Something was awfully wrong. Louisa never called him during work hours, and to think she had called him eight good times. He checked his wristwatch again and wished the traffic would let him home so he could go home to his family.
Source
He dialed Louisa again and hit his head softly on the steering wheel when it went to voice mail. "This is Louisa, I'm probably busy right now so please leave a message. Ciao!"
"Louisa, what's wrong? Please call me when you get this message. I love you".
It wasn't until thirty minutes after he had wormed his way out of traffic that Louisa called him back.
"Louisa! Thank God. How are you?"
No matter how hard she tried to conceal the cracks in her voice by pretending she was clearing her throat, he knew she had been sobbing.
"Hi, Donald. Been trying to reach you since forever" he could even tell from her voice that she was distraught.
"I'm sorry. I had an impromptu meeting. You good?"
She let a sniffle escape her and then tried to speak before breaking into sobs.
"I…it's not me, Travis…Donald, your son is sick" Then she began to weep. Donald couldn't deal with his woman being sad, not to talk of having her cry.
"Hey, hey, where are you? How is he?"
"We're at the hospital. Donald, they say he has pneumonia."
Donald turned the car around abruptly making his tires screech.
"Hang in there Louisa, I'm on my way".
When he got to the hospital, Louisa ran into his arms, almost squeezing his breath from him.
"What's going on baby? Where's Travis?"
The words were coming out in hitches so Donald could barely understand what she was saying but he heard something about him complaining about chest pain and breathing rapidly while running abnormal temperature.
"I'm sure the doctor has something for us. Let's go see him"
That was all Donald could say to her.
"From our tests, your son has pneumonia. We have to place him on antibiotics and he would have to stay away from school for some weeks to enable him to recover fully."
Donald sighed then took Louisa's hands in his.
"Thank you, doctor." He got the prescriptions and headed out with Louisa to the pharmacy.
"Where are we going to get money for this treatment? We're just trying to save up for the wedding. Donald, what are we going to do?"
Louisa was about to break into a sob again when Donald turned her around and looked into her eyes.
"I'll take it from my emergency fund. I mean, it's not much but it will go a long way. We need to sign up for family insurance by the way…."
"Wait, wait. What's an emergency fund? You mean you have some money stashed somewhere and you've been claiming you're broke? What were you planning to use it for?....."
Donald was chuckling without realizing it.
"Babe, don't be like that. An emergency fund is just you keeping some money aside to cover contingencies. That's what I did. Learned from dad."
The doubt he saw in her eyes when she looked up at him made him explode in laughter.
"Then tell me how to set up this emergency fund. It seems it would be pretty helpful. What do you think?"
Donald knew his fiancee, if she had insurance that could cover their son or some spare cash of her own, she may not have called for his assistance. He linked his fingers with hers and pulled her towards the children's ward.
"I'll tell you all about it, but first, I need to see my son."
Later that evening as they strolled out to get food for Travis, Louisa inserted her arm into Donald's and then leaned her head on his shoulder.
"Is it a good time to talk about the emergency funds?"
Donald's lips curled up in a smile.
"It's a perfect time. Emergency funds need you to calculate your monthly living expenses and save that amount."
Louisa did a quick math in her head.
"So I have to save the total of my utility, shopping, groceries, rent, and all other expenses for the month?"
Donald nodded.
"But I can't do that. When I actually take money out for my monthly expenses there's almost nothing but change left."
"Well, you'll definitely need to have a budget. Cut down on some not-too-important expenses and take out your time at the spa for instance so you can save that money up. Then when you've successfully saved for some time, you use that spa session as a treat to celebrate your little win."
Louisa was frowning now and mumbling to herself like she did each time she wasn't so pleased with an opinion.
"So what do you say huh? Think you can hop on the emergency funds idea?"
"I'll see how next month goes" was her reply. Donald chuckled again, it was like that for him as well but the minute he started and saw how the emergency funds saved the day countlessly, he became relentless.
