If I Stay

They call out a chorus of numbers that are as familiar to me now as my own name: BP, pulse ox, respiratory rate. Nurse Ramirez looks like an entirely different person from the one who arrived here yesterday afternoon. The makeup has all rubbed off and her hair is flat. She looks like she could sleep standing up. Her shift must be over soon. I’ll miss her but I’m glad she’ll be able to get away from me, from this place. I’d like to get away, too. I think I will. I think it’s just a matter of time—of figuring out how to let go.

I haven’t been back in my bed fifteen minutes when Willow shows up. She marches through the double doors and goes to speak to the one nurse behind the desk. I don’t hear what she says, but I hear her tone: it’s polite, soft-spoken, but leaving no room for questions. When she leaves the room a few minutes later, there’s a change in the air. Willow’s in charge now. The grumpy nurse at first looks pissed off, like Who is this woman to tell me what to do? But then she seems to resign, to throw her hands up in surrender. It’s been a crazy night. The shift is almost over. Why bother? Soon, me and all of my noisy, pushy visitors will be somebody else’s problem.

Five minutes later, Willow is back, bringing Gran and Gramps with her. Willow has worked all day and now she is here all night. I know she doesn’t get enough sleep on a good day. I used to hear Mom give her tips for getting the baby to sleep through the night.

I’m not sure who looks worse, me or Gramps. His cheeks are sallow, his skin looks gray and papery, and his eyes are bloodshot. Gran, on the other hand, looks just like Gran. No sign of wear and tear on her. It’s like exhaustion wouldn’t dare mess with her. She bustles right over to my bed.

“You’ve sure got us on a roller-coaster ride today,” Gran says lightly. “Your mom always said she couldn’t believe what an easy girl you were and I remember telling her, ‘Just wait until she hits puberty.’ But you proved me wrong. Even then you were such a breeze. Never gave us any trouble. Never the kind of girl to make my heart race in fear. You made up for a lifetime of that today.”

“Now, now,” Gramps says, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Oh, I’m only kidding. Mia would appreciate it. She’s got a sense of humor, no matter how serious she sometimes seems. A wicked sense of humor, this one.”

Gran pulls the chair up next to my bed and starts combing through my hair with her fingers. Someone has rinsed it out, so, while it’s not exactly clean, it’s not caked with blood, either. Gran starts untangling my bangs, which are about chin length. I’m forever cutting bangs, then growing them. It’s about as radical a makeover as I can give myself. She works her way down, pulling the hair out from under the pillow so it streams down my chest, hiding some of the lines and tubes connected to me. “There, much better,” she says. “You know, I went outside for a walk today and you’ll never guess what I saw. A crossbill. In Portland in February. Now, that’s unusual. I think it’s Glo. She always had a soft spot for you. Said you reminded her of your father, and she adored him. When he cut his first crazy Mohawk hairdo, she practically threw him a party. She loved that he was rebellious, so different. Little did she know your father couldn’t stand her. She came to visit us once when your dad was around five or six, and she had this ratty mink coat with her. This was before she got all into the animal rights and crystals and the like. The coat smelled terrible, like mothballs, like the old linens we kept in a trunk in the attic, and your father took to calling her ‘Auntie Trunk Smell.’ She never knew that. But she loved that he’d rebelled against us, or so she thought, and she thought it was something that you rebelled all over again by becoming a classical musician. Though much as I tried to tell her that it wasn’t the way it was, she didn’t care. She had her own ideas about things; I suppose we all do.”

Gran twitters on for another five minutes, filling me in on mundane news: Heather has decided she wants to become a librarian. My cousin Matthew bought a motorcycle and my aunt Patricia is not pleased about that. I’ve heard her keep up a running stream of commentary like this for hours while she’s cooking dinner or potting orchids. And listening to her now, I can almost picture us in her greenhouse, where even in winter, the air is always warm and humid and smells musty and earthy like soil with the slightest tinge of manure. Gran hand-collects cowshit, “cow patties,” she calls them, and mixes them in with mulch to make her own fertilizer. Gramps thinks she should patent the recipe and sell it because she uses it on her orchids, which are always winning awards.