Away from the headlines, the miracle shrank back to its true size: not a cure, not a guarantee, but a fragile sign in a body still ravaged by trauma.
Machines kept breathing for Andrew. His parents learned to decode every grimace, every flicker of his eyes, knowing that one hopeful gesture had not erased the damage that followed. They mourned the boy they had known while showing up, relentlessly, for the boy who remained.
In that in‑between place, they stopped asking whether the thumb “meant” recovery and started asking how to love him inside uncertainty. Hope became less about dramatic turning points and more about stubborn presence—reading to him, holding his hand, arguing with specialists, marking progress in millimeters instead of miles. The world had moved on. They stayed, proving that a life can be both shattered and sacred, even when the miracle ends at maybe.
