The funeral director, hands trembling, leaned close to the casket. “Is someone… in there?”

Another knock. Louder this time.

“Open it!” Robert choked out. “Open it now!”

With fumbling fingers, they unlatched the lid. The crowd surged forward—and gasped.

Her eyes blinked against the light. Pale, trembling, but alive.

Emily.

Dakota whined and lunged forward, licking her face as her lips parted into the faintest smile. The pastor dropped to his knees. Someone screamed. Others sobbed.

Emily had a rare condition—catalepsy. Her vitals slowed to near nothing after her allergic reaction. The doctors had pronounced her dead. But Dakota… he’d sensed something none of them did.

She wasn’t gone.

Within the hour, Emily was rushed to the hospital—alive, alert, confused, but very much there. News vans swarmed Rivercrest. Experts scrambled to explain it. But the town didn’t need answers.

They’d seen a miracle.

Emily survived. Dakota became a national hero. And Robert Taylor? He never let a doctor make the final call again.

They still visit Greenhaven Hill every year—not to mourn, but to remember the day a dog refused to give up…

…and saved the girl everyone else had buried.