Oksana and Artyom had been married for three years. They lived in Artyom’s three-room apartment in a residential district, where mothers pushed strollers in the evenings and children’s voices echoed through the courtyard on weekends. The apartment was bright, with panoramic south-facing windows. Artyom had renovated it nicely before they even met: oak laminate flooring, stretch ceilings, and a built-in kitchen with appliances. Oksana had an eight-year-old son, Dmitry, from her first marriage. When she and Artyom met at a corporate party hosted by mutual acquaintances, Artyom had said he was ready to accept the child into the family. Oksana believed him. She hoped everything would work out, that Dima would finally have a father.
But reality turned out differently. Artyom never showed any interest in Dima’s life. He never asked how his day at school had gone, never helped him with his math homework, never read him bedtime stories. When the boy came into his room with another plasticine craft or watercolor drawing, his stepfather would give a brief nod without looking up from his phone and continue scrolling through the news. Dima learned not to impose. He stopped calling Artyom “Dad,” although at first he had wanted to very much. He simply called him by his name, quietly and distantly.
Polina Grigoryevna, Artyom’s mother, regularly came to visit on Saturdays. She brought treats for her son — homemade cabbage pies, jars of jam from her cellar, pickled cucumbers and tomatoes. It was as if she did not notice Dima at all. When the boy greeted her in the hallway, his grandmother-in-law would give a dry nod and immediately go into the kitchen, where she would begin discussing family matters with her son: vacation plans, repairs at the dacha. Oksana saw it every time, and every time she clenched her fists under the table, but she stayed silent. She did not want to quarrel. She did not want to ruin relations. She hoped that, with time, everything would get better.
“Mom, why does Grandma Polina never give me anything?” Dima asked one day when they were alone in the kitchen after another visit from his mother-in-law. “She brought Artyom a pie and a jar of strawberry jam. But nothing for me.”
Oksana did not know what to say. She turned toward the sink, pretending to wash dishes so her son would not notice the tears in her eyes. Then she pulled herself together, turned around, hugged the boy, and said quietly:
“She just has that kind of personality, sweetheart. She doesn’t know how to express feelings. Don’t pay attention to it. The important thing is that I love you.”
Before marrying Artyom, Oksana owned a one-room apartment on the outskirts of the city. Thirty-two square meters. The fifth floor of a nine-story panel building constructed in the 1980s. The window overlooked an industrial zone and a taxi parking lot. But it was her property. Aunt Vera, the sister of her late father, had left the apartment to her niece when she died of stomach cancer five years earlier. Oksana entered into inheritance rights six months later, registered everything in her own name, and made cosmetic repairs. After marrying Artyom, she continued renting the apartment to a young couple of students from the pedagogical university. They paid reliably, without delays — twenty-five thousand a month. With that money, Oksana bought clothes and shoes for Dima, paid for his drawing club and karate classes, and took him to the cinema and the skating rink in winter.
Artyom held the position of head of sales at a large trading company that supplied construction materials. He earned well, about one hundred and twenty thousand a month plus bonuses. Oksana worked as a manager at a travel agency on the city’s central street. Her income was more modest — sixty thousand, including sales commissions — but she managed. She never asked her husband for money for herself or for her son. Artyom paid the utility bills for the apartment, bought groceries at the supermarket on weekends, and sometimes went to restaurants with Oksana. Oksana spent her own money on personal needs, cosmetics, clothes, and everything Dima required.
Everything changed a year ago, at the beginning of autumn. Dima started complaining of fatigue. He would come home from school and immediately lie down on the sofa in his room. He stopped running around with friends in the yard after classes. He grew pale, as if he had never seen the sun. Blue circles appeared under his eyes and did not go away even after a long sleep. Oksana blamed it on adapting to the new school year, the workload, the autumn blues.
“Mommy, I feel dizzy,” he said one morning in mid-October as they were getting ready for school. “And my stomach hurts.”
Oksana took sick leave from work. She called her boss, explained the situation, and took her son to the pediatrician at the district clinic. The doctor examined Dima carefully, listened to his lungs and heart, and palpated his abdomen. She frowned. She wrote referrals for blood and urine tests. Two days later, the results came in. The doctor called Oksana and asked her to come in urgently. She referred them to a hematologist at the regional hospital. The hematologist performed additional examinations — a bone marrow biopsy, an ultrasound of the internal organs, and a consultation with an oncologist. The diagnosis came after two agonizing weeks of waiting. A rare blood disease requiring immediate specialized treatment. The cost of the full course of therapy was three million eight hundred thousand rubles.
