"I wish you hadn’t gotten yourself into that situation"

By the spring of 2024, due to a combination of bad luck, bad decisions, Karen’s ongoing medical problems, her brother’s appendectomy, and her daughter’s bout with dengue, I was drowning in debt. Little did I know at this point that Karen’s family’s run of misfortune had barely begun. On June 18, Karen’s young nephew broke his arm and needed surgery. Again, the local public hospital was no help, so I felt I had no choice but to cover the cost.

By this point, I was beginning to wonder whether I were the best thing that had ever happened to Karen or the worst. How was it possible for one family to have so many ailments and accidents? Was I being scammed? I repeatedly went over the evidence, and I couldn’t see how all these events could have been fabricated. Karen had sent me videos from the clinic, X-rays, and pictures of her nephew in a hospital bed with a nurse inspecting his arm. The accounts she sent me were detailed and consistent with events unfolding over time. She told me about how the break in her nephew’s arm had happened and what the doctors were telling the family. She told me about her sister crying in the waiting room.

In other words, if these events were fabricated, I was dealing with an incredibly sophisticated group of sociopathic grifters—people who could probably make vastly more money selling drugs or even running a legitimate business, rather than trying to squeeze a few thousand dollars out of a struggling novelist. Not to mention that I had gotten to know Karen pretty well by this time, and I just didn’t see her participating in such a scam. Being 3,000 miles away, I had no way of knowing for certain, but the way I figured it, the worst thing that could happen to me was bankruptcy. The worst thing that could happen to Karen’s nephew was being crippled and in pain for the rest of his life.