Every afternoon at 3:00 p.m., the same man appeared in my daughter Hannah’s hospital room. Impossible to miss—tall, broad-shouldered, gray-bearded, dressed like a biker straight out of a movie.
For six months, he sat beside my 17-year-old, unconscious after a devastating crash, held her hand, whispered softly, and left without a word. I was her mother.
I slept in that room, lived on vending-machine meals, memorized every beep of the monitors—and yet I had no idea who he was or why the staff welcomed him.
At first, I tolerated it. Nothing felt normal with your child in a coma. He read her fantasy novels, apologized quietly, spoke as if she could hear him.
But confusion turned to fear. So one day, I followed him into the hallway and demanded the truth.
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