4:37 p.m. - Beijing Medical Center
The corridor outside the cardiology wing was quiet, unnaturally so, as if the air itself held its breath.
Serena stood alone, her arms crossed tightly over her white coat, fingers pressed into the creases of her elbows.
Aiden's surgery was scheduled for 8 a.m. His first. Her five year old son, her entire world would lie unconscious on a cold table while strangers worked to mend a heart that had betrayed her once before.
She blinked hard, shaking off the shadow of Leo's lifeless body being laid on a iron coffin. She couldn't afford to relive it now.
She approached the consultation room, mentally rehearsing what she would say to the new specialist Dr. Jian, a name she had only seen on paper. Her footsteps were quiet on the polished floor. She reached for the handle, the motion automatic.
Then the door swung open.
And the world stopped.
A man stepped out, tall and narrow shouldered, dressed in a steel gray coat, his hand still on the door. His hair was neatly pushed back, dark as his eyes. Wire frame glasses sat on the bridge of his nose, barely softening the sharp angles of his face.
Serena froze. Her breath caught before she even realized she'd stopped breathing.
Because behind those glasses were onyx eyes, eyes she had once known better than her own.
The man barely glanced at her. Their eyes met for a single, shattering second his gaze indifferent, clinical. Then he walked past without a word.
Serena stood frozen, air lodged in her chest.
It wasn't Leo. It couldn't be.
But it was.
He walked past her without a word. Without pause. Without recognition.
Serena turned slowly, watching him disappear down the hallway, his footsteps fading like a memory she couldn't hold onto. Her heart thundered, confused and shaken. She pressed her back against the wall to steady herself.
It wasn't possible. It couldn't be. Leo was gone. Buried. Grieved.
And yet...
That was his face.
His eyes. His voice, though quieter, like the echo of something once beloved. The only difference-a subtle sharpness in the jawline, a thinner frame, and those glasses that somehow made him even more unreachable.
She couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Not even a whisper left her lips.
Her mind screamed to chase after him. To ask. To know.
But her body refused to move. Not yet.
Not when everything she had built to survive the last five years had just started to crumble with a single glance.
Because seeing his face again was like having her heart ripped open all over-and this time, she didn't even have a name to scream.
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