Butterflies

I was just trying to sleep but I couldnt. I couldn't breathe. Instinctively I thought it was another one of my panic atracks. The ones I used to have years ago about school about homework. The ones I used to go to counseling for the ones I used to go to many shrinks to try and fix. The ones the doctors thought I should go to counseling for. The ones people pitied me for. It felt the same in a way. I inhaled and I couldnt. It was like my body didn't want to like it rejected air. Like my body hated itself so much it just refused to let me live. It just wanted me to wilt like a flower a flower no one would ever remember a flower that contrasted against the others. A flower nobody else liked. Those were the kinds of flowers you threw away. The ones you cringed at maybe even felt sorry for. Then that when my heart started beating faster which made me feel like I was having a panic attack. Which by far is the worst feeling quite possibly knowing your having a panic attack when you are because that's when you freak out most. Because then when you want to breathe your body is just so broken it won't let you breathe. And I just started screaming. Screaming for my mom for my dad. Like an idiot a seventeen year old yelling for their parents to help. What an idiot I was. But surely a few seconds later they came in running and they were screaming too I must have looked bad really bad. Because their faces were filled with worry and they weren't yelling, yelling at eachother like they usually did they both held one of my hands and my mom called 911 and I think they were actually scared and i just didn't know why. I just didn't know why they didn't let me wilt.

And when I woke up It was all white. I thought I was dead maybe I even wished I was dead. Everything was too white to clean too perfect. It smelt sterile I'm pretty sure it was a hospital. An iv stuck in my wrist. My visible blue vein injected with the needle a bag of clear liquid draining from the ceiling into my arm into my body. I wondered what it was. I didn't really know. All I knew was that I could breathe again and that my parents stood up from chairs in the room. And their faces were a mix of pity and sadness and I may have even seen a little bit of hope. The same expression the doctor regarded me with.
"What's wrong?" I ask someone. Anyone my voice cracking.
"The doctors may think it's even more then then a panic attack and that it's something... that it could be... cancer lung cancer." I didn't say anything my face was as blank as the walls. They squeezed my hands.
"When you came in yesterday the reason you couldn't breathe... your lungs were filled with water... we drained them but. .. you need an MRI just to make sure that you don't have it. " the doctor told me.
Blank. I was still pale and blank and expressionless. I think I nodded but that was about it.
I looked down o was wearing a white hospital dress made of some kind plastic or paper. It looked sterile it reminded me a little of death.
"We can do the MRI later." My mom suggests.
"No.. no its fine ." I tell her. I hold my mom's hand as I walk down and my dads. Not for me really but more so for them. The doctor opens the door for me into another white room. It was bigger than the last and had a large machine. They instructed me to lay in it on a sheet of paper. They told me not to move. To be still. It slid towards the center I looked up hearing a noise a whirring kind of noise it was loud but it was coming from the machine. After a few minutes like this I moved I stretched a little sitting on the edge outside of the machine. The docter and my parents were sitting on the other side of the door huddled next to a computer. My mom was gasping and the doctor was pointing to different parts of the screen it was probably my lungs. They didn't think I could hear but I could I could hear little fragments and that was enough.
"How ... long?" Asked my mom
"1 ... month." The doctor responded. My dad held my mom In his arms rocking her back and forth they still didn't notice I was there. I opened the door and they stopped. My mom wiped the tears from her eyes. I looked at the chart it was full of spots these white spots it looked like gaps in my lungs. Parts that just hadn't been colored up yet.
"Im going to go on a walk." I told them walking out side of the hospital still wearing the dress. They stared at me as I walked out.
"I can go with you." My mom volunteered.
"I can do it myself." I said firmly. They already looked at me like I was broken and I hated it so much.

It was a bright day outside. The sky was blue and the flowers were just starting to form. I sat on a bench it was iron black and cold. A butterfly was something I saw out of the corner of my eyes. It sat on my hand its eccentric wings still fluttering. It was blue and was outlined in black. And it was so pretty but maybe you shouldn't have asked me to judge that. I might have been biased. Since everything was more beautiful when you were dying.