I wrote this about a year ago, Fall 2012

Butterflies, pictures, and pictures of butterflies

“Photographs are funny things. You can capture a memory in a moment then forget it even happened. And when you go back and look through old photos, you find old memories, like how you stumble upon a song from years ago and you instantly recall every bit of your life that revolved around it.” Sarah told me that one night when she was showing me her high school yearbooks and scrapbooks from family vacations, and I’ll never forget a single word of it.

At one point she told me that ever since she was small, Sarah was interested in three things: butterflies, pictures, and pictures of butterflies. Now, the word “small” here means childlike, but she was also just a generally small individual. She had small features, short fingers, she wore a size five shoe and she towered over infants and small children alone at the adorable height of four-feet-eleven-inches. If ever someone dared refer to her as a hobbit, she would quite cleverly point out that the tallest of the hobbits is three-feet-eight-inches.

Bouncy, brown curls licked Sarah’s cheeks, neck, and chest as the wind whipped into her car through her rolled down windows. It was that carefree spirit that I loved so much. She said that what she loved about me was that I gave her butterflies in her stomach.

We met in a doctor’s office, so ever since that day I’ve been unusually cheerful about getting a physical. She sat next to me in the waiting room, despite the roomful of empty chairs, and clicked her heels until I looked at her.

“Hi, I’m Sarah.”

“Hi, Sarah,” I chuckled. “What’re you in for?”

She laughed. “That’s cute! You’re cute. Stomach ache. How about you?”

“I’m here with my mom. She’s got the flu or something but she doesn’t drive.”

“That’s really sweet. Does she live with you?”

“Well, I live with her. I’m only 19.” I was kind of embarrassed, but she smiled.

“Oh, good. I’m 18. Your beard makes you look older, but I figured I would talk to you anyway,” she giggled.

She told me later that she had no idea what she was trying to accomplish with that statement; she wasn’t even sure she was interested until we had our first date.

We left the doctor’s office that day expecting to never see each other again, but thankfully we were mistaken. A few weeks later, she rear-ended my car with hers at a stop sign. I saw her in my rear-view mirror and couldn’t keep myself from smiling. She got out of her car and ran to my window, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so so so sorry,” the whole way.

“Hey! It’s you! Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I don’t think your bumper is messed up at all. Are you okay?”

I smiled at her, told her to calm down, and asked her to dinner.

“No, I hit your car. I should take you to dinner.” She insisted, so I let her.

After a few dates, I guess it was five, Sarah showed up on my doorstep, her curls were damp on her face. I let her come inside and brought her a blanket. It was red, her favorite color. I put my arm around her and she wiped her cheeks on my shoulder.

She breathed in heavily through her nose.

“I’m sick.”

“No, sweetie,” I said flippantly. “You’re crying.” It hurt to see her upset, and I never was good with comforting. She laughed, though.

“I wish it was just sniffles.”

“So, what is it?”

“A lot of things. I’m diabetic, anemic, and I have a combination of gastritis and stomach ulcers. It’s not usually a problem, but I haven’t done anything for it until recently so I’ve gotten really sick.”

“That isn’t fatal or anything is it? Can’t those things be treated?”

“Yeah, they can be. I’m being dramatic. I’m not dying or anything, I’m just overwhelmed.”

I had gotten Sarah a scarf with butterflies on it because on our third date she made me dinner at her house and showed me her collection of butterfly photos and butterflies on mounts. The scarf was red and the butterflies were white and black. That night, I gave her the scarf early even though I was saving it for our next date. That night she taught me that every memory is a picture in your mind, and if you focus hard enough, your life can turn out to be a private photo album for you and your thoughts. Her auburn eyes being accented by the scarf was the first mental picture in my album.

We fell fast, and I did my best to keep her mind off of being sick because it didn’t just hurt her, it hurt me, too. She was sunshine, and her sadness kept me in the dark.

One day, I brought flowers to her office. When I walked in, she stood from her desk, then fell to the floor. She said her knees were tired and gave way, but she held her stomach the whole time I was there, her short, slender fingers wrapped around her sides.

“Thank you for the flowers, baby. They gave me butterflies.”

Her smile was perfect. Regardless of my circumstances, she could make me ten pounds lighter with one look. Nothing was too great for her smile, no burden too heavy. That smile could cut through steel.

Her office had a party; I was her plus one. She wore a strapless dress of deep purple, and her face was radiant. Her eye makeup was that same color, and I remember it well because she and I took at least a dozen pictures together that night.

It was over five months since we first met in the doctor’s office, but this was the first time I had seen her bare shoulders. She had a flock of black butterflies tattooed on her left shoulder. They danced across the top of her shoulder and down past her collar bone onto her chest. That night, I kissed her for the first time.

I took her home after the party and she invited me in to show me her past. Sarah pulled out a box from a shelf; it was almost too tall for her to reach. Some pictures fell out. “Ah, jeez,” she sighed as she bent down to get them, but her other hand tipped the box in the process and more pictures fell on the floor. I couldn’t help but laugh, and she glared at me sarcastically.

