If I Stay

Everyone thinks it was because of the snow. In a way, I suppose that's true. The dusting of white is just enough to cancel school, granting my family an unexpected, stolen day. The morning unfolds in a warm blur of inside jokes and the sweet, smoky scent of Dad's pipe tobacco. Mom, a notoriously bad cook, attempts pancakes while my little brother, Teddy, wages a joyous war on his drum kit. We are a loud, loving, chaotic universe of our own, and when Dad suggests we take a drive to visit old friends, I agree without hesitation. I'd rather be here, crammed into our rusting Buick with my ridiculous, wonderful family, than anywhere else in the world. Dad brokers a truce in the battle for the car stereo, and as Beethoven's Cello Sonata no. 3 fills the car, I lean my head against the window, close my eyes, and feel utterly content.

You wouldn't expect the radio to work afterward. But it does. The music plays on, a bizarre soundtrack to the carnage. I am standing in a ditch, looking down at myself in the same jean skirt and black boots I put on this morning. The car is an eviscerated metal skeleton. I see Dad first, his pipe still in his jacket pocket, pieces of his brain scattered on the asphalt like cauliflower. Then Mom, her eyes a ghastly red, killed instantly. A hummingbird of panic ricochets through me - Teddy! Where is Teddy? I run back toward the ditch where I first stood and see a small hand sticking out. But as I get closer, I see the glint of a silver bracelet with tiny cello and guitar charms. The one Adam gave me. It's my bracelet. It's my hand. The body lying broken in the snow is mine.

This cannot be happening. I scream at myself to wake up, but my breath doesn't smoke in the cold air. I pinch my own arm and feel nothing. I have become a ghost, a spectator to my own tragedy. The paramedics arrive, their voices urgent as they work on my body, calling out my Glasgow Coma Score. They put a sheet over Dad and zip Mom into a plastic bag. I learn later that Teddy is alive, whisked away in another ambulance. Me, I am loaded onto a helicopter, a bystander on my own frantic flight, watching the medics pump a small bag that breathes for me as the green Oregon landscape rushes by below. I wonder if Adam is in Portland already, asleep in a hotel room, waiting for a girlfriend who will be both early and impossibly late.

As my body is rushed into surgery, I am adrift in memory. I see myself at my first recital, ten years old and paralyzed by stage fright, hiding outside until Dad found me. He confessed his own ferocious jitters before shows, how he used to get wasted to cope. “Social services frowns on drunk ten-year-olds,” he'd joked, his arm around my shoulder. “You don't get over the jitters. You just work through it. You just hang in there.” I remember meeting Adam in the school's music wing, this cool, quiet boy with a lopsided smile who watched me practice. I was sure he was making fun of me, the serious girl with the hulking instrument. Then he asked me if I'd ever heard of “this Yo-Yo Ma dude,” and with two weeks of his pizza-delivery tips, he bought tickets to the symphony. That night, sitting in the nosebleed seats, he reached over and took my hand, his eyes closed, lost in the music just as I was.

In the sterile, timeless world of the ICU, I learn that I am in a coma, and I hear a nurse tell my grandparents something that changes everything: “She's running the show.” The choice, I realize with a terrifying certainty, is mine. If I stay, if I live, it's up to me. How can I possibly decide? My family begins to gather in the waiting room - aunts, uncles, cousins, a somber vigil of familiar faces. My best friend, Kim, arrives, her usual sarcastic wit a shield against her mother's tears. She finds the hospital chapel and speaks to me as if I'm sitting right beside her. “Please don't die,” she pleads. “If you die, there's going to be one of those cheesy Princess Diana memorials at school... I know you'd hate that kind of thing.”

Then Adam is here, his face a blank mask of shock. When a nurse tells him only immediate family can visit, I see him crumple, and Kim catches him, bearing his weight. Their shared love for me forges a bond between them I had always wanted but never achieved. Later, he returns with an army of punk rockers and the indie-rock goddess Brooke Vega, a harebrained scheme to create a diversion so he can sneak in to see me. The plan is a chaotic failure, but just as he's being dragged away, my mom's best friend, Willow, appears. She is a nurse, a force of nature, and she takes charge. I feel a surge of hope, but it dies in my throat as I realize why she's here, at my hospital, and not at her own. And that's how I know. Teddy. He's gone, too.

I am completely alone now. The thought of waking up an orphan, of never again smelling Dad's pipe or hearing Mom's laugh or reading Teddy another chapter of *Harry Potter*, is a weight too heavy to bear. I am running out of fight. Gramps comes to my bedside, his face streaked with silent, unending tears. He leans close and whispers, “It's okay. If you want to go. Everyone wants you to stay... But I could see why it might not be what you want. So I just wanted to tell you that I understand if you go. It's okay if you want to stop fighting.” His words are a gift, a release. For the first time, someone has acknowledged the profound gravity of what I have lost, and what staying would cost.

Just as I am preparing to let go, Adam returns. He sinks into the chair beside me, his voice a raw whisper. “Stay,” he pleads, tears streaming down his face. “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 can lose you like that if I don't lose you today. I'll let you go. If you stay.” He places a pair of headphones over my ears, and the sound of a cello fills the room. It's Yo-Yo Ma.

The music shatters me. A flood of images - past, present, and future - collides in my mind. Breakfast with my family. Three graves on a hillside. Walking through New York City with Kim. Lying by the river with Adam. The word *orphan*. The pain of staying will be agonizing, a crater in my soul that will never be filled. But then, through the fog, I feel something. Not the memory of a touch, but the physical pressure of Adam's hand holding mine. The feelings - grief, love, loss, hope - threaten to crack my chest open. The only way to survive them is to hold on. I summon every ounce of strength from my family, my friends, from Adam, from myself, and focus it all into my right hand. I picture my fingers on a cello bow, intertwined with Adam's. And then, with the last bit of fight I have left, I squeeze.

His grip tightens, as if his hand is holding my entire body, ready to lift me out of this bed. I hear the sharp intake of his breath, and then the sound of his voice, clear and real.

“Mia?” he asks.