I was sixteen when I met her.
I was sixteen, when I died.

We died in a car.
Out of that bubble.
* * *
I'm Ashton Edrich, and I have severe combined immunodeficiency disease. Better known as the bubble boy disease.
From the time of my birth, until now, the only walls I've known are the ones of Robert Wood Johnson hospital, in Hamilton, New Jersey. The only faces I've seen are my parents', and the doctors that work here.
SCID is an immune deficiency that have to do with the antibodies, and the T cells; the body's only weapon against bacteria, viruses, and diseases. People who have SCID are basically born without an immune system.
My parents were given two options: let me live in the outside world, until my body was taken over by a simple cold virus, or put me in a bubble for my entire existence. The choice was theirs.
Until I met her, I resented their choice. For sixteen years, I was bound to four walls of glass, a door leading in, and out, but I could never walk through it.
No childish dreams of flying, or going into space. Having the coolest toy, bike, or car. No girlfriends. Having a wife and kids.
Nothing.
I was left to die in a glass cage, run by nurses and doctors who only cared enough for their next pay check. I knew it was selfish to think of the doctors, the world even, that they were so ungrateful.
It was true in a sense, they didn't realize how hard it was to grow up in a hospital. In a dome, cut off from the world.
No, they knew different suffering. Maybe more humane, even. They could experience life.