Butterfly

Prologue

Revvyn Grace Callahan.

What a fucking name, right?

I'd like to say that my father just jabbed his finger into a baby book and selected the first name he touched, but he didn't. He was a die hard Star Wars fanatic, and so I was blessed with the female-name-version of the Sith Lord, Darth Revan. As nerdy as he sounds, he was the only parental figure I had in my life. My mother is the elephant in the room that my dad never wanted to mention; the recovering drug addict that bounced the second I was born. He knew who she was, but to me she could be anyone, really.

A random passerby on the street, the middle aged woman I frequently buy my coffee from at Starbucks, the CEO of 'Sage the Day' where I work as an editor, or one of the many homeless people living on the streets of New York. Realistically, she's either long dead or just another blurry face in the crowd that I've never met. It's been 25 years without so much as a birthday card, so it's easier for me to assume she passed away. Even if she isn't physically dead, she was buried in my mind a long time ago.

As a child, I remember being curled up in my bed with my father at my side. He made it a habit to come in every single night just to read me a plethora of Star Wars comics under the faded lamp light. Jedi, Sith, imperials, the fate of the galaxy and only a handful of people to save them all from certain doom. To me, it felt like I was getting lost in an entirely different world.

A world I actually had control over.

At the ripe age of 10, I was diagnosed with Stage 3 Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. It's pretty rare for anyone under the age of 60 to acquire this form of cancer, but fate is a cruel bitch and that 50 year gap didn't matter. Months of radiation, chemotherapy, stem cell therapy and holistic approaches took a toll on my body. I lost so much weight that I was nothing more than a 60 pound, walking pile of bones. My father stayed with me the entire time though. He took off work more than he should have even when he knew we could barely afford the medical bills. He never left my side.

When all of my long, beautiful auburn hair fell out, he shaved his head too. When I refused the hospital food because I was so sick to my stomach, he'd go out and get me whatever I wanted just so I would eat. Whenever the doctor would come in and tell me I needed yet another blood transfusion, he'd convince me that my blood was magical; that the cells flowing through my body were special and powerful with the capability to heal other kids who were sick too. He was my rock when I needed him most, but even some rocks are porous. They are breakable. If a stone is tumbled around in waves of stress long enough, eventually it becomes smaller in size until it's been pulverized into grains of sand. Or, someone can expedite the slow wearing process by smashing the rock onto the ground and breaking it apart by force - splitting it into so many jagged fragments that it can never be put back together again.

His blue eyes mirroring my own always wept when I was sleeping and he was awake. More often than not, he ran on nothing but fumes and he was always exhausted. I was all my father had and he wanted so badly to shelter me from reality. He was channeling every ounce of strength he had into me. Into saving me.

The last time I saw my father was the week I went into remission. My chemotherapy was finally coming to an end after a long battle between my white blood cells and treatments. My body decided to respond in a positive manner, and for once, I had hope. We both did.

But hope is often short lived, as I came to find out early in life.

The memory of that day is carved into my mind so well that I feel as if I'm reliving it all over again. Every time it haunts my thoughts, I'm transported back to the day the life I once knew ended. Me wrapped up in the white sheets of my hospital bed, patiently waiting for my father to arrive after a long shift at work. Hours passing, nurses in and out of my room, but they weren't him. No one was him. He wasn't there.