feeling smug about my speech at a large college, I felt like I had

effectively disproven Galileo's theory of polynomial equations in a room full of the country's

top mathematicians. And then my car flipped over, just like that. Car accident. Never saw it coming.

Don't remember it to this day.

I woke up in the hospital with my legs and back in horrific pain.

A nurse must have noticed my movement because the next thing I knew, a doctor came up and asked me how I was doing.

How I could manage was a moan. came up and asked me how I was doing.

...