Chapter 21: Sky

I felt weak, not the same wolf I once was. It was as if the strength to open my eyes was too much so I just closed them. Even my sense of smell was lost, because before I could tell when both Husk and Winter were in the room. Except the last time I opened my eyes, I could see Winter, and I hadn’t even smelled him.

I wasn’t just losing my wolf, but I could tell by the sadness in Winter’s eyes I was clearly losing my life. I was only thirty years old, but I felt as if I was in my nineties.

Typically, I would have a healthy appetite and want to eat. Now I didn’t feel like doing anything.

My mind was trapped in this feeling of all the things I wanted to do and hadn’t done. Like I wanted to visit the Grand Canyon, swim with the dolphins in Barbados, which was pretty hard considering I couldn’t swim. A sadness crawled inside of me, the feeling of death and not having completed everything I wanted to do in life. The bucket list I should have been checking off instead of trying to find Fagua. We should’ve enjoyed our lives rather than chasing an elusive dream. We only had one life, and we didn’t even appreciate it or live it to the fullest.

In the hallway, Husk and Winter’s voices murmured angrily.

No matter what they said, it didn’t matter. It was too late.

There was nothing they could do, and one-by-one, we would be dead. This had been the issue. We were acting as if we would never die. Sure, thirty was too young, but dying would happen one day, whether or not we liked it.

“Shhh,” I tried to say as loud as I could, but it was just a whisper.

“Guys you need to calm down,” the doctor said in the hallway. “Whatever you’re angry about, you need to keep it outside of this room. Sky has a little time left, and you’re making it even shorter by upsetting him. His heartbeat shot up a few seconds ago. I could hear you arguing from my office.”

“Winter fucked everything up. Sky could be with us at home. Not here hooked up to the machines ready to die,” Husk said in a gruff voice. He was the first of us to get angry, but it wasn’t anger I sensed in his voice, it was fear.

“I thought I was doing the right thing. Hoping we would all be good now. I made the wrong choice, and now we’ll all pay the price,” Winter said in a low voice I had to strain hear.

“Not all of you,” the doctor said. “Winter, you must have mated with her. You’re...well you know, healthy.” Doc cleared his throat meaning either Husk didn’t know or he’d said the wrong thing.

Dizziness pressed me deeper into the hospital bed and I couldn’t hear Husk or Winter. They felt as if they were miles away as if they were in a different world.

I opened my eyes, trying to focus. Then at the corner of the room I made out two figures. Both were dressed in white and seemed to glow inside the hospital. I blinked, wondering if I was having a dream or if this was real. I squinted trying to make out who these two people were when recognition hit me.

“Mom?” I choked out.

She waved, smiling and my dad was beside her. They looked the same age as before when they had their car accident five years ago.

My dad placed his hand on my shoulder. “Son. Don’t be afraid.”

Mom hugged me. She whimpered and cried. She was so small. It had always been a family joke. She was the tiny one of the family, because she was only five feet, and had such a small frame. Her dark hair hung loose rather than the bun I remember her wearing except on special occasions like a party or time we spent all day at the beach.

I held on to Mom with one hand and shifted my head to address Dad.

“I’m not afraid. I worry about Husk and Winter. What will they do without me?”

The more I tried to focus to tell them I needed to help my brothers, the more I found myself with them in my arms and us walking together.

Dad was telling me I shouldn’t be afraid because he wanted me to follow them. I decided as life was part of life, so was death; I had to embrace it. If it wasn’t for now, then it would be in the future.

I took a deep breath and faced Mom. “I’m ready to go.”

She shook her head with tears in her eyes. “My baby boy. Please, let’s see if you have to do this. Let’s wait awhile because we may have good news. You may not have to come.”

“My love,” Dad said, “if he didn’t have to come, then he wouldn’t be here.”

Mom didn’t respond to him, she just held on to me tightly, and I did the same. I closed my eyes. It was as if we were in the middle of a white hole. I didn’t know where dad wanted to lead me. Mom wanted to wait; she had hope. Something she’d always had.

I remember one time, I’d found a butterfly in the garden. I told her I wanted it to get better, so she helped me by reading up on how to look after butterflies.

We tended to it, cared for it, until the day it was time for it to heal, and it should have left. It didn’t. I told her we didn’t do it right. The butterfly didn’t fly like we’d read in the book. She said we should give it more time. I’d given up hope, in my eyes the butterfly was dead. Then one day, she told me to come, she lifted the lid, and the butterfly flew out of the box.

Ever since that day, I wished I possessed hope like my mom. I decided unlike when I was a kid, I would follow in her footsteps and seize some as well.