Oksana left the doctor’s office. Her legs were giving way. She reached a bench in the hospital corridor and sat down. She took out her phone with trembling hands, but she could not dial a single number. Her fingers would not obey her. Everything swam before her eyes; the letters on the screen blurred. She tried to breathe evenly, counting inhales and exhales the way she had once been taught in yoga classes five years earlier. It did not help. Her heart was pounding so hard it felt as if it would jump out of her chest.
That same evening, Oksana gathered her strength. She waited until Dima fell asleep in his room after taking the pills the doctor had prescribed. Then she went into the kitchen, where Artyom was sitting at the table with his laptop, checking work emails and replying to clients.
“Artyom, we need to have a serious talk,” she said, sitting down across from him.
He looked up from the screen and glanced at his wife. He noticed her pale face and red eyes.
“What happened?” he asked, closing the laptop.
“Dima has a serious illness. A very serious one. The hematologist gave us the diagnosis. A blood disease. He needs urgent treatment at a specialized clinic. Expensive treatment. Almost four million rubles. The doctors say we can’t delay. Every week of delay worsens the prognosis.”
Artyom leaned back in his chair. He crossed his arms over his chest. He was silent for a long time, staring at the pattern on the tablecloth.
“I understand that it’s a huge amount of money,” Oksana continued, trying to speak calmly. “But maybe we can think of something together? Take out a bank loan? Contact charitable foundations? I’ve already started collecting documents for foundations, filled out forms on three websites, but the process takes a very long time, and the doctors insist it’s urgent.”
Artyom got up from the table. He walked over to the window. He stood there, looking out into the courtyard, where a couple was walking a dog under the streetlights.
“Oksana,” he finally said without turning around. “He is not my child.”
She froze. She did not immediately understand what she had heard. It seemed to her that she must have misheard.
“What?” she asked.
“I am not obligated to pay for the treatment of someone else’s son. The law doesn’t require that. You have an ex-husband. The child’s father. Let him help with the money.”
“But we live together! We have been living under the same roof for three years! Dima calls you Dad! Or he did, until he realized you simply don’t notice him, as if he doesn’t exist in this house at all!”
“That is his problem and yours,” Artyom turned around and looked at his wife coldly. “I never asked him to call me that. I never asked you to drag your child here at all. But I agreed because I loved you. Oksana, be realistic. I don’t have that kind of money. And I’m not going to take responsibility for someone else’s child. Find the funds yourself. You have parents, friends, colleagues.”
Oksana stood up. Her legs barely held her. She left the kitchen, went into the bathroom, and locked the door. She sat on the edge of the bathtub and clasped her head in her hands. She did not cry. There were no tears. Inside, there was only emptiness. A scorched emptiness, like after a fire. As if everything she had believed in for those three years had evaporated in a single moment, leaving only ashes behind.
The next three weeks passed in constant rushing and nervous strain. Oksana knocked on the doors of charitable foundations. She collected endless certificates from the clinic, the hospital, the school, and her workplace. She filled out thick questionnaires, photocopied her passport and Dima’s birth certificate, and wrote detailed letters describing the situation. She posted appeals for help on social media, adding photos of her son and her card number for donations. People responded. Some sent a thousand rubles, others five thousand. One former colleague, with whom she had been friends ten years earlier, transferred thirty thousand. An unfamiliar woman from another city sent twenty thousand and wished Dima a speedy recovery. The money was accumulating, but slowly — far too slowly. And the doctors insisted on urgency. Every week of delay reduced the chances of a full recovery by five percent.
Oksana made a decision. At night, lying awake in bed beside sleeping Artyom, she realized there was no other way. She would sell her one-room apartment on the outskirts of the city.
The apartment was in good condition. Cosmetic repairs had been done three years earlier, the bathroom had new plumbing, the windows were plastic with double-glazed units, and the floor was laminate. The metro was fifteen minutes away on foot; nearby were a school, a kindergarten, and shops in the courtyard. The student tenants kept the place tidy, did not smoke, did not make noise, and paid on time. Oksana placed a sale listing on three major websites. She set the price slightly below market value in order to sell faster. Buyers appeared within a week — a young family with a two-year-old child. They needed urgent housing after moving from another city. They were ready to pay the full amount immediately after the transaction was processed through a bank deposit box.
