Chapter 3
After working the night shift, I checked my phone before dawn and saw seven missed calls.
They were all from my aunt, Belle Taylor.
I called her back, and there was a three-second silence on the other end.
"Tessa, Nora is gone.
"She had a heart attack. She was rushed to the hospital, but it was too late.
"Fiona said... She already told you," Belle said.
But Fiona never told me.
I didn't find out until three days after Nora was buried.
Belle said Nora was still calling up the government office the day before she died.
When the heart attack hit, she was holding tight to a notebook with the government office's complaint number and Rhea's school ID written on it.
Later, I went back home once.
The lock on Nora's old house had been changed.
The neighbor told me Fiona had already sold it.
She got one million dollars.
The buyer paid in cash, split into three transfers.
That house was supposed to be mine, according to Nora's will.
I'd seen the will with my own eyes.
But Fiona always found an excuse to put it off.
I went to confront her.
She sat on the brand-new sofa, with no sign of guilt at all.
"That house was too old. Selling it was just right for Rhea," Fiona said.
"Nora left it to me," I replied.
"The will wasn't notarized, so it doesn't mean anything.
"Anyway, Gordon's the only one making money. Nora needs cash for all kinds of things at college. Just think of it as helping the family out," Fiona said.
She got one million dollars!
I was making just 900 dollars a month at the garment factory.
Even if I never spent a single cent, it'd take me more than 90 years to save up that much.
I didn't say a word, just turned and walked away.
But from that day on, I started saving every piece of evidence connected to my family.
Bank transfer records, call recordings, a photocopy of Nora's will, and pictures of the sales contract for the house.
I bought a red USB drive.
I hooked it onto my keychain and took it wherever I went.
At the garment factory, there was a woman called Ivy Bennett, in her forties. Her hands were marked with needlework scars.
She was the line supervisor. Noticing I never went out with the others after work and always stayed in my dorm reading, she was curious.
"Tessa, what are you reading?" she asked.
"Advanced math," I replied.
She was confused.
Later, she found a set of high school textbooks her kids had used and gave them to me. I didn't really need them, but I never forgot her kindness.
In my second year at the factory, I registered for the exam again.
By day, I worked hard. At night, I studied hard in the emergency stairwell at the end of the dorm hallway.
There was an emergency light there that stayed on around the clock.
The winter was terribly cold. I bundled myself up in two blankets and studied until dawn.
In summer, the mosquitoes swarmed. So I'd buy a cheap bottle of mosquito repellent and dab it on my ankles and wrists.
The day the exam results dropped, I was sitting on the steps outside the factory, staring at my phone.
I made it again.
I was admitted to the clinical expertise at Lumtown Medical College.
Not Emberwell Medical University, the one I'd dreamed of ten years ago. But this result was good enough.
Enough for me to start over.
That year, I was twenty years old.
All the money I had was about 10,000 dollars.
Tuition cost 2,400 dollars a year, dorm rent was 400 dollars, and I had to keep my monthly expenses under 260 dollars.
I crunched the numbers. If I worked part-time every winter and summer break, I'd barely hold on.
Just barely.
On the day I started college, Ivy treated me to a barbecue and handed me 600 dollars.
I wanted to refuse.
She shoved it into my hand and said, "Just take it. Think of it as a loan. You can pay me back when you make it as a professional doctor."
For five years in college, I never contacted my family.
No calls, no texts, never asked them for a single cent.
Fiona never contacted me either.
It was as if I had disappeared from their lives.
In my third year of college, I interned in the hematology department.
My mentor was Patrick Brown, deputy director at the Lumtown Institute of Hematology.
After reading my literature review, he asked me, "Are you interested in bone marrow transplants?"
"Absolutely," I nodded as I said.
It wasn't because of Rhea.
It was because, during my internship in the hematology department, I met a twelve-year-old girl with leukemia.
She'd lost all her hair, sitting on her hospital bed, folding paper cranes.
She said she wanted to fold a thousand cranes, believing that once she did, she'd finally get to go home.
However, she never made it to the thousandth crane.
I spent three years working with Patrick on bone marrow transplant research.
The year I finished my master's degree, my paper was published in the Hematology Journal.
I was listed as the top leader.
Patrick recommended me to the hematology department at The First Affiliated Hospital of Lumtown University.
It was the top hospital in Lumtown.
Ten years ago, Fiona kicked me out of my own home.
Ten years later, I came back on my own.