The scenes that followed, if captured on film, would likely win "Comedy of the Year." Adrian Lu—a neurosurgeon who had held a scalpel countless times, whose hands were steady enough to suture vessels less than a millimeter wide—was currently wearing his jacket backward, couldn't find his car keys, and walked into the doorframe twice.

When he carried me downstairs, I was in too much pain to speak. I could only see his jaw trembling. It wasn't from the cold; it was out of pure terror. On the way to the hospital, he ran two red lights. I managed to squeeze a sentence through my gritted teeth: "Calm. Down." "I

am

calm," he said, his voice shaking uncontrollably.

At the delivery room doors, I was wheeled inside. He was barred from entering. My mother told me later that he paced more than four hundred steps outside the delivery room. She counted them. He kept muttering to himself: "Prioritize the mother. Save the mother first." My mother eventually kicked him. "Shut up! My daughter is going to be fine!" My father sat on a hallway chair, silent as ever, but his hands never stopped rubbing his knees.

Five hours later. Two girls and one boy. When the three tiny infants were carried out by the nurses, everyone in the hallway stood up. Adrian rushed forward. As he looked at those three wrinkled little faces, silent tears began to fall. He reached out to touch them, then pulled back, terrified of hurting them.

My mother shoved the youngest one into his arms. "What are you crying for? Hold your baby." He was stiff as a board when he took the child. One hand supported the head, the other the back; he didn't even dare to breathe. Seeing a man over six feet tall cradling a palm-sized infant made him look more nervous than he would be during a twelve-hour surgery.

When I was finally wheeled out, he immediately handed the baby to my mother and rushed to my side. He took my hand and pressed his forehead against mine. He didn't say a word. He just held me. His skin was burning hot. "Why are you crying?" I whispered. "I'm not," he said. His tears dripped onto the back of my hand.

During the first month postpartum, Adrian reduced his surgery schedule to the absolute minimum. Anything he could postpone, he postponed; anything he could delegate, he delegated. The shock among his department colleagues was equivalent to the sun rising in the west.

His performance at home, however, could only be described in one word: disastrous. He put diapers on backward. The formula he mixed was always either scalding hot or ice cold. When trying to lull the babies to sleep, he instinctively used his academic presentation voice—low, steady, and perfectly hypnotic. The only problem was that he usually put himself to sleep first.

My mother’s greatest joy every day was watching him stumble. "Look at you, a big-shot professor, and you can't even handle a diaper." Adrian didn't get annoyed; he just gave a silly, helpless grin. Occasionally, my father would offer a few pointers. "Tilt the bottle at forty-five degrees. Don't let them choke." "Got it, Dad."

My father froze for a second. That was the first time Adrian had called him "Dad." He didn't reply, but that night, he proactively poured a cup of tea for Adrian.

On the day the triplets turned one month old, there were no fireworks or grand ceremonies. Our family simply sat in the garden for a meal. My mother cooked a huge spread, and my father opened a bottle of wine, enjoying a rare couple of glasses. Adrian lined up the three strollers on the garden grass. The three little ones were wrapped in blankets, sleeping soundly.

After dinner, I went to the kitchen to wash the dishes. When I returned to the bedroom, there was something new on my pillow. A medicine bottle. Empty. Cleaned. It was

the

bottle of stomach medicine. Inside, there was a tiny, folded slip of paper. I unscrewed the cap, pulled the note out, and unfolded it. His handwriting was neat and precise, just like his surgical notes.

[The first bottle appeared at my door on February 14th. The last one, on the day you left, was still a third full. Five bottles in total. Every single one was you. I didn't know then. I know now. I’m sorry. Thank you. Don’t leave again.]

I sat on the edge of the bed with that note for a long time. I didn't cry. Instead, I folded the note back up, placed it back in the bottle, and tightened the cap. I walked into the living room and placed the empty bottle on the windowsill. Beside it stood my nutritionist certification and the one-month-old photo of the three children.

Outside the window, the loquat tree in the garden had produced its first crop of fruit. I picked one and took a bite. It was sweet.

(THE END)