If I Stay

Mia and her family pile into their rusty old Buick and head out on the snowy road towards Willow and Henry’s home. Her father, in the driving seat, did not get his license until fairly late in life, as he was determined to ride his bike everywhere. It was not until his wife was pregnant with Teddy that he relented, got a license, and bought a car. Teddy’s birth also compelled him to quit his band, to go back to school, and become a teacher, so that he could better support his family. 

As they are driving, the family engages in a routine argument about what music to play on the radio. As they head down the road, Beethoven’s Cello Sonata no. 3 plays on the radio, and Mia closes her eyes to focus on the lovely music. 

What happens next is sudden, disorienting, and life altering. A four-ton truck travelling 60 miles-per-hour, smashes into the passenger side of their car with enough force to send the “front passenger side door through the front driver-side door” (15). In the aftermath of the accident, with Beethoven still playing in the background, Mia attempts to locate her family members in the wreckage. She finds both her parents dead and horribly disfigured by the jarring collision; however, she cannot find her brother, Teddy. Returning to the ditch she crawled out of, she sees a hand sticking up and assumes it is Teddy’s. Much to her surprise, she discovers her own body in that ditch; she is horribly injured but still alive as the approaching ambulance sirens whine in the distance.

Still confused about whether she is alive or dead, Mia watches as the ambulance arrives and the paramedics place her body inside. She can see the assembled firefighters, police and medical personnel zip her parents into body bags; she overhears them declare her mother’s cause of death—“immediate cardiac arrest” (19-20); and she can even observe her own body, with one breast exposed, which, even in these terrible circumstances, she is embarrassed about. The accident is so horrifying and grisly that even some of the first responders burst into tears or vomit. Mia hears a medic announce that “her Glasgow coma is an 8” (20), which means her situation is not only perilous but she has an estimated 10 minutes to live and the nearest hospital is 20 minutes away. In the ambulance, the kind medic sits next to her, adjusts her IV, smooths her hair, and urges her to “hang in there” (22).

Still in the ambulance, Mia flashes back to when she started playing the cello and recalls her first recital at the age of ten. Although Mia’s parents had initially laughed at the irony of their daughter foregoing rock music for classical music, they realize she has a gift when a local Music Professor at the University, Dr. Christie, sees her perform and agrees to teach her.  But years before this, she has to perform her first recital, a cello solo from Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies,” and she is extremely nervous backstage. She tries to flee and hide outside the performance hall but her father finds her. Mia’s dad comforts her, revealing that he was terrified every time he took to the stage as a musician. He also reminds her that there are going to be “all kinds of terrible out there” (26) at the recital, which means that even her worst performance would go unnoticed. This reassures Mia, who gives a decent performance and earns her first real cello as a reward.