- A hopelessly romantic Chicago Transit Authority ticket booth operator is mistaken for the fiancée of a comatose patient.
- Nursing a secret and hopeless crush on the handsome commuter who passes her booth every day, Lucy, a charming loner and Chicago Transit Authority ticket booth operator, is about to have a second chance at love. During one seemingly ordinary Christmas shift, she witnesses the object of her desire falling off the platform, and in one of those spur-of-the-moment decisions, she saves him from certain death, only to be mistaken for his fiancée at the hospital. As she enjoys the unexpected stroke of good luck, unable to tell the truth to his welcoming family, unforeseen romantic affairs further complicate matters. Now his suspicious brother, Jack, thinks he's onto something. Will Lucy face the consequences of what happened while he was sleeping?—Nick Riganas
- Lucy works as a ticket booth operator at a Chicago train station. One day she saves the life of Peter, a commuter she has a crush on. He ends up in a coma and due to an error at the hospital she is identified as his fiancée. At the news of this his family takes her in and treats her as one of their own. Things gets complicated, however, when she meets Peter's brother, Jack.—grantss
- All alone in the world following her long widowed father's passing a year ago and thus being lonely in the process, Lucy Eleanor Moderatz has a dead end job collecting transit tokens at a Chicago El station, she dropping out of school for this job in needing to pay his medical bills. She inherited a sense of wanderlust from him, but she has never had the opportunity to go anywhere, her current life looking like that much wanted travel won't be happening soon. Regardless, she carries around her never used passport "just in case". The one bright spot in her life is seeing the same handsome, well-dressed man come through her booth every weekday morning, she in love with him despite not even knowing anything about him, including his name. When she sees him being mugged on the station platform on Christmas morning, he lying unconscious on the tracks as a result, she, in an act of heroism, saves him from being run over by an oncoming train. In Lucy accompanying him to the hospital, the hospital administration, in a misunderstanding, believes he, highfalutin lawyer Peter Callaghan, and she are engaged. She doesn't have the opportunity to correct them when his tight-knit, working class family arrives, they, who don't see him often in he being the proverbial black sheep in living his high living, superficial life, only assuming the same about Lucy and Peter. And Peter can't correct the misunderstanding in still being in a coma. Beyond their concern for Peter, his family is overjoyed about Lucy in believing she the conduit to bring Peter back into their lives. The one person who can't see Lucy as Peter's type is his older brother, Jack Callaghan, who initially believes she is perpetrating a scam of some sort. Out to prove she isn't who she says she is in Peter's life, Jack instead starts to fall for Lucy, who, in turn starts to fall for him. The proverbial triangle grows into a square when Peter's unofficial fiancée, Ashley Bartlett-Bacon, reenters the scene. The situation will only get more complex when Peter comes out of his coma and the truth necessarily comes to light.—Huggo
- In Chicago, the sweet ticket booth operator Lucy is a lonely woman since her mother died when she was a child and her father also died more recently. She has a crush on a handsome commuter named Peter who she sees every day at the station and dreams about marrying him although they don't know each other. On Christmas morning, Peter is robbed by two small-time thieves that push him on the trails and he passes out. Lucy leaves her booth and risks her life to save him from an oncoming train. She goes with him, who is in coma, to the hospital and when she asks his condition, she is not allowed to see him since she is not a relative. However, the nurse misinterprets her comment, believes she is his fiancée, and tells his family. His godfather and neighbor, Saul, overhears her talking to him in the hospital and learns the truth about their relationship, but he asks her to keep the lie since Peter's grandmother, Elsie, has a heart condition and may be affected by the truth. His family invites Lucy to spend Christmas evening with them where she meets his brother, Jack, in the beginning of a series of misunderstandings.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Lucy Eleanor Moderatz (Sandra Bullock) is a lonely fare collector on the Chicago elevated railway. The highlight of her days is selling a token to a handsome commuter, Peter Callaghan (Peter Gallagher), on whom she has a secret crush. Working on Christmas, Lucy witnesses Peter being mugged and pushed onto the tracks, and she rescues him from an oncoming train. Peter falls into a coma and she accompanies him to the hospital, where she fantasizes aloud, "I was going to marry him." A nurse overhears her and, misinterpreting the situation, tells the head physician, a policeman and Callaghan's family that Lucy is his fiancée. At first Lucy is too caught up in the madness of everyone's panic to tell the truth, and after that she is too embarrassed to.
An orphan with few friends, she becomes so captivated with the quirky Callaghans and their unconditional love for her, that she cannot bring herself to hurt them by revealing that Peter doesn't even know her. She spends a delayed Christmas with the family so "they can get to know each other". Lucy then meets Peter's younger brother Jack (Bill Pullman), who has taken over his father's business and is always working. Jack is very suspicious at first, saying Peter never mentioned Lucy or a marriage, which is not like him. Later on, after spending some time together to get acquainted, Jack starts to realize that he himself has feelings for Lucy.
Then complications arise. Peter wakes up, not remembering Lucy at all, but by this time the rest of the Callaghan family has become so enamored with Lucy that they all naturally assume that Peter must have amnesia. Forced by his family, Peter and Lucy spend time together, while Lucy doesn't know how to tell them the truth, especially now that she has fallen in love with Jack. Peter is convinced by Saul (Jack Warden) - Peter and Jack's godfather, who knows about Lucy's secret - that Lucy must be his true love if he really proposed to her, so he does it "again". Lucy freaks out by the unexpected questions and agrees. Lucy confides in the kindly Saul, who believes that Lucy belongs in the family. Yet the elderly widower can't bring himself to tell the family about Lucy either. Lucy forces herself to be happy; she's with the man she wanted to be with her whole life.
The day before the wedding, Jack visits her to give her a present - a snow globe of Florence, Italy, the place that she has always wanted to go to. As he leaves, Lucy asks him if he could give her any reason why she shouldn't marry Peter. Jack hesitates before saying that he cannot give a reason, and angrily leaves.
On the day of the wedding, Lucy starts to feel more and more guilty over her lie and her feelings for Jack, when it's actually Peter she's marrying. She walks down the aisle, where Peter is waiting with Jack, who is his best man. The priest begins, but during the words "Dearly beloveds, we're gather here today...", Lucy suddenly objects. Jack is surprised and objects too. She tells the family who she is and what went wrong in the hospital. She tells the parents she's fallen in love with their son, but points out that it's not Peter, but Jack. Also showing up to object to the union is Ashley (Ally Walker), Peter's real fiancée, whom the family learns also happens to be married. As the family argues, Lucy leaves, unsure of her future.
The final scene opens with Lucy on her last day of work at the station. As she accepts tokens from passengers, an engagement ring falls through the toll window. When Lucy looks up, she sees Jack and his family standing. Jack passes the token collection line and proposes to Lucy.
The film ends with the two happily married in wedding attire, on the back of a train departing from the station, complete with a sign reading "Just Married", Jack, as a wedding present, giving her that trip to Florence as a honeymoon and that much wanted first stamp in her passport.
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![Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman in While You Were Sleeping (1995)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMGI5OGRiNTgtYzdkNS00N2E1LTgxMmQtYTQyNjk4YmEyM2IzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDQ0MTYzMDA@._V1_QL75_UX90_CR0,0,90,133_.jpg)