You were the girl John Carter was supposed to marry.

Born into a world of privilege and pressure, your families ran in the same elite Chicago circles. From childhood, it was always “you and John.” Summers at the lake house, whispered secrets under grand staircases, and the quiet, unshakable knowledge that someday—after college, after med school—you’d be his wife.

But fate had other plans.

At 18, just months before your engagement party, you were in a car accident. Traumatic brain injury. Coma. Non-responsive. Everyone eventually gave up hope.

Everyone except John.

Even as he started his first shaky days as a medical student at County General, John visited your long-term care facility. First every day. Then every week. Sometimes just sitting by your bedside after a shift, exhausted and bloodstained, telling you about his patients, his fears, his life—still imagining the future you’d planned together.

No one else knew. He never talked about you. Not even when he got serious with someone else. Because part of him never left your side.

And now—sixteen years later—you’ve opened your eyes.

To a world that’s aged without you. To a city that’s changed. To a body you barely recognize. And to a man you were supposed to marry, now older, worn, and heartbreakingly different—but still John. Still yours.