WAITING FOR THE BEGINNING

35. Sleepless Night for Three

The three of them spend a restless, sleepless night.

Wei Xin sits in the couch next to the large bed where Hong Ge sleeps with a low grade fever, moaning once in a while and sweating.  He nurses a bottle of high caliber brandy and periodically wipes down Hong Ge's face and checking her painkiller drip.  A discordant bundle of thoughts are jumbled in his heart.  It feels even more devastating than when he lost the first Xian Ling.  Perhaps with the first Xian Ling, the status of their love and relationship was well defined - husband and wife. They lived out many days happily as such. And he had a right to feel loss and mourn.  With the second Zhang Xian Ling or rather Lee Ping Ping, he doesn't know if he should mourn - if he has any right to feel a loss.  They are barely.  Not really.  Husband and wife.  Yet, Lee Ping Ping in that short 3 months they shared has become a source of comfort, a place of home, a person that brought him peace, normality and a sense that the world can still be innocent and beautiful.  Even while apart, instead of being distant from their fake marriage as a reality, he comes to think of his assignment as temporary and that he will return to his life with her somehow.  He was ready to do what he can to protect that haven, to prolong that feeling and to cherish her. But it is all gone now.  Before it even has had a chance to truly begin.

De Yi paces in the hotel room he has booked for the next few days.  He can barely explain himself to Chen Hua when she phones that night.  He musters the vaguest and lamest words "something has come up, requiring my attention."  The phone call lasts no more than 20 seconds, long enough for him to feel that he's betrayed two women at the same time.  Against Tao Zhen's advice, he insists on delivering Xian Ling back to the apartment.  He fails in coaxing her to pick up a few personal items and return with him to the hotel.  At that suggestion, Ping Ping looks panicked, breaking his heart.  An exhausted and flustered Ping Ping asks to be left alone in the one place that she's come to think of as her home.  Her home with Wei Xin.  In that space, De Yi feels like an interloper.  As he sits in the darkened hotel room, replaying the last few hours, he resists the urge to call everyone and confirm that he is not dreaming.  In the end, he concludes that he must take her home as soon as possible - back to Shanghai.  He convinces himself that once there,  she'll remember him - remember their love.

Zhang Xian Ling, now Lee Ping Ping clutches her heart as she weeps in a fetal position.  She berates herself for her foolishness - for not being prepared for the truth.  What has she been thinking?  The way Yeh Yeh found her, something dreadful must have happened.  The depth of the tragedy is not fully known to her - Tao Zhen, in his infinite wisdom refuses to give her more information until she goes to the police substation for the debriefing  Yet, the little bits of discovery already means certain death - the death of the only identity she's known for the past two years - as Xian Ling, the wife of Wei Xin.  She hasn't counted on that.  She only wants to find out who she was.  It hasn't dawned on her that it might be the death of who she is.  

She grieves for that young man De Yi, who must have loved her deeply.  Her heart pains because she cannot return his love...she cannot remember him, his love, their times together.  She replays the scene from the evening and sees the crestfallen look on his face.  He claims that he is her first and only love - true love; he tells her that they were a week away from being engaged...that they had a secret romance while he waited for her to be of age.  His last words that evening chasten her the most - I waited for you then, I will wait for you to remember us.