Ruth Coker Burks was just 26 years old the day her life changed forever.
A glamorous divorcee, who was raising her three-year-old daughter, Alison, alone, she had gone to the hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas, to visit a friend being treated for cancer.
As she waited in the corridor, she noticed something curious – a gaggle of nurses drawing straws – vying not to enter a patient’s room, trays of food left outside on the ground.
Curious, Ruth, who is now 61, crept down the hall, and saw a young man, pale as death and emaciated.
‘You couldn’t tell the difference between him and the sheet,’ recalls Ruth.
‘Can I help you, honey?’ she asked, and he said, ‘I want my mamma.’
Later, Ruth asked the nurses about the young…
