The Ghost in the Walls

By anyone's measure, John Callaway is a man with the world at his feet. Married for thirteen years to his high school sweetheart and expecting twins, Callaway is also the founder and CEO of his own specialty pharmaceutical firm, a wildly successful venture that is on the cusp of propelling him to even greater heights of achievement. But on a routine business trip, fate steps in and his carefully crafted world is changed forever. After missing his flight due a sudden illness, John takes a cab from the airport and is involved in an accident on the way home. He awakens six weeks later to find himself completely paralyzed, except for limited eye motion, and mistakenly diagnosed as being in a permanent vegetative state, or PVS. This tragic misdiagnosis carries a heavy price, wrongfully assuming he is not conscious or even aware of his surroundings. Instead, he suffers from a little known neurological condition called Locked In Syndrome, which is eerily similar in appearance to PVS but vastly different. He IS awake and aware of his surroundings. He can see, he can hear, he can understand - he just can't communicate this fact because of his paralysis. And that's the good news. The plane that was supposed to be carrying John to Chicago crashes outside St. Louis International in heavy weather, leaving no survivors and carrying with it all of John's baggage and forms of identification. His family and friends have no choice but to assume he's dead. He has no identification upon admittance to the hospital and is assigned John Doe status, eventually being transferred to a state funded long-term care facility for poor and indigent patients. Here he will quickly slip through the cracks and spend the next two years of his life, alone and forgotten. The Ghost in the Walls tells the story of one man's extraordinary struggle to survive, to stay sane in a world that has been turned upside down. It's also a story of courage and compassion, of strength and sheer stubborness, and the hope that only love can bring.