Amnesia After High Fever: I Forgot The ONLY Parents I've Ever Known – My Adoptive Family. This Is My Fight To Remember.

My parents are famous, but I can only see them on TV. They rush to the frontlines of war, claiming the environment is dangerous, and left me with my grandmother in the countryside. But later, they adopted their colleague’s daughter. They kept her by their side, compensating her for everything they owed me. She became their precious one, able to stay with Mom and Dad without the barrier of a cold screen. When they finally remembered me, I had already forgotten my feelings for them after a high fever.

0 I fell ill. It wasn’t serious, but it lasted for a long time.

It all started with a bet between me and my adoptive sister. We were competing to see who could climb to the top of the mountain first. The winner would get our parents to attend their parent-teacher conference.

When I finally reached the summit, exerting all my strength against the morning breeze and dew, I saw my parents and adoptive sister, the three of them smiling as they set up a tent to capture the sunrise.

Seeing me arrive, Sophia grinned and said, “I only said we’d race to see who gets here first. I never specified how we’d get here.”

She continued, “Emma, don’t you get it? To reach the same destination, you have to rely on your own two feet, but I have our parents to lift me up. You were destined to lose from the start.”

My parents stood behind her, holding cameras. Upon hearing our conversation and realizing what had happened, they looked a bit embarrassed and were about to invite me to watch the sunrise with them.

But I had already turned to leave without a second glance.

“Let her go!” I heard Mom’s angry voice from behind. “Why can’t she be more understanding like Sophia? If she knew how to be close to her parents, instead of always having that cold, sullen face, we wouldn’t ignore her!”

Hearing this, I couldn’t help but find it somewhat amusing. My parents always said I never knew how to soften my attitude, never knew how to be affectionate and please them.

But in the fifteen years of my life that they were absent, I couldn’t even see them, let alone be close to them.

How could I know how to do something no one ever taught me?

After returning home, I fell ill. Although I had only been exposed to a bit of wind and dew, I developed a high fever and felt weak and dizzy.

Before completely passing out, I called an ambulance for myself.

Then I sank into darkness. In my unconscious state, I saw my childhood again.

When I was very young, I could only see my parents on television, and that was the only place I could see them.

They were nationally renowned journalists, college sweethearts with shared ideals.

After graduation, they chased their common dream, running to the frontlines of various important news events.

Later, they even volunteered to go abroad to war zones, living and eating with refugees devastated by war.

Before they left, they took a photo.

In the picture, I was still a baby, held in the arms of a smiling man and woman, the three of us nestled together happily as a family.

At that time, I didn’t know that this would be the last time in my life that I would be embraced by my parents.

It was also this moment that made the child in me regret and beat my chest countless times.

I hated myself for not being more precocious - so that I could have known what it felt like to be in my parents’ arms.

It must have been an experience worth remembering for a lifetime.

But there are no “what ifs” in life.

Communication wasn’t as advanced in those days, so I was left with my grandmother who lived alone in the countryside.

The old lady wasn’t very good at using the mobile phone my parents had left her. At the beginning of each month, she would walk over ten miles to the post office in town, leaning on her cane, to see if there was any mail for us.

When I got a bit older, she would take me with her.

Before each trip, I would always put on my best clothes that I usually saved for special occasions, and wear two flowers on the neat braids Grandma had done for me.

I thought my parents could see me through the letters, so I had to dress up beautifully to see them.

But I never received any letters. It wasn’t until third grade, when my language teacher assigned us to write a letter to our mothers, that I suddenly realized letters were only sent one way.

My parents wouldn’t suddenly appear in the post office to hear me tell them how much I missed them.

Fortunately, even without letters, there was still television.

My parents had been abroad for many years and hadn’t come home for the Spring Festival for seven or eight years.

Occasionally, they would ask someone to bring some appliances to Grandma’s house in the old village.

When that 45-inch color TV was installed in the house, it drew many villagers to come and watch.

Grandma didn’t mind, inviting everyone in to watch TV together.

After the antenna was set up and the TV turned on, it happened to be the evening news. After the well-dressed anchor said a few words, the scene changed, and a couple in plain clothes appeared on the screen, holding microphones.

At that moment, my eyes lit up.

The people in the news were my parents. They were standing in front of the smoke of war, briefly introducing the local situation and calling on the whole society to lend a hand to these refugees who had suffered undeserved disasters.

I looked at their faces, much more weathered than in the photos, and walked dazedly to the TV.

“Dad, Mom…” I looked up, calling out to them loudly, but got no response.

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