Teen Brings Prom to Hospital Room After Her Date Is Injured in Car Crash

Sweet photos of Alyah Mitchell celebrating her prom with date JR Hall in his Dallas hospital room have gone viral. Photo by MsAlyah/Twitter

Among the milestone events in a teen’s life, prom ranks right up there. So after 18-year-old JR Hall had the misfortune of getting injured in a car crash in February, it was especially rough for the Dallas teen to face the fact that he hadn’t recovered enough to leave the hospital and accompany his friend to her March 21 high school prom — something they had been planning for weeks. 

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“He asked me if I would go with him once he gets better because it would make his night really special,” Hall’s friend Alyah Mitchell told ABC News. “I was always hoping he would be able to go.” 

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The two “have been friends for four years now,” Mitchell, also 18, tells Yahoo Parenting. “I visit him in the hospital when I can, almost every day.”

But Hall’s recuperation has turned out to be pretty grueling, she told ABC. “For about the first month of the accident, he could not speak on his own, and he didn’t remember much. It was a pretty bad accident. He had to have surgeries on his neck. Pretty much all his normal body functions were out of whack.”

So when the day of the big dance rolled around, Mitchell got glam two hours early and went to hang out with her prom date — in the hospital. “He was very surprised,” she says. “He had no clue I was coming.”

Photo by MsAlyah/Twitter

Nor did the couple have any clue that the celebratory photo Mitchell posted of them on Twitter on Wednesday would go viral — with more than 6,700 people re-tweeting it and 10,000 marking it as a favorite. “I am beyond surprised,” Mitchell marvels. After all, she just wanted to honor their date. 

“I wanted him to feel good,” she says. “This is really tough for him.” Her visit definitely brightened his day. As the senior, who is now hoping that he can take Mitchell to his own prom on May 9, told ABC, “It made me feel really special.”

Photo by MsAlyah/Twitter

But even if Hall still felt a sting of disappointment that he couldn’t make the momentous event, Dr. Paul Hokemeyer tells Yahoo Parenting that’s OK. “Kids need to learn that sadness is an emotion they need not be afraid of, and that will pass,” says the therapist. 

To help, mom and dad should skip the consolation talk and just be present with their kid “in a way that doesn’t shame them or teach them that sadness is a bad emotion that must be instantly banished from their lives,” he says. “Parents need only sit with their children and hold their sadness.”

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