The night shift at Memorial Medical was always still before dawn. In Room 304, a monitor began to chirp irregularly—first a blip, then another. The nurse’s shoes squeaked across the tile, calling for Dr. Helen Sloane. A patient coded by a number—4211, comatose for seventeen years, had moved.
Helen hurried in, coat half-buttoned, heart quickening as the steady rhythm on the screen broke pattern. The man’s fingers flexed, brushing the sheets like someone remembering touch. His breathing caught, harsh and uneven, a forgotten sound forcing its way back through decades of silence.
She leaned closer. Pale lids fluttered, revealing eyes clouded yet startlingly aware. The fluorescent lights reflected in them like fragments of another world. Helen froze; medicine had trained her for recovery, not resurrection. “Can you hear me?” she asked softly. His lips moved, but the answer came out as a broken sound.