Prologue

          Once she had been a wife, a mother, an eager young woman burgeoning with life. Now she was nothing.
          Once she had cooked, cleaned, taught her bright-eyed son how to read and write. Now she was a motionless vegetable.
          Once she had expressed herself in vivid stories, pouring words onto paper as if her life depended on them. Now her life depended on machines.
          Once she had run through the soft green grass, laughing, swinging her arms wide in the bright hot sunshine. Now she was a lifeless gray speck floating in an endless gray void.
          Beep, beep...beep, beep. Complicated life support systems kept her lungs expanding, her blood circulating. Slender IV tubes poured vital nutrients into her system.
          Doctors came and doctors went, shaking their heads in despair. Medical science had triumphed over so many tragic diseases and injuries. But none of their skill could recall a beautiful young woman from a trauma-induced coma.
          Anthony Templeton, the drunken teenager who’d plowed into her car that rainy night, had survived unscathed. Not even a bruise had marred his flushed young rich-kid face.
          His family’s influence had saved him from legal punishment. Their money had paid for all her medical care.
          But no amount of money had been able to save the lives of her husband and six-year-old son.
          Patrick and Sean’s funerals had been held while she’d been in surgery, the fourth attempt in as many days to save her life. Massive injuries to her head, her spine, her chest cavity. It was a wonder that she’d survived the crash itself. Surgeons had worked round the clock to maintain that miraculous thin thread called life.
          Three organs had been damaged beyond repair, and were summarily replaced. One of those organs was her heart.
           The days passed in a blur of bright lights, surgical procedures, blinking readouts, as sophisticated technology monitored her every breath and heartbeat.
          She saw none of it. The extensive damage to her body had been repaired, to the best of medical science’s ability. Her consciousness remained lost, drifting in the endless void.
          Days turned to weeks, and weeks to months. Anthony Templeton visited every Saturday, bringing flowers and books which he read to her, holding her cold limp hand in his, willing her back to life. He always cried before he left. But he always came back.
          Sometimes a nurse would sit with her for a few hours, telling her everything that was happening in the outside world. But as time went on, even the most determined began to lose hope, and merely turned on the television to block out sterile machine hums and beeps.