Chapter 47: The First Bloom
The days of
working side by side closed the distance between Dinh Bac and Phuong Nga a
little at a time.
They still used
each other’s names. They still talked about nothing that wasn’t necessary. But
in a hundred small things, each of them had started keeping track of the other.
Phuong Nga knew
he couldn’t tolerate harsh light. Every morning she pulled the blinds across on
his side of the room before she sat down.
Dinh Bac knew she
checked the clock in the late afternoon because she was afraid of reaching the
hospital too late. On the heavy days, he took the hardest piece off the pile
first so she could leave on time.
Neither of them
said thank you. Neither asked why the other remembered such small things.
One morning,
Phuong Nga came in later than usual.
Dinh Bac checked
the time, then looked at the door. He didn’t drop his eyes back to the screen
until she walked through it.
Phuong Nga set
her bag down and grinned at him.
“Were you waiting
for me?”
“No. I needed a file,
and that file happens to be… with you.”
She laid the
stack in front of him.
“Here’s your
file.”
He took it.
Phuong Nga sat
down, the corner of her mouth curling. She didn’t say anything else, but
something about her whole morning had gone brighter.
Dinh Bac knew he
had started listening for her footsteps. On the days she was out, the room went
quiet in a way that got under his skin.
And he knew he
didn’t like watching Huu Tri stand too long beside her desk.
It had all
arrived slowly, threading its way into ordinary days. By the time he saw it
clearly, he could no longer call it fondness between two colleagues.
He had feelings
for Phuong Nga. And the cruel part was that knowing it gave him no pleasure at
all.
That night he
opened the file marked Tran An Nhien again.
The same old
information. The same places Hoa had already searched with nothing to show for
it.
Dinh Bac stared
at the name for a long time.
For six years he
had believed he would find An Nhien. As long as she was alive somewhere in this
world, he would find her.
And yet, while he
was still refusing to let her go, he had let himself feel something for another
woman.
It felt like a
betrayal of both women at once.
He would not
betray An Nhien. So in the days that followed, Dinh Bac decided to keep what he
felt shut away where it couldn’t go any further.
He still helped
Phuong Nga when she needed it, still worked beside her exactly as before, and
reminded himself constantly that they were friends and that he had no right to
want more than that.
Phuong Nga knew
nothing of the war going on inside him.
All she saw was a
man who could feel very close one moment and then retreat back into his usual
quiet the next. He was never cold to her. He never crossed a line.
Maybe that
restraint was exactly what let her breathe around him. She liked him.
With him she
didn’t have to perform weakness to be treated gently, and she didn’t have to
lay out her whole situation to earn sympathy. He helped her without leaving her
in his debt. When she said no, he let it go.
After years of
nothing but keeping her head down for her brother and hauling her own life
along behind her, his presence gave her a rare scrap of peace.
But she didn’t
dare take the thought any further. Her life still had Tu in it, and debts with
no end in sight. Love was a luxury for other people.
And while Phuong
Nga was learning what that warmth felt like and telling herself she had no
business wanting it, Huu Tri went on pursuing her.
Huu Tri no longer
came to her door with offers of help, but his attention never wavered.
He didn’t press
gifts on her. He never brought up what had already been refused.
That sincerity,
that patience, made it impossible for her to dislike him.
She kept her
distance anyway.
One afternoon,
Huu Tri was waiting outside the office when she came out.
“You’re going to
the hospital today?”
“Yes.”
“Let me drive
you.”
She was about to
refuse when he spoke first.
“You don’t have
to answer now. I can wait in the background as long as you need. Just don’t
push me away.”
Dinh Bac happened
to be passing, and heard every word of it.
Something in him
twisted. He didn’t step forward. His hand closed into a fist.
“Thank you. But
I’ve already called a car.”
Huu Tri didn’t
press.
“Get there
safely, then.”
Phuong Nga went
back inside for her bag.
The sight of Dinh
Bac made her falter.
“I’m heading
off.”
“Mm.”
“I’ll finish the
rest in the morning.”
“I know.”
She looked at him
as though there were something else she wanted to say. In the end she said
nothing and walked away.
Dinh Bac stayed
where he was in the empty corridor. He had no right to be bothered by Huu Tri
caring about her, standing beside her as nothing more than a friend had been
his own decision.
Her footsteps
faded down the hall.
Dinh Bac went
back into the room and sat down, eyes on the file in front of him, and couldn’t
read a single line of it.
That same
afternoon, Hoa had business near the hospital.
Hoa was waiting
on the far side of the road when she saw a woman come out through the hospital
gates.
The hair was
different. The clothes were different. Everything about the way she carried
herself was different from the girl of ten years ago.
Hoa recognized
her anyway.
And at that
moment, the woman looked across.
Phuong Nga
stopped dead. She had seen a face she knew too, the secretary who had once
worked for Khai Minh’s aunt.
Their eyes met
over a river of moving traffic.
Hoa stood frozen.
The color went out of Phuong Nga’s face and her fingers clamped around the
strap of her bag. For a few seconds, both of them were hauled straight back to
Vinh An Hospital.
Neither one
crossed the road. When the traffic thinned, Phuong Nga only dipped her head in
the smallest of greetings.
Hoa nodded back.
Nothing more than
that.
Then Phuong Nga
turned and was swallowed up by the crowd outside the hospital gates. Hoa didn’t
move.
Her phone was in
her pocket. All she had to do was take it out, and she could tell Dinh Bac that
the woman he had spent six years hunting for was alive.
Her fingers
touched the phone, and stopped.
In the end, Hoa
didn’t make the call.
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