My Parents Stole My Kidney,Now the Hospital CEO Couple Is Going to PrisonChapter 1

My parents always told me we were poor. If I ever got sick, I'd just have to wait to die.

So when I was diagnosed with kidney failure, I didn't dare tell them I wanted treatment.

I rented a dingy basement room by myself. Deliveries by day. Dialysis by night.

Three years passed like that—until the hospital called to say they'd finally found a kidney match for me.

I gathered my courage and the three hundred thousand dollars I'd scraped together, ready to tell my parents about my illness and the surgery.

But outside their run-down apartment complex, I watched them climb into a luxury car and head straight to the hospital where I'd been getting treatment.

The whole way there, doctors addressed them with deference. Director Swanson. Director James.

My mind went blank. I followed like a corpse on strings.

Outside a lavish office, I heard their voices—familiar, yet cold as strangers.

"Push Penelope Swanson's surgery back. Give the kidney to that girl from the countryside."

"We both work at this hospital. We have to avoid any appearance of favoritism..."

1.

"Director Swanson, Director James—are you really giving the kidney to someone else?"

"Penelope has been waiting for three years."

"These three years with kidney failure... she's suffered so much..."

"I've watched her waste away from over a hundred and thirty pounds to barely seventy. I'm afraid she won't hold on much longer!"

Dr. Derek Chavez's voice cracked with disbelief and heartbreak.

I gripped the bank card in my hand so hard the edges bit into my palm. My ears rang. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"Dr. Chavez, we're Penelope's parents. We're also doctors. You think we don't understand how dangerous kidney failure is?"

"Just do as we say."

"Call Penelope and tell her the hospital made a clerical error. Tell her to wait a little longer."

My father's voice drifted out—calm, tinged with impatience.

I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper.

So this is it.

The parents who raised me crying poverty were the hospital's director and department head all along.

My head buzzed. I reached for the door handle—

But then I heard my mother's voice. Haughty. Detached.

"Dr. Chavez, Penelope isn't like her sister—the one who jumped off that building."