Butterfly Dreams (2 page)

“I'm leaving around three today,” I told Adam Johnson several weeks later.

Adam was my partner at the Razzle Dazzle pottery studio and my best friend by default, mostly because there was no one else to fill the position.

Though I'm pretty sure if he were given the option of being Corin Thompson's bestie or…well…anything else, anything else would win every time.

“Oh yeah? Where are you headed?” he asked, opening a box of premade clay figurines and haphazardly lining them along the lowest shelf. I waited for him to finish and then quickly, while his back was turned, rearranged them so that they were neat and straight.

Razzle Dazzle was my pride and joy, and I may or may not be a bit over the top about wanting everything to be perfect. The studio catered mostly to the stay-at-home mom and preschool crowd. I enjoyed watching people create something that they loved. It gave me a sense of satisfaction knowing that my store was responsible for putting smiles on people's faces.

And I also liked to fart rainbows on the weekends.

“I'm headed to a new group,” I said quietly so no one would overhear. If I were talking to my older sister, Tamsin, I could expect an exasperated huff followed by a lengthy lecture about yet another support group I was attending. She'd tell me, in her condescending way, that my illnesses were all in my head. That no, I didn't have fibromyalgia. And that pain in my head was
not
a brain tumor. She had no patience for my health anxiety and even less patience for the persistent fears that had plagued me for years.

Tamsin was seven years older than me, and I often wondered if our difference in age attributed to our lack of closeness. But then I realized she was just a jerk.

But Adam didn't huff. He never really said anything. And I could never figure out whether it was because he sensed I wouldn't appreciate it or if he just didn't care. I sincerely hoped it wasn't the latter, though I'd never really asked him. I was much more abrasive and snarky in my head than I was in real life.

But it was his lack of domineering personality that made him the only person I could stomach being around for lengthy periods of time. I hated pushy people almost as much as I hated judgmental people. And Adam was neither. At least out loud.

What went on inside that head of his was anybody's guess.

Adam and I weren't the sort to share unnecessary confidences, but he had been there, in all of his strong, silent glory, through the rougher parts of my life.

So, like it or not, he had been handed the
Corin best friend
crown.

I had known Adam since we were kids. But we weren't friends at first sight. Hell, I think we spent the first ten years of our acquaintance staunchly avoiding each other.

Though that wasn't unusual for either of us.

Even before both of my parents had died when I was a teenager, I wasn't exactly a people person. When everyone else learned to play beer pong, I made vases on my pottery wheel. I didn't talk much.

Adam Johnson was someone who spoke even less.

He was the loner just shy of good looking with thick, dark hair and a wiry, lean frame. His lips were too thin and his nose too long. His ears stuck out through his curls, but his lashes were beautiful, making his eyes his best feature by far. He was a hodgepodge of attributes, some attractive, some not, that made him, at the very least, interesting to look at.

The day I had come back to school after my dad's funeral, I lost it after first period. I had sat down on a stone bench in the school courtyard and sobbed until I thought I was going to be sick.

“Here.” Adam, whom I hadn't noticed sitting in the corner, came over and offered me a stick of gum. I took it, holding it in my hand.

“You gonna look at it or chew it?” he had asked abruptly. Slowly I had unwrapped the gum and stuck it in my mouth, barely noticing the flavor. He sat with me until the bell rang. We didn't talk about much that day. I think we mentioned the weather and a new sitcom on television, but that was it.

After that, I unconsciously sought him out during lunch. I went out of my way to find him while he smoked in the parking lot after school. He started offering me rides home and sometimes we'd hang out and watch television together.

But most important, Adam never looked at me like I was strange or different. Not even when I first told him I thought I had a rare form of bone cancer after complaining of aches in my legs for over three weeks. And when I told him I was pretty sure I had developed glaucoma, he had only shrugged and asked if I wanted to grab something to eat.

His lack of response was more reassuring than most people's verbal concern.

“Oh yeah?” he asked, pushing his hair out of his eyes.

I rubbed at a sore spot in the middle of my chest. “I've been feeling dizzy and fatigued. And my left arm has been going numb. Dr. Harrison is running some tests.”

“Dr. Harrison?”

I shrugged. “Dr. Graham wasn't very helpful,” I said flippantly, referring to the doctor I had been seeing semi-religiously for most of my life.

I had decided to find a new physician when, after complaining of chronic weakness in my left arm, he suggested that perhaps I should see a therapist instead of having more tests run.

I had been gutted. And more than a little angry. I could put up with a lot, but condescension was a major pet peeve. So I had given the good family doc the big heave-ho and quickly found another physician.

