She never saw the car.

It had been a beautiful day towards the end of May and she had been heading to work again, her feet dragging along the asphalt as she crossed the street, her heart in her shoes. The sun shone overhead without a cloud in the sky but her eyes were downcast, like her heart, and she never saw the car.

****

The hospital room was quiet aside from the murmuring beeps coming from the machines that sat unobtrusively in the corner near the head of the bed. The curtains were drawn, leaving the room in a dim shadow, the abrasive halogens turned out. The room’s only occupant was the frail slip of a girl lying in the cold hospital bed. All the wires for the machines lead their way to her, the rhythm of their beeps following the rhythm of what was left of her life.

The physical damage had healed.

The cuts and bruises and broken bones all mended since the accident so many months ago but the girl still hadn’t woken up. She had lain there for months, growing thinner and paler, showing no signs of coming back. Her loved ones had stopped visiting everyday, moving on with their own lives, but there was someone who never stopped to come and see her, bringing fresh flowers with every visit.

The door opened quietly with a tiny whoosh as it disturbed the stale air in the room and a woman in her mid thirties entered carrying a vase of narcissus and a ring of pine cones. She stalked quietly through the room as if she were afraid of disturbing the girl from her slumber. She set the vase on the bedside table and took the seat closest to the bed, leaning forward to take the girl’s fragile hand in her own.

“Hey,” she said in a hushed whisper, her voice cracking over the single word. “I’m back.”

There was no change in the girl but the woman continued to speak.

“I brought you more flowers,” she said. “You never told me what you liked so I bring what I like, and pine cones. Because the pine cones… you started collecting them after we met. Cause I gave you that one.”

She fell silent again, this time for longer than before, staring at the girl’s pale hand inside of her own, rubbing her fingers across the girl’s knuckles in small circles. She glanced at the machines in the corner and back at the girl. She remembered how beautiful her smile had been and how her eyes had glowed when they had looked at each other, the love in her that the woman would never see again. A love she had let go.

A sob caught in her throat but she held it back, swallowed it down like a bitter lump that tried to choke her before it would pass. Her eyes burned at the memories of seeing the young girl smile and laugh. The sun shining off of her auburn hair, making it glow a fiery red. The memory of the last time they had spoken rose up in her mind, seeing the girl’s eyes, a stormy, tear-filled blue, hidden behind her hair as she pulled away from the emotional torrent that had been passing between them for months.

Her heart had been held out on her sleeve and the woman had abused it… and hadn’t seen it then. She hadn’t realized until after she had gotten the call at work telling her that the girl had been in an accident… that she was in the hospital, that she wasn’t expected to make it through the night.

That had been months ago.

The reason she had broken the girl’s heart had eventually fallen through as the woman had known, deep down, that it would and she was left sitting at the girl’s bedside praying everyday that the girl would wake, hoping for the chance to apologize.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please wake up… I would do anything.”

“Anything?”

The question rang out through the room, booming in the silence.

The woman jumped from her seat, never letting go of the girl’s hand as she spun to take in the empty room. She found herself face to face with the girl in the bed. Her mouth opened as she attempted to form words but no sound escaped her lips as she looked back to the girl in the bed and the one standing in front of her. They shared the same auburn hair and stark pale skin, the same thin upper lip and full pout, the same bottomless grey eyes. Only the look in the eyes of the girl before her was dark and cold, unforgiving, a contrast to the girl the woman had known.

“Who are you,” the woman hissed.

A thin, dark smile spread across the girl’s lips as she moved across the room circling the bed, running her hand along the blanket that covered the girl in the bed. “I am desire… I am passion, promise, forgiveness, redemption. I am the girl you have come to see everyday for the last few months, the one that lays there in a coma… lost to the world.”

The woman glanced back to the girl in the bed, her pale face showing no sign that she knew anyone was there.

“That isn’t possible.”

“Why?” the specter asked. “Because you say it isn’t possible?”

“What do you want,” the woman asked, afraid to raise her eyes to the girl standing in front of her.  Terrified to believe that what the girl said was true and she was somehow the girl in the bed. Tears burned her eyes and her heart ached at the possibility of hope but fear kept her grip on the unconscious girl’s hand.

“What do I want,” the specter mused as she traced the comatose girl’s fingers with her own. “I thought the question should have been what do you want? Why are you here everyday without fail? Why do you still hold on when everyone else has let go?”

“I love her.”

The words were choked and barely above a whisper but they escaped the woman’s lips without being bidden. She spoke without having thought. She laid out her heart to the ghost of the girl in the bed and she felt the sting in her heart ease as she came to a truth she had been running from since they had met.

The specter made a noise deep in her throat that could have been laughter.

The woman met her eyes.

“Love put her hear!” the girl snapped. “And you think love would be enough to bring her back? Did you stop to think that maybe she is happy where she is?” The specter turned those hard grey eyes to the girl in the bed and her look softened. “Everything hurt so much here. All she ever wanted was just to sleep. And now you want to take that away from her too?”

“All I want is to have her back,” the woman said, her eyes following the specters to take in the pale face of the girl in the bed. “I just want her back.”

When the woman looked back at the specter those grey eyes were locked back on her, burning into her. The smile curved her lips into a malicious grin that made the woman’s heart begin to race.

“And what would you give?” she asked, venom in her voice. “What sacrifice would you make to have her back in your life?”