I like to think of myself as a lucky gem. I am the kind of girl who spends her days buried in novels or obsessed with stories, yet here I am, telling mine. My story. My love life. A love so deep we never imagined separation. We started as friends, inseparable friends long before we ever became lovers. My name is Amina, though everyone calls me Meena, or Beauty Queen when they want to tease me. I am an ambivert, floating somewhere between silence and conversation, comfort and crowd. Ambitious, imaginative, and yes! 😉 I admit it-an unrealistic lover girl. It sounds funny, I know. But I can't help it. My mind creates scenes like a Korean drama, soft and romantic, like petals falling in slow motion. I've always pictured meeting my prince charming in the university-like fate would script our beginning. I'd be coming out of the library with books in my hands, and he would be heading in. Then boom-we'd collide, papers flying everywhere, eyes locked... and just like that, our story would begin. That's the kind of dreamer I am.

Hassana was only fourteen when she first learned how quickly life could unravel. The day they wheeled her into the theatre for an appendix surgery, she thought the pain would finally end. The nurses smiled, her mother whispered prayers, and Hassana promised herself that tomorrow would be different, lighter, easier, pain-free. But tomorrow did not bring relief. Instead, it brought a diagnosis heavier than her small chest could bear. Her heartbeat once steady and innocent grew troubled, fighting against a body too young to understand what was happening. Tests turned into more tests, days turned into weeks, and the doctors' voices shifted from calm to urgent. Then came the words that changed everything: Rheumatic heart disease. Mitral stenosis. Sinus complications. A trio of battles she never asked for. Her mother tried not to break in front of her, hiding tears behind hospital curtains. The air smelled of disinfectant and prayers. Bills piled higher than breaths she could take. The surgery she needed was immediate, but the money was not. Relatives nodded with sympathy but offered silence. Neighbors asked questions but held their pockets closed. Hope became a thin thread-too thin for a girl whose heart was failing faster than the world realized. There were nights when Hassana could hear her own heartbeat struggle, like a faint drum losing rhythm. She wondered if God chose her for this pain, or if pain simply found her and refused to leave. Yet even in the stillness, even in the fear, she held on. Then, just when the world seemed deaf to her cries, when medicine could not move forward and faith was her only pulse-a door opened, quietly, unexpectedly. Help arrived not with noise, but with grace. What was impossible became possible, and what was breaking began to mend. Hassana would later call it a miracle. But in that moment, as dawn spilled weak sunlight into her room and her chest rose with fragile breaths, she simply whispered: "Alhamdulillah."