A horrific accident stole her father’s life and left her mother trapped in a coma. Their little girl was so shaken, she lost her voice completely. Years later, her foster dad brought her to a therapist. But the moment she spotted a hospital janitor cleaning the floor, something broke open inside her—and with one devastating word, her voice came rushing back, changing three lives forever…
“Are you just going to sit there mute?” he snapped, his tone sharp and cruel. “Did you even hear me? I’m done with you, Lisa.”
“Julian, please,” she whispered urgently, glancing at the rearview mirror where their four-year-old daughter lay asleep in her car seat. “Nika’s resting.”
“Nika’s resting, Nika this, Nika that,” he mocked with venom. “It’s always about Nika! What about me? I don’t matter anymore. My needs don’t exist to you.”
“She’s just a child, Julian,” Lisa pleaded, her voice breaking. “She needs us—both of us.”
“Don’t guilt me. It’s too late. I’ve decided—I refuse to be second best in my own house.”
His knuckles whitened on the wheel as the storm raged outside.
“Then why bother with the carousel, the ice cream, the trip to the park? What was that? A twisted goodbye?” she cried.
“I don’t even know why I wasted my time,” he spat, turning to glare at her. For one fleeting moment, the man she loved vanished, replaced by a stranger with eyes cold and hateful.
That moment was enough. The car slid across slick asphalt. Headlights exploded through the rain, blindingly close.
“Julian!” Lisa screamed.
He jerked the wheel, but the tires couldn’t grip the wet road. The car spun violently, metal twisting, glass shattering. The last sound Lisa heard was her daughter’s terrified cry:
“Mommy, what’s happening?”
Bystanders pulled over, shielding themselves from the downpour as sirens pierced the night.
“He was speeding like a madman,” someone muttered. “And the storm caught him.”
Julian was gone instantly. Lisa, thrown from the wreck, lay broken but breathing.
“She’s alive!” a rescuer shouted. Paramedics rushed in.
“There’s a kid in the back!” another yelled.
Inside, a little girl sat frozen in her car seat, clutching a worn stuffed bunny. Bruises covered her small body, but it was her silence that scared them most. She was carried into the ambulance beside her unconscious mother, staring unblinking at the stretcher.
“Severe head trauma, multiple injuries,” the doctor said grimly after examining Lisa. “The child is in shock, but physically stable. We’ll monitor her.”
Lisa’s elderly parents were too frail to raise a traumatized girl. Child services stepped in. “She’s practically an orphan,” a nurse whispered. “The poor thing.”
“She’s not gone yet,” the doctor reminded her, though hope was thin.
Lisa was placed in a medically induced coma. Nika was taken to a children’s home, her bunny clutched tightly. She no longer spoke. Doctors said it was psychological—the shock had stolen her voice.
Five years later, Andrew and Gail were still battling heartbreak from infertility. “Let’s adopt,” Andrew suggested. Gail hesitated but finally agreed—with conditions. “A girl. And not a baby.”
At the orphanage, nothing felt right to Gail—until she noticed the small, silent girl with the rabbit.
“That one. What’s her story?” she asked.
“Her name is Nika,” the director said softly. “Her father died in a crash, her mother has been comatose ever since. She doesn’t talk much, but it’s trauma, not illness.”
“I want her,” Gail said.
Andrew felt an instant pull toward the child. “Can we take her?”
“Guardianship only, while her mother is alive.”
“Perfect,” Gail said, and just like that, Nika had a new home.
Months later, Lisa awoke in a hospital bed. Tubes restrained her. Her memory was gone. Doctors explained about the accident, the coma. Photographs of a little girl meant nothing to her. Released eventually, she drifted back to the hospital—not as a patient, but as a cleaner. It was the only place that felt familiar.
Meanwhile, Nika bonded deeply with Andrew. With Gail, she was guarded. “She ignores me,” Gail fumed. “She clings to that ugly rabbit instead of the toys I buy her.”
“That rabbit is her past,” Andrew reminded her. “It’s all she has left.”
The tension only grew. Years later, Gail broke. “I can’t live like this! I feel nothing for her. I want a divorce!”
Nika overheard. The word “divorce” cracked her silence into a single broken sob. She dropped her rabbit and fled. Her voice was gone again.
Desperate, Andrew sought a specialist. Leaving the office, he bumped into a cleaner with sad eyes.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s alright. Losing your memory is worse,” she murmured without thinking.
“Someone you know?” he asked.
“They say… it was me.”
“They told me my name is Lisa.”
The next day, as Andrew waited with Nika for her appointment, he saw the cleaner again. “Lisa! Morning!” he called.
Nika froze. Her eyes locked on the woman. The rabbit slipped from her hands. Then she ran.
“Mama! Mommy!” she cried—the first word she’d spoken in weeks. She flung herself into Lisa’s arms.
Something broke open in Lisa. Her mind was blank, but her body remembered. She hugged the girl back. Tears flowed. Memories soon followed—the storm, Julian, the headlights, Nika’s scream.
Lisa collapsed, clutching her daughter. “Nika, my baby…”
Andrew picked up the rabbit, watching in awe. He knew then: their lives had just been rewritten.
In time, Lisa recovered, memories returning piece by piece. She and Andrew chose not to tear Nika between them, but to build something new together. A family.
The battered rabbit now sat on a shelf, retired. Nika no longer needed it for comfort. She had her mother. She had her papa. And soon—she would have a little brother too.
