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The slow steady beeping echoed around the tiny dimly lit room just like it had for the last 10 years. Dust lined the wooden side table and empty couch that hadn't held life for at least 4 years. The only movement in the room was that of the slow rising chest of a pale thin girl that last straight out on her back under the white hospital sheets. Her hair was long and brown, matted from the lack of care it received. The room was a death chamber enclosing the forgotten girl whose name was messily scrawled across the doctors clip board.

Hope Hathaway

But hope had abandoned her long ago, driven off into the distance. Hope had stolen from her and she didn't even know it.

*

Linda had worked at Newark Hospital for 22 years, having scored the job when her first and only son turned 2. She had had her fair share of heartbreak on the job, watched so many people come in and never go out again, so many families break down, mothers collapsing and praying that it was just a bad dream. She had seen it all, but there was always one patient she held a particular soft spot for, a girl named Hope who had come in at the age of 17 and never had the chance to walk out again, no she wasn't dead, well medically speaking that is, to everyone else in the world she might as well have been.

Linda pressed the brakes down on her cart and gently pushed open door 273 to check on her long term patient. She sighed sadly when she looked upon the girl whose body was only working because of all the tubes connecting her to life support. Linda had yearned many times to go and help the poor girl, to turn off the life support and let her go to heaven where she belonged, but her parents had different plans. They never came to visit anymore though, just sent money to the hospital every year.

Last thanksgiving Linda bought a small turkey and music to the room and shared the day with Hope, her son having gone away for work, she knew what loneliness was like. She walked over to the bed and smoothed out the covers that didn't need smoothing for the girl never moved except to breathe. She checked the drip was still working and wrote down the hate rate and life support reading on the doctor's clipboard. Everyday for ten years she had done this, and everyday it got more painful to watch.

The staff at the hospital now referred to Hope simply as comatose, unless of course Linda was around. Linda felt like even though she had never talked properly to Hope, she was like a daughter to her; she needed her protecting because God knows no one else was going to. Linda looked around the small room and spotted the dust covered couch, she wondered how long it had been since some one had sat in it. It looked just like the one her son use to have in their basement, she remembers sitting on it with him and telling him about how a poor girl a few years older then him was in a car accident and went into a coma, it was her way of educating her son of the dangers of speeding, but also to make him grateful for what he did have.

Linda sighed deeply once more and made her way out of the room, glancing solemnly at Hope before she closed the door quietly. God please save her she prayed.

*

Linda was just unwrapping her chicken and avocado sandwich when the code red light went off above her. Everyone in the staffroom glanced up momentarily before going back to their lunch time ritual, Linda was no different. She knew that if they needed extra people for the patient that they would phone down for them.

She was just about to take a bite out of the sandwich though when the phone rang, startling not just her but everyone in the room. The male nurse closest to the phone got up and answered it, staring around the room for a moment until his eyes fell on Linda and he said something quickly in the phone before hanging up. Linda tilted her head sideways and watched him cross the room towards her.

"Linda Iero?" He asked as he reached her, she nodded slowly in response so he could continue, "You are requested in room 273."

Her heart immediately dropped, every bad scenario that could possibly have happened passed through her mind as she threw her chair back and pelted as fast as she could towards her destination, her insides churned and groaned in protest but she heeded them not. She pushed past another doctor hastily as she came to the right corridor and sprinted down it, stopping in front of door 273 where a cluster of doctors huddled. One of them stepped forward and smiled at her.

"Linda Iero?" He asked, she nodded yet again for him to continue as she got her breath back, "You are the nurse for this patient?" he asked, again she nodded, he beamed and stepped aside to reveal the door behind him. "She woke up." He said simply.



Her eyes popped out of her head in disbelief, she couldnt believe it. She walked slowly past the doctors and pushed the door enough for her to slip in and close it behind her. There was another doctor standing in the room talking to Hope who seemed quite confused, the doctor turned to her and smiled.

"I've heard that you know this patient better than anyone, so if you wouldn't mind I think you would do a better job in filling in the...gap," he said to Linda as he patted her shoulder and left the room. Hope tried to pull herself up to a sitting position but her weak arms gave in so she remained lying and stared at Linda who stood in awe staring back. Hope's eyes which had never opened in the whole time Linda knew her where shining brightly, they were the brightest blue you could ever see with just a hint of green flashing across them every now and then.

"I don't know where I am," Hope said simply to Linda who couldn't help but laugh, laugh from happiness, laugh from the way Hope had said that sentence, just laugh because she never believed this day would come.

"I'll explain everything I know," said Linda warmly as she settled down. She pulled the couch towards the bed and sat down. "Ten years ago..."