There are questions asked during the process of adjustment that usually include a Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret kind of monologue, because—why me? Why this? We view it as, you had us standing on the rug and then you pulled it out from under us. We view it as something that has effectively ruined our lives.

You put Babs Gordon in a chair.

You took away her legs.

Except, no, it wasn’t the being who rests in the clouds making all these colossal decisions. It was a mad man with a gun. And really, these things—do happen.

When she wakes up in the hospital bed, tubes corkscrewing out of her arms and feeling like part of her is missing; she knows. She remembers that, yes, something bad has happened and she remembers who did it. There are missing pieces, as there are with every puzzle, but she has been able to collect the majority of them through x-rays and apologetic looks. Barbara Gordon does not want to be remembered as the girl who let wheels destroy her life; she does not want to be remembered as the girl whose spine got severed, who would not be able to do all of the things that she had thought she would be able to do. Given the guiding touch of a man who was more of a myth than anything else—given the bonds that had been unbreakable.

But everything is breakable. Everything has a point where something happens and there is no button that we can press to make it all go back to how it was.

“Babs—no, let me do that!”

“Dad, I am twenty four years old. Let me do it myself!”

“I’m only trying to—”

“Don’t.”