If I Stay

7:16 A.M

It’s morning. And inside the hospital, there’s a different kind of dawn, a rustling of covers, a clearing of the eyes. In some ways, the hospital never goes to sleep. The lights stay on and the nurses stay awake, but even though it’s still dark outside, you can tell that things are waking up. The doctors are back, yanking on my eyelids, shining their lights at me, frowning as they scribble notes in my chart as though I’ve let them down.

I don’t care anymore. I’m tired of this all, and it will be over soon. The social worker is back on duty again, too. It looks like the night’s sleep had little impact on her. Her eyes are still heavy, her hair a kinky mess. She reads my chart and listens to updates from the nurses on my bumpy night, which seems to make her even more tired. The nurse with the blue-black skin is also back. She greeted me by telling me how glad she was to see me this morning, how she’d been thinking about me last night, hoping I’d be here. Then she noticed the bloodstain on my blanket and tsked tsked before hustling off to get me a new one.

After Kim left, there haven’t been any more visitors. I guess Willow has run out of people to lobby me with. I wonder if this deciding business is something that all the nurses are aware of. Nurse Ramirez sure knew about it. And I think the nurse with me now knows it, too, judging by how congratulatory she’s acting that I made it through the night. And Willow seems like she knows it, too, with the way she’s been marching everyone through here. I like these nurses so much. I hope they will not take my decision personally.

I am so tired now that I can barely blink my eyes. It’s all just a matter of time, and part of me wonders why I’m delaying the inevitable. But I know why. I’m waiting for Adam to come back. Though it seems like he has been gone for an eternity, it’s probably only been an hour. And he asked me to wait, so I will. That’s the least I can do for him.

My eyes are closed so I hear him before I see him. I hear the raspy, quick rushes of his lungs. He is panting like he just ran a marathon. Then I smell the sweat on him, a clean musky scent that I’d bottle and wear as perfume if I could. I open my eyes. Adam has closed his. But the lids are puffy and pink, so I know what he’s been doing. Is that why he went away? To cry without my seeing?

He doesn’t so much sit in the chair as fall into it, like clothes heaped onto the floor at the end of a long day. He covers his face with his hands and takes deep breaths to steady himself. After a minute, he drops his hands into his lap. “Just listen,” he says with a voice that sounds like shrapnel.

I open my eyes wide now. I sit up as much as I can. And I listen.

“Stay.” With that one word, Adam’s voice catches, but he swallows the emotion and pushes forward. “There’s no word for what happened to you. There’s no good side of it. But there is something to live for. And I’m not talking about me. It’s just. . I don’t know. Maybe I’m talking shit. I know I’m in shock. I know I haven’t digested what happened to your parents, to Teddy. . ” When he says Teddy, his voice cracks and an avalanche of tears tumbles down his face. And I think: I love you.

I hear him take gulpfuls of air to steady himself. And then he continues: “All I can think about is how fucked up it would be for your life to end here, now. I mean, I know that your life is fucked up no matter what now, forever. And I’m not dumb enough to think that I can undo that, that anyone can. But I can’t wrap my mind around the notion of you not getting old, having kids, going to Juilliard, getting to play that cello in front of a huge audience, so that they can get the chills the way I do every time I see you pick up your bow, every time I see you smile at me.

“If you stay, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll quit the band, go with you to New York. But if you need me to go away, I’ll do that, too. I was talking to Liz and she said maybe coming back to your old life would just be too painful, that maybe it’d be easier for you to erase us. And that would suck, but I’d do it. I can lose you like that if I don’t lose you today. I’ll let you go. If you stay.”

Then it is Adam who lets go. His sobs burst like fists pounding against tender flesh.

I close my eyes. I cover my ears. I cannot watch this. I cannot hear this.

But then, it is no longer Adam that I hear. It’s that sound, the low moan that in an instant takes flight and turns into something sweet. It’s the cello. Adam has placed headphones over my lifeless ears and is laying an iPod down on my chest. He’s apologizing, saying that he knows this isn’t my favorite but it was the best he could do. He turns up the volume so I can hear the music floating across the morning air. Then he takes my hand.

It is Yo-Yo Ma. Playing Andante con poco e moto rubato. The low piano plays almost as if in warning. In comes the cello, like a heart bleeding. And it’s like something inside of me implodes.

I am sitting around the breakfast table with my family, drinking hot coffee, laughing at Teddy’s chocolate-chip mustache. The snow is blowing outside.

I am visiting a cemetery. Three graves under a tree on a hill overlooking the river.

I am lying with Adam, my head on his chest, on a sandy bank next to the river.

I am hearing people say the word orphan and realize that they’re talking about me.

I am walking through New York City with Kim, the skyscrapers casting shadows on our faces.

I am holding Teddy on my lap, tickling him as he giggles so hard he keels over.

I am sitting with my cello, the one Mom and Dad gave me after my first recital. My fingers caress the wood and the pegs, which time and touch have worn smooth. My bow is poised over the strings now. I am looking at my hand, waiting to start playing.

I am looking at my hand, being held by Adam’s hand.

Yo-Yo Ma continues to play, and it’s like the piano and cello are being poured into my body, the same way that the IV and blood transfusions are. And the memories of my life as it was, and the flashes of it as it might be, are coming so fast and furious. I feel like I can no longer keep up with them but they keep coming and everything is colliding, until I cannot take it anymore. Until I cannot be like this one second longer.

There is a blinding flash, a pain that rips through me for one searing instant, a silent scream from my broken body. For the first time, I can sense how fully agonizing staying will be.

But then I feel Adam’s hand. Not sense it, but feel it. I’m not sitting huddled in the chair anymore. I’m lying on my back in the hospital bed, one again with my body.

Adam is crying and somewhere inside of me I am crying, too, because I’m feeling things at last. I’m feeling not just the physical pain, but all that I have lost, and it is profound and catastrophic and will leave a crater in me that nothing will ever fill. But I’m also feeling all that I have in my life, which includes what I have lost, as well as the great unknown of what life might still bring me. And it’s all too much. The feelings pile up, threatening to crack my chest wide open. The only way to survive them is to concentrate on Adam’s hand. Grasping mine.

And suddenly I just need to hold his hand more than I’ve ever needed anything in this world. Not just be held by it, but hold it back. I aim every remaining ounce of energy into my right hand. I’m weak, and this is so hard. It’s the hardest thing I will ever have to do. I summon all the love I have ever felt, I summon all the strength that Gran and Gramps and Kim and the nurses and Willow have given me. I summon all the breath that Mom, Dad, and Teddy would fill me with if they could. I summon all my own strength, focus it like a laser beam into the fingers and palm of my right hand. I picture my hand stroking Teddy’s hair, grasping a bow poised above my cello, interlaced with Adam’s.

And then I squeeze.

I slump back, spent, unsure of whether I just did what I did. Of what it means. If it registered. If it matters.

But then I feel Adam’s grip tighten, so that the grasp of his hand feels like it is holding my entire body. Like it could lift me up right out of this bed. And then I hear the sharp intake of his breath followed by the sound of his voice. It’s the first time today I can truly hear him.

“Mia?” he asks.