Moonface Read Online Free Page A

know, but we’re going to try our best.” He tried to make himself sound clear, but to me his words just sounded vague and cruel.
    So this was the point at which my higher education went from learning about Western civilization, philosophical anthropology, and basic bong hit methodology to taking a crash course in applicable premed. Now, I sat up in hospital beds and people pointed to anatomical diagrams of the kidneys, and showed me how they regulated blood pressure, how they filtered the waste from the body. It was the beginning of my father finally revealing to us the world of medicine that he had kept from us for so long, thinking that we simply weren’t interested. When I had specific questions, he explained my disease in a language that was logical and plain. Curling his forefinger into his thumb to show me how filters in the kidney worked, he said, “These filters in your kidney are usually very small, but yours are big for some reason. They’re letting all the wrong things in and out of your body, and that’s a problem.”
    Prior to this, I was not dependent on numbers, measurements, and ratings, even though I had gone through twelve years of schooling. But now I began watching as the nurses took my blood pressure, and I learned to watch as the needle swept along the scale before hiccupping at 200 or 220. It was the first time I’d try to use my psychic powers to determine that number or to lower it, begging that the needle move far down on the scale before it began to hiccup and slow.
    To my surprise, different things came more easily, like getting my blood drawn. I had gotten used to the smell of the alcohol pad that they smeared across my arm, and that quick prick that followed. I watched as the blood spurted into the tube, and I watched until the tube was full. These, I learned, were minor details in the process. The moment when I really needed to sweat? Waiting to see the reaction on the doctor’s face when he came in to tell me the blood test result, about my creatinine level, the measurement for how well my kidney was functioning. And I was beginning to get used to his face cringing uncomfortably as he read the number: 2.5, 4.3, higher and higher every time, when I knew it should be less than 1.0. That 0.7 is normal.
    This was not the beginning of my mother praying, or wrapping rosary beads around her hand, then tucking them under her sleeve and trying to be subtle about it (she had been doing that for as long as I could remember), but it was the beginning of her going to church daily, waking up at 7:00 a.m., and kneeling before God for an hour before coming into the hospital to see me. Near my bed she’d say, “Oh, anak , if I could only take this thing from you and put it in me, I would. That’s what I pray for.”
    Over those weeks, my father’s face grew permanently worried, sinking slowly from the lines in his forehead to the skin under his chin. His smile, which he usually flashed with ease, was now a struggle for him.
    Buxom Marsha started calling me more frequently then, first with more stories and more assignments, but later to tell me that the boy in philosophy class whose attention I had recently acquired? Yeah, well, she was dating him now.
    I held the receiver and thought that this was what kidney disease can do to you. It can make clear the things you stand to lose.
    â€œTransplant,” the doctor said, when I finally asked him how we could make this all end. I traced back into my memory what I knew of this word: baboon hearts, organs in coolers on helicopters.
    The intern came in, her lab coat sagging with pocket-sized reference books. She held her hands against my hips and chest and asked, “Can I listen to your heart?”
    â€œSure,” I said.
    â€œYou’re a college student?” she asked. She wore braces and a ponytail and didn’t seem much older than I was. “Taking time off from your studies?”
    I