No Happy Ending

"There is no happy ending with me," he sounded so broken and I felt my heart break for him.

~ ~ ~

It is 1915 and Irene Ashford works in a hospital in L.A.

Having always idolized her mother, she became a nurse like her mother before her.

Irene quickly gains a reputation amongst the patients; kind, loving, gentle, funny, quick-thinking and patient. Having a particular fondness for children, she is assigned to work with them. Then one day, a little girl, Alexandria comes in, having broken her arm while picking oranges. Irene takes an instant liking to her and vice versa. Irene would often stay with her at night and sometimes rock her to sleep while holding her. It was almost impossible to separate them.

Then, all of a sudden, everything changes.

One particular hot and humid night, Irene is called away from the children's ward to help with a new patient that is being brought in. It is a young man with a broken spine. She later learns that he works in the film industry as a stuntman.
Over the next few weeks, Irene, while working her shifts, notices that Alexandria is often out during the day. Always the curious one, she follows her young patient one day. She discovers that Alexandria has made a new friend, the young man with the injured spine, whose name, Irene learns, is Roy.
A few days later, she is reassigned to work in another ward. Roy's ward.

In her new post, she sometimes overhears the stories that he tells Alexandria and is drawn in. Over the course of the next few months, Irene develops a close relationship with her paralysed patient.

When he leaves, months later, will she be able to simply put him behind her as just another recovered patient? Or will she finally know what it means to follow her heart?