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TORONTO – A British woman has woken from a coma after her husband reportedly played wedding songs from her bedside.

Maria Neal was on life support after she suffered a severe stroke and a massive bleed to the brain in March. Doctors told her family there was “nothing more than they could do” and to “prepare for the worst.”

Her husband Steve never gave up.

“We spent hours talking to her and trying to find anything that we thought would stimulate a response,” said Neal’s daughter Kyrstie. “‘Dad downloaded their wedding songs onto his phone and played them to mum with tears rolling from his face onto hers.”

In an interview with the BBC, Neal’s husband Steve said he then decided to play his wife their two favourite tunes: “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers and Simply Red’s “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”—songs that she and her husband danced to on their wedding day 21 years ago.

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“She started to move her right arm and a couple of days after this she started nodding,” said Krystie. “After ten days in the intensive care unit, she was breathing without a ventilator, talking and sipping water.”

“I can’t really put into words how I feel,” Steve said. “She is my life partner, we have had a very close relationship and we have always been together.”