Sonata

Six months after losing her mother in a plane crash, Nita Beth Donner is still very much grieving. For her, life has lost just about all meaning. School doesn't matter, and her relationships are struggling to survive. There is little that brings her solace, until one day her dad unearths a snowglobe that her mother got her when she was a kid. Filled with a nostalgia she had been missing, she goes to bed that night enveloped in much needed peace and Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14. What happens when she wakes up completely disrupts that.

The sound of her mother's voice fills her room; the feel of her weight on the bed makes Nita think that she may be losing her mind or having the most vivid dream ever. The dream only ends when she's lulled back to sleep at the end of a day with her mom to the sounds of the snowglobe. The next day, she wakes up in a hospital, even more discombobulated than before. She had been in a week-long coma as she spent the day with her mom.

It all felt so real, though. While she was sleeping, she was able to touch her mom, spend time with her mom, and make new memories with her mom. Since her dreams feel so real, why ever wake up? In her reality she has a loving dad, a loyal best friend, and a heart filled with the ever present heaviness of grief. In this alternate world, grief doesn't exist, but neither does reality in a way. She can't move forward in her dream world, but without her mom, does she even want to? Nita must choose between living her life and living a fantasy. Can she live with her grief or will she sleep her life away?