Ten days later, after the documents were checked at the MFC and the transfer of ownership was registered, the deal was closed. The money arrived in Oksana’s account. Three million nine hundred thousand rubles. The amount was enough. It covered the full course of treatment at a specialized oncology clinic and still left some for medication.
Oksana did not discuss the sale with Artyom. The apartment was her premarital property. She had inherited it from Aunt Vera long before meeting her future husband. The apartment was registered only in her name. They had not signed any prenuptial agreement. By law, Oksana had every right to dispose of that property without her husband’s consent. Her husband did not need to know about her financial decisions.
Treatment began immediately, the day after the money arrived. Dima was admitted to a ward in a specialized oncology clinic on the outskirts of Moscow. It was a bright room on the second floor overlooking a small park. Two beds, a television, a refrigerator, and a private bathroom. Oksana visited him every day after work. She took days off when she needed to sit with her son during procedures. She brought fresh fruit, picture books, sketchbooks, and colored pencils. She drew with him, read fairy tales aloud, told him about work, her colleagues, and funny incidents from office life. The doctors were pleased. The therapy was producing results. His tests gradually improved week by week.
“Mom, am I definitely going to get better?” Dima asked every evening before sleep, when Oksana tucked him in with a blanket.
“Of course, my sunshine. The doctors say everything is going well. Your tests are improving. You are a very brave boy. You’re doing wonderfully.”
Two months had passed since the start of treatment. Oksana returned from work late in the evening, around nine. She opened the apartment door with her key and immediately heard loud voices coming from the kitchen. Artyom and Polina Grigoryevna were heatedly arguing about something, interrupting each other. When Oksana took off her jacket and entered the kitchen, they both fell silent and stared at her. Artyom was sitting at the table, his face red, his fists clenched. His mother-in-law stood by the stove, arms crossed over her chest, with a sour expression on her face.
“Is it true?” Artyom snapped without greeting her, staring straight at his wife.
“Is what true?” Oksana asked, taking off her scarf.
“You sold the apartment?! Your apartment?! That one-room place on the outskirts?!”
Oksana put her bag on the floor near the refrigerator. She looked first at her husband, then at her mother-in-law.
“Yes. I sold it two months ago.”
“And why didn’t you consult me?! I’m your husband! Your husband! You should have told me!”
“It was my apartment, Artyom. My premarital property. I inherited it from Aunt Vera. The apartment was registered only in my name. I had every right to dispose of it as I saw fit.”
Artyom abruptly jumped up from the table. The chair fell to the floor with a crash. He approached his wife.
“How dare you sell your premarital apartment for the treatment of your little maggot?!” he shouted directly into Oksana’s face. “Do you understand what you’ve done?! You deprived us of a stable income! We were getting twenty-five thousand rubles every month from rent! That money could have gone to our family! To renovations! To a new car! To a seaside vacation! To anything! And you wasted it all on that stranger’s boy!”
Oksana stood motionless. The word “maggot” landed like a slap. She looked at her husband and did not recognize him. Before her stood a stranger — angry, greedy, cruel — someone she had never seen before.
“Maggot?” she repeated quietly. “That is what you called my eight-year-old child? A sick child?”
“You should have consulted me! It was a serious financial decision! A family matter!”
“Family?” Oksana’s voice remained calm, though her hands were shaking. “When I asked you to help save Dima, when I came to you and said that my child needed money for treatment, that without it he might die, you said he was not your child. You refused to give even a single kopeck to save him. And now you are shouting that I should have consulted you? You consider my property family property, but you don’t consider my child family?”
“You acted stupidly! Irresponsibly! Selfishly! You didn’t think about the future! You thought only about yourself and your own wishes!”
“I wasn’t thinking about myself. I saved my child’s life. The only person who truly matters to me.”
Polina Grigoryevna joined the conversation. She stepped forward and stood beside her son.
“Oksana, how could you do such a thing?” she began in a reproachful tone, shaking her head. “You could have bought a wonderful dacha with that money! A proper dacha with a bathhouse and land! Or invested it in major renovations for this apartment! Replaced all the plumbing, changed the furniture! Or saved up for a good family car! But you spent it all on that boy! On someone else’s child from your first marriage!”
