The Billionaire Price

My name is Lila Fredrick, and I originate from Vancouver, North America. Speaking about myself, I can recall that my life has always been a real representation of the human survival adage, as I grew up in a very poor family. I have Sofia and Frederick Leo as my parents, and I am their only child. Although my parents loved me and each other, their marriage could not survive life’s adversity, and my mother left my father while I was young. My paternal father’s name was Frederick, and he worked as a gardener for several years. He grew tough hands, which moulded the soil. But the intricacies of life finally struck back when we were informed that he had a problem with his kidneys—news that completely changed our lives. Frederick Leo, my father, was a man of simple living and high thinking, yet powerful and calm all the same. He was gifted with the ability to appreciate beauty through natural drawing, which he practiced by working for the gardens of the elite. Whenever he would discuss the flowers and plants that he tended to, his eyes would sparkle, and no matter how tired he was, he never grumbled. There were always vases of some flowers in our small apartment; the fragrances of the flowers picked at gardens were signs of appreciation he derived from his work and stress relievers he brought to the home. We were simple people, and living was barely comfortable; money was really scarce. My mother, named Sofia, was a very hard-working woman who had to support the family by doing more than one job. Financial problems and other domestic issues forced her to leave my father. Despite this, my parents always had my best interests at heart, and I fondly related to both of them. The nature and work of gardening are something that I associated with my father, and he explained to me about each plant and how much time it takes to get it healthy. Those glimpses were dear to me because they shielded me from the grim facts of our financial woes. At that point, my father started showing symptoms of the illness that was going to change our lives. Initially, it was gradual as he began to complain of things like general body weakness and joint pains that he blamed on his manual work. He would come home and expect to sleep, and what little strength he had in him before was gone; he became frail. Initially, I, as well as he, did not pay much attention to it, considering this to be the consequence of the overload of work. But as the weeks went by, his health declined, or, I should say, rather, his malaise got worse. He began having severe back pains; he did not bother to seek medical help and thought perhaps it was due to the strenuous activities he did in gardening the previous weekend. One evening I came home early from work to find him slouched deep in his comfortable armchair, his usually rosy cheeks white and his forehead glistening with a film of sweat. He was clutching below his back and was panting heavily. I knew that something was definitely not right. “Dad, we ought to make a visit to the doctor's,” I told him desperately in a manner that showed my concern. He attempted to calm me down and tell me that all was well with him and just another episode of pain from the injury, and he would be okay, but I could see he was scared from the look in his eye and was just hiding it from me. The final and decisive step was made when I saw that he got his ankles and feet swollen, which he could not pretend did not exist any more. “Dad, this is not a one-sided workplace issue anymore; you have to go for a checkup." I pressed on as the days passed. He did not like it, but agreed, and we fixed an appointment to see a doctor at the clinic nearby. The doctor carried out a number of investigations, such as blood tests and general clinical examinations. This period of waiting for the results was torture. The feeling we got when we were finally informed was like the ground had been swept from beneath our feet. The doctor had said to me that my father had chronic kidney disease, a disease that has maybe been dormant for some time. His kidneys were not working well, and in other words, without constant and regular input from health professionals, his condition would be deteriorating. My father, who was usually non-emotional, attempted to get a grasp of what the doctor had said. ‘What does this mean, doctor?’ He said this in a calm tone, though fear was seen in his voice. The doctor informed me that my father had renal failure, due to which his kidneys couldn’t clean the blood any more. This had therefore resulted in the buildup of toxins in his body, hence the symptoms that he had been displaying. He stated that to treat such a condition, he would need to begin taking certain substances to help control the situation and would likely need to go on dialysis or have a kidney transplant if kidney function remained diminished. When the doctor was explaining that to us, a feeling of dread and powerlessness came over me, especially concerning how we were going to pay for such treatments. Things were never good when it came to money, and now this? I looked at my father, and despite a deafening message of hope, he wore a grim look on his face. “We’ll make it, Lila,” he whispered, his fingers wrapped around mine. The weeks that followed were a blur of doctors’ appointments, procedures, and coming to terms with the fact that you have a chronic illness. My father was put on various drugs to control the progression of the disease and its symptoms. I remember being presented with a doctor, a nephrologist, a doctor who specialised in the kidney, and I was provided with the treatment plan for my father. The doctor also laid down some rules of dieting, constant control over the pressure, and constant check-ups to determine the degree of the sickness. Thus, our lives became occupied with this new reality. In order to make ends meet to cater for the medical bills, I had to work several shifts as well as study every free moment I had. My father who was previously a gardener, by the intensity of which he had to quit his work, felt sidelined, hopeless and guilty. “I should be the one who takes care of you, not the reverse,” he would tell me with what I still thought was genuine remorse. As time went by, there was an unbearable weight of medical bills to face. It was evident that we could not afford my father’s treatment any longer. The danger of losing our apartment grew closer, and it just brought more stress and uncertainty into our lives. I knew I had to find a way out; however, the ways were scarce.