Free THIEF: Part 4 by Kimberly Malone

Chapter One
     
                  “Kidney failure.”
                  Dr. Brody nods as I repeat his words.I know what they mean, and I’ve heard him say them at least ten times now, describing my diagnosis.But somehow, they still don’t make sense.
                  “But I’m healthy,” I sputter, as though this illness is a sentence, and I can talk my way out of the whole thing with good behavior.“I eat right, exercise...I haven’t been sick or anything.”
                  “Renal failure is a tricky thing,” he says, a little too casually.Like he’s telling me I forgot to change the oil in my car or something.“People can lose up to 90% of their kidney function without a single symptom.But when it finally makes itself known…it hits big.”He flips through a sheaf of papers.“Your blood work doesn’t point to anything like lupus or HIV…have you ever used drugs?”
                  I glance briefly at Alex, biting his thumbnail in the chair next to my bed, then back at Dr. Brody.“Define ‘drugs.’”
                  He sighs, like he’s half-annoyed, half-amused; I know I’m not in a position to be a smart ass, but it’s all I can think to do.This feels surreal, like I’m dreaming all of it.Only the pain in my stomach, the rolling nausea hitting me every five minutes, and the swelling in my feet and hands—and, I suspect, my face, though I’ve yet to summon the courage to seek out a mirror—tell me this is definitely real.
                  “Drugs,” Dr. Brody says in a patronizing tone, “like intravenous street drugs.Heroin.”
                  “No,” I answer.I make my voice as fake and cheery as his.
                  He waits a minute, pen poised over his clipboard.“Care to tell me what you have done?Even if it was years ago.Just to try and get some answers here about what's causing this.”
                  “Pot,” I say flatly, staring at him, and fold my arms across my chest, the wires from my heart monitor snagging on my gown.“Ecstasy.Acid.Mushrooms.”For a moment, I flashback to my couch-surfing days: waking up mid-afternoon, when my friends got home from school and we’d crowd together in someone’s basement, taking turns with whatever we could get our hands on.We’d been the kind of kids addicted to the high itself, just always wanting to be fucked up, because we thought the world was too hard sober.I think of the time none of us could score anything, so we shared bottles of Robitussin from my friend Whitney’s medicine cabinet.It made us sleepy and silly, like doing shots of whiskey while getting a morphine drip.
                  When I moved into my own place and stopped everything but the weed, I’d kind of missed that life.Then it just made me sad, remembering how we used to be.How we thought lying around doing nothing, feeling nothing, was better than going out there and living.
                  Right now, though, part of me wants to go back there again.Get fucked up and feel nothing, just for a little bit.Just until I forget everything.
                  Dr. Brody clears his throat, snapping me back.“That it?”
                  “Cold medicine, on occasion.When I was a kid,” I add.“We, uh...my friends and I, we'd sniff glue and shit sometimes.”I feel myself blushing ashamed.“But just a couple times.”
                  “Might have played a role,” he says, as if I don't feel shitty enough.“Any family history of kidney failure?”
                  “No.”
                  “Parents still alive?”
                  “Mom died of a stroke this summer,” I answer, looking away.I try to sound like I don’t care, but it’s still not easy saying the words out loud.
                  Dr. Brody, to his credit, seems to soften.“Sorry to