My Fake Cancer Exposed Their Greed

After winning 20 million dollars in the lottery, I immediately quit my job and head to the hospital. Having worked as a programmer at a major company for over a decade, I've accumulated a host of health problems, such as hemorrhoids, cavities, chronic gastritis, cervical spondylosis, and more. I get treated for everything at one go, and the pain is so bad that I can barely even walk. My aunt, Jessica Davidson, happens to see me like that and spreads rumors about me having stage-4 cancer and barely hanging on in the ICU. My relatives all send me well-wishes on my social media accounts. I don't bother clarifying myself because I'm too distracted by the pain, and also, I'm too busy recovering. As it turns out, my own mother is the first one to visit me at the hospital with some documents—a waiver of my inheritance rights. She tells me, "You need to transfer that house you own to your younger brother before you die." Chapter 1 My name was Aiden Carroll, and I got lucky and won 20 million dollars in the lottery. As soon as the money arrived in my bank account, I quit my job as a programmer at a huge company and immediately made appointments at the hospital for the next day to receive treatment for all my ailments. When my aunt, Jessica Davidson, bumped into me at the hospital, I had only just finished receiving my cervical traction treatment and was struggling to get back to my hospital room as I held myself up against the wall. My face was sallow, my back was hunched over, and my hospital gown was as wrinkly as a rag. Meanwhile, Aunt Jessica held her little grandson's hand as she stood at the elevator door, staring at me with her eyes wide open. "Aiden? What are you doing here?" "Some minor surgeries," I replied through clenched teeth. She gave me a quick once-over, opened her mouth to ask me something, but thought better of it and kept quiet. I didn't have the strength nor energy to continue with the small talk with her either. It was only the third day after my hemorrhoid surgery, and speaking hurt as it tugged against my wounds. Aunt Jessica then quickly left with her grandson in tow. I didn't think much about it. That night, my phone nearly exploded with messages. Aunt Jessica had sent seven or eight messages in the huge relative group chat. "Aiden's in the General Hospital, and he looked so emaciated I nearly couldn't recognize him! I'm guessing he's having stage-four cancer. And his own mother didn't even know about it! What the hell?" I didn't respond to her messages. However, my relatives soon began posting about it on their social media accounts. Some of them sent me private messages to wish me better health, while some others just posted vague photos with a whole wall of text. One of them even posted, "God always calls home the most talented people first." My cousin, Larry Carroll, posted a black image with the words, "RIP, Aiden", with three "prayer hand" emojis behind it. I stared at the screen for a long time and didn't bother explaining. I had another cervical traction treatment scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, and I hadn't taken my stomach medicine yet. Yet, I'd already broken out in a cold sweat from the pain of changing my dressing after the hemorrhoid surgery. I really didn't have the strength or the time to reply to everyone's wishes and misunderstandings. The next morning, my mother, Jenny Davidson, came to visit me at the hospital. She brought a clear plastic bag with her with two oranges in it. I thought she came to check on my condition and take care of me. But as it turned out, she was here for another reason. She sat down next to my bed, placing the oranges on the bedside table, and pulled out a stack of papers that looked like a document. "Sign this, Aiden." I took the papers from her and saw that it was a "Declaration of Waiver of Inheritance". The contents wrote, "I, Aiden Carroll, hereby voluntarily waive my right to inherit the property under my name and fully hand over the right to my younger brother, Austin Carroll." The document was printed in black and white. Only the date and signature fields were left blank. I gripped the pages in my hands until my knuckles turned white. "What's the meaning of this, Mom?" I asked. "Austin hasn't bought a house yet," she said, looking out the window instead of looking at me when she said that. "Remember to transfer your house to him before you die." Before I died? Why did she say those three words so casually as though she were just talking about the weather? "I'm not dead yet, Mom." "I know," she said, finally turning to look at me. "But your Aunt Jessica already said that you just came out of the ICU. Why did you hide it from me, Aiden?" "I never went into the ICU." "Stop acting tough. Jessica already told me everything." I looked at Mom's face. There were tears in her eyes, but most importantly, I could sense the urgency in them. However, she wasn't anxious about my health. She was anxious about my house. "I bought this house with my own money. I took out a ten-year loan for this." "You brother can't marry until he owns a house." "What does that have anything to do with me?" I shot back. She was stunned for a moment. Then, the rims