Her words haunted me. Desperate, I secretly set up the camera while Eric was undergoing a scan.
I hid the tiny device inside a hollowed-out book on the shelf facing his bed. My heart was pounding so hard I thought the nurses could hear it. When the orderlies wheeled Eric back in, he looked frail and pale, his breathing shallow.
“I’m so tired, baby,” he whispered, gripping my hand weakly. “I just need to sleep.”
“I know,” I said, kissing his forehead, fighting the urge to vomit. “I’m going to go to the cafeteria to get some coffee. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
I walked out, went straight to my car in the parking garage, and pulled up the live feed on my phone.
For the first two minutes, Eric lay perfectly still. I started to feel guilty. That woman was crazy, I thought. I’m spying on my dying husband.
But then, the door to his room clicked shut.
On the screen, Eric’s eyes snapped open. He didn’t look tired anymore. He sat up—completely unassisted—and stretched his arms over his head, cracking his neck. The “frail” man who couldn’t lift a spoon yesterday swung his legs over the side of the bed and walked briskly to his duffel bag in the closet.
He pulled out a burner phone and a bag of beef jerky.
He dialed a number, chewing aggressively. “Hey,” he said, his voice strong and clear. “Yeah, she just left. It’s working perfectly. The doctor is an idiot, he thinks the test results are degraded, but he’s buying the symptoms because I’m playing it up.”
I covered my mouth to scream.
“Yeah,” Eric laughed. “The GoFundMe is up to $80,000. Plus the early payout on the life insurance hits next week. Once the money is in the offshore account, ‘Eric’ dies, and we meet in Mexico. Just be patient, babe.”
My world shattered. There was no cancer. There was no tragedy. Just a scam. He was faking the symptoms—likely taking something to make himself vomit or look pale—to steal money from friends, family, and me, to run away with someone else.
I didn’t go back to the room. I went to the police station.
The Aftermath
Three hours later, I walked back into the hospital room, but this time, I wasn’t alone. Two officers followed me in.
Eric was back in bed, putting on his “dying” act. He gasped when he saw the police. “Honey? What’s going on?”
“The performance is over, Eric,” I said, holding up my phone. “I saw everything. The jerky. The phone call. Mexico.”
His face went from pale to beet red in a second. He tried to stammer an excuse, but the officers were already moving in. They found the burner phone under his mattress. It contained texts detailing the entire plan with his mistress.
As they handcuffed him and led him away—miraculously walking just fine now—I saw a familiar figure standing by the nurses’ station.
It was the stranger.
I walked over to her, tears streaming down my face. “You saved me. Who are you?”
She gave me a sad smile. “My name is Sarah. Five years ago, Eric did the exact same thing to me. He faked a brain tumor, drained my savings for ‘treatments,’ and vanished. I’ve been tracking him ever since. I promised myself I wouldn’t let him do it to another woman.”
Eric went to prison for fraud and grand larceny. I eventually rebuilt my life, but I never forgot Sarah. Sometimes, the hardest truth is better than the sweetest lie