“So which group is it?” Adam dropped the empty cardboard box onto the floor and I picked it up immediately, grabbing a pair of scissors so I could slice the edges and fold it down into a compact square before putting it in the recycling bin.

“It's the Mended Hearts support group over on Eleventh at the old Methodist church,” I told him.

“The Mended Hearts group?” Adam didn't look up but I flushed slightly at the question. I hated this part.

The explanation.

I cleared my throat and grabbed the bag of pretzels I kept underneath the counter at all times. People had all types of vices. All manner of pretzels were mine. Salted pretzels, plain pretzels, sour cream and onion pretzels. I wasn't picky. I loved them all equally. Adam knew they were hands-off. Limbs would be at risk should he try and take one.

I popped a few in my mouth, making sure to chew and swallow before answering. “It's for heart patients. People who have survived heart attacks and defects. It's actually a pretty big group,” I said quickly.

Adam looked at me with his deep, unreadable eyes. “Okay, I'll close up.”

That was it. No more questions.

“Do you want to know what I'm being tested for?” I asked him, pushing the subject, when just minutes ago I wanted to drop it completely.

Adam shrugged. “I'm sure you'll let me know all about it,” he remarked dryly and then walked into the storeroom, ending our conversation. I wasn't overly bothered by his indifference. It had been one of the main ingredients to our quasi-healthy friendship. His lack of censure and overall disinterest in my frequent health complaints made us work.

I looked around my store and smiled at the few customers. I could hear Adam banging around in the storeroom. Krista, one of our part-time employees, was cleaning paint off the tables in the back.

This was my life. These were my only connections.

And that felt more than a little sad.

Not so deep down, I was a hopeless romantic. I wanted to find my soul mate. I wanted to have my happily ever after.

I wanted to be swept off my feet and loved forever.

Even if the thought of going on dates and engaging in meaningless chitchat to get to that point of true love made me want to break out into hives.

I was beginning to think I was destined to live and die alone. With only Mr. Bingley, my deceptively benign cat, by my side.

Oh god.

“Let's have a look at the incision,” Dr. Callahan said as she carefully peeled back the bandage attached to my chest with an excessive amount of tape. I tried not to wince as a clump of my chest hair was ripped out in the process.

I clenched my teeth as my doctor gently pressed the skin around the two-inch healing cut. It was still really sore, but it had only been a couple of weeks since having the cardioverter defibrillator implanted, so that wasn't surprising.

The defibrillator, or ICD as the docs liked to say, was meant to monitor my heart, delivering an electric shock should it pick up on an abnormal rhythm. The purpose was to prevent another heart attack. Because, as Dr. Callahan gently informed me, the next one could be fatal given the heart damage I had sustained.

I had jokingly asked about getting a new heart, to which I was told, by a very serious Dr. Callahan, that it was an option of last resort. She made it clear that until my heart began to fail completely, it wasn't something they would even consider.

“It looks like it's healing nicely,” Dr. Callahan said with a smile, cutting a length of new gauze and taping it to my chest. When she was finished, she pulled out something that looked sort of like a paddle.

“I've been a good boy, I swear,” I joked lamely. Dr. Callahan, who was ridiculously hot for a doctor, didn't respond to my less-than-appropriate attempt at humor.

“This is a programmer that will check to make sure your ICD is working properly. It'll only take a few minutes and then we'll look at the results.” She started pushing buttons on the paddle thing. “It's nothing to be nervous about. It uses radio waves to determine whether it's functioning the way it's supposed to. It's completely painless.”

Yeah, yeah. I knew the drill. I should be used to being poked and prodded by now. This had been my norm since suffering from a heart attack four months ago.

It had been sudden and completely unexpected. I was young, not obese, and almost maniacally healthy. I worked out. I ran five miles every morning before going to work. I ate right and wasn't a boozehound or a smoker. I had sex in monogamous relationships and didn't dabble in random hookups with hookers on street corners.

The day that had changed my entire life had started like any other. I had woken up when my alarm went off. I had turned over and kissed my girlfriend, Sierra, before rolling ninja-style out of bed so I wouldn't wake her up. She was a demon in high heels if she didn't get enough sleep.

I changed into my running clothes, grabbed a bottle of water, and was out the door.

I remember feeling a little off that morning. Not quite right. But I had brushed it off as not sleeping enough. I had been up late celebrating with Sierra the night before. She had been named assistant manager at the coffee shop where she worked. She was thrilled. I was attempting to be happy because
she
was thrilled.

