Daughter Near Death, Mother-in-Law Sends Money via Chatbot

At the payment window for my daughter's liver transplant, the doctor kept pressing me.

The full surgery fee has to be paid today. If we go past the window, the donated organ goes to another patient.

I nodded over and over, terrified of losing this one chance for my daughter to live.

We just sold the house. My mother collected the money for me and she's wiring it over right now!

A second later, my mother sent me the bank transfer receipt.

The moment I saw it, I was overjoyed. The weight that had been crushing my chest finally lifted.

I pushed the card through the window at once, but the nurse looked at me like I was an idiot.

"Sorry, ma'am. The system shows the balance on this card is zero."

The next second my phone lit up. A text from my mother.

"I already sent Abby's surgery money through the AI chatbot. Go check your account."

After my ex-husband heard our daughter was sick, he never showed his face again. This money from my mother selling the house was Abby's only hope.

The phone rang five times before she picked up, her voice tangled with the crackle of firecrackers.

"Your brother's getting married today, I'm run off my feet. I already transferred the money, so what are you calling for again?"

I forced my voice louder to cut through the firecrackers.

"Mom, you can't transfer money through the chatbot. You have to go to the bank!"

"What kind of nonsense are you talking? The chatbot told me the transfer went through!"

My mother's voice was even louder than mine, furious as she cursed.

"Your brother is getting married and you think I can just leave? You're picking a fight on purpose, aren't you?"

For as long as I could remember, anything to do with my brother was the single most important thing in the world to my mother.

When he was away at school, he'd mail his dirty clothes and reeking socks back every few days, and the moment my mother finished washing them she'd have a courier run them straight back to him.

My living money in college had to wait until my uncle happened to take a trip to New York so he could carry it over for me.

One semester of waiting each time. I worked part-time jobs until dawn just so I could eat a full meal.

Later my mother said, "You've managed to survive this long without the money, haven't you?"

And then she cut off my tuition and my living money for good.

I knew my parents had no obligation to put me through college, and I didn't qualify for hardship aid because both of them had steady incomes.

So I gritted my teeth and finished college on student loans and odd jobs.

But this time was different. This time it was my own money. It was my daughter's lifeline!

My voice shook with panic.

"Mom, I'm begging you, the chatbot can't transfer money. Just go to the bank!"

The nurse at the payment desk frowned.

"Transferring money through a chatbot? Is your whole family messing with me?"

My mother's full-throated voice carried down the line.

"You little wench, are you trying to swindle money out of me? And you hired an actor to help you con me?

"Besides, why can't the chatbot transfer money? Doesn't the receipt spell it out plain as day?"

I pulled up the receipt and rushed to explain.

"Mom, the payee account on here says 'your daughter's bank card' with no account number at all. A bank would never write 'wishing you and your daughter a closer and closer relationship'!"

"Aren't you my daughter? Why can't it say the relationship's getting closer? So they've got good customer service, is that a crime?"

The nurse at the payment desk waved me off.

"There are people waiting behind you. If you're not paying, step aside and go wait on your chatbot!"

I stamped my feet in desperation. It was only because my daughter had gotten so much worse that the doctor had made an exception and let her receive the transplant first.

Another couple whose child was waiting on a liver source wouldn't accept it. Several times they'd rushed over trying to take Abby's slot,

and now they were lined up right behind me with money in hand, ready to pay.

But Abby's eyes had gone yellow all the way to the whites, and no matter what I did she wouldn't wake.

The only time she'd been awake was last night, when she vomited three times, every time bright red blood.

The doctor said if she didn't get the transplant, she might not make it through tonight.

I dropped to my knees at the window with a hard thud, my knees slamming onto the cold tile with nothing to soften the blow.

"Please, just wait a little longer, I'm not stalling on purpose, it's honestly that the elderly woman at home doesn't know how to transfer money.

I'll teach her right now, please just wait, save my daughter!"

The doctor's grim face eased a little, and he let out a sigh.

"It's nine ten now. Nine thirty at the latest. If you can't do it by then, the people behind you come up."

I thanked him again and again, my tears falling to the floor as I bowed.

On the other end of the line, my mother interrogated me, righteous as ever.

"I just asked the chatbot again, and the chatbot said you already got the money and you're pretending you didn't so you can swindle another million out of me!"

I held up the phone, screaming until my voice tore.

"Mom, I really didn't get it, just go to the bank, go to the bank, is that so hard!"

"Or put my dad on the phone. No, get my brother to come to the phone!"

