She never interfered with the machines or the nurses—she simply stayed, and in a place where I felt invisible, that small act meant everything.
When I finally regained my voice and asked the staff about her, their response was gentle but firm: no such visitor had ever been recorded.
They suggested it was the medication, the trauma—hallucinations shaped by stress. I accepted that explanation, because I didn’t know what else to believe.
Six weeks later, I was discharged and returned home, still fragile but thankful. As I unlocked my front door that afternoon, a familiar stillness washed over me—the same feeling I had known during those long hospital nights.
