Butterflies & Characters Page 3

  I cleared my throat, not wanting to say something that could sink this ride again. “I have an international piano contest in a month. It’ll be one of the last things on my college applications, so I really want to place first. Plus, I have a programming internship.” I shrugged. “It’s cool, but”—I laughed humorlessly—“like always, busy, busy. You didn’t do any camps or internships, right?”

  She laughed, but it sounded strained. “Pleeeease, Charles. I worked all summer. Camp sounds so much better than the breakfast shift. ‘How do you want your eggs? And how do you want your eggs?’” She lowered her voice. “I wish I could have done a drawing or architecture class. Savannah College of Art and Design—you know, SCAD—offers tons, but no freaking way. My mom would never pay for a program like that. You’re lucky.”

  I was silent. I did not want to put my foot in my mouth. Not again. Between her and my ma’s offhand comments, I didn’t think her mom was the greatest. Plus, the few times she’d called Professor Ericson when I was there, he looked like he’d eaten an entire lemon.

  Crap, it was awkward not to say anything. “Yeah, the camp was fascinating. And expensive. Sorry you had to work instead. I was disappointed to go to the one here at U of M, not the one at Caltech, but that was even pricier. I can show you the robot if you want. Even here, the labs were state of the art. I can only imagine how awesome they’ll be at Caltech.”

  She smiled and I caught it out of my periphery. Despite her rash, she was still stunning. “Please! I’ve been curious about it. It’s amazing you built it.”

  “What can I say, I am pretty amazing,” I joked, hoping she’d laugh at my quips like usual.

  She chuckled again and I loosened my hands slightly on the wheel. I hadn’t made her hate me. Then she tilted her head, and I caught a whiff of jasmine. “So, what are the economists into these days?”

  I couldn’t miss the catch in her voice. I’d always gotten the feeling she’d do anything to impress her dad—to prove she wasn’t her mom. She had always looked at him like he he’d hung the moon. He tried to be diplomatic, but got this set to his jaw whenever someone mentioned her mom that couldn’t quite hide his disdain. And I’d heard him talk to her on the phone like talking to a child who didn’t understand adult logic. But he’d never spoken to Ray that way, at least not in my presence.

  I thought back to Ma’s rambling. “They’re working on a new course on multinational corporations’ versus microeconomies’ impact on international economies. They both seem rather fixated on it.”

  She grilled me intensely, leaning in, and I told her everything I could remember about their latest projects, scrambling to remember snippets I’d heard. I was surprised by her curiosity.

  “So,” she said with a dry laugh, “do you think Dad will be impressed I got into AP Art?”

  I found a parking spot in front of our families’ favorite Szechuan restaurant and pondered how best to respond. She’d always liked drawing as a kid, so I wasn’t too surprised. Plus, she wanted to be an architect. “No, I don’t, but my parents think it’s stupid I’m in a band, so…”

  I’d mentioned it before in the few texts we’d exchanged, but I’d never gotten the nerve to send Ray any songs. She didn’t say anything. Not as exciting as football or robots, I guessed. I risked a glance. She stared, transfixed, at her reflection in the pull-down mirror. As far as scaly, raised bright-red rashes went, I wouldn’t want it on my face either. Then she closed her eyes and her shoulders sagged.

  “It—” I started to say.

  “Don’t.” She cut me off with a harsh voice. “It does look that bad. Thanks for the ride, but let’s just get inside. Eventually this day will be over.”

  She was being a little hard on herself, but it did look terrible, so I kept my mouth shut. I tried to tell myself her comment had nothing to do with me, but that was worse. I’d thought about her all day—all week! Clearly, that was just me.

  Ray was almost gasping for breath as we walked inside.

  “Hey, are you still running?”

  She nodded with a frown and coughed like she had when she’d gotten into the car. “I ran six miles yesterday. Today I feel like I can barely walk without getting breathless. Maybe I’m getting sick?” She sounded worried as she mumbled, “My whole body hurts.”

  I held the door for her. Something wasn’t adding up. I briefly wondered if she’d done drugs or something, but she’d never struck me as the type.