Then my mother let loose on me.

"On a happy day like this, you just have to bring bad luck down on your brother, don't you?"

"It's about to be my turn as the mother-in-law to drink the tea my new daughter-in-law serves me. I don't have time to fuss with you!"

The line went dead with a single click, and I sat there gripping my phone in disbelief, clutching it like it was the last lifeline holding my daughter up.

Praying for one more sound from the other end.

As long as my mother was still listening, I could walk her through an online transfer.

But there was nothing. Just silence, dead as a grave.

My parents were busy planning their son's wedding,

and they couldn't spare a single thought for the granddaughter dying in that hospital bed.

Not once since Alberta was admitted had either of them come to see her.

Alberta watched the grandmother in the next bed hold her little granddaughter every day,

telling her stories, warming her small hands,

covering her eyes and coaxing her gently through every needle.

There was a small ache of hurt in my daughter's voice. "Mommy, why doesn't Grandma come see me?"

She understood too much for her age. She knew her father and I were divorced, and she never once mentioned his side of the family,

and still I didn't know how to answer her.

Her next words wrung my heart like a fist closing on it.

"If Grandma came, you wouldn't have to work so hard, Mommy."

"Taking care of me all by yourself is too tiring. I'm too much trouble!"

I held her tighter. "Abby isn't trouble. Abby is my treasure!"

Because her grandmother didn't love me, my treasure got hated right along with me.

I'm the one who failed you.

Only the hospital in New York could do this surgery, so I'd carried my daughter onto an eight-hour high-speed train to get here.

I couldn't leave her bedside for a moment now, which was the only reason I'd begged my mother to sell the house back home and wire the money over.

It was the single thing my mother ever did for her own granddaughter,

and that one thing was exactly why Alberta was now left with nothing to do but wait to die.

"Will the guardian of Alberta Swanson please come to the third-floor resuscitation room immediately!"

"The patient's condition is critical. We have important medical matters to discuss with you!"

"Repeating one last time. Will the family of Alberta Swanson come to the resuscitation room at once!"

The moment I heard it, panic spread out through my arms and legs.

I stumbled toward the stairs, my legs too weak to run, half crawling by the time I reached the door of the resuscitation room.

The heavy door stood ajar, and inside the shrill alarms of the monitors kept bursting through the air.

"Push epinephrine! Keep up compressions, we still haven't got a rhythm back!"

Alberta's face was a waxen, ashen gray, her small thin body tangled in tubes,

her whole frame rising and falling with the doctor's movements like a broken rag doll.

"Are you Alberta Swanson's family? Sign this emergency resuscitation consent form!

The child went into sudden cardiac arrest. CPR carries a risk of broken ribs and internal organ injury..."

I didn't catch a single word the nurse said after that. I could only pick up the pen, murmuring it over and over.

"I consent, I consent. Just save my daughter, please, I'm begging you, save her!"

After several endless minutes, the flat line on the monitor finally began to move.

The doctor's voice grew heavier.

"We've brought her back for now, but without a new liver she could go into shock at any moment!"

"So... I need you to confirm right now. Are we doing this transplant or not!"

My eyes stayed fixed on my unconscious daughter, tears rolling down without stop.

"Do it, we're doing it! I'll call right now! Right now!"

Just then my phone rang in my hand, and I saw the caller ID and answered without a second's hesitation.

My mother's voice came, unhurried:

"Alison, you still haven't gotten the money?"

"No, Mom. Download an online banking app right now and"

Before I could finish, she cut me off.

"Should I just transfer it again? Without the chatbot this time?"

I hadn't expected her to change her tune so suddenly, and I jumped on it:

"Yes, yes, no chatbot. Use online banking, and I'll walk you through it!"

"So the chatbot was right after all!"

On the other end, a cold laugh escaped me.

"What did the chatbot say?"

"It said the more a kid claims they didn't get the money, the more sure it is they got it! And that if she won't let you use the chatbot, she's trying to swindle the family's money straight out!"

The smugness in her voice was impossible to hide.

"Good thing I'm clever, checking with the chatbot to protect myself! Your little tricks might work on other people, but you think you can fool me?"

Every drop of blood in me jammed up in my throat, and I couldn't get out a single word.

A while back my brother wanted a few thousand for a game skin, and told her it was for tutoring. She transferred it without a second thought.

For the SATs I needed fifty-five dollars for a medical check, and she called me a liar who couldn't even bother making up a story.

