If I Stay

“I’m calling it ‘The Girlfriend’s-Going-to-Juilliard-Leaving-My-Punk-Heart-in-Shreds Blues,’” he said, singing the title in an exaggeratedly twangy voice. Then he smiled that goofy shy smile that I felt like came from the truest part of him. “I’m kidding.”

“Good,” I said.

“Sort of,” he added.

5:42 A.M.

Adam is gone. He suddenly rushed out, calling to Nurse Ramirez that he’d forgotten something important and would be back as soon as he could. He was already out the door when she told him that she was about to get off work. In fact, she just left, but not before making sure to inform the nurse who’d relieved Old Grumpy that “the young man with the skinny pants and messy hair” is allowed to see me when he returns.

Not that it matters. Willow rules the school now. She has been marching the troops through here all morning. After Gran and Gramps and Adam, Aunt Kate stopped by. Then it was Aunt Diane and Uncle Greg. Then my cousins shuffled in. Willow’s running to and fro, a gleam in her eye. She’s up to something, but whether it’s trotting out loved ones to lobby on behalf of my continuing my earthly existence or whether she’s simply bringing them in to say good-bye, I can’t say.

Now it’s Kim’s turn. Poor Kim. She looks like she slept in a Dumpster. Her hair has staged a full-scale rebellion and more of it has escaped her mangled braid than remains tucked inside. She’s wearing one of what she calls her “turd sweaters,” the greenish, grayish, brownish lumpy masses her mom is always buying her. At first, Kim squints at me, as if I’m a bright, glaring light. But then it’s like she adjusts to the light and decides that even though I may look like a zombie, even though there are tubes sticking out of every which orifice, even though there’s blood on my thin blanket from where it’s seeped through the bandages, I’m still Mia and she’s still Kim. And what do Mia and Kim like to do more than anything? Talk.

Kim settles into the chair next to my bed. “How are you doing?” she asks.

I’m not sure. I’m exhausted, but at the same time Adam’s visit has left me . . . I don’t know what. Agitated. Anxious. Awake, definitely awake. Though I couldn’t feel it when he touched me, his presence stirred me up anyhow. I was just starting to feel grateful that he was here when he booked out of here like the devil was chasing him. Adam has spent the last ten hours trying to get in to see me, and now that he finally succeeded, he left ten minutes after arriving. Maybe I scared him. Maybe he doesn’t want to deal. Maybe I’m not the only chickenshit around here. After all, I spent the last day dreaming of him coming to me, and when he finally staggered into the ICU, if I had the strength, I would’ve run away.

“Well, you would not believe the crazy night it’s been,” Kim says. Then she starts telling me about it. About her mom’s hysterics, about how she lost it in front of my relatives, who were very gracious about the whole thing. The fight they had outside the Roseland Theater in front of a bunch of punks and hipsters. When Kim shouted at her crying mother to “pull it together and start acting like the adult around here” and then stalked off into the club leaving a shocked Mrs. Schein at the curb, a group of guys in spiked leather and fluorescent hair cheered and high-fived her. She tells me about Adam, his determination to get in to see me, how after he got kicked out of the ICU, he enlisted the help of his music friends, who were not at all the snobby scenesters she’d imagined them to be. Then she told me that a bona fide rock star had come to the hospital on my behalf.

Of course, I know almost everything that Kim is telling me, but there is no way that she’d know that. Besides, I like having her recount the day to me. I like how Kim is talking to me normally, like Gran did earlier, just jabbering on, spinning a good yarn, as if we were together on my porch, drinking coffee (or an iced caramel frappuccino in Kim’s case) and catching up.