Miracle (43 page)

“Maybe he thinks the IV lines are ropes,” Guadalupe, her eye swollen shut, had said helpfully, handing Joanna a transcript of the episode.

“Maybe,” Joanna had said, but she didn’t think so. He doesn’t know the IV lines are there, she thought, or the snow or the nurses. He’s somewhere else, seeing something different altogether.

Like Mrs. Davenport. And all the other heart attack and car accident and hemorrhage patients she’d interviewed over the last two years, wading through the angels and tunnels and relatives they’d been programmed to see, listening for the offhand comment, the seemingly irrelevant detail that might give a clue as to what they had really experienced.

“The light didn’t hurt at all,” Lisa Andrews, whose heart had stopped during a C-section, had said, but she had put her hand above her eyes, as if to shield them, as she said it. And Jake Becker, who had fallen off a ladder putting up Christmas decorations, had said, trying to describe the tunnel, “Like a telephone cord, only straight.” Like a rope.

Joanna went over to the window and looked out at the snow. It was coming down faster now, covering the cars in the visitors’ parking lot. An elderly woman in a gray coat and a plastic rain bonnet was laboriously scraping snow off her windshield. Heart attack weather, Vielle had said. Car accident weather. Dying weather.

She pulled the curtains closed and went back over to the bed and sat down in the chair beside it. He was not going to speak, and the cafeteria would close in another ten minutes. She
needed to go now if she ever wanted to eat, and Mr. Mandrake was probably gone by now.

But she sat on, watching the monitors, with their shifting lines, shifting numbers, watching the almost imperceptible rise and fall of Carl’s sunken chest, looking at the closed curtains with the snow falling silently beyond them.

She became aware of a faint sound. She looked at Carl, but he had not moved, his mouth was still half-open. She glanced at the monitors. But the sound was coming from the bed.

Can you describe it? she thought automatically. A deep, even sound, like a foghorn, with long pauses between, and after each pause, a subtle change in pitch.

He’s humming, she thought. Carl’s humming.

She fumbled for her minirecorder and switched it on, holding it close to his mouth. “Nmnmnmnm,” he droned, and then slightly lower, shorter, “nmnm,” pause while he must be taking a breath, “nmnmnm,” lower still. Definitely a tune, though she couldn’t recognize it either. The spaces between the sounds were too long, the back-of-the-throat sounds too nasal. But he was definitely humming.

In a rowboat on a summer lake somewhere, while a pretty girl played a ukulele? Or at the end of a tunnel in a warm light, listening to a heavenly choir? Or somewhere else altogether, out in the snow perhaps, or the jungles of Vietnam, or the dark, humming to himself to keep his fears at bay?

Her pager began abruptly to beep. “Sorry,” she said, scrabbling to turn it off with her free hand. “Sorry.”

But Carl hummed on undisturbed, long short short long, long short long. Oblivious. Unreachable.

The number showing on the pager was the ER. “Sorry,” Joanna said again and switched off the recorder. “I have to go.” She patted his hand, lying unmoving at his side. “But I’ll come see you again tomorrow,” and headed down to the ER.

“Heart attack,” Vielle said when she got there. “Digging his car out of a ditch. Coded in the ambulance.”

“Where is he?” Joanna said. “Over in the CICU?”

“No,” Vielle said. “He’s right here.”

“In the ER?” Joanna said, surprised. She never talked to patients in the ER, even though there were times she wished she could, to get to them before Mr. Mandrake could.

“He refuses to be admitted till his doctor gets here,” Vielle said. “We’ve paged the cardiologist, but in the meantime he’s driving everyone crazy. He did
not
have a heart attack. He works out at the gym three times a week.” She led Joanna across the central area toward the examining rooms.

“Are you sure he’s well enough to talk to me?” Joanna asked, following her.

“He’s demanded to talk to everyone else, from Mrs. Brightman on down,” Vielle said, sidling expertly between a gurney and two orderlies.

“Thanks,” Joanna said dryly, following her. “Are you sure he’s willing to talk to me? If he’s in denial—”

“He can tell you why he couldn’t have had an NDE,” Vielle said. “He works out three times a week—”

“—at his health club,” Joanna said, grinning. “Maybe you should have paged Mr. Mandrake for this one.”

“I did,” Vielle said. “He didn’t answer. Listen, there’s your subject now.”

“Why isn’t my doctor here yet?” a man’s baritone demanded from the end examining room. “And where’s Stephanie?”

His voice sounded strong and steady for someone who’d just coded and been revived. Maybe he was right, and he hadn’t had a heart attack at all.

“What do you mean, you haven’t gotten in touch with her yet?” the voice shouted. “Where’s a phone? I’ll call her myself.”

“You’ll be doing me a big favor if you can keep him in bed till the cardiologist gets here,” Vielle whispered.

She opened the door and led Joanna into the room. An intimidated-looking nurse’s aide was standing next to the bed.

Joanna looked at the man propped up in the bed, his bare chest covered with EKG patches and wires, in surprise. She had been expecting a barrel-chested man in his fifties or sixties.
This man couldn’t be more than thirty-five, and he was tan and well-muscled. She could believe he worked out at the gym three times a week.

“She has a cell phone!” he was saying to the nurse’s aide.

“She isn’t answering,” the aide said, “I’ll try again,” and scooted out.

“Mr. Menotti,” Vielle said. “I’d like you to meet Dr. Lander. I told you about her.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. He started to push himself to sitting.

“Don’t try to sit up,” Joanna warned, glancing anxiously at the heart monitor.

Vielle had already pushed him gently back against the bed. “You need to stay quiet. Your doctor will be here in a few minutes,” she said, looking at the monitor and then checking his pulse.

“You need to try Stephanie again,” he said. “She’s probably left the cell phone in the car. She’s always doing that. I tell her, what good is a cell phone if you don’t carry it with you?”