of her eyes turned red. "Aiden, he's going to be the only son I have left if you die." I gripped the document in my hand so hard that it left creases in the paper. Someone pushed a wheelchair past the window, and a nurse called out in the corridor that it was time for my medication. There was a long silence inside my hospital room. "I'll think about it," I said, putting the document on my bedside table without signing it. Mom then launched into a long grandmother story, telling me about how Austin was a very kind and obedient kid when growing up, how he and I were brothers, and how she was just being fair to the both of us by making this decision. I listened to every word she said. I also recorded all of it. When she finally left, she brought the two oranges away with her, saying that she forgot to turn off the stove at home. I then turned to look at the document on my bedside table and fell into deep thought. I'd gone to a good college in the big city when I was 18 years old, started working as a programmer at a huge company when I was 22 years old, and paid the down payment for the house when I was 26 years old. I'd paid 3,000 dollars a month every month for the next ten years, but now, Mom casually just told me to give everything to Austin instead. I grabbed my phone and took a photo of the document. Then, I went into my photo gallery and set up a new folder especially for the photo. I wrote in the footnotes, "My mother, Jenny Davidson, brought a notarized declaration of waiver of inheritance and requested for the property to be transferred to Austin Carroll." I locked my phone screen and then stared at the IV drip bag above me. The transparent tube dripped slowly like a countdown. News about my "stage-four cancer" had only been circulating for a day, and the first person to visit me, my own mother, was already behaving like this. I could kind of guess the people who would be coming to visit me tomorrow. I carefully folded the stack of papers and put them under my pillow for safekeeping. I never signed it. I was just waiting for the next person to show up. Chapter 2 Early the next morning, the nurse had only just removed the IV from the back of my hand when another of my cousins, Lana Carroll, arrived. She brought a carton of milk with her. I glanced at the expiration date and saw that it was expiring in just eight days. "How are you feeling, Aiden?" she asked. "Not too bad," I replied. She placed the milk on my bedside table, sat down, and exchanged a few pleasantries with me. She talked about the weather, her son's temper, and the hospital elevators being far too slow. Then, she changed the subject. "Aiden, there's something I need to discuss with you." Finally, she was getting to the main point of her visit today. "About the 180 thousand dollars you lent to Larry…" Larry was her younger brother, also the one who posted that RIP story about me yesterday. "What about him?" I asked. "He's having quite a tough time right now. He just welcomed his second child to the family, and his mortgage is a huge burden on his shoulders too. "But looking at your situation now…" She hesitated for a while. "It's not like you have anywhere else to spend your money anyway, right? Maybe you should just forget about the debt." I looked at her face. "Did he ask you to tell me this? Or are you the one speaking on his behalf?" "It doesn't make a difference, does it?" she asked with a smile. "You're going to…" She didn't finish her sentence, but she had already made herself very clear. She was trying to say that there was no point for me to be so stubborn about the money since I was going to die anyway. I took out my phone and showed her a photo. It was an IOU slip that Larry had written in his own writing, and he'd also signed the paper and stamped his thumbprint on it to show his sincerity back then. It was all recorded down in black and white. "I, Larry Carroll, have borrowed 180 thousand dollars from Aiden Carroll on this date, and it is to be repaid in full within the next five years." It was already the seventh year since the date on the IOU slip, and yet, I still never saw a single cent from him. The smile froze on Lana's face. "Lana, I might have been diligent in asking him for my money back, but what is owed is still there." She got to her feet, her mouth twitching as she said, "Uh… I suddenly have something that I need to take care of…" Then, she left the room, taking the carton of milk with her. I opened my photo gallery and added a footnote to the photo of the milk. "Lana Carroll tried to renege on Larry Carroll's 180-thousand-dollar debt on his behalf. Her reason was that I didn't have anywhere else to spend my money anyway. She brought a carton of near-expiry milk for me but took it back with her when she left." I'd only just finished typing out my notes when my phone rang. It was a call from my uncle, James Davidson. "Aiden? I heard that you were hospitalized." "Yeah." He didn't ask me what I was sick with. He also didn't ask if I was hurting anywhere. Instead, he asked, "About your Tesla… Has the loan been completely paid off?" "I bought it with cash." There were a few seconds of silence on the other end of the phone. Then, he said, "That's good to hear. I'd have