NINETEEN
The first time I ever saw Mia Hall was six years ago. Our high school had this arts program and if you chose music as your elective, you could take music classes or opt for independent study to practice in the studios. Mia and I both went for the independent study.
I’d seen her playing her cello a couple of times but nothing had really registered. I mean she was cute and all, but, not exactly my type. She was a classical musician. I was a rock guy. Oil and water and all that.
I didn’t really notice her until the day I saw her not playing. She was just sitting in one of the soundproof practice booths, her cello resting gently against her knees, her bow poised a few inches above the bridge. Her eyes were closed and her brow was a little furrowed. She was so still, it seemed like she’d taken a brief vacation from her body. And even though she wasn’t moving, even though her eyes were closed, I somehow knew that she was listening to music then, was grabbing the notes from the silence, like a squirrel gathering acorns for the winter, before she got down to the business of playing. I stood there, suddenly riveted by her, until she seemed to wake up and start playing with this intense concentration. When she finally looked at me, I hustled away.
After that, I became kind of fascinated by her and by what I guessed was her ability to hear music in the silence. Back then, I’d wanted to be able to do that, too. So I took to watching her play, and though I told myself the reason for my attention was because she was as dedicated a musician as I was and that she was cute, the truth was that I also wanted to understand what she heard in the silence.
During all the time we were together, I don’t think I ever found out. But once I was with her, I didn’t need to. We were both music-obsessed, each in our own way. If we didn’t entirely understand the other person’s obsession, it didn’t matter, because we understood our own.
I know the exact moment Mia is talking about. Kim and I had driven to the hospital in Sarah’s pink Dodge Dart. I don’t remember asking Liz’s girlfriend to borrow her car. I don’t remember driving it. I don’t remember piloting the car up into the hills where the hospital is or how I even knew the way. Just that one minute I was in a theater in downtown Portland, sound-checking for that night’s show when Kim showed up to deliver the awful news. And the next minute I was standing outside the hospital.
What Mia inexplicably remembers, it’s sort of the first pinpoint of clarity in that whole petri-dish blur between hearing the news and arriving at the trauma center. Kim and I had just parked the car and I’d walked out of the garage ahead of her. I’d needed a couple of seconds to gather my strength, to steel myself for what I was about to face. And I’d remembered looking at the hulking hospital building and wondering if Mia was somewhere in there, and feeling a heart-in-throat panic that she’d died in the time it had taken Kim to fetch me. But then I’d felt this wave of something, not really hope, not really relief, but just a sort of knowledge that Mia was still in there. And that had been enough to pull me through the doors.
They say that things happen for a reason, but I don’t know that I buy that. I don’t know that I’ll ever see a reason for what happened to Kat, Denny, and Teddy that day. But it took forever to get in to see Mia. I got turned away from the ICU by Mia’s nurses, and then Kim and I devised this whole plan to sneak in. I don’t think I realized it at the time, but I think in a weird way, I was probably stalling. I was gathering my strength. I didn’t want to lose it in front of her. I guess part of me somehow knew that Mia, deep in her coma, would be able to tell.
Of course, I ended up losing it in front of her anyway. When I finally saw her the first time, I almost blew chunks. Her skin looked like tissue paper. Her eyes were covered with tape. Tubes ran in and out of every part of her body, pumping liquids and blood in and draining some scary-ass shit out. I’m ashamed to say it, but when I first came in, I wanted to run away.
But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. So instead, I just focused on the part of her that still looked remotely like Mia—her hands. There were monitors stuck to her fingers, but they still looked like her hands. I touched the fingertips of her left hand, which felt worn and smooth, like old leather. I ran my fingers across the nubby calluses of her thumbs. Her hands were freezing, just like they always were, so I warmed them, just like I always did.
And it was while warming her hands that I thought about how lucky it was that they looked okay. Because without hands, there’d be no music and without music, she’d have lost everything. And I remember thinking that somehow Mia had to realize that, too. That she needed to be reminded that she had the music to come back to. I ran out of the ICU, part of me fearing that I might never see her alive again, but somehow knowing that I had to do this one thing. When I came back, I played her the Yo-Yo Ma.
And that’s also when I made her the promise. The promise that she’s held me to.
I did the right thing. I know it now. I must’ve always known, but it’s been so hard to see through all my anger. And it’s okay if she’s angry. It’s even okay if she hates me. It was selfish what I asked her to do, even if it wound up being the most unselfish thing I’ve ever done. The most unselfish thing I’ll have to keep doing.
But I’d do it again. I know that now. I’d make that promise a thousand times over and lose her a thousand times over to have heard her play last night or to see her in the morning sunlight. Or even without that. Just to know that she’s somewhere out there. Alive.
Mia watches me lose my shit all over the Promenade. She bears witness as the fissures open up, the lava leaking out, this great explosion of what, I guess to her, must look like grief.
But I’m not crying out of grief. I’m crying out of gratitude.