The Snow Has Stopped When the Fetal Heartbeat Rings

————The cold wind of the twelfth lunar month rolled up broken snow and smashed against the old wooden windows on the seventh-floor top floor. 36-Year-old Lin Jianjun clutched a crumpled fifty yuan while driving an online ride-hailing service to pay off his debts while submitting his 501st resume on a recruitment website. He fell from being the director of the President's Office to having difficulty making ends meet. After two years of unemployment, he even had to hesitate in front of the shelf for a long time to buy a box of strawberries for his pregnant wife, Su Xiao.​ Su Xiao had just survived lung cancer surgery and was four months pregnant with her baby. However, she had to climb seven flights of stairs alone for a follow-up check-up. Faced with patriarchal parents and a younger brother who only wanted to ask for help, she was reluctant to take a whole pill even when she coughed. The couple guarded the leaky old house and hid the secret of a debt of 300,000 yuan. Even to celebrate Lin Jianjun's father's birthday, they had to pool money to buy a bottle of cheap liquor and pretend to have a "stable life" at the dinner table.​ Lin Jianjun once hid in a car and drank to escape, was blocked at the door by debt collectors, and even heard Su Xiao crying about "divorce"; Su Xiao once sat alone on the stairwell shaking after chemotherapy, and stayed up late sewing buttons to earn five yuan in craft fees, but always regarded the "dong dong" sound from the second-hand fetal heart rate monitor as the hope of life.​ When Lin Jianjun finally got a job opportunity by relying on his self-study accounting knowledge after staying up late at night after being frustrated by interviews and being unfamiliar with his profession, the debt collector's knock on the door and HR's recruitment call rang at the same time. This winter, the beating of the fetal heart, the sweetness of strawberries, and the old chicken soup stewed by their parents finally made this struggling couple understand: No matter how cold the winter night is, as long as you keep each other in your heart and hold on to the strength of not giving up, you can always wait for the light to brighten the day. ————