The Caregiver Who Poisoned My Mother's Recovery

I took a cab straight home, and the moment I walked in I slapped the lab report down on the dining table. "Aunt Loretta, look at it yourself."

"The doctor said if she keeps eating vegetarian, my mom's incision won't heal."

"From now on, you don't get to touch what my mom eats."

She picked up the report, glanced at it, and instead of panicking, she actually smiled. "This is a healing reaction."

"The toxins in your mother's body are being flushed out. It's normal for the numbers to drop a little."

"Once her karma has mostly cleared, they'll naturally go back up."

She had me laughing out of sheer anger. "What are you even talking about!"

"These are medical lab results. What healing reaction!"

Her tone was flat with certainty. "Western medicine's numbers are all lies."

"Real health is earned by building up good deeds, not measured on a slip of paper."

Watching her, so completely impossible to reach, I just felt drained.

Right then I remembered the two thousand dollars in emergency cash I kept in the nightstand drawer.

I'd still seen it that morning, but when I went for my wallet just now, the drawer was empty.

I asked, "The two thousand dollars in my drawer, have you seen it?"

Something unnatural flickered across her face, then she steadied just as fast, frowning and shaking her head. "No, I haven't!"

"Money's just a worldly thing anyway. Maybe you set it down and forgot. Just look around."

"Gloria, you can't go accusing people for no reason. That's a sin of the tongue."

"I've been in your home all this time and haven't asked for a cent in wages. Would I really take your money?"

She said it so openly, and I had no proof, so I could only push the doubt down.

But what finally made me stop holding back and turn on her completely was that box of targeted medication.

The imported targeted medication I'd had someone bring back from overseas cost twenty thousand dollars a box, and there were only two boxes, my mom's lifeline for the next three months.

The day it arrived, I made a point of putting it in the very back of the nightstand drawer in the bedroom, and I told my mom about it too.

I guarded against everything, but I never guarded against Aunt Loretta simply taking it out and throwing it away.

That day I came home from work, and the second I opened the door I knew something was wrong.

The living room was dead quiet. My mom was sitting on the couch, her face awful.

Before I could even ask, my mom said, her voice trembling, "Gloria, your Aunt Loretta took that box of targeted medication and went out."

"She said she was taking it to the temple to have it blessed, so the medicine would carry the Buddha's power and work better when she takes it. I couldn't stop her."

My heart lurched.

Aunt Loretta probably didn't even know which way a temple door faced. How could she possibly be getting anything blessed!

The first place I thought of was the riverbank.

She had "releasing animals for merit" on her lips every single day, went to the river every week to "release" something, and always said creatures of the water were the most spiritual of all.

I grabbed my keys and rushed out, and when I got to the riverbank, I saw a figure in a gray cloth jacket standing by the railing.

She was holding a white medicine box, tearing the blister packs open one strip at a time and dropping them into the river.

"Amen. May these pills be given to the creatures of the water, to clear my sister's karma and add to her blessings and long life..."