This will be the last chapter for this story. I know there's a lot that was left out, but there's a reason for it, which I will explain at the end. Hopefully, the missing gap between the last chapter and this one will be made clear in this chapter.

Epilogue

November 2080

No nurse in the hospital knew a time when the woman had had a visitor. It would be as outlandish as seeing the woman without the heavy-lined wrinkles that adorned her face. And yet, here he was - an already strange looking visitor, a teenage boy, aged beyond possibility and out of breath. She couldn't remember the last time any young person had come to the hospital to visit, and still, there was something about this boy that suggested he wasn't as young as she thought.

"Is Ms. Manson here?" He asked, and each nurse fell silent. Naturally, it would be this strange boy that asked for their most peculiar and puzzling patient.

A middle-aged nurse, Jenna Rosenberg (whose grandmother was Nadine Rosenberg, although she never met her), stepped from around the counter. "I'll direct you to her," she said, leading the boy up staircases and down hallways so familiar to him that he might have cried to walk them alone. He might have cried to walk them with the nurse, but he didn't want to alarm her.

"Ms. Manson, you have a visitor," Jenna announced, stopping at a room one floor shy of the one the boy might have headed for. He looked around the room, noticing the one biggest change: the color. This might not be the floor he used to frequent, but he knew all rooms had looked the same - white. This one had pale blue walls, and baby blue curtains.

The wrinkled woman looked up from the bed she sat on, facing the gardens and staring longingly outside. When they entered the room, she dropped her arm, which had been raised as if to reach out to the flowers outside. "Oh, I don't know you. Do you read?" She held the book out to the boy, who took it.

The nurse, watching the scene, backed out of the room and down the hallway, knowing the woman would be docile. "Should I read this out loud?" The boy was openly crying now, visibly shaken by the sight in front of him, and the fact that she didn't know him.

A twinkle sparkled in the woman's eye, almost hidden. "No, it was just a front. They think I'm crazy," she said, taking the book back.

"I told you once before, crazy's not a label, Sam."

Sam heaved a giant sigh, a sigh that belonged to worn-out mothers that had outlived their children, and not to a teenager. But then, Danny reminded himself, she wasn't a teenager. "It's not the same reason as why I was committed. They think I'm crazy because I babble about this book, and the real boy who lives. They think I'm crazy because I always believed he'd be back. I don't care, I knew you'd be back, Danny."

"How did you know?" He picked up the book, Peter Pan, from her bedside table and traced the boy. "You knew I'd still be young. You knew I wouldn't grow up between the night I left you, and today."

"I felt it, the way you feel a phantom limb. You were my phantom limb, Danny," she said, crying at the sound of her own joke.

He was beyond crying, he was sobbing now, and laughing. "Sam, you should know. I was going to come back, the next day, but that night I was-"

"I know," she said, and suddenly her voice changed. It was brittle, a thin cover to protect fragile Sam. "I felt it. I didn't tell anyone where you had gone, not even when I thought you were dead. I wanted to keep hoping, and I wouldn't admit it to myself. Everyone wondered. Everyone asked me - Danny, even the kitchen staff thought...knew we were dating! Who would've guessed that a patient and a volunteer would be so popular?"

She paused, and Danny knew better than to interrupt. He wanted her to keep speaking, and she did. "Danny, the whole time that I thought you were dead, I found myself on the verge of death so many times. You couldn't imagine the accidents I got into. It was almost as if Mother Nature was trying to kill me and at the last minute, saving my life. It was torture, like my life was someone's game, their entertainment. The first ten years were the worst. Fires and other natural disasters, unforeseen accidents claimed everyone's lives but mine. Nothing hurt like Kates' death, and nothing compared to yours. Angie died. Irene died. Rosie was last. I supposed they were following you, to that place you told me about - the Ghost Zone. I wanted to die more than any of them. I wanted to find you. This building burned down at least twice, but it never took me with it. You may have noticed - it's a different building, Danny, but you and I have barely changed.

"And then, it got better. I heard your voice after ten years and in an instant, the decade without you seemed like an hour. I told myself I could hold on, for you. You saved me, keeping me alive with the thought...the knowledge that you would come back before I died. When I heard your voice, it confirmed what I already knew - that you were still alive, but it also dared me to hope again."

Danny was sitting on the bed opposite Sam, a bed that had never been filled, and smiled ruefully. "I could imagine the accidents, actually. I tried to come faster, Sam. I'm only seventy-two hours older than the last time I saw you, did you know that? And you're seventy-two years older." He, too, was becoming more animated, so much more youthful than the old-looking young man who entered the door.

"And I won't last much longer. You came at the right time, really. Oh, Danny, and you lost people, too. Your family..."

"Jazz is still alive. I dropped in on her this morning. She was reading. Can you imagine that? She's over eighty years old and she's reading. She never quits studying...never quit...never..." He broke off suddenly, unable to speak. He couldn't even begin to fathom what words to use, the way to talk as if he had never missed almost three-quarters of a century.

"It's not fair! I'm young! I want to grow up. I wanted to get old, with you. Do you think, when you die, I can come? Or can I take you with me, right now if you'd like. Maybe you won't be able to die in the Ghost Zone, or maybe you will, but you'll just stay there. We could be there forever together, and never ever age."

"Wendy never got to return to Neverland, Peter."

"You're better than Wendy, and besides, you've never been to the Ghost Zone, so you won't be returning."

"And you're one thousand times better than Peter, but I still don't know if I can come. I don't know the rules, but we can try. It'll be my dying wish."

It was all they could hope for, everything they felt they deserved. She died a few minutes later, looking far younger than any nurse had ever seen her. She looked like a teenager. Danny walked out the front door, his face miraculously dry of tears, after alerting a nurse. Once he got outside, he took off in flight, after helping someone else along the way.

Her body was buried a week later. There were two unseen guests, both in the form of teenagers, at the burial. They didn't stay for long. They had other places to go.

At the service, Jenna Rosenberg read a line from the woman's favorite book, the line that had been highlighted and underlined and repeated so many times, "All children grow up, but some get a second chance."

I'm considering posting another one-chapter story about what happened to Danny (I've got the short story figured out already). I had been debating with myself for the longest time about adding a chapter before this one that would have explained it, but I ditched the idea because I felt it didn't fit right - this whole story is centered on Sam. But please, if you're interested in hearing Danny's explanation of the disappearance, please say so.

Also, I'd like to thank everyone for reading this entire story. Please, please review and leave your thoughts. And, I would absolutely adore anyone who took the time to vote in the poll on my profile -- if you haven't already.

Thanks again for reading!

Love, IAmTheLonelyHeart