thought of a way to help you if the loans hadn't been paid off yet. I won't let the bank take it away." I didn't speak and waited for him to continue. And just as I expected, he spoke again after a couple of seconds, saying, "By the way, Colin is graduating next year, and he's going to need a car to go to work after that. Since you're not going to… Your car…" Colin Davidson was his son and another one of my cousins. Uncle James, too, was speaking to me using the same phrasing Lana used on me just moments earlier. "The nurse is here, Uncle James. We'll talk later." I then hung up on him, making sure to save the recording and even took a screenshot of the call log to save in my photo album. I wrote in the footnotes, "Uncle James inquired about my Tesla car loan and implied that I should leave the car for Colin." Later that afternoon, Aunt Jessica arrived. She brought with her a thermos of chicken noodle soup that she made herself. She opened the lid, and the entire room was filled with the delicious aroma at once. However, she didn't give it to me. Instead, she took out her phone and put it on my bedside table with the screen side up. I glanced at the phone and saw that she was recording our conversation. "I'm going to have to say some upsetting things to you, Aiden." "Go ahead, Aunt Jessica." "With your condition like this, you're going to have to make earlier arrangements for your funeral and asset divisions," she said in a low voice. "And that includes the stuff in your home office, the laptops and computers at home, and the something-coins—" "Bitcoins?" "Yes, Bitcoins. Those things that your parents and the rest of the villagers will never understand," Aunt Jessica said. "I'll help you settle them by liquidating them and selling them off. I'll then keep the money for you, and Austin can take them when he needs them later." After saying that, she patted me on the back of my hand, as though she were the one telling me about making her posthumous arrangements. "I'll think about it, Aunt Jessica," I said. Her smile dropped. "Fine. You can think about it. I won't force you into anything." She left the chicken noodle soup for me. I took a photo of her soup and wrote down in my footnotes once again. "Aunt Jessica visited me with chicken noodle soup and recorded our entire conversation. Offered to liquidate my tech items and Bitcoins. The reason given was to hold on to the money until Austin needed them." That night, I received a voice message from another aunt of mine, Sandy Carroll. I actually received three voice messages from her, and none of them were longer than five seconds each. There was only one thing she was concerned about. "Aiden, Ivan is going to college next year, and he's studying computer science. "Since you won't be using your top-of-the-line Alienware laptop at the hospital, I'll be taking it for him instead. "I'll drop by tomorrow to pick it up." Ivan Sterling was her son. And she'd said it so matter-of-factly as though she were notifying me about her taking my laptop instead of asking me about it. I replied, "We'll see." I then unlocked my phone, went into the photo gallery, and saved the screenshot of the voice message tran into it. There were four new photos and four new footnotes today—the 180 thousand dollars, the Tesla, the Bitcoins, and the Alienware laptop. Everyone who came was coveting my things and had already arranged to take them all away from me. They were even more "thoughtful" than I could ever have thought for myself. My phone lit up with a new text message once again. This time, it was from Ruth Snider, another one of my aunts. "Aiden? I'll be coming to visit you at the hospital tomorrow. There's something I need to discuss with you." I replied, "Okay." It seemed like tomorrow was going to be another day full of new performances again. Chapter 3 The next morning, Austin came to visit me at the hospital first. He wore a Patagonia down jacket, the one I bought for him last year while it was on sale, and sat down next to my bed. The first thing he said was, "Aiden, since you're not going to be using your Tesla anymore, you can consider transferring the ownership to me first. I need it to go to work." "Who told you to come here?" I asked. "Mom did. She said it's a waste to just let the car sit there anyway." He then scrolled on his phone for a while afterward before asking me, "By the way, is your job position available now? I just connected with your HR manager on LinkedIn. Help me put in a good word on my behalf." "What job position?" "Your backend architecture job. You're not going back to work anymore, are you?" I didn't say anything and just stared at him for a long time. He continued scrolling on his phone again as he said nonchalantly, "Also, you're not using your stock account anymore, so just send me your password later. I'll help you take care of it." I lifted my phone and took a photo of him. Then, I added a footnote that said, "Austin Carroll. Came to visit me and demanded my Tesla, a job referral, and my stock account password. Mom told him to come." Austin didn't even stick around for more than ten minutes. He left soon after, citing that he was meeting up with a friend for lunch. Sometime in the afternoon, Aunt Ruth