After school, Lily often stayed at the neighbor's house for a couple of hours until mom returned home from work. She was eight years old. One day she came back from school very fatigued, which was quite unusual for her, considering she was very energetic. Aunty noticed the exhaustion on Lily's face and asked her to rest up until her mother came back. Mom had returned from work and went to Aunty's house to take Lily back home. When she arrived at her house, she told her that Lily was feeling exhausted so she was asleep on the couch. Mom went to check up on her, she noticed that her body temperature was higher than normal and a few rashes were forming on her body. Mom decided to quickly take her to the hospital and she booked an appointment with the doctor. Along with the appointment, she called dad and asked him to come back home. Dad immediately hurried back home. Together they went to the hospital, to understand the problem she was suffering from. She was asked to be admitted to the hospital for further blood tests. After three days the reports arrived, reports showed that Lily was suffering from blood cancer.
At first, they didn't want to believe that this was true, the reports made them stressed and anxious about this situation. Their minds were drifting away to unwanted thoughts, thoughts of what-ifs, and worst-case scenarios. This made them further question the doctors, how is it possible that she has cancer?
The doctors requested the parents to give their health reports, to understand the history of the parents if they had ever suffered from any sort of disease. As it would help determine how Lily is suffering from cancer. They submitted their records to the doctors waiting for an appropriate reason but the doctors didn't seem to find any problems with their reports, they seemed to be very healthy parents.
He then asked them if they have any sort of addiction, something like smoking or drinking. The parents replied to him saying that both the parents are chain smokers, and that was the answer to their question on how Lily was suffering from cancer. Their addiction was from their teenage years and still carrying on, they causally smoked inside the house as well. Lily is suffering from cancer because of inhalation of excess smoke for such from a young age.
The doctor had told them, to never plan on getting another child because it's most likely that even the second child would suffer from cancer, this added to the list of why they didn't want Anon, and it was a mistake.