Things had been on the track toward
good
. I was your typical twenty-eight-year-old guy with a decent job as a sales manager for a software design company. Sure, it wasn't my dream of being a pro athlete or an award-winning photographer, but I couldn't complain.

I had just moved into a new apartment by the river with my gorgeous girlfriend of nearly two years. She had been hounding me about marriage and kids and white picket fences for almost a year, and I was starting to think maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea.

Then, during my routine morning run through the park by our apartment, I felt a sharp pain in my chest. My left arm went numb. I couldn't breathe.

I collapsed.

My heart stopped.

I
died
.

Two women walking their dogs found me. I was told later that while one had administered CPR, her friend called 911. When the paramedics arrived, they were able to get my heart started again.

But I had died.

I had been following the white light. I had been making the final journey. I had been ready for the big sleep.

Then I was brought back.

And my entire life changed in an instant.

While I was laid up in the hospital, the doctors ran a battery of tests trying to figure out why a healthy twenty-eight-year-old man would have a heart attack.

The answer came soon enough and it was one that would impact me forever.

I was diagnosed with a genetic heart defect called arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy. What a mouthful, right? In simple terms that the rest of us could understand, I was told that it meant because of a genetic abnormality, which I apparently had my entire life, my heart didn't function the way it was supposed to. Some of my cardiac muscle was replaced with fatty tissue that resulted in heart arrhythmia, which could lead to heart palpitations and possible death.

Talk about a downer.

The doctors at the hospital explained that with some lifestyle changes and medication I could quite possibly go on to live a long and healthy life.

I then proceeded to freak the hell out.

How could I live with the fucked-up knowledge of impending death hanging over my head every second of every day?

Oh, you want to take a quick jog around the park? Sorry, can't. I could have a heart attack.

You want me to join in a game of basketball? I'll have to pass; otherwise I could die before the first layup.

I was most definitely
not
a happy camper.

The two weeks I was in the hospital had been bleak. Between the intermittent panic attacks and frightening depths of despair, I wasn't a fun guy to be around.

I had been angry and mean. I had made my mother cry and my little sister, Zoe, refused to come see me. Sierra couldn't understand why I was lashing out at her when she thought she was being supportive. My buddies Aaron and Bryan had taken one look at all the tubes and monitors and had made some excuse about doing their taxes. I responded by throwing an empty bedpan at their heads.

And the louder I yelled, the less anyone heard me. So I stopped talking altogether. I was a damn mess.

I felt incredibly sorry for myself. Yeah, I became
that
guy. A big pile of emo douchiness that moaned on and on about how hard my life was and no one understood. In short, I sucked.

What people didn't get was that I was no longer the Beckett Kingsley I used to be. I couldn't be the wild guy who threw himself out of airplanes because I felt like it. I couldn't play a pummel-each-other-until-we-puke game of football with my buddies on a Sunday afternoon. And I most certainly couldn't go backpacking along the Appalachian Trail with Sierra as we had planned to do in June.

Now I was someone else. Someone who had to constantly worry about taking medications and not to “overexert” myself. I was seriously. Pissed. Off.

I felt like there was nothing left for me. What was the point of living when I had to stop doing so many of the things that I enjoyed? I was doing some serious, hard-core wallowing.

The doctors recommended that I speak to a therapist. Apparently suicide was a concern in heart patients. But I wanted nothing to do with any of that crap. I
wanted
to feel sorry for myself.

And then one day, pretending to be asleep, I could hear my mom and dad talking quietly. They were whispering so they wouldn't wake me, but I heard them clear as day.

“I've never seen him like this. He's just given up, Stanley,” my mother wept, her voice muffled. Even though my eyes were shut, I knew that she was crying into her hands. I had seen her do it enough times since I had woken up in the hospital.

“He's suffered a major trauma, Meryl. We can't expect him to be smiling and happy. Of course he's angry,” my dad reasoned.

“It's more than that and you know it! He's my baby boy and I know when he's hurting and when he needs me. But he's shut us out! He's cut himself off from everyone! From us, from Zoe, from Sierra. I look at him and I don't see our Beck. I see a man that's already died!” Her words gave me chills. Is that what she saw when she looked at me? A dead man?

My mom was still talking and I strained to hear her.

“I won't be able to survive losing him. I just won't. He's breaking my heart, Stan!” My mother's cries made it hard to catch my father's response. But soon I could hear my dad's rough sobs mingling with my mother's and something twisted inside of me.

I had never heard my father cry before and hearing it then was a much-needed slap in the face. There I was, feeling sorry for myself when I was so damn lucky.

I was
alive.
I still had a life ahead of me.