  Our parents hadn’t arrived yet. The hostess recognized me and spoke rapidly in Mandarin. I got us a table for five with a lazy Susan. When we were with friends, my parents had no shame in ordering dishes. Ray fiddled with her ballcap, which partially hid her rash. I’d never seen her wear a cap inside, but she left it on with a fire in her eyes that dared anyone to tell her to take it off.

  Ray leaned down to read the menu. I glanced up to see our parents had miraculously arrived at the same time.

  I heard the slightly British-English clipped accent of her dad, who had studied more British-English than American as a kid. “Wonders never cease. Ray wearing a hat to the table.”

  His sarcasm halted as Ray looked up. Moisture gathered in her vibrant blue eyes, which matched her father’s more piercing ones.

  “Hej, hej, Pappa,” she said softly as she stood and hugged him.

  He began questioning her in rapid Swedish, something he’d almost never done in my presence. Like I did with my parents, she spoke with her dad in his native tongue. Her replies were short and soft. When she sat down, he touched her knee and held her hand gently. His usually stern face turned even more serious.

  Finally, Professor Ericson relayed her symptoms to my baba, including shortness of breath. She did seem to be panting slightly. Baba was an MD/Ph.D. in pathology who spent more time with cells than people. He never responded without a carefully thought-out answer, unless it was about school or piano. Then it was all A’s and you will play.

  It took him a long minute to reply. “You are leaving for Stockholm the day after tomorrow?” Baba asked pensively.

  “Yeah,” rolled off her dad’s tongue, sounding much more Swedish than usual.

  “Let me make a phone call.” Baba rose from the table, and I heard, “Suzanne, hello, this is Jing Wong, Director of Pathology. I have a friend…”

  The rest of his conversation was lost as he stepped away. Did her rash and shortness of breath have something to do with each other? And her whole body hurt too. It wasn’t adding up.

  My ma, the other Dr. Wong, gave Ray a gentle hug. She reconfirmed Ray’s favorites, many of which were the same as ours: gān biān sì jì dòu, mápó dòufǔ, and dòu miáo. Ma ordered enough to feed twenty by the time Baba returned to the table. He wrote something down and handed it to Professor Ericson.

  “Dr. Murray has fit Ray in tomorrow at eight-thirty. She works in the department of rheumatology and that’s her clinic’s address. She wants to see Ray and do a few blood tests.”

  Rheumatology, huh. I’d never even heard of that.

  Ray fidgeted with her hat. Turned pink again. Then said, “Thank you, Dr. Wong, but I went to my doctor this morning, and he said it was just a sunburn.”

  Baba gave Ray a cutting look. “Did he do any tests?”

  “No, sir,” she said with a shake of her head. Her hands moved restlessly on the table. “He said it was nothing.”

  “How could he know? He didn’t test for anything.” He’d clearly already decided her physician was inept.

  Ray’s eyes flashed in astonishment at my normally fairly silent baba’s outburst. He patted her hand awkwardly, not really one to show affection. That was weird. Then scary. Baba wasn’t the comforting type.

  “Just let Dr. Murray check you out, then. University of Michigan is ranked eleventh in the country in rheumatology. I hope your doctor was right.”

  After that, the conversation fort
unately became less strained, and our parents asked us about the classes we were scheduled to take in the fall. Ray was in more APs than just art, which didn’t surprise me. No one as witty as Ray wasn’t smart. Of course, I had all APs except Orchestra. The average GPA at Caltech was a 4.22; I needed all As in APs just to be considered. Our parents told us about the various courses they would be teaching, as plate after plate filled the table. Unless you looked directly at Ray, you could almost forget everything she’d mentioned earlier.

  Ray asked a few questions about the microeconomics class, then sent me a warm smile that left me tingling as her dad launched into a passionate discourse.

  As the leftovers were bundled and divided with my family’s typical efficiency, Baba craftily handed his credit card to the waitress.

  “Paid,” she said with a shake of her head.

  All eyes rounded on Professor Ericson, who must have paid the bill when he snuck to the bathroom. Squawking ensued from my parents—they couldn’t believe someone had beaten them to the check.

