I.V.

Occasionally when we visit a patient, something is going on in the room. We usually try to come back to the rooms where a procedure is being done, or where the doctors are speaking with the patients. But sometimes it doesn't feel like we are interrupting, so the concert becomes part of all the other small "happenings" in the room.

A lady in her 60's had arrived on the floor and was settling in. She was cheerful--almost a little too cheerful to be in an oncology unit. Her neighbor in the next bed had agreed earlier to let me serenade her, and the lady was glad for the company. She was definitely the "the more the merrier" type. A nurse was kneeling in front of her when I entered the room, trying to find a good vein in her pale arm to put in an IV. The lady looked like she was receiving a manicure in her own living room: welcoming me to her presence, nodding to her neighbor approvingly, while explaining to the nurse--who looked like he had been trying for a while to find that vein--what I had come to do.

I started improvising, and the lady immediately started to hum--an act that always amused me somewhat because the melody only began to take form in my head as I played. She tried to stay with it as long as she could, but whenever the melody took a turn, she waved her other hand to distract the nurse, whose would raise his head slightly to acknowledge her excitement. "Oh, listen, the music!" she would say. "Yeah..." he would answer politely, turning his head towards me--more to show her that he got the message than any genuine interest.

This went on for another minute and a half. By the middle of the piece, I had shifted my attention from what I was playing to what the nurse was doing on the patient's arm. I wanted to get closer and see if he found what he was looking for. The lady was the complete opposite; she was getting more and more excited about the music. Suddenly, the nurse got up, went out to the hall and got the IV, the dressing, etc. He knelt in front of the lady again.

The piece slowly approached the end.

"Now, don't move," he said.

Last note lingered. I slowly lifted the bow from the string.

"Yay! Brava!" the patient clapped ecstatically. The pillow on which her arm was resting fell on the floor.

Sorry, man. Keep trying.

Miriam

The last time I went to the children's hospital, I met 18-year-old Miriam from Egypt. Charlotte, the music therapist who usually guided me through the floors, showed me a violin that she got for the Miriam. I helped her tuned the violin, set up the bridge, and together we went to surprise Miriam with the gift. We arrived just in time, right before she was transferred to another floor. Miriam was ecstatic, to say the least. Her soft brown eyes lit up as she stretched out her hands to receive the instrument, holding it as if holding a baby. She told us that the violin was her favorite instrument and that she has had a couple of lessons in Egypt.

Under the encouragement of the music therapist, we had a little "jam session." She played the G open string rhythmically while I made up a melody in G major. Our audience--Miriam's mother and the nurses--clapped and whistled to show their appreciation. I gave her some tips on playing scales and on how make the violin stay on her shoulder. As we left her, we could still hear her playing and her mother's cheerful voice in the background.

When I returned the other day, two weeks later, I asked Charlotte how Miriam was. "Oh, you just missed her. She left yesterday," she replied.

"Did she enjoy playing the violin while on the other floor?"
"Well," Charlotte looked up from the piece of paper she was writing on and hesitated. "You know she started chemotherapy...so she wasn't feeling too well."

I didn't ask more, somewhat able to imagine, at the back of my mind, all that Charlotte did not say. I could still see Miriam's beautiful smile when she held the violin and bow in her hands, her painted fingernails slowly moving up and down the fingerboard. Wherever she is, I hope she did not lose her smile.