Unwanted child
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Judge: ‘I expect you both to fight fair. No holds barred. Only boxing.’
The referee simultaneously gestured and blew his whistle to start the fight. Both fighters rushed into the fight from the first seconds, hoping for a quick and legitimate victory.
FIRST STEPS
Parents
According to the new chronology, the year was 735. Gai was a relatively small settlement, where no more than 20,000 people lived and worked. Mostly people were engaged in agriculture and crafts. There were a couple of schools and a couple of kindergartens for children. Most of the townspeople still couldn't understand why rural children needed an education, as they were taught the craft of farmers and artisans by their own parents based on their years of experience. Despite the small population, the traffic on the country roads was quite busy. Every now and then, there were lorries and trucks travelling around delivering food to other settlements.
After borrowing money from his parents, Lars had moved here with his wife about five years ago, hoping to find peace and escape the hustle and bustle of the city. Although he had lived in Lockfood City before that, where he learnt the trade of a chef. The man was not a bad cook, and also knew most of all about the quality and freshness of the products needed for cooking. So, one day, he caught himself thinking that he would not be engaged in the manufacture of these products. In order to do so, he needed to get his own farm and cattle. He also needed to hire a few workers who knew how to care for and keep the animals.
At first, Inessa (the wife) was strongly against such a step, as it seemed illogical to her – to change a big city for some village. However, Lars managed to persuade her by telling her tales of a profitable business and how it would flourish.
Acquiring a working farm was difficult and prohibitively expensive, even for such a small village. Just like buying an empty plot of land to organise a new one from scratch. So the idea of buying a farm had to be abandoned. He used the borrowed money to buy several rooms in a two-storey house. One of them was on the ground floor, the other one was directly above it. The entrepreneur converted the first room into a small restaurant. It was a novelty for a small settlement, so there were plenty of visitors. The business gradually grew and developed. The second room was renovated and converted into a cosy two-room apartment, where the young family lived. By that time, Lars was 35 years old and Inessa was 27.
Communication with their parents did not work out well, so at some point the relatives stopped coming to Gai. No phone calls, no texts. It was not clear where it all started. It was much more important for the couple to preserve the idyll between them than to struggle to regain the long-lost relationship with their loved ones. Lars was madly in love with Inessa, and this feeling persisted in him even after many years. The couple started their relationship before marriage, and only after two years, they decided to get married.
It was only after three years that the family managed to pay off their debts to Lars's parents. He knew their account number and just silently sent them the agreed amount every month. From the outside, of course, this could seem both strange and sad. A native child who is bound to his parents by only two things – the formal details of kinship, and his debt. However, it happens, too. Especially when lovers protect each other in front of their parents, independently entering into conflicts and disputes with them.
Inessa more than once started a conversation with Lars about trying to have a child. At least one. After all, she said, they had everything they needed for that: enough money, their own apartment, their own business and love for each other. But Lars persisted and categorically refused to talk about it, believing that the time had not yet come. Yes, and in principle, man not very much love children, and somewhere inside, sincerely hopeful that Ines early or late stop this talk.
However, there are things that happen in life that do not depend on a person's will. Simply because it had to happen sooner or later. It happened to them in the year 740. Was ordinary everyday day. Inessa was helping Lars in the kitchen, once again thinking that she would like to have a child while looking at one of the happy families sitting at a table in their restaurant. The woman hadn't felt well all day, and she couldn't understand why. At one point, she felt nauseous, dizzy, and sick to her stomach and ran to the toilet. Lars saw that his wife was getting sick. He quit cutting the meat, leaving the knife on the table, and went to the closed toilet door, knocking quietly on it.
Lars: ‘Inna…are you okay? All good?’
The unpleasant sounds of nausea, vomiting and the gurgling of water in the toilet bowl were heard behind the door. Inessa ripped off the toilet paper hanging nearby and wiped her mouth several times, spitting the rest of the vomit into the toilet bowl periodically.
Inessa: ‘Lars, I think I have something poisoned. I don't know how I'll be able to continue working.’
Lars: ‘Erm…then go back to the apartment. I'll serve the last of the customers and be home soon. I'll ask the guys. Someone will fill in for you in the lounge.
Inessa had already realised what the ailments were about and that it was hardly poisoning. The next day, she bought a pregnancy test and her suspicions were confirmed. What the woman had been dreaming of for several years had come true. However, she was in no hurry to tell her husband about the news. First, she wanted to carefully prepare for her acceptance. For this purpose, Inessa from time to time started talking to the man about the children and emphasised his attention to small details related to their content. This only irritated him.
A month later, in August, when she visited a doctor, in one of the neighbouring cities, to determine the embryo's due date and get counselling. The city's hospitals had special scanners that could determine the sex of the baby in the womb from the embryo's two-month age, with 85 per cent accuracy. As well as the date of its birth down to the exact date. However, with dates, everything was not very well organised. The possibility of error was up to 70%. But it was possible to determine the approximate date. Research showed that the child should be born on 17 February. From statistics, taking into account the error, it meant that the exact month is February.
Inessa was over the moon. She had already started dreaming of a nursery, of the clothes she and Lars would buy, but suddenly, at one of the subsequent consultations, the doctors in charge of her maternal health brought her sad news. Due to the appearance of a foetus in her body, her congenital disease, referred to medically as ‘Hyena’, had become active. It progressively affected inside vital organ – kidney and liver. Treatment of this disease in modern medicine yet not exist. There are ways, only slow down the course of the disease. On the child's birth this also could say negative. But there was no turning back. Process has already been run and stop it was impossible. Only cared about the baby so that he could be born as healthy as possible.