Fab opened his eyes, saw me and said: ‘All right, Nige..?’

VISITORS ... Nigel Reo-Coker and Darren Pratley arrive to see Muamba in hospital

THEY were three words he had heard his pal say hundreds of times before.

But this time they left midfield hardman Nigel Reo-Coker close to tears and too choked to speak.

"All right, Nige?"

Only three days earlier, the Bolton star had feared he would never hear his Trotters team-mate Fabrice Muamba say that, or anything else, ever again.

Reo-Coker was the first player to reach fellow midfielder Muamba, 23, who suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed 41 minutes into last Saturday's FA Cup quarter-final at White Hart Lane.

He watched in horror as doctors first battled in vain to restart Muamba's heart on the pitch and then hurried him off on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance and away for crucial emergency treatment.

Back in their dressing room, the distraught Bolton players thought their friend was dead.

And, effectively, he was — for 78 minutes.

So to see him, alive and lucid, in the London Chest Hospital was overwhelming... even for a tough South Londoner like Reo-Coker.

He said: "It was Tuesday morning and I went in to see him with Darren Pratley.

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