Ivan - on... sale

Profitable organ trade ends in death for donor
More and more Ukrainians are going abroad to work. Sometimes they are offered non-standard work there - to share their organs...
Cemetery talk
His family couldn't believe his death. Even after the priest read a prayer over the open coffin and clods of earth clattered against the clogged lid, they stood in numbness and confusion, not perceiving the reality of what was happening. The mother and wife were led away from the cemetery arm in arm, and they kept looking around, trying to return. They could no longer cry out of powerlessness and only repeated inconsolably: “Why? Why?..” Two teenagers - the sons of Ivan Vavrik - walked frowning, looking distantly at their feet. They have yet to realize that their father passed away so early because he wanted to see them wealthy, and therefore happy.
The neighbors were talking quietly as they walked, and one of them kept shaking his head sadly:
- Ivan alienated me. What a fool...
He stopped mid-sentence.
At the wake, the fellow villagers, after the first glass, still could not stand it and began to express themselves more forcefully:
- So what about these dollars? I chased them and killed myself.
And they seem to have completely forgotten how just recently they envied Vavrik:
- Look, Ivan built what a house! He grabbed some money in Germany.
- Well, he’s not the only one. We went as a brigade. Others also made money...
“We made money, but not that much,” said one of the knowledgeable people. “The millionaires there took him away as a breeding bull and cut some things out of him for spare parts...
First earnings
Vavrik first went abroad three years ago. At a local factory in the village of Verkhovtsy, Sambir district, Lviv region, wages have not been paid for many months. There wasn't enough for food. My father's house was falling apart. The new building was overgrown with weeds. So several fellow countrymen put together a construction team and moved to Poland. They were lucky: they found a case. True, I had to work hard, but my work was paid generously. In comparison with the salaries in the Lviv region, the amounts seemed fabulous...
Three months later they returned home with new clothes and gifts for all their relatives. Ivan began to finish building the house. However, the money quickly disappeared. And again the shock builders got ready to set off along the familiar route. This time everything turned out to be much more complicated. Poland is already flooded with fellow countrymen-competitors. We had to contract on less favorable terms than before. Where can you go - there is no work in Ukraine.
In general, after returning to his family, Vavrik did not complete the house. But I had already gotten excited, I realized that I had to look, and maybe something would come up somewhere. I thought about it together with the same fellow villagers, and they waved through Poland to Germany. Helped build a luxurious villa.
One day, a company representative supervising the work called Vavrik over and introduced him to three prim gentlemen. Ivan had seen them before: they would come, walk around, for some reason inspect each worker and leave. I thought these were the future owners of the villa. It turned out they were doctors. They invited Vavrik to go with them: they say there is a very profitable business.
“Come on,” the company man dispelled his doubts, “these people don’t deceive.” Don’t worry about your absence from construction – we will pay you in full. And you'll also make a lot of money...
At some clinic, the gentlemen quickly tested Vavrik with equipment he had never seen before and busily said that they would buy one kidney from him for five thousand dollars. Plus quality food and a plane ticket to Lviv after treatment.
At thirty-five years old, Ivan has already seen and heard enough of everything. I knew that a person can live without one kidney. And most importantly, he was tired of vegetating. When he returns home, he’ll have to live in his father’s wrecked house again. Five thousand “greens” is a fortune. You can’t earn that amount even in two years on any construction site...
After the operation, Vavrik recovered quickly. I flew home with a new suitcase and a big profit. He explained to his family that a very profitable order had turned up, he worked like an ox and saved money. And he immediately began to finish building the house.
The long-awaited housewarming was celebrated for several days. The joy was natural and cloudless. During the pleasant troubles, Ivan forgot about the absence of a kidney. True, sometimes a completely new sensation of emptiness arose in his left side, but he convinced himself that this was from suspiciousness.
Fatal dice
Another trip to Germany turned out well. The company that built the villas again willingly entered into a 90-day contract with a team of Carpathian builders. They rushed by quickly. And suddenly, in the midst of pre-departure efforts, Vavrik was visited by the same gentlemen. With purely German pedantry and practicality, they proposed:
— Let's do a spinal cord puncture and take a few cubes. The process of recovery of the body is short-lived, there will be no complications - it has been verified.
Fifteen thousand dollars (three times more than for a kidney!), promised for a “trifling procedure,” paralyzed Ivan’s will. He meekly agreed, drowning out his doubts with an “iron” argument: I can manage quite well without a kidney, there will be no problems without some amount of spinal cord fluid. He told his fellow countrymen that he would be late, so they could return home without him. They, naturally, were in a hurry and waved their hand: as you know, it’s your business. They heard last time what kind of secrets Vavrik had with the mysterious Germans. And rumors have already spread about similar cases with other Ukrainians...
Ivan rushed from the airport to his native village by taxi, singing. He hugged Maria and his sons and started dancing:
- Now we’ll live! Let's buy groceries! Let's furnish the house with new furniture!
He answered all questions about the fantastic amount of dollars jokingly and diverted the conversation. Actually, Maria wasn’t really asking that much. I knew that Ivan would not commit a crime. So it worked. Man. Master. Takes care of the family.
But how fleeting happiness turned out to be! Something incomprehensible began to happen to Ivan: either sudden weakness or, for no apparent reason, loss of consciousness. He turned to local doctors, but to no avail: they did not seem to determine anything, and prescribed medicine to support the body. But Vavrik refused a serious examination: he was afraid that a connection between the ailment and the operations in Germany would be revealed, then the shame would fall on all the relatives.
He rarely went outside. Fellow villagers were amazed: in a matter of weeks, the stately, tall, handsome man (it was no coincidence that the German experts chose him) turned into a hunched, withered old man. Either the foreign doctors went too far with the number of cubes during the puncture, or they touched some vital nerves or caused an infection - who can say now?
Just before his death, Ivan told his younger brother about the operations he agreed to in Germany. But it was already too late.
He died quietly at night. A person who voluntarily becomes a commodity, an object of purchase and sale. His kidney and spinal cord probably saved someone's life. And he ruined his own. And he didn’t want so much: for the family to live in their own home, and for the wife and children to be well-fed...
Yuriy Marushchak Sambir district - Lviv