Chapter 14: The Little Shadow in the Hospital Room

The Little Shadow in the Hospital Room

My father suffered a sudden brain hemorrhage. As he was rushed into the ICU, the doctor issued a critical condition notice. Black characters on red paper, the document felt as heavy as a slab of iron in my hands.

They fought to save him for ten full hours. At last, Dad clawed his way back from death’s door and was moved to a general ward for observation. During that time, my sister and I took turns staying with him at night. By day, I handled urgent matters at work and then rushed to the hospital, the dark circles under my eyes as heavy as if they had been painted on in ink.

On the third night after it happened, it was my turn to keep watch.

The ward was very quiet. There was only the steady beeping of the cardiac monitor, so regular that it made my heart clench. Later that night, Dad suddenly woke. His eyes opened wide, staring straight past me at the doorway behind me. His lips moved, and his voice was so hoarse I could barely hear him.

“Sweetheart… behind you… there’s a child.”

My heart lurched. A chill shot up my spine.

There was no one in the room but Dad and me. The corridor light outside the door was on, but the hallway was empty—not even a shadow in sight.

“Dad, you’ve only just woken up. Could you be mistaken? There’s no child there. Don’t scare me.”

I forced myself to sound calm and reached out to touch his forehead. His temperature was normal. He did not seem to be talking nonsense from a fever.

But Dad shook his head stubbornly, his gaze still fixed on the doorway.

“There really is… standing right there. Very small. I can’t see the face. It doesn’t move or speak.”

Then he weakly closed his eyes again, and his breathing grew heavy.

I was too frightened to turn around. I curled up in the chair beside his bed and did not sleep all night. I told myself that Dad had only just survived a grave illness, that his mind was still clouded and he had hallucinated.

At the time, I had no idea that a new life was already quietly growing inside me. My period was late, but the anxiety of my father’s critical condition had completely overshadowed it.

By the end of October, Dad’s condition had stabilized a little, and he could barely take a little liquid nourishment. Meanwhile, I began to feel inexplicably nauseated and weak. I assumed it was exhaustion from too many sleepless nights.

Then, on November 1, at my sister’s urging, I went to the hospital for an examination. The word positive on the test report left me stunned—I was pregnant.

But that sudden joy was quickly extinguished.

That same afternoon, I began to suffer abdominal pain and bleeding. When I was examined again, the doctor said the embryo was developing poorly and could no longer be saved. I underwent surgery that same day.

Lying on the operating table, in the final second before the anesthetic took effect, I suddenly remembered the child Dad had said was standing in the doorway. My heart ached, and I could not tell whether it was a coincidence or something else.

Only a few days after the miscarriage, Dad’s condition took a sudden turn for the worse. His clinical indicators continued to decline, and the doctors issued another critical condition notice.

On November 8, a fine rain drifted outside the window. My mother, my sister, and I kept vigil beside the bed, holding Dad’s cold hand and watching his breathing grow fainter little by little. At last, the line on the cardiac monitor went flat.

Dad was gone.

The night after we had finished taking care of the funeral arrangements, my sister and I crowded into the same bed. Neither of us spoke. Tears slid silently down our faces.

Later that night, my sister suddenly woke with a start. Her whole body was trembling. She wrapped her arms around me and said, “Sis… I dreamed about Dad.”

My heart tightened, and I urged her to go on.

She swallowed, her voice thick with tears.

“In the dream, we were still in the hospital room. Dad was sitting beside the bed, just as usual, only he didn’t say anything. Then I saw a child standing in front of him. Very small, dressed all in white, just standing there quietly. Dad didn’t look at me. He only looked at the child.”

The moment I heard the word child, I burst into tears. I held my sister tightly, my whole body gone cold.

The child Dad had spoken of shortly before his death—the little life I had not been able to keep—had appeared in my sister’s dream in this way.

I often thought afterward that perhaps the child had come to take Dad with him. Perhaps the child had arrived early and, in some way we could not understand, accompanied Dad through the final stretch of his journey.

I had not been able to keep that little life, yet I was also grateful that on Dad’s lonely road away from this world, there had been such a small figure beside him.

Even now, whenever I think of it, my heart still aches with a bitter tenderness. The ways in which lives meet and part are sometimes so mysterious that they defy explanation.

The child I never had the chance to meet—the little shadow in the hospital room—became the tenderest and heaviest bond my sister and I carried in our hearts, reminding us that some bonds never disappear, even when they cross the boundary between life and death.