“So he’s waking up!” she burst out. Dr. Harris held up a hand, hesitating. “Not necessarily. It could mean a lot of things.”
“But… it is a very good sign.” It wasn’t the definitive answer she had been hoping for. But for now, it was enough.
That night, as she sat beside his bed during her shift, Anna found herself talking to Grant even more than usual. “I don’t know for sure if you can hear me,” she murmured, “but something deep inside tells me you can.”
She glanced at his face, at those strong, handsome features. He was still unmoving. But for the very first time, she truly felt like she wasn’t alone in the room.
So she talked. She told him all about her day. She complained about the other patients who frustrated her. She told him about the rude doctor on the third floor who always seemed to steal her coffee from the breakroom.
She found herself telling him about her childhood. About the tiny, quiet town she grew up in. About how she had always, always dreamed of being a nurse.
And as she spoke, pouring her heart out, she had no way of knowing that deep within the profound silence of his coma, Grant was, in fact, listening.
The morning sun filtered softly through the room’s large windows, casting a warm glow across Grant Carter’s motionless form. The beeping of the heart monitor filled the silence, steady and rhythmic, exactly as it had been for the past year. Anna stood beside the bed, rolling up the sleeves of her scrubs. It was just another day.
Another routine bath. Another round of talking to a man who might never, ever answer her.
She dipped the cloth into the warm basin, wrung it out, and began to gently wipe his chest, her movements practiced, precise, and careful.
“You know, Grant,” she murmured, a faint smile on her face, “I was thinking about getting a dog. I really need someone to listen to me who won’t just lie there and ignore me all day long.” Silence.
She sighed. “Okay, rude. I was just trying to make conversation.” She reached for his arm, running the warm cloth over his skin, her fingers brushing lightly against his wrist.
And then… his hand tightened around her wrist. Anna froze solid. A sharp, sudden breath lodged in her throat as she stared, unblinking, at his hand.
The pressure wasn’t strong. It was gentle, weak, even hesitant… but it was there. “Oh my God.” Her heart began to pound violently against her ribs, her pulse roaring in her ears.
She desperately wanted to believe it was just another reflex, just one more meaningless muscle twitch. But it wasn’t. Because in the next second, Grant’s eyes snapped wide open.
For one long, stretched-out moment, Anna couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t even think. She had spent months staring at those closed eyelids, praying for any sign of movement, any tiny flicker of life. And now… now, those deep, ocean-blue eyes were looking right at her.
They were confused, unfocused, and looked incredibly vulnerable… but they were alive. Grant’s dry, chapped lips parted. His voice was a hoarse rasp, barely even a whisper, but it was real.
“Who…?”
Anna’s entire body tensed up. Her knees felt like they were about to buckle, her breath caught somewhere between total disbelief and sheer, rising panic.
He had spoken. He was awake. The impossible, the thing they said would likely never happen, had just happened.
She barely even registered the basin of warm water slipping from her numb grip, splashing loudly onto the pristine white floor as she stumbled backward. “Oh my God.” Then, her training kicked in.
She spun around and slammed her hand against the red emergency button on the wall. A loud, piercing alarm immediately blared through the hallway. Seconds later, the suite door burst open, and a team of doctors and nurses rushed in, with Dr. Harris right at the front.
“What happened?!” Dr. Harris demanded as he rushed to the bedside, his hands already moving to check Grant’s vitals. Anna’s voice was shaking. “He… he grabbed my hand…”
“He opened his eyes. He…” She looked back at Grant, still completely unable to process what she was seeing. His chest was rising and falling in shaky breaths, his eyes darting wildly around the room as if he was trying to piece together where he was.
What was happening? He wasn’t fully aware, not by a long shot, but he was here. Dr. Harris’s expression shifted instantly from stunned shock to decisive action. “Get me a neurological team in here, now!”
Nurses scrambled, their voices overlapping in hurried, disbelieving tones as they rushed to perform the initial tests. The room became a whirlwind of motion and sound, but Anna couldn’t tear her eyes away from Grant.
Then, as if he could feel her gaze on him, his eyes found hers again. And this time, he didn’t look away…
