Chaos followed—nurses crying, doctors issuing orders, calls being made. Someone phoned Thomas.
He arrived breathless, jacket undone, disbelief etched across his face. When he saw Margaret looking at him, his knees buckled. The man who commanded corporations fell beside her bed, overcome.
“Margaret…” he whispered, clutching her hand. “Is it really you?”
Her gaze shifted weakly from her husband to the frightened boy clutching his harmonica.
With enormous effort, she rasped, “That music… it reached me.”
Rosa stood in the corner, holding Ethan tightly, feeling she didn’t belong in such a sacred moment. She wished to disappear.
Instead, Thomas approached them. His eyes were red, his composure gone. He knelt before Ethan.
“Son,” he said, voice breaking, “the best specialists in the world told me this would never happen. And you… you did what money couldn’t.”
Ethan shrugged shyly. “I just wanted her to wake up.”
In the days that followed, word of the “harmonica miracle” spread, though Thomas kept reporters away. Margaret’s recovery was gradual but steady. Each word she formed felt like a triumph. And every afternoon, Ethan visited.