Chapter 2 - Echoes in the Dark
The second time Mia pushed open the heavy door, the room felt colder. The electronic hum of the life-support machines filled the silence, a mechanical heartbeat keeping time for a man who had stopped fighting.
Mia dragged her small plastic stool across the marble floor with a grating screech. She climbed up, clutching her gray stuffed rabbit, and peered down at the dark-haired giant beneath the sterile white sheets.
"Mister," Mia whispered, her big eyes wide. "You're still sleeping."
In the deep, suffocating abyss of his coma, Lorenzo Moretti was drowning. For weeks, his mind had been a battlefield of dark memories, enemies closing in, and the blinding screech of metal on the Long Island Expressway. He felt cold. He felt detached from the brutal empire he had built from blood and ambition.
Then came the sound.
Scrritch. The noise of a small chair moving.
“Mister.”
A voice, impossibly small, cutting through the heavy fog of his unconsciousness.
Lorenzo’s internal self strained, fighting against the dead weight of his own limbs. He couldn't open his eyes. He couldn't breathe on his own. But he could hear. And right beside him, a tiny presence climbed onto the edge of his consciousness.
"My mommy says when you're scared, you have to sing," Mia announced matter-of-factly. She patted his limp, IV-tangled hand with her tiny fingers. "My mommy sings to me when the thunder is loud. Now I'm going to sing to you so the dark goes away."
Taking a deep breath, Mia began. Her voice was pure, unpolished, and trembling slightly with childhood innocence.
“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine...”
In the doorway, Elena Whitmore stood completely paralyzed. She held a clipboard against her chest, her knuckles turning white. On the monitor across the room, the numbers began to climb. Heart rate: up six beats. Oxygen saturation: stabilizing. Brain wave activity—previously flat and lethargic—flashing with sudden, rhythmic spikes.
“You make me happy when skies are gray...”
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Mia sang the entire verse, completely unaware of the medical miracle happening around her. When she finished, she leaned forward and planted a sticky, innocent kiss on the back of Lorenzo’s knuckles.
"See? You're safe now," Mia whispered. Then she hopped down, grabbed her rabbit by the ear, and skipped out of the room, leaving a shell-shocked nurse staring at a sleeping mafia boss whose index finger had just twitched against the sheet.
