The rain had not stopped for three straight days.
It tapped softly against the hospital windows morning and night like the world itself was counting down the little time my grandmother had left.
By then, hospitals had become our entire universe.
The sharp smell of disinfectant.
The endless beeping machines.
The quiet footsteps of nurses walking through dim hallways at midnight.
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Two weeks earlier, the doctors pulled us aside and delivered the sentence no family is ever truly prepared to hear.
“A week, maybe two.”
After that, I practically moved into Grandma’s hospital room.
We spent hours flipping through old photo albums together, pretending we were simply reminiscing instead of saying goodbye.
One night, Grandma sat propped against her pillows holding a faded black-and-white photograph carefully between trembling fingers.
At first, I barely glanced at it.
Then I noticed the boy standing beside her.
Tall.
Dark-haired.
Smiling at her like she was the only person in the world worth looking at.
And suddenly Grandma smiled too.
Not politely.
Not nostalgically.
She glowed.
“That was him,” she whispered softly.
I leaned closer.
“Who?”
“The boy I loved before your grandfather.”
That sentence startled me immediately.
Because in my entire life, I had never once heard my grandmother mention loving anyone except Grandpa.
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“His name was Leo,” she murmured.
Then slowly, like opening a locked door she’d kept sealed for sixty years, Grandma began telling me about him.
They met at fifteen.
He carried her books home every day even after she insisted she could carry them herself.
“He was stubborn,” she laughed quietly. “But sweet. God… he made me laugh so hard my stomach hurt.”
Outside, rain slid down the glass in silver streaks while she kept staring at the picture.
“We danced together at prom,” she whispered. “Everyone else had already gone home.”
“What song?”
“‘Unchained Melody.’”
The second she said it, tears filled her eyes.
“I can still hear it sometimes when I close mine.”
I swallowed hard trying not to cry.
“What happened to him?”
Her smile faded slowly.
“Life happened.”
After graduation, their families moved away to different countries.
At first they exchanged letters constantly.
Then the letters stopped.
Or at least…
…that was what Grandma believed.
“I always wondered if he forgot me,” she admitted quietly.
The pain in her voice physically hurt to hear.
“Did you love Grandpa?” I asked gently.
“Oh yes,” she answered immediately. “With my whole heart.”
Then after a pause:
“But your first love… stays somewhere inside you forever.”
That sentence shattered me completely.
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I reached for her hand instinctively.
“If you could,” I whispered, “would you want one last dance with him?”
She looked at me silently for several seconds.
Then nodded.
“I dreamed about it my entire life.”
Tears rolled down my face before I even realized I was crying.
“Grandma,” I whispered shakily, “I’m going to find him for you.”
She squeezed my hand weakly.
“Promise?”
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