In the dark of a hospital delivery room, a woman painfully gave birth to the tiny daughter she and her husband had longed for every day. The moment the newborn baby's cries echoed, the woman began to bleed uncontrollably, accompanied by symptoms of shortness of breath. This caused the doctors and nurses to panic, rushing to perform emergency procedures, hoping to save the mother's life.
After more than ten minutes, the mother's heart stopped beating. All the doctors and nurses, despite having witnessed many patients not make it, felt an inexpressible pity as the mother's body grew cold and the baby, who had just left the warmth of her mother's womb, cried incessantly.
When the doctor came out to inform the patient's husband, Bạch Phát, that his wife hadn't made it, he couldn't stand firm and collapsed onto the cold hospital floor. He couldn't accept that the wife he loved most was gone. From that moment on, a deep resentment towards his tiny daughter was born in his mind.
Throughout the days of his wife's funeral, Bạch Phát paid no attention to his daughter, leaving the baby with the nurses. Fortunately, the maternal grandmother, despite being heartbroken that her own flesh and blood had not survived childbirth while giving birth to her granddaughter, quietly went to the hospital. Seeing her granddaughter's tiny face, identical to her daughter's when she was little, she lovingly embraced and warmed her grandchild.
Two weeks later, when the hospital discharged the baby to go home with her family, Bạch Phát did not appear to pick up his daughter. So the maternal grandmother, laden with bags and holding the baby, hailed a taxi to take her granddaughter to her son-in-law's house.
In the living room, filled with the scent of incense, Bạch Phát sat motionless on a chair, only his eyes blinking as he gazed at a photo of him and his deceased wife. His mother-in-law, seeing him immersed in grief, carried the baby and approached him, speaking softly:
"Son-in-law, I know you loved your wife, my daughter, very much. But the dead cannot return to life. So please, lessen your sorrow and raise your daughter. The child is innocent; she lost her mother the moment she was born and has never once been loved and held by her father.
Now that your daughter has been discharged from the hospital, I've brought her home. Look, she's so adorable and has your wife's eyes."
Bạch Phát remained silent and pensive, as if deep in thought. His eyes still fixed on the photo, not looking at his daughter, he suddenly spoke:
"My wife died because of this child. If I live with her, it will only make me constantly grieve and miss my wife even more intensely. If you can, please take her to live with you. As for me, I don't want to see her for a single moment, because she is nothing but a harbinger of disaster. And if I had known that I would lose the wife I loved just because of this child's existence, I would never have let her get pregnant in the first place!"
The maternal grandmother hugged the baby tighter, heartbroken and pitying her granddaughter who was not acknowledged by her father and received no love from him. But she still tried to plead with her son-in-law:
"Don't say that, it's unfair to your daughter. The child is innocent. Every child, upon being born, should receive the love and blessings of their parents, grandparents, and all relatives."
Bạch Phát suddenly stood up. His eyes bloodshot, he angrily yelled:
"Mom, do you know that my wife's mother died because she lost too much blood giving birth to her? She is the one who killed her own mother, so I!"
"So I cannot live under the same roof as a murderer. Mom, don't say anything else. Take that child out of my sight, or I don't know if I'll have enough sanity left to avoid doing something I'll regret to her."
Seeing her son-in-law's unstable mental state, the grandmother didn't dare to offer any more advice. Swallowing her tears, heartbroken for her granddaughter, she said:
"If you've said so, then I will take my granddaughter to raise. But the child is still a member of the Bai family, after all, so I only ask one thing of you: please make a birth certificate for her with the name Bai Khue, because that's also the name your wife really wanted to give her daughter."
So, from that day on, the poor little girl, whose name on her birth certificate was Bai Khue, received no warmth whatsoever from her father.