Friendship Evaluated

My friend had unexpectedly gone away from the city on a business trip.  On his way to the airport, he called me on his cell phone. He forgot that he had left his house unlocked and asked me to lock it up for him.  I knew exactly where he hid his share of the gold that we salvaged from the ship wreck last summer.  He didn’t think I knew where it was.  It was under the sink in a soap detergent box.  All I had to do was make it look like somebody else had broken into the house and stole it, so that’s what I did.  I took the gold myself then buried it in my garden.  I broke a window and messed up his house to make it look like some thief did it.  Then a couple of days later I called him to say that somebody had broken into his house.  He would never have thought that I would do something like that.  He flew back home the next morning.  
The next day, I noticed my fingers started to turn a little yellow, but thought nothing of it.  Maybe it was from the pollen outside.  I washed my hands, but it still wouldn’t come off.  When I was at work the next day, my fingers weren’t as nimble as they usually were when I was typing on the computer.  Maybe it was arthritis or something.  
A few days later I couldn’t even move them.  The skin was turning hard and I had no feeling in them.  What was happening to me?  Then my hands started turning yellow.  I went to the doctor and he said he had never seen anything like it before.  It couldn’t be hepatitis, because the skin was so hard.  He didn’t know what to do.  He just sent me home and told me to call him if it got any worse.  
Then the next week I couldn’t even get out of bed.  The ambulance had to come and rush me off to the hospital.  My friend whom I stole the gold from came to visit me and told me not to worry.  Everything’s going to be fine; what he always says when something bad happens to me.  
So now here I am here lying in the hospital bed waiting to die and can’t even move.  All I can do is think.  Could it be that my body is turning into gold? Was that my punishment for what I did to my friend?   Before I die should I confess what I did to him?   All I know is that I am so sorry for what I did.  So I did confess to him.  At first he thought I was joking, but then later he started to believe me. Then he forgave me.  Isn’t that what true friends do?  After a while he excused himself, went back to my garden, and dug up his gold.    
Just then, I started to get some of the feeling back into my body.  My skin was beginning to turn back to normal.  That was the remedy.  For the gold that was back in its rightful hands, it was also leaving my body.  My betrayal was the punishment that I deserved. For the gold that I took from him was also turning me into gold.  Friendship is worth much more than the riches that we found together.