Who Is Lina?

Chapter One

"I remember that it hurt...looking at her hurt"

The phone slipped out of Libai's shaking hand, as he spoke to his daughter Lina through the prison glass partitioning.

"Dad, Mum survived, we both did, no one was hurting anymore. All these years, why? And now, now you've killed someone!" Lina replied.

Libai, wiped his eyes with his rough hands and picked up the phone again. "Lina, you'll never understand, your mum will never understand, what I did, I did so she wouldn't hurt anymore."

"But you killed someone! You are the reason mum has been hurting for the past 16 years! You won't let her forget!"

"Hurt? Do you even understand what hurt means? If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't even..." quickly biting his tongue, to prevent himself from opening Pandora's box, Libai recomposed himself. "Lina, Dad's innocent, you've got to help me." His pleading was beginning to fall on deaf ears as his daughter turned away almost putting down the phone on her side of the glass partitioning. "Lina, please, listen carefully, there's a USB with all my research on it. It was the dogtag necklace I used to wear. Mr Cui's got it. If you can find that I can prove my innocence. Please Lina, your mum doesn't understand." Time up, and with the prison guard gesturing to close, Libai added, "If you can't do this for me, please do it for your mum."

"Dad! Dad!" Lina banged on the glass that stood strongly between them as her dad shuffled away, footsteps restricted by metal chains.

16 Years Ago

"Wait I'm not asleep yet..." Yali murmured as the general anaesthetic began to ease off. It was 6 hours since the operation had begun, but it felt like a split second hadn't even past. Then came the question that burnt her lips as she held back from asking out loud.

"Had she made it?"

"No, don't ask that question. You daren't ask that question."

Yali clenched her teeth to repress the pain, the fears and the volcano of emotion threatening to erupt inside her. A burning sensation seemed to paralyze both her body and her soul.

Yali hadn't even laid eyes on her baby, who was already on the other side of Shanghai, miles away from the bed where she was still hooked up to what was quite possibly her five hundredth intravenous drip.

"Had she made it?"

A while later, Yali was pushed out of the recovery room. She met her husband, Libai, in the corridor who rushed over to her side.

"What are you doing here? You shouldn't be here! What's going on?" she queried desperately, as he had previously promised he would follow their baby's ambulance to the children's hospital.

"I just wanted to check you were alright first," he replied tearfully.

"Just go, be there for our baby until...just stay with our baby," Yali urged as the nurses pushed her back into her room and lifted her onto the bed that had been her home for the past three months.

No one could hear her silent, internal screams but when the nurses arrived the atmosphere was strained. The taller one, so thin she was convinced was anorexic, didn't yet know of the morning's turn of events and the emergency cesarean. Yali saw the shadow of realization fall across her face as they locked eyes for a few long seconds before she continued to go about her duties in a grim, efficient silence.

For three turbulent months Yali had been able to hold on, desperate to give her baby a chance of survival, but at barely twenty eight weeks the baby had finally overcome Yali's struggles and forced herself out of the apparently inhospitable womb. Now her baby was all by herself, fighting for her life in the hands of strangers, her husband now battling through the busy Shanghai traffic to reach their baby's bedside.

It was clear that Yali was already on the brink of mental collapse, hanging over a cliff of despair by one hand. Simply too afraid to hope and not ready to allow herself to let in the love for the baby that she knew needed her so desperately.