“When a young woman ends up in a coma after a terrible accident, the doctors never expect her to be hiding a secret. When they discover the truth, they begin to cry.
The coma ward of the hospital was usually a quiet place. There would be the odd visitor during the day, but normally, the worrying and beeping of the various machines the patients were hooked up to would be the only sound to occupy the corridors.
But the silence was suddenly shattered as distressed cries came from one of the rooms. As doctors and nurses dashed towards the source of the noise, they got a huge shock when they entered the room. One of the junior doctors, Susie Harrison, was in tears as she looked at the young woman lying in the bed, claiming she had been terribly wronged. The staff didn’t understand what she was saying. Yes, the poor patient was all alone in the world and was facing an extremely uncertain future, but this wasn’t the first time that life dealt 21-year-old Bonnie a low blow.
Life hadn’t worked out the way she imagined it would. She’d spent most of her childhood in the care system after losing her parents in a car accident, and she had no other family around. Then she had been thrown out into the world on her own, and she struggled. Her past trauma couldn’t allow her to move on with her life, so her behavior had become more and more reckless, just so she could try and feel something.
After one drunken night, Bonnie staggered back home in the dark. Her apartment building was on the outskirts of town, and she had no choice but to walk back. At some point in the night, she’d misplaced her handbag, so she lost her phone and wallet. Luckily, she had a spare key hidden under a doormat. Their out home was poorly lit, but Bonnie was too drunk to drive, and unfortunately, she was too drunk to walk as well. Suddenly, she lost her footing and tripped off the sidewalk into the road.
Bonnie fumbled around, trying to regain her balance. In her confusion, she didn’t hear a car coming around the corner before it was too late. The vehicle drove straight into the young woman before coming to a stop. For a long time, the car remained in the middle of the road, but no one got out to check on the young woman lying in the road. Whether through fear or confusion, the driver left the scene without calling for help.
It was the early hours of the morning in the outskirts of town, so some time passed before another car came along that same road. Thankfully, the driver saw the poor woman and immediately called for an ambulance. The kind passerby jumped out of the car and checked Bonnie’s vitals. The young girl was still alive, but her breathing was shallow, and her pulse was faint.
At the hospital, the staff did all they could to assess Bonnie’s injuries. She’d suffered a head injury, so she was placed in a medically induced coma in the hopes that the swelling would go down. The nurses tried to find out who the young woman was, but she had no idea. Days passed by, and there were no reports of missing people to link the woman to; her identity remained a mystery.
While most of the coma patients received visitors, no one ever came to see Bonnie. She was all alone. A junior doctor named Susie took pity on the young woman. It had always baffled Susie how someone like that could end up in the hospital with no ID and no one missing her. Soon, Dr. Susie was going above and beyond her normal duties and caring for the woman in her spare time. She would update Bonnie on current affairs or read a book to her. She’d talk to her like a friend or sister. She wanted the young woman to know that there was someone who cared about her.
Sadly, despite all of Dr. Susie’s care and the expertise of the other doctors and nurses in the coma ward, Bonnie didn’t show much sign of improvement. Six months had passed since she’d come to the hospital, and nothing had changed. Dr. Susie didn’t want to give up hope, though. She remained diligent in her care. She was sure that one day the young woman would wake up, and they would be able to have a proper conversation together.
During those 6 months, Susie had been one of Bonnie’s main carers. The doctors were usually assigned key patients, and Susie was happy that the young woman was one of hers. However, she slowly noticed some little changes had started happening. She’d come into work and see the road had changed suddenly, and she’d have to visit another patient rather than Susie. She thought it was strange that after such a long time, things were now changing suddenly. But as a junior doctor, she didn’t care to confront the consultants who had made the changes.
What had started as a few small changes had soon become big changes. Susie barely saw the young woman anymore and found that she had to try and find time just to say hello to her before her shift started. However, even this was becoming difficult because as soon as she stepped onto the ward, she would be bombarded with small tasks that would keep her away from the young woman. Susie couldn’t understand why it felt like she was being stopped from seeing her mystery patient.
It had now been 3 months since she’d had anything to do with her. Maybe the consultants didn’t like that she seemed to have formed a bond with a patient. Maybe she’d overstepped the mark by reading to the woman and spending more time with her. The job she had once loved now made her feel anxious and worried about her performance. No one had ever said she’d done anything wrong, but she was certainly made to feel like she had.
After a particularly tearful night where she felt like she was being pushed out of her job, Susie came up with a plan to visit the young woman. If she was going to be pushed off the coma ward or out of the hospital altogether, she wanted one last opportunity to check on her patient and say goodbye to her. She decided that when her shift ended the next day, she would go and sit in the canteen and wait for most of the staff to go home. None of the consultants worked late, and at night, the coma ward was even quieter. It would be quite easy for Susie to get back on the ward practically undetected and slip into the young woman’s room.
The next day when her shift ended, Bonnie took a seat in the corner of the canteen and waited. She tried to read to occupy herself, but she couldn’t concentrate on the words in front of her. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that something felt wrong about the whole situation. When she was sure the ward would be quiet enough, she left her spot in the canteen and made her way to the young woman’s room.
Susie quietly opened the door and slipped inside, saying hello to the nameless friend she hadn’t seen for a while. She went over to the bed and held the woman’s hand. It felt nice to see her again. She flicked through the woman’s charts and notes to see if anything had happened in the month she hadn’t seen her, and a few things stood out to Susie as not being quite right. First of all, she didn’t have a
key doctor anymore. She was being looked after by a different resident each day, and it seemed that even the nurses came and went without ever developing any lasting connection with her.
