Read Online If I Stay by Gayle Forman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Gayle Forman
Tags: Fiction, General, Death, Family, Juvenile Fiction, Family Life, Social Issues, Young Adult Fiction, Girls & Women, Death & Dying, Friendship, oregon, Families, New Experience, Emotions & Feelings, Medical Fiction, Coma, Medical Care, Violoncellists
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house to bring her fresh clothes. Gramps is sitting very still, and his hands are shaking. He’s not much of a talker, so it must be hard for him being ordered to chat with me now.
Another nurse comes by. She has dark hair and dark eyes brightened with lots of shimmery eye makeup. Her nails are acrylic and have heart decals on them. She must have to work hard to keep her nails so pretty. I admire that.
She’s not my nurse but she comes up to Gran and Gramps just the same. “Don’t you doubt for a second that she can hear you,” she tells them. “She’s aware of everything that’s going on.” She stands there with her hands on her hips. I can almost picture her snapping gum. Gran and Gramps stare at her, lapping up what she’s telling them. “You might think that the doctors or nurses or all this is running the show,” she says, gesturing to the wall of medical equipment. “Nuh-uh. She’s running the show. Maybe she’s just biding her time. So you talk to her. You tell her to take all the time she needs, but to come on back. You’re waiting for her.”
Mom and Dad would never call Teddy or me mistakes. Or accidents. Or surprises. Or any of those other stupid euphemisms. But neither one of us was planned, and they never tried to hide that.
Mom got pregnant with me when she was young. Not teenager-young, but young for their set of friends. She was twenty-three and she and Dad had already been married for a year.
In a funny way, Dad was always a bow-tie wearer, always a little more traditional than you might imagine. Because even though he had blue hair and tattoos and wore leather jackets and worked in a record store, he wanted to marry Mom back at a time when the rest of their friends were still having drunken one-night stands. “ Girlfriend is such a stupid word,” he said. “I couldn’t stand calling her that. So, we had to get married, so I could call her ‘wife.’”
Mom, for her part, had a messed-up family. She didn’t go into the gory details with me, but I knew her father was long gone and for a while she had been out of touch with her mother, though now we saw Grandma and Papa Richard, which is what we called Mom’s stepfather, a couple times a year.
So Mom was taken not just with Dad but with the big, mostly intact, relatively normal family he belonged to. She agreed to marry Dad even though they’d been together just a year. Of course, they still did it their way. They were married by a lesbian justice of the peace while their friends played a guitar-feedback-heavy version of the “Wedding March.” The bride wore a white-fringed flapper dress and black spiked boots. The groom wore leather.
They got pregnant with me because of someone else’s wedding. One of Dad’s music buddies who’d moved to Seattle had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, so they were doing the shotgun thing. Mom and Dad went to the wedding, and at the reception, they got a little drunk and back at the hotel weren’t as careful as usual. Three months later there was a thin blue line on the pregnancy test.
The way they tell it, neither felt particularly ready to be parents. Neither one felt like an adult yet. But there was no question that they would have me. Mom was adamantly pro-choice. She had a bumper sticker on the car that read If you can’t trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child? But in her case the choice was to keep me.
Dad was more hesitant. More freaked out. Until the minute the doctor pulled me out and then he started to cry.
“That’s poppycock,” he would say when Mom recounted the story. “I did no such thing.”
“You didn’t cry then?” Mom asked in sarcastic amusement.
“I teared . I did not cry.” Then Dad winked at me and pantomimed weeping like a baby.
Because I was the only kid in Mom and Dad’s group of friends, I was a novelty. I was raised by the music community, with dozens of aunties and uncles who took me in as their own little foundling, even
Another nurse comes by. She has dark hair and dark eyes brightened with lots of shimmery eye makeup. Her nails are acrylic and have heart decals on them. She must have to work hard to keep her nails so pretty. I admire that.
She’s not my nurse but she comes up to Gran and Gramps just the same. “Don’t you doubt for a second that she can hear you,” she tells them. “She’s aware of everything that’s going on.” She stands there with her hands on her hips. I can almost picture her snapping gum. Gran and Gramps stare at her, lapping up what she’s telling them. “You might think that the doctors or nurses or all this is running the show,” she says, gesturing to the wall of medical equipment. “Nuh-uh. She’s running the show. Maybe she’s just biding her time. So you talk to her. You tell her to take all the time she needs, but to come on back. You’re waiting for her.”
Mom and Dad would never call Teddy or me mistakes. Or accidents. Or surprises. Or any of those other stupid euphemisms. But neither one of us was planned, and they never tried to hide that.
Mom got pregnant with me when she was young. Not teenager-young, but young for their set of friends. She was twenty-three and she and Dad had already been married for a year.
In a funny way, Dad was always a bow-tie wearer, always a little more traditional than you might imagine. Because even though he had blue hair and tattoos and wore leather jackets and worked in a record store, he wanted to marry Mom back at a time when the rest of their friends were still having drunken one-night stands. “ Girlfriend is such a stupid word,” he said. “I couldn’t stand calling her that. So, we had to get married, so I could call her ‘wife.’”
Mom, for her part, had a messed-up family. She didn’t go into the gory details with me, but I knew her father was long gone and for a while she had been out of touch with her mother, though now we saw Grandma and Papa Richard, which is what we called Mom’s stepfather, a couple times a year.
So Mom was taken not just with Dad but with the big, mostly intact, relatively normal family he belonged to. She agreed to marry Dad even though they’d been together just a year. Of course, they still did it their way. They were married by a lesbian justice of the peace while their friends played a guitar-feedback-heavy version of the “Wedding March.” The bride wore a white-fringed flapper dress and black spiked boots. The groom wore leather.
They got pregnant with me because of someone else’s wedding. One of Dad’s music buddies who’d moved to Seattle had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, so they were doing the shotgun thing. Mom and Dad went to the wedding, and at the reception, they got a little drunk and back at the hotel weren’t as careful as usual. Three months later there was a thin blue line on the pregnancy test.
The way they tell it, neither felt particularly ready to be parents. Neither one felt like an adult yet. But there was no question that they would have me. Mom was adamantly pro-choice. She had a bumper sticker on the car that read If you can’t trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child? But in her case the choice was to keep me.
Dad was more hesitant. More freaked out. Until the minute the doctor pulled me out and then he started to cry.
“That’s poppycock,” he would say when Mom recounted the story. “I did no such thing.”
“You didn’t cry then?” Mom asked in sarcastic amusement.
“I teared . I did not cry.” Then Dad winked at me and pantomimed weeping like a baby.
Because I was the only kid in Mom and Dad’s group of friends, I was a novelty. I was raised by the music community, with dozens of aunties and uncles who took me in as their own little foundling, even
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