“Entropy” by Heny Patel

Inspired by Thyroid Nest painting from the Series Forbidden Garden by Alexandra Suvorova
https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-Thyroid-nest-Series-Forbidden-Garden/764004/73196
43/view

Sitting on a red gingham blanket, Anya presses her back against the tree trunk of an old

maple tree. She flips through a book she found at a local thrift bookstore. Distracted fingers try

to drown out the surrounding sounds and sights. But, neither the leaves of her book nor the

leaves around her were successful at the attempt.

A family of four near her enjoys a picnic of sandwiches, lemonade, and a charcuterie

board. Anya hears a young boy with straw-like blond hair wonder, “Why is it called a

shark-cootie-ri board?” emphasizing the words that represent most kids’ obsession and fear. A

teenage girl begins correcting the boy, but the boy finishes his food and starts running around

to make use of his newfound energy. This causes the girl to chase after him in deliberate slow

motion. Anya imagines what it would be like to have the movement and energy of the

22-year-old she is instead of the 75-year-old she feels like because of her condition.

It took third grader Anya a few days to correctly pronounce her condition’s name let

alone understand it. She remembers the first question she asked her endocrinologist after her

diagnosis.

“Who is Hashimoto?”

The doctor crouched down to her level and explained that “Hashimoto was the Japanese

physician that first learned about the disease and that was over a hundred years ago, so we

have learned so much since then! You and your family are in great hands, honey.” Though, some
days, it seems like Hashimoto’s thyroiditis has taken on its own personhood and hers along with

it.

After handing a white teddy bear with a red bow to Anya, he turned to her parents. He

spoke to them in a hushed tone that day of the autoimmune disease and the role of the thyroid

in the metabolism of energy. Textbook details that she understands today because of constant

doctor visits, thousands of articles, and experiences of the metabolic irregularities themselves.

Will they ever become regularities, Anya asks no one in particular. Maybe Hashimoto knows

“You two slow down and come back here!” The older woman in the park scolds the

young boy and girl, “you’re going to run over the nice girl reading over there.” Anya gives her a

polite smile and waves.

“If only you two kids would sit down and read more…” The woman mumbles under her

breath as she walks away.

Anya refocuses her attention on the words on the page. She reads the first line of that

page again for the third or maybe fifth time. Just then, in her periphery, a blur of black and

orange drifts onto her checkered picnic blanket. It seems to almost blend in with the helicopter

seeds floating around her. Setting her book aside, she moves closer to it, realizing that the blur

is unmistakably a monarch butterfly with two striking pairs of orange wings embellished with

black veins and white polka dots. She recognizes the butterfly species because her

seventh-grade teacher, Ms. Priss, had a white mesh cage in her classroom that housed monarch

butterflies. For a good portion of the year, Anya and her class were responsible for taking care

of the creatures until they were ready to be released into the wild for their fall migration. They

often start their journey from the conifers and maple trees of northeastern North America.
 Ms. Priss had told them that the butterflies use a combination of different

environmental cues to guide their migration over long distances to reach their homes in the fir

trees of southwestern Mexico. Anya assumes the monarch on her blanket was on its

countrywide trekking journey to its final destination, where it will enter hibernation for the

winter. How they survive all winter with little to no food fascinated young Anya. Ms. Priss had

explained that monarchs get energy from energy reserves of milkweed and nectar that is stored

as fat. Cool temperatures also slow down their metabolism, so they don’t need as much food.

When the day finally came in seventh grade, Ms. Priss brought out all the students to

Shackford Head State Park. Bundled up in firetruck red gloves, a wool hat, and way too many

sweaters for that fall day, young Anya watched hundreds of monarchs burst into the cool air of

Eastport, Maine, joining the gold, orange, and crimson foliage of the trees.

Anya observes the monarch, which is now playing with a loose red thread of the blanket,

and she notices an almost imperceptible tear in its right wing. Anya offers her trembling hand as

an alternative refuge. The butterfly climbs and clings to her hand. She carefully stands up and

extends her hand out to the sky, desperately hoping the tear didn’t disable its ability to fly. But

like a crack in stained-glass windows, the tear did not diminish the beauty of its wings. Nor the

function it seems because, after some time, the butterfly lifts itself and flutters away towards

the cloudy sky, leaving Anya with one hand over her forehead, squinting through the sun’s rays,

and the other hand on her neck.