  Ma said loudly, at least once, “I’ll never take you out again if I can’t pay next time!”

  Ray and I exchanged a smile, barely containing our laughter. Her shy grin made my heart flip. Fighting over the check remained a time-honored tradition between our families.

  When we got to my car, I couldn’t help but notice how swollen her hands were. Something pinched a little in me as I loaded her bags into her dad’s car. She was okay, right?

  She leaned in for a hug once my hands were free and her scent, the one I’d been dreaming about, finally engulfed me. “Thanks for the ride, and it’s really good to see you again.”

  I hugged her back, but it was hard to think with her warm, toned body pressed against mine. “No problem. Hey, um, good luck tomorrow. If everything is okay, maybe you can meet my band before you go and see the robot.” The words stumbled out as I grasped for an excuse to see her again.

  “That’d be nice. Thanks again,” she said as she walked away.

  As I got into my car, I hoped her doctor back home was right—that it was just a bad sunburn. But the pinch in my chest tightened as I thought of that cough and those panting breaths.

  No matter how much I hoped, somehow I didn’t think Ray had just a sunburn.

  For the second day in a row my alarm blared, and my first thought was agony. Why did my body hurt so much? Would I find out today, or would this doctor think I was hysterical too?

  I turned to take in the bright Michigan morning and tried to cheer my thoughts. I drew comfort from my soft, baby blue duvet that matched today’s cloudless sky. Dad made sure that when he bought this condo, I had my own room and twin bed. I had storage boxes on rollers under the bed, and the closet held the coats, old boots, and such I needed to stay warm here and in Sweden in the winter. This room also served as his office, and huge bookcases lined the far wall. Still, he’d tried to make it special for me.

  Even after all the hurtful things my mom had said to me over the years, he was still my dad. Sometimes, despite living with my mom, I secretly felt more kinship with him. It was nice being in a city with open-minded people. And I wanted him to love me so much that I’d even studied Swedish and read the world news to impress him when we talked. We usually spoke a few times a week, and even if it was stiff sometimes, I looked forward to it. My writing wasn’t perfect, but we’d spoken in Swedish together for years now, so I was certainly fluent. I bought a few books a year in Swedish, not English, so I wouldn’t forget how to read it.

  I stretched with a slight whimper and forced my stiff joints out of bed. It was hard to sustain cheeriness with the pain I felt. I fought to breathe, and I mildly panicked before reminding myself I was going to the doctor.

  The bathroom mirror revealed flaky red skin still covering half my face and a huge chunk of my arm. I was glad Ross couldn’t see me now, not that the jerk had done more than respond to my arrival text with a few short messages back and forth. I moped my way to the glossy, modern kitchen for coffee, the house so quiet that my breathing sounded louder that usual.

  “Morning, Ray,” Dad said as he poured himself a cup of coffee over his gorgeous speckled-granite countertop. Maybe because he was my dad, but I’d always thought he was strikingly handsome. I got my height and leanness from him—he was six-four. With his still mainly blond hair, he looked more twenty-eight than thirty-eight.

  “Morning,” I said back, trying to stay brave. I couldn’t tell whether I was more anxious that they’d find something wrong or that they wouldn’t. If they didn’t, I was a hypochondriac. If they did—well, I tried not to think about that.

  “Do you feel any better?” he asked, a note of hope in his voice.

  I looked down, feeling guilt churning inside my gut. “I feel worse.”

  But Dad wasn’t like Mom, who’d blame me for being sick. He simply sighed into his cup and said, “Let’s get ready and see this Dr. Suzanne Murray.”

  And we did. Less than an hour later, I was sitting in her office filling out a medical history on an iPad. My dad kept casting me worried looks from the corners of his eyes. I’d been coughing a lot and was struggling to suck in air. We’d had to stop twice on the way from the parking lot to the rheumatology office. I’d never even heard of rheumatology before yesterday. I’d googled last night and learned they mainly treated “autoimmune diseases,” or your body attacking itself. Weird. But I’d been so exhausted, I crawled in bed after minimal reading. Now I wished I’d investigated a little more.

