The Eternal Coin, Part 3 – The Nurse’s Gift

Decades passed. The coin disappeared into the shadows of history, its previous bearer long forgotten, its legend buried beneath the rubble of time. Then, in a bustling flea market somewhere in Communist-era Bucharest, it reappeared.

Mariana was a nurse, kind-eyed and steady-handed, worn down by long shifts at a crowded state hospital. She had little money, yet she found herself drawn to the small, glinting coin nestled among a pile of trinkets on a vendor’s table. Something about it whispered of curiosity, of stories untold. She bought it cheaply, thinking it a charm, a lucky token she could carry in her pocket during night shifts.

That evening, Mariana carried her usual loaf of bread home. Outside her apartment, a small gypsy boy sat shivering in the doorway, clutching a worn blanket. Without hesitation, she broke in two and handed him half of the bread, smiling softly despite her own limited resources.

When sleep finally claimed her, the world shifted.

She awoke not in her modest apartment, but in a city of impossible beauty, soaring towers of glass and steel, streets alive with soft luminescence. The air was warm, clear, and filled with the hum of a world at peace, with the sound of birds singing in the cherry blossom trees, and small animals running free or lounging peacefully in the green spaces. The year read on a hovering holographic display: 2225.

Humankind had spread beyond the ice wall surrounding the world she had previously learned about. Mariana wandered through gardens that floated above oceans, walked streets where technology served, not enslaved. She felt a joy so deep it made her eyes water. Knowledge was revered, compassion was law, and she herself was celebrated as a healer of considerable skill.

Mariana felt immediately: she would never return. The coin in her hand had chosen her for this, perhaps to reward her selflessness? Or the courage to give even when she had nothing? She could not be sure. Outside observers—her co-workers, neighbours—would wake to find her gone, vanished in the night without explanation, the bed she had slept in empty and cold.

And the coin?

It had thrown it into the fountain in the city’s main square. Vaguely, it resembled Piata Unirii, but much more beautiful. A curious boy, in the fading light, spotted the round object in the shallow water of the fountain, which by now was silent. He waded into the water to collect what turned out to be the single coin thrown there. Its metal gleamed softly in the dim dusk. He bent down to pick it up, dried it and slipped it into his pocket, unaware of its history or the destinies it carried.

The coin waited. Patient. Eternal.