arrived at my room. She brought a bag of apples with her, and I saw that she hadn't snipped off the "on sale" tag that was still attached to it. She set down the apples by my bedside and made small chats for about 15 minutes. Finally, she got to the point. "Aiden, Theodore wants to start a business of his own, but he needs another 100 thousand dollars as capital. Since you're in this condition now… Can you lend him some of your money?" I didn't answer her. It was bad enough that they spread rumors about me having stage-four cancer and yet never asked me if I had enough money for my treatment. And now, she was trying to borrow money from me instead because she thought she wouldn't need to return it after I was "gone". "It's not that I'm trying to make it sound bad," Aunt Ruth said, explaining herself. "But you probably won't be able to recover from stage-four cancer. You should use the remaining time you still have on earth to help out your relatives while you still can." I pushed the apples back toward her. "I need to rest now, Aunt Ruth." She was stunned for a moment. Then, she got to her feet and left without the apples. I snapped a photo of the apples and made another footnote. "Aunt Ruth visited me with apples that were on sale. She told me that I wouldn't recover and should help out my relatives before I died. But she tried to cheat me out of 100 thousand dollars." There were no more new guests after that until night. I flipped through my photo gallery and footnotes. It had only been three days, but I'd already amassed seven photos and screenshots. At 8:00 pm that night, the door opened again. I thought it was another one of my relatives trying to covet some other thing of mine, but to my surprise, I saw Brenda Chavez standing there instead. She was my first love and also my ex-girlfriend. We'd broken up in our final year of college over a bowl of spicy crawfish boil. I hadn't seen her in more than a decade, and she'd gotten a lot slimmer. Her eyes were also red and puffy. She entered my room with a thermal flask, a bag of fresh fruits, and another bag of stuff from the pharmacy. There were painkillers, protein powder, and other various supplements inside. "You… What are you doing here?" I asked in surprise. "I saw Lexie's Instagram story. She said you had stage-four cancer," Brenda replied, sitting down next to me and opening her thermal flask. A delicious smell wafted into the air at once. It was the warm, comforting aroma of my favorite beef stew. "I asked for the hospital and searched for you all day," she said. I stared at the stew in her hand and felt a lump in my throat. Wait. Did Brenda just say that Lexie Carroll, another one of my cousins, had posted about me on her Instagram stories? I suddenly remembered someone—Wanda Osbourne, my current girlfriend. I'd been hospitalized for three days, but she never called, never texted, and never even contacted me anywhere. I quickly took out my phone and texted her, "I've been hospitalized." However, I noticed that the message just wouldn't go through, and I correctly guessed that she'd blocked my number and all of my socials. I then hurriedly tapped into the home surveillance application on my phone and saw that the living room was empty, the dressing table was empty, and the closet doors were also left wide open. I watched the surveillance footage from a few days ago and saw that she'd moved out in the afternoon two days ago, bringing two men into the house to move her things out. Wanda left a note on the coffee table telling me that she was breaking up with me. She'd also taken the gold and my savings in the safe with her, citing them as her share of the breakup fee. I turned off my phone with trembling fingers. Brenda looked at me. "What's the matter?" "I'm fine." She handed the stew to me. "Eat this." Then, she took out a bank card from her purse and stuffed it under my pillow. "What's that?" "300 thousand dollars," she replied. "They're from my savings and my mom's budget for my future wedding gift. I know it's not much, but maybe it's good for one or two sessions of chemotherapy?" I looked at her card, her stew, and then her. My own mother had brought a document to waive me from my own assets. Lana tried to get me to write off 180 thousand dollars. Uncle James wanted my Tesla. Aunt Jessica wanted my Bitcoins. Aunt Sandy wanted my Alienware laptop. Aunt Ruth wanted to borrow 100 thousand dollars. Austin wanted my house, my car, my job, and my stocks. Wanda took my gold and savings and ran off. And then, Brenda, my ex-girlfriend whom I hadn't seen in over ten years, traveled two hours by bus to visit me in her discounted TJ Maxx shirt and gave me 300 thousand dollars in a bank card stuffed under my pillow, saying they were her and her mom's savings. "Brenda." "Yeah?" I took out my phone, tapped into my bank account, and showed her my screen that displayed, "Balance: 20,000,000.00 dollars." She dropped the spoon to the floor. "You—" "I don't have cancer. I just hit the jackpot. 