That Moment

5.Julliard

They take me into a small room with bright lights. A doctor dabs some orange stuff onto the side of my chest and then rams a small plastic tube in me. Another doctor shines a flashlight into my eye. "Nonresponsive," he tells the nurse. "The chopper's here. Get her to Trauma. Now!"

They rush me out of the ER and into the elevator. I have to jog to keep up. Right before the doors close, I notice that Meg is here. Which is odd. We were meant to be visiting her next week. Did she get called in because of the snow? Because of us? She rushes around the hospital hall, her face a mask of concentration. I don't think she even knows it is us yet. Maybe she even tried to call, left a message on Mom's cell phone, apologizing that there'd been an emergency and she wouldn't be home for our visit.

The elevator opens right onto the roof. A helicopter, its blades swooshing the air, sits in the middle of a big red circle.

I've never been in a helicopter before. My best friend, Sadie, has. She went on an aerial flight over Mount St. Helens once with her uncle, a big-shot photographer for National Geographic.

"There he was, talking about the post-volcanic flora and I puked right on him," Sadie told me in homeroom the next day. She still looked a little green from the experience.

Sadie is on yearbook and has hopes of becoming a photographer. Her uncle had taken her on this trip as a favor, to nurture her budding talent. "I even got some on his cameras," Sadie lamented. "I'll never be a photographer now."

"There are all kinds of different photographers," I told her. "You don't necessarily need to go flying around in helicopters."

Sadie laughed. "That's good. Because I'm never going on a helicopter again—and don't you, either!"

I want to tell Sadie that sometimes you don't have a choice in the matter.

The hatch in the helicopter is opened, and my stretcher with all its tubes and lines is loaded in. I climb in behind it. A medic bounds in next to me, still pumping the little plastic bulb that is apparently breathing for me. Once we lift off, I understand why Sadie got so queasy. A helicopter is not like an airplane, a smooth fast bullet. A helicopter is more like a hockey puck, bounced through the sky. Up and down, side to side. I have no idea how these people can work on me, can read the small computer printouts, can drive this thing while they communicate about me through headsets, how they can do any of it with the chopper chopping around.

The helicopter hits an air pocket and by all rights it should make me queasy. But I don't feel anything, at least the me who's a bystander here does not. And the me on the stretcher doesn't seem to feel anything, either. Again I have to wonder if I'm dead but then I tell myself no. They would not have loaded me on this helicopter, would not be flying me across  if I were dead.

Also, if I were dead, I like to think Mom, Dad and Eric  would've come for me by now.

I can see the time on the control panel. It's 10:36. I wonder what's happening back down on the ground. Has Meg figured out what the emergency is? Has anyone phoned my grandparents? They live one town over from us, and I was looking forward to dinner with them. Gramps fishes and he smokes his own salmon and oysters, and we would've probably eaten that with Gran's homemade thick brown beer bread. Then Gran would've taken Gwen over to the giant recycling bins in town and let her swim around for magazines. Lately, she's had a thing for Reader's Digest.

I wonder about Sadie. There's no school today. I probably won't be in school tomorrow. She'll probably think I'm absent because I stayed out late at my gramps place or had another recital.

 I am fairly certain that I'm being taken there. The helicopter pilot keeps talking to Trauma One. Outside the window, I could see the interiors of London.

Is Will already there? He played in Seattle last night but he's always so full of adrenaline after a gig, and driving helps him to come down. The band is normally happy to let him chauffeur while they nap. If he's already back, he's probably still asleep. When he wakes up, will he have coffee ? Later this afternoon, I know that the band will do a sound check. And then Will will go outside to await my arrival. At first, he'll think that I'm late. How is he going to know that I'm actually early? 

"Have you ever heard of this Yo-Yo Ma dude?" Will asked me. It was the spring of my sophomore year, which was his junior year. By then, Will had been watching me practice in the music wing for several months. Our school was public, but one of those progressive ones that always got written up in national magazines because of its emphasis on the arts. We did get a lot of free periods to paint in the studio or practice music. I spent mine in the soundproof booths of the music wing. Will was there a lot, too, playing guitar. Not the electric guitar he played in his band. Just acoustic melodies.

I rolled my eyes. "Everyone's heard of Yo-Yo Ma."

Will grinned. I noticed for the first time that his smile was lopsided, his mouth sloping up on one side. He hooked his ringed thumb out toward the quad. "I don't think you'll find five people out there who've heard of Yo-Yo Ma. And by the way, what kind of name is that? Is it ghetto or something? Yo Mama?"

"It's Chinese."

Will shook his head and laughed. "I know plenty of Chinese people. They have names like Wei Chin. Or Lee something. Not Yo-Yo Ma."

"You cannot be blaspheming the master," I said. But then I laughed in spite of myself. It had taken me a few months to believe that Will wasn't taking the piss out of me, and after that we'd started having these little conversations in the corridor. Also Yo-Yo Ma was a cellist. Not a violinist. Even if it wasn't my business to listen to cello pieces, I used to listen to his compositions. Well, you must have met people who are already somebody, someone who did something respectful. Will is that sort of guy. He was "somebody".

Still, his attention baffled me. It wasn't that Will was such a popular guy. He wasn't a jock or a most-likely-to-succeed sort. But he was cool. Cool in that he played in a band with people who went to the college . Cool in that he had his own rockery style, procured from thrift stores and garage sales, not from Urban Outfitters knock-offs. Cool in that he seemed totally happy to sit in the lunchroom absorbed in a book, not just pretending to read because he didn't have anywhere to sit or anyone to sit with. That wasn't the case at all. He had a small group of friends and a large group of admirers.

And it wasn't like I was a dork, either. I had friends and a best friend to sit with at lunch. I had other good friends at the music conservatory camp I went to in the summer. People liked me well enough, but they also didn't really know me. I was quiet in class. I didn't raise my hand a lot or sass the teachers. But I guess I was still a nobody. And I was busy, much of my time spent practicing or playing in a string quartet or taking theory classes at the community college. Kids were nice enough to me, but they tended to treat me as if I were a grown-up. Another teacher. And you don't flirt with your teachers.