what the rain remembered
Chapter 13: What the Rain Remembered
It rained the next evening.
Not a storm, just the kind of steady, whispering rain that makes the world feel softer. The kind of rain she used to say washed the noise from her mind.
I walked to the garden at the facility. No umbrella. Just my hoodie pulled tight.
I didn't expect her to be there.
But she was.
Standing barefoot on the wet grass, face tilted up to the sky, eyes closed. Her hair stuck to her cheeks, her sleeves soaked.
I didn't speak.
Just watched her breathe.
Then —
She turned slowly.
And whispered my name.
Not a question. A certainty.
"You came."
"Always," I said.
She walked toward me and touched my face with trembling fingers.
"I woke up today and everything was a blur. But then it rained, and… something clicked. Like the world handed me a memory. And it had your voice in it."
I closed my eyes.
Tried not to fall apart.
"Sometimes," she said, "the rain remembers for me."
---
We sat beneath the old awning behind the garden.
She wrapped herself in a towel and held the voice recorder between her palms.
"I listened to all of these again last night," she said. "Your voice... It makes me feel like I belong somewhere. Even when I don't know where that is."
"You always belong," I said softly.
She looked away.
"But what if one day I forget how to speak entirely? What if the parts of me you love disappear?"
"Then I'll love what's left."
"What if there's nothing left?"
"There will be. There's always something left when it's love."
---
We began something new that week.
A book.
She wanted to write down every story I'd told her. About us. About her.
"I want to know me through your eyes," she said. "Even if it's not how I remember. Maybe that's better."
We filled pages slowly. Not in order.
Moments.
Fragments.
One night, she drew a picture of us under the streetlamp. Two figures sitting close, stars above, silence between. She shaded it all in blue.
"Why blue?" I asked.
"Because it's the color I feel safest in," she said.
---
Her memory flickered again after that.
Three days.
She didn't know me at all.
Didn't want to see me.
Told the nurses to keep the boy with the flowers away.
I respected that.
But I left a book on her nightstand.
It had one note in the cover:
"When you're ready, I'll be waiting."
On the fourth day, I got a call.
"She's asking for you," they said.
When I walked in, she was crying.
She didn't say anything.
Just handed me the book, now open, pages dog-eared, underlined.
And whispered:
"I don't remember it… but I believe it."
---
We started recording videos too.
Not for vanity.
For preservation.
"I want to see my face when I'm laughing. I want to watch you say my name," she said. "I want something to hold onto when I can't find the pieces."
In one clip, I asked her what love meant to her.
She thought for a long time.
Then said:
"Love is what shows up. Even when I disappear."
---
She had a good week after that.
Held my hand without hesitation.
Kissed me goodnight, remembered my coffee order, laughed at the same joke four times in a row.
"I like this version of me," she said one night. "I feel alive. Real. I wish I could keep her."
"You are her," I said.
"Then don't let me forget her."
"I won't."
And I meant it with everything I had.
---
But just as light comes, so does the shadow.
One evening, she collapsed.
A seizure.
They said it wasn't unexpected — memory conditions like hers often carry deeper neurological complications.
But nothing could've prepared me.
When I visited the hospital bed, she didn't wake.
For two days.
I read to her.
Played our tapes.
Held her hand.
And whispered:
"Don't leave me here without your voice."
---
She stirred on the third morning.
Whispered something faint.
I leaned in.
Her lips brushed my ear.
"Blue… blue sky."
It was enough to break me.
Because that was the first phrase she ever wrote in our notebook.
---
Quote from Spring (Chapter 13):
"Love is what shows up. Even when I disappear."
Quote from the Protagonist (Chapter 13):
"There's always something left when it's love."