For twenty long years, Eleanor existed inside a sterile hospital chamber where time seemed to have lost its meaning. Sunlight spilled through tall windows each morning, washing the walls in soft gold, yet for her, every moment felt identical—dark, silent, suspended. Machines breathed on her behalf. Screens flickered. The quiet beeping of monitors became the only proof she was still tethered to the world, marking a life paused but not gone.
Doctors came and went. Treatments were tried, abandoned, and replaced. Hope thinned with each passing year, until it felt almost inappropriate to speak of it aloud.
For illustration purposes only
