It is Yo-Yo Ma. Playing Andante con poco e moto rubato. The low piano plays almost as if in warning. In comes the cello, like a heart bleeding. And it’s like something inside of me implodes.

I am sitting around the breakfast table with my family, drinking hot coffee, laughing at Teddy’s chocolate-chip mustache. The snow is blowing outside.

I am visiting a cemetery. Three graves under a tree on a hill overlooking the river.

I am lying with Adam, my head on his chest, on a sandy bank next to the river.

I am hearing people say the word orphan and realize that they’re talking about me.

I am walking through New York City with Kim, the skyscrapers casting shadows on our faces.

I am holding Teddy on my lap, tickling him as he giggles so hard he keels over.

I am sitting with my cello, the one Mom and Dad gave me after my first recital. My fingers caress the wood and the pegs, which time and touch have worn smooth. My bow is poised over the strings now. I am looking at my hand, waiting to start playing.

I am looking at my hand, being held by Adam’s hand.

Yo-Yo Ma continues to play, and it’s like the piano and cello are being poured into my body, the same way that the IV and blood transfusions are. And the memories of my life as it was, and the flashes of it as it might be, are coming so fast and furious. I feel like I can no longer keep up with them but they keep coming and everything is colliding, until I cannot take it anymore. Until I cannot be like this one second longer.

There is a blinding flash, a pain that rips through me for one searing instant, a silent scream from my broken body. For the first time, I can sense how fully agonizing staying will be.

But then I feel Adam’s hand. Not sense it, but feel it. I’m not sitting huddled in the chair anymore. I’m lying on my back in the hospital bed, one again with my body.

Adam is crying and somewhere inside of me I am crying, too, because I’m feeling things at last. I’m feeling not just the physical pain, but all that I have lost, and it is profound and catastrophic and will leave a crater in me that nothing will ever fill. But I’m also feeling all that I have in my life, which includes what I have lost, as well as the great unknown of what life might still bring me. And it’s all too much. The feelings pile up, threatening to crack my chest wide open. The only way to survive them is to concentrate on Adam’s hand. Grasping mine.

And suddenly I just need to hold his hand more than I’ve ever needed anything in this world. Not just be held by it, but hold it back. I aim every remaining ounce of energy into my right hand. I’m weak, and this is so hard. It’s the hardest thing I will ever have to do. I summon all the love I have ever felt, I summon all the strength that Gran and Gramps and Kim and the nurses and Willow have given me. I summon all the breath that Mom, Dad, and Teddy would fill me with if they could. I summon all my own strength, focus it like a laser beam into the fingers and palm of my right hand. I picture my hand stroking Teddy’s hair, grasping a bow poised above my cello, interlaced with Adam’s.

And then I squeeze.

I slump back, spent, unsure of whether I just did what I did. Of what it means. If it registered. If it matters.

But then I feel Adam’s grip tighten, so that the grasp of his hand feels like it is holding my entire body. Like it could lift me up right out of this bed. And then I hear the sharp intake of his breath followed by the sound of his voice. It’s the first time today I can truly hear him.

“Mia?” he asks.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Several people came together in a short amount of time to make If I Stay possible. It starts with Gillian Aldrich, who started crying (in a good way) when I told her about my idea. This proved to be quite a good motivator to get started.

Tamara Glenny, Eliza Griswold, Kim Sevcik, and Sean Smith took time out of their hectic schedules to read early drafts and offer much-needed encouragement. For their enduring generosity and friendship, I love and thank them. Some people help you keep your head straight; Marjorie Ingall helps me keep my heart straight, and for that I love and thank her. Thank you also to Jana and Moshe Banin.

Sarah Burnes is my agent in the truest sense of the word, harnessing her formidable intelligence, insight, passion, and warmth to shepherd the words that I write to the people who should read them. She and the superb Courtney Gatewood and Stephanie Cabot have made miracles happen where this book is concerned.

When I first met with the team at Penguin, I felt like I was sitting down with family. My extraordinary editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel, has lavished Mia and her family (not to mention me) with the careful attention and love you’d hope to get from a relative. She is “Julie-special.” Don Weisberg put both heart and muscle into this book, and the editorial, sales, marketing, publicity, and design people have all gone above and beyond, and for that I want to individually thank: Heather Alexander, Scottie Bowditch, Leigh Butler, Mary-Margaret Callahan, Lisa DeGroff, Erin Dempsey, Jackie Engel, Felicia Frazier, Kristin Gilson, Annie Hurwitz, Ras Shahn Johnson-Baker, Deborah Kaplan, Eileen Kreit, Kimberly Lauber, Rosanne Lauer, Stephanie Owens Lurie, Barbara Marcus, Casey McIntrye, Steve Meltzer, Shanta Newlin, Mary Raymond, Emily Romero, Holly Ruck, Jana Singer, Laurence Tucci, Allison Verost, Allan Winebarger, Courtney Wood, Heather Wood, and Lisa Yoskowitz. And finally a huge thank you to the field reps who worked so hard on behalf of this book. (Phew).

Music is a huge part of this story, and I drew a lot of inspiration from Yo-Yo Ma — whose own work informs much of Mia’s story — and from Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, whose song “Falling Slowly” I probably listened to more than two hundred times while working on the book.

Thanks to my Oregon contingent: Greg and Diane Rios, who have been our compatriots through all this. John and Peg Christie, whose grace, dignity, and generosity continue to move me. Jennifer Larson, M.D., an old friend and, as luck would have it an emergency room doctor, who enlightened me about Glasgow Coma Scales, among other medical details.

My parents — Lee and Ruth Forman — and my siblings — Tamar Schamhart and Greg Forman — are my cheerleaders and most steadfast fans, who ignore my failings (professional ones, anyhow) and celebrate my successes as if they were their own (which they are). Thank you also to Karen Forman, Robert Schamhart, and Detta Tucker.

I didn’t immediately recognize how much of this book is about the way parents transform their lives for their children. Willa Tucker teaches me this lesson every day and is occasionally forgiving when I am too absorbed playing make-believe in my head to play make-believe with her.

Without my husband, Nick Tucker, none of this would be. I owe him everything.

Finally, my deepest thanks go to R.D.T.J., who inspire me in so many ways and who show me every single day that there is such a thing as immortality.