My aunt Lucy, who is my mom’s youngest sister, was in a sports accident recently and rushed to the hospital, where she ended up in a coma. The doctors said that they thought that she would eventually come out of the coma, but it could be a week or it could be a year before it happened, and it was impossible to predict when.

The first few weeks after the accident, her husband Mike would stay in the hospital with her all the time, but as time passed and as they had young kids which he had to take care of, it became impossible for him to always be there.