  “Ms. Ericson?” We stood as a nurse introduced himself as Tony and motioned us down the hall and then into a room.

  Tony had barely asked me to get up on the table and told me I had a fever when a petite brunette in a long white coat entered, followed by a twentyish man.

  “Rayanne?” the woman asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, but you can call me Ray,” I said. Rayanne never sounded right without a Southern twang.

  “I’m Dr. Murray.” She pointed to the man in the white coat. “This is my fellow, Dr. Ezra. Normally, he’d see you himself—well, normally, since you’re fifteen, I might not see you at all, but I received a call about you last night.” I shifted, embarrassed that I’d messed with her schedule, and that slight movement sent pain searing through me. “You must be Dr. Wong’s friend?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I shifted nervously again, unable to hide the wince on my face.

  She motioned Dr. Ezra closer, and they asked me a series of questions about my family’s medical history while taking my blood pressure and listening to my heart.

  Then Dr. Murray said, “Ray, we are going to do a rheumatology exam on you. Have you ever had one?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said with a shake of my head. Jeez Louise, I’d already ripped the exam paper around my shorts to shreds.

  She smiled, her amber eyes bright like a hawk’s. Watchful. Observant. It was strangely soothing. “We need to feel and test your joints. I just warn you because it’s a little more invasive than some physical exams. Are you and your father okay with Dr. Ezra helping me?”

  Before my dad could answer, I felt my cheeks heat. “If it’s not under what I’m wearing, that’s all right.”

  She looked to my dad, whose face was pinched, but he nodded.

  First, the doctors gently took my hands, which had turned bright white in the cold clinic. With one doctor on each side, they bent my tender fingers and flipped my hands over before exchanging a look.

  “Do your hands turn white like this often?” Dr. Ezra asked after a nod from Dr. Murray.

  “Yes, sir. In the summer, when I fill the ice tray or swim too long.” I barely resisted the urge to pull my hand out of his to fidget. “Or if I get nervous. I’m nervous now. And cold.” I was rambling. Dad had told me to wear shorts so they could see my knees. “In the winter, it gets worse, but not too bad. Savannah’s not too cold. It just start
ed about a year ago.”

  Dr. Ezra gave me a half smile and dropped my hand before clicking away on his iPad.

  “Ray,” Dr. Murray said, pulling my attention back to her. “How long have your hands been swollen, and is this the first time this has happened?”

  “It started Sunday night. I went to the beach with some friends.” I glanced down. “Lately the sun has been bothering me. I run a lot, but recently I’ve needed to wear long sleeves and a hat and tons of sunscreen.” I pointed to my face, which neither had acknowledged. “I’ve gotten this several times, but never this bad. It’s on my arm too. It started Sunday afternoon, and on Monday it got worse. My mom took me to my pediatrician, who said it was just a sunburn. Dr. Wong saw it last night at dinner and called you.”

  Dr. Murray held my eyes before scanning me again. “Please take off your sweatshirt.”

  I stripped to my tank top, and she ran a gloved finger over my puckered bicep rash.

  “You can put it back on. I’m going to take off your shoes,” she said, and she did after swapping gloves. Dr. Ezra observed stoically as she rotated my ankles, exchanging a glance with him over my white toes. When Dr. Murray reached my legs to bend my knees, I couldn’t resist a small whimper of pain. “Ray, on a scale of one to ten, how bad is your knee pain?”

  “Five,” I said hesitantly. I didn’t really feel like I was dying, which was probably a ten, but my knee was in agony. More than any other part of me, which was saying a lot.

  “And anything else going on?”

  This time Dad answered. “She has progressive dyspnea.”

  Both doctors turned to stare at him a moment, but I hadn’t understood what he’d said.

  “Yes, she was tachycardic,” Dr. Murray said. “I’d like to admit Ray to the hospital and do some tests on her. I have a strong suspicion, but I don’t want to say anything until the tests come back. However, I’m worried her condition is progressing, and I’d like to monitor her overnight as we wait for the test results.”

  “Of course,” Dad said after the briefest halt. “Tell me what to do and we’ll get it started.”