20 million dollars," I explained. "But I never told anyone about it. The show's only just begun." Chapter 4 Brenda's mouth hung open, and her eyes turned red. I continued explaining, "I was only hospitalized for fixing my ailments over the years. It's just hemorrhoids, cavities, chronic gastritis, and cervical spondylosis. I'd accumulated them all over the decade I spent working at that huge programming company. "My Aunt Jessica saw me trailing along the corridor and thought that I had terminal cancer. I didn't explain myself to her." "Aiden, you…" She leaned over the bed and burst into tears. "I thought you were going to die!" She cried for a while, then looked up and dried her tears from her face. "It's good that you're still doing good. Then, I'll be leaving now. Please stay healthy and well." She got to her feet and grabbed her bag. However, I took her hand and said, "Don't go. I… My waist still hurts, and my legs are still shaky. And I still need to keep changing out my hemorrhoid dressing…" She turned to look at me. "What are you trying to say?" "Stay… Even if it's just for the sake of keeping the act going until the end." Brenda held on to her bag strap and stood there, staring at me. Then, she sat down, picked up the thermal flask, and put it in my hands. "Finish the stew first." I held it up. The stew was still warm and hot, and it warmed me up very nicely on the inside. I showed Brenda the photos and my annotations on them in my photo gallery. She cried again and held my hand tightly. … Early the next morning, Mom came to visit me again. This time, she spoke to me in an even softer tone than before. "Aiden, you're not going to hold out much longer… You'd better hurry up and settle what needs to be settled while you're still awake now." "What are you talking about?" She then produced a thick stack of documents from her bag. They included my identification documents, my property deed title, and several signed transfer agreements. "Transfer your house in the city and your car to Austin first. I'll handle all the paperwork." I looked at the stack of documents. The property title was something that I'd only managed to get after saving up for over a decade working at the huge programming company. And the car had been paid for in full. I'd just bought it last year. "Mom, I told you that I'm fine," I said. She didn't respond to that. Instead, she pointed at the signature line on one of the documents and said, "Sign here. You don't need to bother about anything else." "I paid for it with my hard-earned money." "You're not going to use it anyway." The room went silent, and the tension grew. The birds outside my window chirped twice before falling silent. I snapped a photo of the documents. This was the eighth photo that I was adding a footnote to. "Mom brought a stack of documents and my identification papers and told me to transfer my house and car to Austin. She told me to hurry up with the signing and she'll take care of the rest of the paperwork." I'd only just finished saving the note when I heard someone else at the door. It was Samson Moreno, my best friend since childhood. When Mom saw that he was here, she left the papers behind and walked out of the room. Samson hadn't come empty-handed. He brought two bottles of beer with him and set them down on the bedside table. "Here, Aiden. I got you a drink." "I can't drink now." Samson still opened his bottle and finished half of it before speaking again. "I'm getting married next month." "Congratulations," I said. "Who's the lucky bride?" "Someone from work. You wouldn't know her," he said, pacing around the room with his beer before speaking again. "Remember our bet back then? "We said that whoever got married first would receive a wedding cash gift of 10,000 dollars from the other. You remember it, don't you?" Of course I did. We'd made that bet right after high school, which was nearly 15 years ago. "It's not that I'm trying to rush you or anything," Samson said, looking at me. "It's just that… with your condition like this… I don't think you'd be able to hold out until my wedding day." He said he was afraid that I wouldn't be able to hold out until his wedding day. But it wasn't that he was worried I wouldn't be able to attend. He was just worried that I'd die before I gave him the 10,000 dollars. "Sure." "Really?" he exclaimed in joy. "Then, don't forget to transfer it to me soon." He was still a little taken aback. He didn't think that I would agree to it that easily. Then, he finished the beer before leaving. I snapped a photo of his empty beer bottles and wrote the ninth footnote in my photo gallery. "Best buddy Samson Morena brought two bottles of beer to visit me and finished them all. He came to make sure that I'd fulfill our high-school bet of giving him 10,000 dollars for his wedding. The reason is that he's afraid I won't survive until his wedding." Before I'd thrown the beer bottles away, Aunt Jessica came to visit me again. She still spoke to me as though she were concerned about me. "Aiden, I've been so worried about you these two days that I could barely sleep a wink. But Eugene has a friend who owns a company in the medical field, and he knows a lot of experts there," she said, referring to her son, Eugene Woods. "I've arranged for one of the experts to come over to talk to you tomorrow." I stared at her for a few long minutes. Was she going to find someone to treat me on my behalf? Puzzled, I nodded in response.