Elaine Esposito was a real person; one who beat the record as the one longest staying in a coma.
Although they didn't realize how lucky they were that they managed to come back, it was good that they had left the place created by Mr. Barrie's imagination. Regardless of how much they wished to spend more in the new Neverland, asking additional questions to Barrie. James Barrie would've answered all of them by patiently explaining to the figments of his imagination everything they wished to know save for the one small problem of their impending fate.
He realized that their fate would be decided very soon and as such, Miss Junaid and the Neverlanders had to leave that place instantly if they weren't going to be trapped there forever. Mr. Barrie's body had begun to die. He knew something was wrong with it, aware of its worsening condition in the same way people separated from their families know what's happening in the family they left, from the letters and calls – not participating in those events themselves but aware of their existence. During the years spent in his sleeping state that not many people encounter or experience, the old man gained knowledge that only he and the form that was so similar to him could gain.
Barrie had met other people there in the new Neverland; people who sank into a coma but whose damaged brains could still conjure up for them the most fabulous worlds that the human imagination is able to come up with. They shared some collective knowledge on the rules that their created worlds were ruled by. Not that there were many people who were comatose even for roughly as long as James, since he was just young Jimmy was. Elaine Esposito, another "eternal child" was the closest to him in terms of the similarities they shared. She had spent 37 years in the world she created to soothe her loneliness into which she sank since at age six when she didn't wake up from an appendectomy. She created a wonderful world full of magical animals which played with each other in an enchanted wood, doing all those things little Elaine herself couldn't do in her condition. It was Elaine's idea for a world which James decided to borrow quite recently. The world of a magical land where Peter, his alter ego, could frolic was fascinating but James couldn't pretend that he wasn't already bored with this world a bit.
As fascinating as Neverland was, it had lasted in his mind for so many years that he felt the need for a change. Shortly before his body's condition worsened, the old man fell in love with the idea of the world of anthropomorphic animals. Not children, like in the fantasy he was spinning for all this impossibly long time but animals – as Elaine liked to imagine. Recently, shyly, almost as if embarrassed a bit that he dared to "betray" his fantasy he kept for many, many years, James started to reimagine his world. He did it just from time to time but even this stopped due to the state of his health which started to get worse, entailing the destruction of Neverland. He swore to himself that if his body would manage to get better, he would concentrate on making Neverland assume this new shape. Like from Elaine's fantasy. Some of the characters she invented, died with the death of the world they lived in which followed the death of their creator. Some of them got a new shape, transforming into different forms, different entities, as real as they ones they were but at the same time different. It was like the very idea lived on, only replaced by another aspect of it.
But just now Mr. James Matthew Barrie couldn't concentrate on making the world from his fantasy assume a new shape, even if he wanted. There was something seriously wrong with his body – he felt it and it was the part of this knowledge which came to him in this very world. He could come back to his body whenever he wanted but even while out of it, leaving it behind like some sort of empty husk, he could know in some mysterious way he couldn't describe to anybody that something wrong was happening. In the same way the old man whose spiritual essence greeted the children whose creator he was, knew that they should leave the world he had made. Salima was needed by the doctors from the hospital to help them. And as for the children… well, they were seen by the staff of the hospital so Miss Junaid the old man came to like would have to spend a lot of time explaining to the others who saw them coming into the room what she did with the children. But now she didn't need to. They came back through the bridge suspended between both the worlds, finding themselves in the room where the medical devices were making one hell of a noise.
The atmosphere in Salima's house after their return, which took place the previous day, could be described only as strange. The feelings which embraced the Neverland children after they came back were a mixture of fear and some kind of anticipation of what was coming. Sometimes it's better when the anticipation just ends, regardless of what results it entails and this is what the young Neverlanders would have thought if they were able to think more clearly. What happened soon after they were back in the hospital room, deprived them of any strength and it concerned not only those who were left home but also the healthy participants of this new magical trip to Neverland and back.
Now, in the hospital, a lot could be said about the commotion with Mr. Barrie with whose body something seriously wrong was happening which started at the moment when they came back – Salima needed to take only one look at the machines before she ran out of the room only to return with other doctors who told the kids to go out so they could perform their mysterious procedures on James Barrie's unresponsive body. Stunned enough by this meeting with someone whom they had thought to be sleeping for more than half a century and coming to the conclusion that the truth wasn't exactly as they thought it was. Along with the sharp and sudden return to the room before they had any chance to ask anything and later the fuss with Barrie's body (they didn't need to ask if it was something serious), the children didn't protest against being pushed out of the room. They only thing they were told, but for the impatient order to go out they heard from the mouth of the doctors, was the only sentence that came out of Salima's mouth: "Go back home."
So they did. They weren't needed at the hospital where the fight for the life of their creator was taking place and did not need to be informed that their absence in the hospital was the most proper thing they could do – in this way not only did they not disturb the doctors but also gave their friend Salima the opportunity to get away with the necessity of explaining what exactly they were doing there. The medical staff would certainly want to know their names and how their family was. So eluding the questions, the children made their way towards Salima's house quickly and trying not to think of James' words about the new form they were likely to assume after his death. The air of the early spring was warm but it was rainy, as if even the sky was mourning over their dying creator.
But that had all happened yesterday. Yesterday when the trend of events still seemed relatively good, in spite of some of them being ill, their creator's worsening state of health and similar things. But now all of them were already ill. More ill than they were at the beginning. They couldn't even gather their thoughts properly. The only thing they could do was lie helplessly, forgetting about everything they experienced. All of them were ill, stricken with this mysterious illness which wasn't an ordinary disease of body. Peter Pan. Wendy and her brothers. Peter Pan's band of the Lost Boys. Tiger Lily. Even little Tinkerbell in the doll's bed. They laid with no care, for Salima was still in the hospital and Mr. Stuart, all of a sudden couldn't go to take care of him for some reason. He had to fix something important and couldn't go to Miss Junaid's house to check how the Neverlanders were doing. So they laid alone, slowly losing their memories on Neverland, indifferent to everything, waiting for the return of Salima who was one of the few things they could still remember. The memories of all the wonderful adventures they had had in Neverland were slowly fading away, same as the memory of the destruction of the land they were from, their meeting with James Matthew Barrie the previous day and everything else.
It wasn't like they didn't remember anything but they were becoming more and more indifferent to this still slowly decreasing set of memories which still existed in their heads. And even those were fading away. One by one. They started to forget who they were, that once in the past they were the children from sunny Neverland, taking pleasure in swimming in the waters of the Lagoon of Mermaid and fighting pirates. They even started to think that they were someone else. Not even children any more. Their imagination let them believe they were animals, as if the animal skins they used to wear were their real skins.
