Before Waking Up Rika Nishimura -

She was no longer a child. She was Rika—the same age, the same face, the same tired eyes. But she was smiling.

When a loved one is in a persistent vegetative state, family members live in a limbo that the story captures perfectly. They cannot move forward (wake up) because that would mean accepting death. They cannot stay still because the body is still breathing. They are trapped in the before .