“Someone else’s child?” Oksana raised her voice. “Do you hear yourself? He is my son! My only son! He is eight years old!”
“We are talking about the family’s future! About well-being! About savings! You thought only about yourself and your selfish maternal instincts!”
Oksana raised her hand, stopping the stream of accusations.
“Enough,” she said quietly but firmly. “Enough talking. I understand everything about both of you now.”
She looked first at her mother-in-law, then shifted her gaze to her husband.
“I am filing for divorce. Tomorrow.”
Artyom smirked, twisting his lips.
“Oh, really? And where will you go, I wonder? You have nothing now. Absolutely nothing. You sold the apartment for peanuts and wasted the money on treatment. Are you going to rent some corner for twenty thousand a month on your pathetic manager’s salary?”
“I didn’t waste the money. I saved my child’s life. That is not wasting. That is investing in the most precious thing I have. And I will go to my parents. They are waiting for me.”
“They won’t take you in! Old people can’t handle extra mouths to feed! Who needs a divorced woman over thirty with a sick child hanging around her neck?”
“They will take me in. Do you know why? Because they are normal people. People with hearts. Unlike you and your mother.”
The next day, Saturday, Oksana took a day off from work. She told her boss it was due to family circumstances. She packed her things and Dima’s. Two large suitcases with clothes, three bags with shoes and books, a box of toys and school supplies. Artyom sat in his room at the computer and did not come out to say goodbye. He did not even open the door. Polina Grigoryevna stood in the kitchen by the window, watching her daughter-in-law with a sour, triumphant expression.
“You’ll regret this,” she threw after her. “You’ll come crawling back on your knees begging for forgiveness.”
Oksana did not answer. She simply picked up the last bag, closed the door behind her, and called a taxi.
Oksana’s parents welcomed them with open arms. Her father came out onto the landing and helped carry the heavy suitcases into the apartment. Her mother immediately led her daughter into the kitchen, sat her down at the table, poured hot mint tea, and placed homemade cookies on a plate.
“Stay with us as long as you need,” her father said, sitting down beside her. “This is your home. It always has been and always will be your home. Your mother and I are glad you came.”
The divorce was finalized three months later. She and Artyom filed a joint application at the registry office. Both agreed, both came together. There was nothing to divide. The apartment belonged to Artyom. There were no joint savings in bank accounts. They had no children together. The divorce procedure was quick, formal, without arguments or scandals.
Oksana found a new job two months after moving in with her parents. It was another travel agency, larger, with an office in the city center. The position was higher — head of the corporate client department. Her income increased by almost one and a half times: ninety thousand rubles plus sales bonuses. Six months later, she had saved enough for an initial payment and rented a small two-room apartment near Dima’s school. The apartment was modest, on the fourth floor of an old building without an elevator, but it was bright and cozy. Oksana did the cosmetic repairs herself over the weekend, pasted light wallpaper in the living room, and painted the radiators white.
Dima was recovering. Slowly, but steadily and confidently. Every month, the doctors noted improvements in his tests. His blood indicators were approaching normal. Color returned to his face; the pallor disappeared. Strength and energy came back. He began running with friends in the yard after school again, playing football on the sports field, and going to drawing classes on Wednesdays and Fridays.
“Mom, will we never see Dad Artyom again?” he asked one evening while they were watching a superhero cartoon together on the sofa.
“No, my sunshine. Not anymore. We live separately now.”
“That’s good,” the boy said seriously. “He didn’t love me anyway. I always felt it. From the very beginning.”
Oksana hugged her son. She held him tightly.
“But I love you. More than anything in the world. And I always will, no matter what happens.”
Another year passed. Dima entered third grade at a new school near their home. He received a certificate of merit from the principal for his success in studies and drawing. At the city school exhibition, his watercolor landscape of a birch grove won first place in the junior category. The illness had completely retreated. The doctors confirmed stable remission with no signs of relapse.
Oksana stood by the window of her rented apartment on a Sunday afternoon and watched her son ride his new bicycle in the courtyard. He laughed, overtook his friends, waved his arms with joy, showing off tricks. She smiled. She did not regret selling the apartment on the outskirts. Not for a second. Not once. Aunt Vera would probably have approved of her decision from the other world. Auntie had always said that life was the most important thing. Everything else could be earned, bought, built again. But a human life was priceless.
Life is worth more than bricks and concrete.
Much more.
