He Had a Secret Wedding, I Had a Final Goodbye Chapter 06
During our first month overseas, I barely slept through a single night.
Mra was doing even worse than the doctors had expected. She seemed relatively calm during the day, but nights were another story.
Sometimes she would lie there with her eyes closed, crying and repeating the same words over and
over.
“It wasn’t Leah… It wasn’t Leah…”
I sat beside her, holding her hand and calling her name again and again, but I could never seem to
wake her.
My days were filled with tests and appointments, and my nights were spent beside her bed. I was afraid to step away even long enough to wash my face.
When we first arrived, I still wasn’t comfortable enough with the local language to navigate everything at the hospital. The medical terminology was even harder.
Whenever the doctors spoke too fast, I wrote down whatever I could, then went through the paperwork later and looked up the terms one by one.
After one appointment, I sat on a bench in the hallway with a stack of papers in my lap. A vending machine hummed nearby as I tried to open a bottle of water, my hands barely strong enough to
twist the cap.
When Mia woke and saw that I was still wearing the same coat as the day before, her eyes immediately went red.
“Leah,” she said softly. “You don’t have to keep taking care of me.”
I handed her the water.
“Don’t say that.”
Tears slipped down her face.
“I’ve held you back for too long.”
I handed her a tissue and tried to make light of it.
“Not happening.”
She stared at me.
“You used to steal my candy when we were kids, and I still never gave up on you.”
That only made her cry harder.
The room stayed quiet for a while before she finally spoke again, sniffling between words.
“Whenever something went wrong at home, you handled it. When we ran out of money, you found a way. When I got into trouble, you cleaned up after me…”
I tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“Just focus on getting better.”
Mia closed her eyes. Tears slid down her cheeks, but she didn’t say anything else.
After that, she fought much harder for her recovery.
Physical therapy left her sweating from pain, but she gritted her teeth and endured it instead of losing her temper halfway through.
If they told her to lift her leg, she did it over and over. When it was time to practice walking, she used the rehab equipment for support and slowly inched forward, refusing to stop even when her legs shook.
Her emotional breakdowns gradually became less frequent too.
On nice days, I would take her down to the garden in her wheelchair.
A blanket covered her legs as the breeze stirred her hair. She was still pale, but little by little, some life was returning to her eyes.
One day, I handed her her water bottle, and she suddenly said, “Leah, I really did have terrible
taste.”
I blinked.
“What?”
She stared out at the lawn.
“How did I ever like someone like Owen?”
I paused, then laughed despite myself.
“Because you were blind.”
She turned and glared at me.
Two seconds later, she started laughing too.
It was the first time since we had gone overseas that she had laughed like her old self again.
The breeze moved around us, sunlight warm across her face. I stood behind the wheelchair and
pulled the blanket a little higher over her legs.
In that moment, I suddenly felt like maybe we really could get through this.
Money was still tight. Mia still had a long road of treatment ahead, and neither of us knew what
came next.
But at least we were both still here.
Eventually, I got used to the routine.
My days revolved around the hospital, and at night I worked through paperwork. Once Mia fell asleep, I sat beside her bed answering emails, checking bills, and figuring out what we could afford
for the week ahead.
The busier I became, the more everything else seemed to fade.
Life without Adrian was hard, but it was peaceful.
No one decided for me anymore what I had to put up with or what I was supposed to let go.
No one hurt me and then told me it was for my own good.
Morning kept coming, day after day. The flowers in Mia’s room wilted and were replaced.
Life moved slowly, but it kept moving forward.
I had assumed that if Adrian couldn’t find me, eventually he would give up.
I had underestimated him.
One day, I came back from the pharmacy carrying a bag of medication and found someone standing
outside Mia’s room.
He was wearing a black overcoat. His posture was still as straight as ever, but he had clearly lost
weight.
I stopped.
Adrian saw me too.
Before I could say anything, Mia went pale.
Her fingers clamped around the blanket. Her breathing turned uneven, and her shoulders began to
shake uncontrollably.
I hurried over, dropped the medication onto the cabinet, and stepped directly between Adrian and
her bed.
“What are you doing here?”
He looked at me.
“I came to see you both.”
“You’ve seen us. You can go.”
He didn’t move.
His gaze shifted past me to Mia.
She turned her face away and squeezed her eyes shut, her whole body rigid.
The color slowly drained from Adrian’s face.
Maybe that was the moment he finally understood what he had done to her.
“Mia…” His voice was rough. “I never meant for this to happen.”
Mia flinched, her fingers digging into her palms.
I cut him off immediately.
“Don’t talk to her.”
“Hearing your voice is making it worse.”
Silence filled the room.
Adrian looked at me, exhaustion written all over him. The effortless confidence he used to carry-
the sense that everything was always under control-was gone.
After a long silence, he spoke quietly.
“Leah, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.”
He froze.
“You’re not here for us,” I said evenly. “You’re here to make yourself feel better.”
His mouth opened, but nothing came out.
I continued.
“You want to see how we’re doing. You want to know whether I’ll still react to you. Even if I yelled at
you or told you I hated you, you’d still count that as a response.” –
“But you’re not getting that anymore, Adrian.”
“I don’t want to see you.”
He went still, as if my words had stopped him cold.
The only sound in the room was the quiet beeping of the monitor.
After a long time, he finally asked, “Can’t I even look at you?”
“No.”
His hand tightened slightly.
“Leah…” he said, barely above a whisper.
I looked at him and finally said what I should have said a long time ago.
“You used to look right at me and still never really saw me.”
He had nothing to say to that.
I turned away and poured Mia some water. She was still trembling, so I held the cup for her while she took a few small sips until her breathing gradually settled.
Adrian remained by the door.
This time, I didn’t look at him again.
Eventually, he turned to leave.
At the door, he stopped.
“Vanessa and I are over.”
I didn’t turn around.
“That’s your business.”
The door closed softly behind him, and the room was finally quiet again.
Mia leaned back against the pillow and took a while to collect herself.
“Leah,” she finally asked softly, “was he crying?”
I pulled the curtain back a little, letting the sunlight fall across the floor.
“I don’t know,”
“And I don’t want to know.”
Mia murmured, “Okay,” and said nothing else.
I glanced out the window.
Adrian was still standing below, looking up toward the hospital. A long time passed before he finally turned and walked away.
He looked weighed down as he left.
I felt nothing.