Was Bonnie being intentionally ignored just because they didn’t know about her medical insurance status? Susie wondered. But there were also anomalies in her blood test that the doctor struggled to understand. With a puzzled expression on her face, she returned the charts and sat beside the young woman. The junior doctor began to apologize to Bonnie for not being around. She explained how she felt like she was being kept away on purpose but didn’t know why.
Thinking back to the anomalies on the chart, Susie decided to carry out a few of her own checks on the young woman just to put her mind at rest. Now she gently pulled back the bed covers. The young doctor let out a loud gasp. Beneath the sheets, the young woman’s stomach had become distended and rounded. She looked pregnant.
Susie’s mind raced. The anomalies on the chart, the fact that she’d been kept away from the young woman, and now her appearance all led the doctor to one conclusion. Someone had got the young woman pregnant while she was in the hospital. No, they were trying to cover it up. That could only mean one thing, though. The person who had abused the nameless patient worked at the hospital.
Unable to hide her distress, Susie began to cry. Soon, her sobs became more distressed and frantic and attracted the attention of other staff members. The door to the young woman’s room burst open, and everyone looked at Susie in surprise. Why was she here, and what had got her so upset over a nameless pregnant patient?
Amidst tears, Susie explained to the night nurses that Bonnie had most certainly not been pregnant when she had entered the hospital 9 months earlier, and coma patients don’t just get pregnant unless something bad has happened. One of the nurses rushed to check the woman’s charts and realized that the first ones were missing from the file. Someone had deliberately hidden the patient’s earlier test to hide the fact that she hadn’t been pregnant upon her arrival.
The once quiet coma ward was now in chaos. The consultants were phoned and told to return to the hospital right away. Gossip and rumors were spreading amongst the staff as to how the young woman had gotten pregnant and who had tried to hide the terrible secret. Susie was outraged. It was clear she’d been stopped from seeing the young woman so that someone at the hospital could take advantage of her and then cover up what they’d done.
She knew she had to phone the police. Unfortunately, no one was going to own up to abusing the young woman, and with no other evidence, there was little that the police could do until the baby was born. Then they would conduct DNA tests on the staff to see if one of them had matched the baby. Susie felt lost and heartbroken. If she challenged her change in duties, maybe she might have been able to save the young woman from this horror. Clearly, the police could do very little to help, and now she felt like she was surrounded by people who had tried to cover up a dark secret.
Things were about to get worse, though. Much to Susie’s horror, none of the consultants were removed from the hospital. At least she was allowed to be in charge of the young woman’s care again. Susie didn’t want to be at the hospital anymore, but she couldn’t abandon her friend. So she spent the next few months ensuring Bonnie was as comfortable as possible while her belly got bigger. She went back to reading to her and keeping her up to date with the news.
As the baby’s due date got closer, Susie began to feel nervous. With the young woman still in a coma, who would look after the baby when she gave birth? Via cesarian section, Bonnie gave birth to a healthy little girl. Susie and a few of the other doctors and nurses cried. Their poor patient had been through so much, and hers was one of the oddest cases they’d ever had. They all desperately wanted her to recover and meet her daughter, but giving birth had taken its toll on her, and her condition rapidly deteriorated.
Susie was in shock. The woman had been stable for so long that she’d never given up hope that one day she would wake up. Now there was talk of disconnecting her from all the machines, just letting her pass away peacefully. Although professionally Susie knew the machines were the only reason the young woman was still alive, she didn’t just want to sit back and let her friend die. But the decision was made by the board. There was nothing Susie could do to stop it.
As the machines were switched off one by one, Susie lifted up the little baby and placed her on the young woman’s chest. She wanted her to feel her daughter one last time before she died. As the last of the machines was switched off, the only sound in the room was the gentle whimpering of little Rosie as she lay on her mother’s chest.
But then something amazing happened. The young woman’s hand began to twitch. It looked like she was trying to lift her hand up towards her baby. Susie was in shock. The woman was alive, and for the first time since she’d come to the hospital, she was moving. Happy tears slid down Susie’s face as she put the baby back in the crib and set about carrying out a checkup on the young woman.
Three days later, the young woman was sitting up in bed and holding onto her daughter. Susie had a very difficult conversation with her about how she’d ended up pregnant, and she knew she’d need a lot of support to overcome the trauma. But at the same time, she was overjoyed that she finally got to have a conversation with the woman.
Bonnie told Susie her name but said she didn’t remember anything from the night of her accident. She told the doctor she had no family and no idea how she would look after a child. No sum of money would ever be enough to compensate her for the horror she had gone through. But when the results of the DNA test came out, the hospital board informed Bonnie that she would receive a huge settlement. The consultant responsible for abusing her was found and deprived of his license to practice medicine.
However, it was also uncovered that he hadn’t acted in complete secrecy. Other senior members of staff had covered up his behavior in order to try and protect him. They too were punished for their actions, and the hospital was forced into a huge overhaul of its staff.
On the day Bonnie was due to be released from the hospital, Susie had a proposal for her. She told her new friend that she’d quit her job and got a new position at another hospital. Even though all the consultants had been replaced, she still didn’t feel like she could work there. She asked Bonnie to move in with her, at least until she found her footing. Bonnie was speechless. The young woman had never had any family of her own, but now she had a daughter, and Susie felt like a big sister to her.
Terrible circumstances had brought them all together, but Bonnie wouldn’t change her new little family for anything. Now it’s over to you. What do you think of this story? Do you think Susie was right to try and fight against the senior staff?
