Chapter 7:Echoes In The Rain
544 Words
Rain fell gently against the hospital window, tracing silver lines down the glass like tears the sky couldn't hold back. Mei Lin sat upright in bed, sketchbook on her lap, eyes fixed on a blank page she hadn’t touched for hours.
Li Wei entered quietly, two cups of warm chrysanthemum tea in hand.
“Still drawing?” he asked softly, placing one cup beside her.
She gave a faint smile. “Trying. But… I keep remembering instead.”
He sat beside her, his gaze tender. “What do you remember?”
Mei Lin turned the sketchbook around, revealing a drawing in progress — a child’s hand reaching through a fence, fingers barely touching another hand on the other side.
“That day,” she whispered. “The day your father told mine we weren’t allowed to see each other anymore. I never got to say goodbye.”
Li Wei looked away, jaw tight. “He said your family was below us. That you weren’t good enough. I hated him for it.”
“I wasn’t angry at you,” she said. “But I was scared. I thought maybe… maybe you believed him.”
He looked into her eyes then, fierce and aching. “Never. You were everything good in my life.”
She blinked quickly, swallowing a sob.
“I used to dream of you coming back,” she said. “At the magnolia tree. I’d wait every summer. Even when I moved, I drew that tree everywhere I went.”
He took her hand gently, his thumb brushing across her knuckles.
“I went back to that tree five years ago,” he said. “It was still there. Still blooming. But it wasn’t the same without you.”
Their silence was heavy — not with awkwardness, but the weight of years lost.
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That night, Mei Lin’s condition worsened.
Her fever spiked, and by dawn she was unconscious.
Li Wei was no longer the doctor — he was the desperate boy who once made a promise under a blooming tree. He stayed by her side as machines beeped and nurses worked around the clock.
He whispered stories to her sleeping form, reread their childhood letters, and begged quietly for fate to be kind this time.
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Three days passed.
She didn’t wake.
The hospital board pressured him to step back — but he refused. “If she dies, I die with her,” he told them.
He even called her family — the ones who once tore them apart — and told them, without pride or anger, that she needed them now. Some came. Others didn’t.
Still, she remained still, as if trapped between worlds.
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On the fourth morning, the rain stopped.
Li Wei sat slumped beside her, nearly asleep when a faint whisper reached his ear.
“Li… Wei…”
His eyes snapped open.
Mei Lin was blinking slowly, her voice raspy but clear. “Did… you keep your promise?”
He choked on a breath. “Every day. I never stopped.”
She smiled faintly. “Then… can we go back? To the magnolia tree?”
He kissed her forehead, tears streaming. “Yes. As soon as you’re ready. I’ll carry you if I have to.”
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- Writer