"The government's going to charge you for the SATs? Who knows what you really want the money for."

Growing up, any time I asked for money,

she'd stop the classmates walking home with me and grill them three or four times, then bike over to school to confirm it with my teachers.

Over time, the other kids started calling me "the liar,"

and teachers sat me down to talk about how hard parents work for their money and how I shouldn't waste it.

I cried and asked her what it would take for her to believe me, and all she gave me was, cold as ice:

"You know better than anyone what you want the money for!"

Of course I knew. I wanted that money to save my daughter's life!

"Mom, if you really transferred it to me, the balance in your account would have gone down!"

"If you don't believe me, go check right now! See how much is left in your account!"

She gave a cold snort, and after half a minute, answered:

"I already checked. The balance is zero!"

"See, I told you the chatbot didn't lie to me. What do you have to say now?"

Panic swam black across my eyes. "How can it be zero? That's impossible. Where did you check?"

"The payment app, obviously!"

"Mom, open the screen that shows your balance, hold down the power button and the volume-up button, take a screenshot, and send me the picture!"

About a minute later, the screenshot from her came through, and the balance on it really was zero?!

I zoomed in on the screenshot with shaking fingers, over and over, closing it by accident a few times and opening it again.

Available balance: 0.00.

The card number was right. The time was right. There was no AI-generated watermark in the corner.

What on earth was going on?

Could the chatbot really transfer money?

My head spun. I grabbed the arm of a stranger walking past.

"Can you use the chatbot and try sending me one dollar?"

The person stared at me.

"Are you sick? Why would I send you money? And since when can a chatbot transfer money?"

I opened the chatbot app.

"Then let me send you some, and you check whether it comes through, okay?"

The stranger shook my hand off and ran, cursing the whole way.

"God, do they keep the psych ward on this floor? What a piece of work, asking me to watch a chatbot move money."

The people nearby heard him shouting as he fled, and one by one their eyes shifted, wary, onto me.

The nurse who'd been in Abby's resuscitation had seen it all. She came over and took my hand, her face pained.

"I understand how you feel. If money's tight at home, you can borrow it. But the chatbot really cannot send you money."

Her words jolted me awake. I called my mother back at once, forcing my voice level.

"Mom, you may have been caught in a phone scam. I'm going to report it so the police can trace it."

"Report it? Your brother's getting married with all those people there and you want to call the police?"

"Yes. Reporting it is the only way to find out where that money went."

For the first time, my mother's voice held something like alarm, but what she said to me was:

"Don't panic. Bank transfers don't arrive right away. Just wait a little longer."

"Wait any longer and my daughter will be dead."

I screamed it, my throat raw.

"Oh, come on now, she can't die. What terrible luck that would be for your brother's wedding."

Every drop of blood in me caught fire at those words, but I knew this was no time to fight.

Just as I stood there, lost, the voice on the other end suddenly changed.

"Oh, Ali, you know what, I really did misread it. The money's still in the card."

My heart lurched. "Still there? Then why does it say the balance is zero?"

"Well, it's your brother's wedding day, so I thought I'd have a little fun, let some of the luck rub off on you."

"Mom!"

I cut her off sharply. "Is this something to joke about?"

She went quiet for two seconds, and then her voice cracked with tears.

"I know you think I'm useless, that you look down on your dad and me for being poor, for not being able to cover Abby's surgery.

But do you really think I don't worry about Abby? She's my granddaughter too."

Across the hall the other couple was still shouting, "Is your hospital running some crooked scheme? We have the money and you still won't let our child have the surgery!"

The woman's wailing and my mother's sobbing tangled together, and a ringing rose in my ears.

I fought to steady my voice.

"Mom, I'm not blaming you. Just send me the money now. One more second and Abby really won't make it."

"I don't know how to send it!"

I made myself lay out every step, clear and slow.

"Mom, first download the online banking app, then open it and"

My mother's voice cut across mine.

"Hold on, hold on, let me ask the chatbot how to do it."

"Don't ask the chatbot. Don't ask the chatbot. Just listen to me."

I screamed it, breaking, and the line went dead with the busy tone.

For a moment, the wailing couple, the nurses keeping order, the frowning doctor explaining

eight pairs of eyes turned to me all at once.

In the hallway that had gone suddenly still, all you could hear was the machines beeping.

My hand clamped onto the edge of the service desk to keep myself from going down.

Then I pulled out my phone and dialed the police.

"Hello, is this 911? I want to report a crime. I've been scammed out of a million dollars."