Chapter 149

So, as I mentioned, there are good days and there are bad days. However, that gives off the impression that the two come back and forth as equal forces — a common misconception. For a bad day to happen, I just have to be reminded of my mom, or anything related to her. For a good day to happen, I must be super busy and occupied so that I can’t think about anything except my work or whatever I’m working on. This unfortunately also means that I usually only have a good day when I’m extremely exhausted — a state where a bad day can suddenly and violently rush in to take over. 

It was now a few months into the new year of 2024, and I guess you could say we had done all the things we could have done. The lawyers and real estate agents had done their duty and moved the money to the appropriate places. The accountants were working to make sure the money would help my mom with her finances and taxes all the way through. There was nothing left to do.

My mom lost the house but still had two condos. One was the large one my fiancée and I were living in, and the other was now occupied by my mom. The move was painful and required throwing away a LOT of things, but in the end, it worked out. As March came to a close, I finished my taxes early and looked ahead to the next big thing: my wedding.

This was perfect. Though my fiancée and I weren’t doing much planning ourselves — my mother-in-law was handling almost everything — there was just enough to occupy my time. Like I said, if I stay busy, I don’t get angry. So things were okay. I was caught in a somewhat busy and therefore somewhat distracted state. But that was, as I mentioned, very fragile.

Then, around the week of April 13th, 2024, I felt something coming. This was the anniversary of the transaction that had ruined my family, after all. And because of this, I wondered if I had triggered a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. In any case, I had a bad day.

The day started off pretty amazing. It was a Wednesday like any other, and I had the next few days off — essentially a Friday for me. I got into work and the first thing I heard was that some of the referrals I’d sent through had gone through. A great start.

During lunch, I had an emergency patient with inflammation in her brain. It was papilledema — not a good condition, though thankfully rare. More thankfully, I tend to overprepare myself in the clinic.

I keep a drive with contact information for all the hospitals and emergency clinics nearby. As I contacted them, I had my staff write out detailed instructions for my patient to get to the hospital and the specific department. Then, as a last precaution, I gave my patient a letter explaining their condition, just in case some information got lost in the referral process. A quick hour later, my patient was seen, and three hours after that, they were in surgery. A huge sigh of relief. This was a win — though it set me behind for the rest of the day. 

But then, my day shifted.

From my workplace in the mall to the elevator that takes me down to the parking garage is about a one-minute walk. That’s it — 50 or 60 seconds. When I finished my day, I walked my route to the elevators but was intercepted during the short period by a phone call.

It was from Canada Life Insurance — a well-known policy vendor in Canada. They’d even reached out to me before, back when I was in school, about disability insurance for my profession. So I knew they were credible.

When I picked up, however, they spoke Mandarin.

Oh boy. Here we go.

After greeting me in Mandarin, they began confirming my identity. Then they wanted to tell me more.

I replied, “Okay?”

They responded in Mandarin, “Oh, you are there. Yes, hello, can we speak in Mandarin please?”

“No. Can you speak English?”

“Sorry, my English is not very good. Can we please speak in Mandarin?”

“Go to hell. I hope you die alone and horribly.”

click

Call History → Recent Calls → Number Blocked.

Day ruined.

They were scammers. That was obvious. The information they had about me was surface-level at best and honestly not very credible. On top of that, they only spoke Chinese. If you only speak Chinese but work out of a Canada Life Insurance broker in Canada, your potential client base is extremely limited. This is why, if you work in Canada, you should learn English.

These were all obvious facts, but I also knew that since my reality had shattered, this was nothing to scoff at. Blocking the number was all I could do. Once again, the new reality hit me — abruptly and without mercy — pulling me out of the fragile comfort of ignoring it all. I was reminded, sharply, that the people who took money from my family were still out there, still operating.

I hated this. My mind went full red, imagining all the horrible things I wished would happen to the scammers. But what could I really do? Nothing. All I could do was stare at my phone, blankly, and feel angry at the world. That was it.

Well… technically, not it. I still had to call my mom — something I hated doing at this point — to warn her about scams impersonating Canada Life. The entire conversation pissed me off: how stupid the scam was, and yet how, after everything that had happened, I still had to take it seriously and call my mom about it. In essence, the day was ruined all over again.

I have never hated my family’s ability to be fluent in Mandarin more than I did at that moment. I hated that speaking Mandarin meant my mom could be targeted by scammers in Mandarin. I used to believe that more capability — more ways to communicate — was always good. But now, I saw the opposite. More information could be bad. The internet had already taught me that. Now, I saw that information and communication in general could be dangerous.

It was a horrible thought. If there was ever a moment in my life when I felt ashamed of the colour of my skin, it was then. I hated the voice on the other end of the phone, and I hated that he spoke the same language I did. I hated everything about the idea of stealing money as a means to get by. What kind of degenerate behaviour is this? 

I was so angry I couldn’t express it, nor contain it. What do you do when you feel an injustice in the world but have no way of releasing the tension it creates? I’d been angry at myself before — for doing poorly in school, for academic failures — but this was different. This was a crime, in real life, where the criminals got away.

What do you do when you are entirely powerless to change anything?