A hospital on Valentine’s Day in Memphis, Tennessee. A sparse gathering of families have remembered their silent loved ones today, including the parents of the girl in room 509, who arrive shortly after work and tape a Valentine’s Day card up on the wall. It storms outside, icy rain hitting the window, making it rattle. Not the most inviting of Valentine’s Days; not the most inviting of settings.

Still, the couple do their best to make the most of it. The mother paints the girl’s nails, for her sister is in college and can’t be there to do it. The father goes through his ritual of massaging her muscles to keep them soft and supple, for there’s still a faint and far-off chance that she’ll need them again someday. The mother reads yet another chapter from Sense and Sensibility, and then when melancholy sets in, the father goes to pull up the car, for he doesn’t want to make his wife walk in the storm.

The woman gets up to look out of the window, her heart sinking at the sight of quivering branches on winter-bare trees. She wishes that Valentine’s Day—that every holiday—could be different for them, but she knows that it probably never will be. Resigned to that fact, she turns to look at her silent daughter in the bed, only to see her daughter looking right back at her.

“Hi, Mom,” the girl says, her voice weak and raspy.

“Allie?” The woman hurries to her daughter, sitting in the chair beside her, taking her curled hand, and holding it—and for the first time in a very, very long time, that hand squeezes back.

“Sorry I’ve been gone for so long,” Allie rasps.

“It’s okay, honey,” the mother says. “Oh my God, it’s okay.” Tears burst from the woman’s eyes, falling more powerfully than the rain outside. They are tears of joy, because finally, after all these years, she’s been given permission to cry.

Picture this:

A skateboarder in New York City awakes to find himself on a street corner in the middle of the day. He looks around, and the world seems strange. Sounds are hollow, people pass by as blurs, and the colors all seem muted except for him, his skateboard, and the spot that he’s on. He turns to see a boy sitting on the curb across the street, also in perfect focus, watching him. As he goes over to the boy, he notices that there’s something wrong with the ground. It feels as if it’s melting beneath his feet.

The boy who’s been watching him smiles and stands up. He wears pressed pants and a leather jacket over a white shirt and a dark tie.

“What’s going on here? Am I dreaming? Am I drugged?” the skateboarder asks.