A Lonely Mother

#Ayodale City Hospital-Dr. Juli's office

Dr. Juli was sitting on her chair. She was thinking back to the meeting she had attended. Every time she thought about the colonel, it made her furious.

"That man is an absolute brute and uncouth. How can he keep pestering me like that? What does he mean by suspect?" She slammed her hands on her table in helpless frustration.

"That was unbelievable!" She reclined in her seat.

"What do I do with the child? She is so adorable. How old is she? Five? Seven?" She sighed.

"If my Suho was alive, would she be the same age?" The thought of her deceased daughter cast a melancholic shadow on her face. "Suho, why did you leave me like that?"

"If Suho was alive, she would have played with this little girl. The child is so lonely now."

Maybe because Juli was lonely herself, she was even more drawn to the child at the VIP ward.

She began weaving her dreams with many 'what if's. Her wishful, childlike thinking sored to the sky and beyond.

"What if I adopted this child? Then I would have had two daughters. They would have been sisters, friends, and rivals competing for my love. Oh! How wonderful that would have been."

The prospect brought her to tears. So many moons had passed, yet she could not hold back her tears when the thought of her daughter came to her mind. Dr. Juli at first cried, then sobbed for a long time. Luckily, there was no appointment for her that day. So she cried for a long time.

Juli's fit of sadness subsided after an hour or so. Her tears dried up, but her pain did not go away. Once she was able to gather herself, she felt an unimaginable pull toward the child lying on a hospital bed in the VIP ward. All the love she could not give her daughter, she felt she needed to give to the child.

She suddenly rose from her chair, put her cellphone in her pocket, and quickly walked toward the elevator that would take her to the VIP floor. She needed the child to calm the storm of sadness in her mind.

"Baby! You just wait! If nobody is taking you, I will. Just wait, I promise."

#Ayodale City Hospital, VIP Ward

The nameless little girl was lying in bed. She did not know what was going on. She had no memory. She did not know why she was here. She had so many questions, but no one was there to answer them.

The nurses would come when it was time for her meds or routine checks, pushing their trolley and talking in a friendly voice. They were nice people, but soon their lines and behavior became tediously monotonous. The pattern was the same.

These were the same old lines in a soothing voice with no emotion behind them. The little girl was not emotionally strong enough to accept that the voices, no matter how monotonous they felt, were still friendly, and even if this was their duty and they got paid, they were still paying attention to her discomforts.

The little girl did not have emotional maturity like that. That was why she felt the pain of the absence of emotional support that a family would have given her at a time like this. Only a blood relative could provide that support for her. But there was no one. She was just lying on the only bed in the very big and luxurious V.I.P. room.

She was not allowed outside the room, lest the reporters swarm and bombard her with questions. With no memory to recall the past, she grew all the more anxious, sad, depressed, fearful, and empty as time passed by like a snail moving at its slowest.

Her days passed as she would silently weep and sob alone in the room, then become tired and sleep. The shadow of the window frame traversed the room floor as the sun rose at dawn and took its sweet time to set behind the horizon at dusk.

At a moment like this, she would wait, with an anxious longing, for the only human who showed her what you could call the closest to family affection.

"Darling! How are you doing today?" Dr. Juli asked her in a soft, friendly voice as she entered the room.

She took her chart and had a quick look at it. Then she moved on to the machine and took a look at the readings.

Being assured that everything was fine, she came and sat next to the child's bed and combed her hair with the affection of a mother. Dr. Juli was once a mother; however, she lost her child to an unknown disease. If her child was still alive, she would be just like this little angel!

"Darling! I still don't know your name! Should I give you one for now, so we can be friends?" She gave her a wrapped candy and said, "Here, take this!"

The little girl took the candy. A faint smile shone on the melancholy face. Dr. Juli kissed her forehead. The situation was breaking her heart.

"Suho! Can I call you Suho? I had a daughter just like you, but she left me and went to the stars." Dr. Juli asked with a voice that was shaking from the sorrowful memories of her own child.

The little child nodded. "Mmm!"

Dr. Juli hugged the child, "My dear angel Suho! When you remember your name, let me know; I will call you by your own name, okay?"

Suho nodded again. Dr. Juli ruffled her hair. She looked out the window. The beautiful leaves of the trees outside were slowly dancing in the wind of a dying afternoon.

Dr. Juli was a very lonely person. After a year of marriage, her husband died in a mysterious accident. Then her daughter, Suho, was born. When she was just two, she was diagnosed with an unknown disease.

It took three slow, painful years before Suho could not fight it anymore and left her mom alone to grieve a lonely life.

She was still very young and astonishingly beautiful, at twenty-five, but the shock of her life did not let her find another family of her own. As she was holding the little plump hands of Suho in hers, the thought of adopting this endangered soul kept coming to her mind.

"If no one is coming, I will take care of her as my own flesh and blood." She looked at Suho with moist but determined eyes. She stayed with the little girl with a new name, Suho, until she fell asleep.