It was possible. I hadn’t seen Dr. Travetti for some time, not since the session where I told her to call Audrey’s family. My condition could’ve deteriorated in that time, whatever the hell my condition even was exactly. Things felt too okay while still being so bad, so I could see where my mind would start conjuring these simple delusions. Why the fuck would a butterfly be here, in my girlfriend’s bedroom, in late December? How the hell was it even alive?
The more I sat there, frozen solid, the more I thought about it. And the more I thought, the more I began to think I really was seeing things. There was no possible way there was a butterfly in here right now, and just as I began to feel self-assured in my ability to talk myself away from the brink of insanity, Audrey entered the room and stopped with the smallest of gasps.
“Oh, my Lord,” she whispered, clapping a hand to her chest.
“Wait, you see it, too?” I answered, my voice hoarse and embarrassingly shaken.
Audrey nodded and quietly tiptoed to the bed, climbing on to sit beside me. “How long has it been there?”
“I don’t know. I just woke up.” Then, I turned to her and shook my head. “How is that your first question, and not how the hell it’s here in the first place?”
“Because I know how it’s here,” she replied simply, keeping her eyes on the butterfly that hadn’t yet moved.
“Oh, really? How?” I challenged, narrowing my skeptical glare.
“It’s a message.”
I didn’t mean to roll my eyes but I did, accompanied by a steady shake of my head. “Audrey, come on …”
Her eyes met mine then. “I get that you have an explanation for everything, and that’s fine. But what could possibly be your explanation for this, if it’s not that?”
Sighing, I turned toward the butterfly again. It still hadn’t moved from its spot on the footboard, but its wings lifted and dropped in a slow rhythm, almost in time with my breath.
“I …,” I’d begun to speak, but I was stopped short by the reality that there was no logical explanation for this. Whatever I could say would sound just as ridiculous as her assumption of it being a message from someone or something, and so I closed my mouth to shrug.
“That’s what I thought,” Audrey jabbed, accepting the victory with little grace.
“I’m not agreeing with you,” I pointed out. “I just don’t know what else it could be, other than a freakish thing.” And it really was a freakish thing. The butterfly was nearly identical to Audrey’s tattoo, and if she wasn’t going to point that out, neither was I.
“What do you think it—” I began, when my phone started to ring, and Audrey grasped my wrist. Her gaze was full of fear and dread as she stared at the device in my hand and the butterfly flew off in a fluttering frenzy around the room. And I knew why.
My dad was calling.
A swirling mess of nausea, sadness, and hope tangled through my gut and veins as I stared, shaking and scared, at the phone. I couldn’t move. My brain screamed for me to answer the call, to pick up the fucking phone, but my fingers wouldn’t comply. I could hardly blink, let alone get my hands to behave the way I needed them to, and finally, Audrey had to take it from me.
She put it on speakerphone and said, in a quivering voice, “H-hello?”
“Put Blake on,” Dad said urgently.
“He’s here. You’re on speaker,” Audrey replied.
“Blake?” he asked, as if he didn’t believe her.
Somehow, I managed to coax my vocal chords into saying, “Yeah, Dad. I’m here.”
“We need you here now,” he rushed, nearly breathless and shaken.
I blinked rapidly, too tempted by the tears stinging at my eyes. “Wha-what’s going on? What’s happening?”
He was too quiet and hesitated for too long. My heart hammered, my head spun, and my jaw hung open so loosely, all I could do was cover my mouth with a hand to ward off the uprising of bile in my throat. Audrey’s hand was against my back as she reminded me to breathe, saying my name and saying other things I couldn’t hear. But my father’s voice sliced through the torrential wave of panic, saying, “He’s waking up, Blake,” and I heard him. I heard him loud and clear, and thank God for that.
***
Walking through the hospital felt otherworldly. With Audrey’s hand in mine, I tugged her toward my brother’s room with urgent desperation. I needed to see him, know he was alive, and ensure that my parents weren’t just pulling some sick, cruel joke on me.
I heard him before I’d even reached his door at the end of the hall. He was shouting for everyone to get away from him, to not touch him, and to let him up and let him leave. I released Audrey’s hand and took off at a run, zigzagging between carts and irritated hospital personnel, until I reached his open doorway.
Crowding around his bed was a handful of nurses and a couple of doctors, all struggling to keep him still while they took his vitals and blood. My parents noticed me first, as I barreled my way into the room, calling his name through a dream-like haze.
“Blake, Blake, Blake,” my brother answered through his panicked outburst, tugging his arms out of their clutches. The IV line snagged on the bedrail and he cried out in pain, only to tug harder.
“Oh, God, he’s gonna rip it out again,” one of the nurses muttered. “We need to sedate—”
“No!” I shouted, hurrying to his bedside. “Don’t you dare!”
She twisted her face and looked like she was about to protest, when I finally got to him, clasping his face in my hands and collecting his tears in my palms. “I’m here, buddy,” I assured him, barely breathing as I leaned over to press my forehead to his. “I’m here.”
Jake grappled for my shoulders, holding onto me with enough force to crush my chest. “I wanna go home, Blake. I wanna go home.”
“I know, buddy, I know,” I soothed, smoothing his hair away from his forehead, dotted with sweat. “But listen to me, okay? Can you listen to me?” He nodded furiously and I continued, “You need to listen to these people, okay?”
He shook his head, keeping his gaze on me as though that alone could make the room disappear. “I don’t like it here. I don’t like them. Don’t like them at all.”
“Yeah, I know, but I promise, they’re only trying to help you.”
His frantic resolve settled a bit as he exhaled. “Don’t leave.”
“I’ll be right over here,” I swore to him, pointing behind me.
“Pinkie swear?”
Sniffing back a sudden rush of emotion, I nodded, reaching for his hand and wrapping my smallest finger around his.
“Pinkie swear.”
***
I kept my promise and stayed in the room with my back glued to the wall, overseeing every move the nurses and doctors made. Jake mostly kept his bewildered gaze on them, but every now and then, his eyes darted in my direction. Making sure I was there and that I hadn’t left. Audrey had slipped out sometime during my dutiful watch. She hadn’t said anything, and I hadn’t noticed, but I knew she understood.
After what felt like hours, the room was finally emptied of medical staff, taking the air with them, and it was just my parents, Jake, and me—a family that no longer felt like one. Mom hurried to Jake’s side and wrapped her hands around his, but he jolted from her grasp.