Once in a Lifetime 1994

Daphne Fields, Lindsay Wagner, a world-famous novelist from New York City, is struck by a car one night and falls into a coma. While she lies unconscious, her memories flash back to eight years earlier, when she was happily married to Jeffrey Fields, Rex Smith, and had a loving daughter named Aimee. Yet tragedy strikes when a fire robs her of husband and daughter. Nine months later, she gives birth to a son, Andrew, Darrell Thomas Utley, who turns out to be deaf. Determined to bridge the silence that surrounds her child, she learns sign language under the tutelage of Dr. Matthew Dane, Barry Bostwick. Inspired by the loss she has endured, she begins drafting a novel called Autumn Years.

Daphne grows into an overprotective mother, deciding not to enroll Andrew in a New York public school. Instead, she sends him to a special boarding school for deaf children in New Hampshire, headed by Dr. Dane. While building her freelance writing career, she achieves a bestseller and hires her best friend Barbera Amy Aquino as her assistant. She refuses promotional tours so she can always be near her son, frequently visiting his school and slowly forming a close bond with the school’s principal, all while trying to stay faithful to Jeffrey.

Meanwhile, news arrives that the film rights to her second novel, Apache, have been sold, and the project will be adapted for the screen. She travels to Hollywood and meets Justin Wakefield, Duncan Regehr, the lead actor in the adaptation. After one romantic night, he tells her that he is in love with her. She loves him too, but she notices his casual attitude toward her home life and his reluctance to meet Andrew. Despite this, she agrees to marry him and begins considering moving to Los Angeles with her son.

Discontent with Justin’s lifestyle and his inconsistent presence, Daphne eventually ends the engagement. She returns home with the intention of telling Matthew how she feels, but she misreads a moment and thinks his relationship with another woman is different. The flashbacks end, bringing us back to the present, where Matthew hurries to the hospital to be by Daphne’s side as she awakens from the coma. In the final moment, he confesses that he loves her, and the two become engaged.