“Well, what are you doing? Come help.” She motioned her head for me to come over. She looked adorable in her little purple dress surrounded by pictures. I sat next to her and picked up a picture of her as a five year old. Her curls were tighter and wild.

She took the picture from my hand; her fingers slid over mine. I grabbed her hand and kissed her, and I saw her other hand hold her stomach out of the corner of my eye.

Most of our nights that weren’t spent going places and taking pictures were spent looking at pictures, either hers or mine. One night she brought her camera to my house. For about an hour, she showed me how to take a “photograph,” which, according to Sarah, was different than “snapping a picture.”

“Anyone can take a picture. A photograph is a well thought out piece of art.”

She showed me how to increase and decrease the shutter and how to open and close the iris of the camera.

“You know how your eye dilates when it’s dark, and your pupils get really small when it’s bright? Well, when you open the iris of the camera, the picture gets lighter, but not as much is in focus. That’s called having a low aperture. When the aperture is low, it’s bright but there’s a small depth of field. Only one small area is in focus. But when you have a really high aperture, you could take a whole landscape picture. Now, I know it’s confusing, but I think you can get it.”

“Yeah, yeah, I think I understand. Tell me about the shutter, again?”

“Good. Okay. The shutter is the speed in which your camera takes the picture. So if you want to take a picture of soccer players in action, your shutter should be super fast so you can get them without the picture being blurry. But sometimes it’s cool to leave your shutter open longer so the picture can be blurred. Have you seen those pictures of the trails of lights on the freeway?”

“Yeah, they’re cool. You can do that just by leaving the shutter open?”

“Yeah! Neat, eh? Never thought you’d learn that at a girl’s house, huh?”

I rolled my eyes and kissed her. She was so smug.

Exactly one month later, I took her to dinner for her 19^th birthday. She wore a black cocktail dress with a pink sash and she made me wear a pink tie to match.

She asked me on our way to dinner if we could roll the windows down. “It’s so nice outside.” She spent an hour curling her hair, we almost missed our reservation, but she fancied whimsy over appearances. I loved that about her, and I was grateful because the ring in my pocket was much more quaint than expensive.

I had the waiter put the ring around the candle on her red velvet cake. She knew we would sing to her, of course, but the proposal was more than her body could handle. I kneeled next to her as our waiter set the cake before her, and she fell heavily onto me. At that moment, everything slowed down. I cradled her softly as someone ran to call an ambulance. I could hardly hear the inquiries as to what happened. All my lips could exude was, “baby’s gonna be fine.”

The wait after that was the longest I’ve ever waited for anything. The hours felt like months. All I could do was sit forward in a chair in the hospital waiting room with my hands across the top of my head, my fingers clutching my hair, my heels clicking.

I felt the doctor walking toward me; his sadness pulsed through the room. I made myself stand, despite immense protest from my knees which had made a snap decision to change their occupation from joints to jellyfish. The doctor forced eye contact and made himself stand still.

“Sarah was very sick. I’m sure you know that. Her various blood deficiencies weren’t a problem as long as she kept them in check, which she did. Are you familiar with the term ‘butterflies in your stomach’?”

“Yes, of course, she got them all the time. Did she say something about them?”

“No, no, she wasn’t conscious when she arrived. She’s had butterflies for a long time, most of the time for no reason. Most people get them when they’re nervous because their bodies pull blood from their stomach to their muscles to ease tension. This causes their stomach to shut down briefly, and that’s usually the reason why people lose their appetite when they’re anxious. Sarah’s stomach would lose blood and gain blood so often due to her gastritis that she constantly had butterflies, but if she were to ever get overly excited or nervous, her stomach would lose blood too rapidly and go into shock. We’re giving her a blood transfusion to make up for her anemia, but if she is going to recover, it’ll take some time.

“So, what does that mean? The butterflies could kill her?”

“The short answer is yes, but luckily she’s not dead. She’s not exactly stable, but she’s alive. Right now she’s in a comatose state.”

A coma’s better than dead.

I don’t remember walking to her room, but somehow I knew how to get there. All I remember after the doctor talked to me was seeing her. She looked smaller than usual, more fragile. Her skin, which had glowed golden a few hours ago, was porcelain. She was almost as white as her hospital gown.

For hours I just sat next to her bed and looked at her. She had an oxygen mask on; it covered her adorable little nose. It reminded me of my dad’s accident, but he didn’t hold on this long. He was gone before I could see him.

Sarah flat-lined while I held her hand. The warmth had already left her fingers, and since that moment my life has been a blur. She taught me once that when you decrease the shutter speed on your camera, your picture will blur. The lower the shutter speed, the longer the exposure and the more action is captured. Since she left, my shutter’s been open. It’s made for an interesting picture, but it’s impossible to sort through. My life is a beautiful piece of art, but it’s become a horrible memory.