It was time to take this heart thing by the balls and deal with it.

And from that moment on I had tried to be as positive as possible. I became physically stronger. Mentally I tried to keep it together. Every morning when I woke up, I said to myself,
I'm alive!
I played it on repeat over and over again throughout the day.

When I would look around my dismal hospital room, I'd think,
My heart's still ticking. I've got this!

When the constant beeping of the monitors drove me crazy, I'd tell myself,
At least I can hear them. Because I could be dead instead.

I focused on the fact that at least I still had my health…or what was left of it. I was Mr. Sunshine. I had to be, or I'd lose my fucking mind.

After I got out the hospital, I felt strange…
different
. It was like returning to a life you realized didn't belong to you anymore. I was forcing myself to be a person that I no longer was. I tried to feel things that weren't there anymore.

I came home to an apartment I shared with a woman who I knew didn't want me there. Because I wasn't what she had signed up for. She was used to a Beckett Kingsley who ran with her after work, who planned backpacking trips, and who could stay up the entire night screwing her brains out in new and interesting ways.

The Beckett who came home after almost dying couldn't do any of those things, and it quickly became obvious that Sierra didn't necessarily want to be around this new guy I had become.

Sierra had never been the patient sort, and I knew that my heart attack had put a strain on how flexible and agreeable she could be. At first she tried. She really did. Those first couple weeks at the hospital, she'd visit me every day. She'd sit in the chair beside my bed and hold my hand. She brought me my favorite pajama bottoms and the book I had been reading.

That was all fine and dandy until I came home and she actually had to live with the invalid. Stuff changed really quickly after that.

I knew that I took a lot of my frustrations and anger out on her. She was easy to lash out at because she was simply
there.
But she didn't help matters. She seemed to think that once I was out of the hospital, I should be able to jump back into our life together as though nothing had changed.

The first night I came home, she entered our bedroom wearing a silky piece of lingerie that, under normal circumstances, I would have ripped from her body. But I was tired and sore. I just wanted to sleep.

So when Sierra started kissing on my neck and touching me, sliding her hand underneath my pajamas and cupping my junk, I pulled away. She kept trying to get me in the mood, straddling me and pushing her tits in my face. She inadvertently pressed her hand into my healing incision and I had yelped in pain, pushing her off my lap.

“I can't, Sierra!” I had yelled, frustrated and pissed that she was only thinking of herself. Pissed that I couldn't be the man she wanted me to be…the man I was
before
.

I just remember lying there with my hot-assed girlfriend gyrating on top of me with my dick flaccid between us wondering what the hell was wrong with me. Why was I so angry? Why wasn't I turned on? Why couldn't I just be the man I was before my heart stopped working?

“Fine, be an asshole!” Sierra screamed, jumping off the bed and slamming out of the bedroom. She ended up sleeping in the spare room that night. And the night after that.

In the three months since I had been discharged from the hospital, Sierra and I had slept apart more times than we had slept together. Our sex life had dwindled to nonexistent and I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to remedy it.

“All couples go through rough patches,” my mother had tried to assure me. She had been badgering me as to why Sierra, once again, hadn't joined me for dinner with my parents. I knew that Sierra wasn't their favorite person but they had always made an effort for me. I hadn't wanted to admit that maybe they had been right about my girlfriend all along. That she
was
juvenile and self-centered. That she was incapable of thinking about someone besides herself.

But I had finally cracked and told Mom how bad things actually were. It was festering inside me. She surprised me by being completely nonjudgmental.

“Yeah, I don't know, Mom,” I had said, unconvinced.

“If it's meant to be, it'll be. One thing I've learned in all these years being married to your father is that it's not always passion and kisses that make your toes curl.” I cringed. The last thing I wanted to hear about was my parents' toe-curling kissing. But when she was in her bestower-of-sage-wisdom mood, there was no interrupting her.

“There will be hard times. There will be moments when you ask yourself if this person is really worth it. But I can tell you that every time I have ever asked myself that question about your father, I could answer
yes
without hesitation. Because in my bones, I knew he was the only man I could ever spend my life with. If you look inside yourself and can say that about Sierra, then you'll be able to get through this. I promise you.” She had poured me a glass of iced tea and left to go check on her pot roast.

In Mom's mind, there was nothing in this world a good pot roast couldn't fix. I wondered if her rose-colored glasses would fit my fat head.

Because, when I asked myself if Sierra was worth the trouble, all I could feel was frustration and anger at her selfishness. Maybe I needed to wait until I wasn't pissed and irritated to ask myself such important questions. Or maybe that was the best time to ask them.