The little antennae search her skin, his feet move as though she’s hot sand on a summer day and he needs to move or be burned.
“Many cultures believe butterflies to be our souls,” she continues in an almost whisper. The sunlight reflects off of her recently shaved head. She looks sick, but right in this moment, she looks magical. “Some cultures associate them with resurrection. Do you think someone is visiting with us right now?” She brings him closer to her nose, grins, and does a bum wiggle when he reaches out with his feet.
Her smile is so large, her eyes so alight, she burns brighter than the sun I was so eager to sit under.
“He looks good on you,” I sigh. “Do you have anyone that has passed that you’ve been thinking about? Because he sure seems to know you.”
She almost crosses her eyes to keep the butterfly in focus. He doesn’t leave her finger, but he experiments and touches her pert nose.
“I don’t know. I guess I’ve been thinking about my grandma lately. She was a Marcie too. I was named for her.”
“She’s gone?”
“Mmm.” Her eyes dim. “Cancer. I feel like maybe my granddaughter should definitely not be named Marcie. We’ll break the curse with me.”
We sit in the sun for our full hour. We absorb every single ray of light and every drop of vitamin D we’re gifted, but eventually, our butterfly leaves us, and our hour is up. If I turned around right now, I know with a hundred percent certainty that Doctor Rhett will be standing in Marcie’s window, watching us.
He cares so deeply for his patients. He cares that they overcome. So since he gave me an hour, I don’t abuse it.
She doesn’t want to go back in. It almost seems the same as offering an innocent and unfairly incarcerated inmate a day on the outside to enjoy everything good with the world, but dragging him back as the sun goes down and the day grinds to an end. It’s cruel, but I can’t take her home, and I can’t take her to an island somewhere to escape.
It sucks in this place, but it’s where Marcie has to be to get better.
I help her into her chair and bring the footrests up. We haven’t done anything too strenuous, but she already looks weaker, her skin impossibly paler. She’s almost translucent, and it scares me. She has her wits, her brains, her sass, but her body is failing her.
“You look different today, Abby.” She huddles in close to her chair, as though she’s gotten cold since leaving the bench seat.
I wish I’d thought to bring a blanket outside for her.
“That’s what Rhett said, too.” I shrug. “I didn’t do anything different.”
“You look happy,” she muses. “Brighter. I don’t know what it is, but you look freer.”
I smile. “That’s deep of you.”
I push her through the front doors and back into the lobby. Her shoulders droop with disappointment, but she doesn’t vocalize her thoughts.
“I guess maybe I feel a little different too,” I admit.
“Yeah?” She looks up and meets my eyes. “Did you meet a boy?” Her grin creeps across her face.
It was a joke question, something she’s asked before. She expects the same answer – because I never meet men that aren’t my brothers – but when I blush, her eyes widen, and she realizes she hit her mark.
“Oh my god! You did!”
I press the button for her floor when we step into the elevator, but she doesn’t let go of her smile.
“Abigail! Spill.”
“Well…” I hesitate. “Maybe. But you’re seventeen, and don’t need to hear about that.”
“Like hell I don’t!” Despite the weakness I thought I saw only a minute ago, she twists in her seat and stares into my eyes. “I want all of the details. All of the juicy stuff. I want to knoweverything.” She drags the word out and makes me blush so much more. “I’m not a child, and I’ve been with boys. I know what happens.”
“You have?” I shake my head. “What?”
“Of course I have. I’m seventeen. Almost eighteen. I did… stuff… last summer.”
“Shut up! Who with? Does your mother know?”