He has just learnt his beloved wife and soulmate is fighting for her life in hospital.

Nanette Hoysted collapsed in their West Albury home earlier, lucky to be found by her sister, Jill, only acting on David's hunch that something was amiss.

Guided by all too many broken white lines, David is adrift, unable to speak to the one person who matters most to him.

Nanette is always his first port of call.

She is his "one-stop shop".

Now his wife of 27 years has suffered a massive and life-threatening brain haemorrhage, which has left her in a coma.

The satellite towns and key markers along the Hume pass altogether too slowly as David is seduced into a dangerous game of "what-ifs".

Working in Melbourne on a new contract during mid-2014, David and Nanette spend alternate weeks - like this one - together in their inner-city apartment.

This time Nanette stayed at their West Albury home to work on their garden.

"The tragedy is that our Melbourne apartment is 800 metres from The Alfred (hospital)," David says.

"If she'd been in Melbourne, I would have been home when it happened."

Arriving at Albury Base Hospital emergency department late at night, the confronting sight of Nanette splayed out on a bed, connected to a tangle of tubes, renders David powerless, angry and afraid.

With no neurosurgeon in Albury, Nanette needed emergency surgery and an intensive care unit (ICU) bed at a city hospital.

Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra facilities were swamped, predominantly because of a dire flu season over winter that year.

Canberra Hospital was preparing to convert an operating theatre into an ICU bed when a vacancy came up at St George Hospital in southern Sydney.

"We lost 13 hours from when they found her to when they operated on her in Sydney and because of that her brain swelled and she stroked more," David recalls.

"It was traumatic and terrifying; it was a very large bleed and her prospects were very slim."

Early on, the doctors inform David that Nanette, only 54, has suffered significant brain damage and the longer it takes her to come out of the coma the worse her chances of any quality of life.

Relying on only one brief encounter with Nanette, David felt it was enough to guide him over the coming weeks and months.

Years earlier watching a TV program about life and death situations she told him: "If I'm ever in that kind of situation, I'd want you to make the decisions on my treatment because I know you'd give me a chance."

From the moment they met on the Australia Day weekend of 1983, David and Nanette had an instant attraction and a tight bond, which was tested early in their relationship.

"I can literally still picture Nanette walking into Sodens Hotel," David says.

"I remember thinking she was attractive; by Easter of that year we were a thing!"

Within 18 months Albury-born David was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He was 22.

His girlfriend, then named Nanette Parker, was rock-solid in the face of adversity.

"She was the first person I told - even before telling my parents - we were both in tears," he says.

"She came to Sydney with me for two surgeries (the latter impeding David's ability to have children).

"She was already clear in her mind we would be married so this was a massive self-sacrifice on her part."

After marrying at St Patrick's Parish Church in Albury in 1987, they had no children but kept a menagerie of horses, dogs and cats. They relished creative outlets; Nanette as a visual artist and David as an amateur musician.

With time not on their side at St George Hospital, David advocates for Nanette with everything he has left in the tank as the hours turn into weeks and doctors reinforce the home truths of their new reality.

David only clings tighter to his conviction.

"You don't just stop loving someone because something bad happens to them," he explains.

"She was a highly intelligent person. She skipped a grade in school and when she did her HSC she had only just turned 17; she was very strong in literature."

After nearly two months at the Kogarah-based hospital, Nanette miraculously awakens in a moment David describes as "the most significant day of his life".

But it also marks the evolution of their relationship from a traditional partnership to one that is more parental in nature.

"A Japanese nurse was talking to me about a member of her family who had been in an accident that left them childlike," he recalls.

"They believed it was giving someone a second life and that just resonated with me."

In a heartfelt and salient memoir, Second Life, David reveals their harrowing, four-year journey of love and loss, which ended in 2018.

He shares his honest insights as a carer and reveals the importance of advocacy and the everlasting power of love.

"It's a tribute to Nanette," he says of the memoir.

"There is a lot about our difficult experiences and advocacy and there is a lot about perseverance and losing someone you adore."

The former Mars Incorporated senior IT manager, who now lives in Melbourne, shares the highs and lows of the journey including a miracle drug that allows Nanette to be more responsive.

He explores his own loneliness, anxieties and needs with humour and grace.

"No one else should decide the quality of someone's life," he says.

"Nanette had stability for many years.

"We had funny moments too - she didn't initiate much but she was still responsive.

"She knew her family and she knew she was loved."