Hidden Under the Rain

Chapter 13: The Second Visit

Zhou Ye showed up at my door three days after the supermarket.

I didn't ask how he found my address. He was a doctor. Doctors had ways.

"You missed your appointment," he said, standing in the hallway with his hands in his coat pockets. "Dr. Lin rescheduled you for tomorrow at ten. I'm here to drive you."

"I didn't ask you to."

"I know."

He didn't leave.

I stood in the doorway, one hand on my belly—rounder now, impossible to hide—and looked at his face. Those silver-rimmed glasses. Those calm, brown eyes. He wasn't looking at me with pity. He wasn't looking at me with judgment.

He was just... waiting.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked.

He thought about it for a moment. Then he said, "Because when I was eight years old, my mother was pregnant with my little sister. My father left her when she was seven months along. She raised two kids alone. I know what that looks like."

He paused.

"I promised myself I'd help if I ever saw someone in the same position."

I let him in.

He sat on the edge of my bed—the only place to sit—and looked around the room. Three walls. One window facing a brick wall. Instant noodle cups stacked in the corner.

He didn't say anything about it.

But the next day, when he picked me up for the appointment, there was a bag of groceries in his back seat. Vegetables. Eggs. Milk. Real food.

"Consider it a loan," he said when I stared at it. "You can pay me back when you're working again."

I didn't believe him.

But I took the bag anyway.