The day Anita came into the world was the saddest day of her father’s life. In a small, dark room in a local clinic, her mother fought with all her strength to bring her first baby into the world. Being her first child, the womb opener, the birth was very difficult and painful. The midwife tried everything she could, but there were no modern machines or good medicines in their poor village. Moments after Anita took her very first breath and let out a soft cry, her mother breathed her last. The young woman died on the cold iron bed before she could even hold her baby girl in her arms. When Michael, Anita’s father, heard the dark news, he fell to the hard dirt floor and wept like a child. He held his tiny, helpless baby against his chest and cried until his eyes were red. Relatives and elders from the village came to him weeks after the burial. They brought different women to his small house and urged him to choose one. His aunt told him that he was still a young man and needed to marry another wife so she could cook for him and take care of the motherless child. Michael looked at the baby sleeping peacefully in his arms and shook his head firmly. He told them that a stepmother might treat her badly or make her feel unloved. He said his wife gave her life for this child, so he would not bring anyone into the house who would make his daughter cry. He vowed to be her father and her mother, raising her completely alone. His relatives were angry and called him foolish, warning him that a poor man could not raise a child alone. But Michael stood by his decision and refused to remarry just to give his daughter his full love and attention. Growing up, Anita knew only her father. Life was very hard for the two of them. Michael took up every manual job he could find in the village. He cleared thick bushes under the hot sun, carried heavy bags of cement at building sites, and washed dusty cars by the roadside. On days when he had no money to buy milk or food, he would boil warm water with a little sugar, feed baby Anita, and rock her to sleep while singing soft songs to drown out the painful hunger in his own stomach. As Anita grew older, Michael always encouraged her. He worked hard to pay her small school fees and buy her worn-out uniforms. Whenever she felt sad because other children mocked her for being poor and motherless, Michael would kneel in front of her, hold her small hands, and tell her that she was not a curse, but his light. He reminded her every single day that they might be poor, but their love was bigger than money. However, tragedy struck when Anita turned ten. While Michael was carrying heavy timber beams at a construction site, the beams slipped and crashed onto his lower back. He collapsed in pain and was rushed to the clinic. The doctor told Anita that her father’s spine was badly damaged and he could no longer do any hard labor. Despite his severe back pain and inability to walk properly, Michael refused to let Anita drop out of school. He pushed her to study hard, while Anita took up late-night dishwashing jobs at a local restaurant to buy food and kerosene. Just when Anita thought things could not get any worse, a terrible darkness fell upon her body. She started feeling weak all the time. Her body was constantly hot with fever, her gums bled when she brushed her teeth, and dark bruises appeared all over her skin even when she did not bump into anything. One day, while walking home from school, Anita collapsed on the dirt road. A kindly neighbor carried her to a hospital in the nearby city. After running several blood tests, the doctor broke the terrible news to Anita and her crippled father, informing them that Anita had leukemia, a type of cancer that affects the blood. When Michael heard the word cancer, he wept uncontrollably, holding his damaged back as he sat in his wheelchair. Anita was completely crushed. Leukemia was a rich man’s sickness, but she was just a poor girl living in a leaking mud hut. Her leukemia and their deep poverty instantly blocked her life. She had to stop going to school because she was too sick and tired to walk. Every small coin her father had saved was swallowed up by basic painkillers. They could not afford the expensive chemotherapy treatments, specialized blood transfusions, or proper hospital beds. For two whole years, Anita was trapped in a cycle of pain and despair. She watched her bright dreams of becoming somebody in life fade away. She spent her days lying on a thin mattress beside her father’s wooden chair, both of them crying in silence, wondering why life was so cruel to them. One dark afternoon, Anita’s condition took a dangerous turn. She began to vomit blood and fainted on her bed. Her skin was as pale as paper, and her breathing became slow and shallow. Desperate and crying hysterically, her crippled father dragged himself out of the house, calling out to neighbors for help. The suffering until their life took a dangerous turn.