8
I had just finished bandaging a patient when a child I had treated pointed behind me.
Amongst the rubble and ruins, a tall figure stood, stooped and broken. His face was covered in a scraggly beard, his clothes in tatters.
“Anya…”
His eyes filled with tears of disbelief and joy. His voice trembled when he called my name. “You’re alive… Thank God. I thought I would never see you again.”
Seeing my indifferent expression, he fumbled in his pocket and pulled
incongruous gesture in this place of desolation.
out
à pair of dazzling, matching rings. He held them out to me, a completely
“Wife, these are the rings I promised you. ‘One Life, One Love.‘ You can only order them once. I brought them especially for you. Please, will you
wear them?”
One Life, One Love?
I looked at him coldly. “No, thank you. I’m not interested in someone else’s second–hand goods.”
He seemed stunned by my blunt refusal. His eyes reddened, and he kept wiping his hands on his tattered pants. “No one else has worn them. I
only prepared them for you. Anya, I was wrong. I know it’s too late to say this now, but the person I love is you. It’s always been you. I was just
blind, deceived by Peaches. It wasn’t until I saw her true colors that I realized I had fallen in love with you long ago. When I thought you were dead, I was in so much pain, I wanted to die with you.”