“I’ll find her,” Vielle said and went out.

Joanna pulled a pen and a release form out of her sweater pocket and unfolded it. “This is a standard release form, Mr. Menotti—”

“Call me Greg,” he said. “Mr. Menotti’s my father.”

“Greg,” she said.

“And what do I call you?” he asked and grinned. It was a very cute grin.

And he’s fully aware of that fact, Joanna thought. “Dr. Lander,” she said dryly. She handed him the form. “The release form says that you give your permission for—”

“If I sign it, will you give me your phone number?” he asked.

“I thought your girlfriend was on her way here, Mr. Menotti,” she said, handing him the pen.

“Greg,” he corrected her, trying to sit up. Joanna leaped forward to hold the form so he could sign it lying down.

He did and handed her the pen back with a grin. “Dr. Lander. That means you’re a doctor, right?”

She shook her head. “I’m not a medical doctor. I have a doctorate in cognitive psychology.”

“But you work here, right?” he said insistently. “They keep saying I had a heart attack, but I couldn’t have. I work out at the gym three times a week. I thought maybe you could talk to them and convince them there’s some mistake. I’m thirty-six. Guys my age don’t have heart attacks.”

Actually, they do, Joanna thought, and they usually aren’t lucky enough to be revived after they code.

“The cardiologist will be here in a few minutes,” she said. “In the meantime, why don’t you tell me what happened?” She switched on the minirecorder.

“Okay,” he said. “I was on my way back to the office from playing racquetball—I play racquetball twice a week, Stephanie and I go hiking on the weekends. You can see it’s impossible for me to have had a heart attack.”

“You were on your way back to the office—” Joanna prompted.

“Yeah,” Greg said. “It’s snowing, and the road’s really slick, and this idiot in a Jeep Cherokee tries to cut in front of me. I slam on my brakes and end up in the ditch. I’ve got a shovel in the car, and I start digging myself out, and I don’t know what happened then. I figure a piece of ice off a truck must have hit me in the head and knocked me out, because the next thing I know, there’s a siren going, and I’m in an ambulance and a paramedic’s sticking these ice-cold paddles on my chest.”

Of course, Joanna thought resignedly. I finally get a subject Maurice Mandrake hasn’t already corrupted and who’s willing to talk, and he doesn’t remember anything.

“Can you remember anything at all between the—between being hit in the head and waking up in the ambulance?” Joanna asked hopefully. “Anything you heard? Or saw?” but he was already shaking his head.

“It was like when I had my cruciate ligament operated on last year. I tore it playing softball,” he said triumphantly. “One minute the anesthesiologist was saying, ‘Breathe deeply,’ and the next I was in the recovery room. And in between, nothing, zip, nada.”

Oh, well, at least she was keeping him in bed until the cardiologist got there.

“I told the nurse when she said you wanted to talk to me that I couldn’t have had a near-death experience because I wasn’t anywhere near death. I was knocked out,” he said. “When you do talk to people who’ve died, what do they say? Do they tell you they saw tunnels and lights and angels like they say on TV?”

“Some of them,” Joanna said.

“Do you think they really did or that they just made it up?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “If I ever
do
have a heart attack and have a near-death experience, you’ll be the first one

I’ll call.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Joanna said.

“I’ll need your phone number,” he said, and grinned that adorable grin again. “Just in case.”

“Well, well, well,” the cardiologist said, coming in with Vielle. “What have we here?”

“Not a heart attack,” Greg said, trying to sit up. “I work out at the gym three times a week.”

“That’s what they all say,” the cardiologist said, grinning. He turned to Joanna. “Will you excuse us for a few minutes?”

“Of course,” Joanna said, gathering up her recorder. She went outside and leaned against the hall. There was probably no reason to wait, Greg Menotti clearly didn’t remember anything, but she wanted to thank Vielle, even though it hadn’t worked out. And she was too tired and hungry to go back to her office and face Dr. Wright, whoever he was, right now. She continued to lean.

“Why hasn’t he been taken to CICU?” the cardiologist’s voice, clearly talking to Vielle, said.

“I’m not going anywhere till Stephanie gets here,” Mr. Menotti boomed.

“She’s on her way,” Vielle said. “She’ll be here in just a few minutes.”

“Where was she?”

“Over on Monaco,” Vielle said. “Just a few blocks away.”

“All right, let’s have a listen to this health club heart,” the cardiologist said. “No, don’t sit up. All right …”

There was a minute or so of silence, while the cardiologist listened to Greg Menotti’s heart, and then instructions that Joanna couldn’t hear.

“Yes, sir,” Vielle said.

More murmured instructions.

“I want to see Stephanie as soon as she gets here.”

“She can see you upstairs,” the cardiologist said. “We’re taking you up to CICU, Mr. Menotti. You’ve had a major myocardial infarction, and we need to—”

“This is ridiculous,” Greg said. “I’m fine. I got knocked out, is all. I didn’t have a heart—” and then, abruptly, silence.

“One amp epy,” the cardiologist said. “One amp bicarb.”

“Mr. Menotti?” Vielle said. “Greg?”

“He’s coding,” the cardiologist said. “Get a cart in here and get him intubated.”

The buzz of the code alarm went off, and people converged on the room, running. Joanna backed out of the way across the hall.

“Get a board under him,” the cardiologist said, and something else Joanna couldn’t hear. The code alarm was still going, an intermittent ear-splitting buzz.

Was it a buzzing or a ringing? Joanna thought irrelevantly. And then, wonderingly, that’s the sound they’re hearing before they go into the tunnel.

“Get those paddles over here,” the cardiologist said. “And turn off that damned alarm.”

The buzzing stopped. An IV pole clanked noisily as someone hung another bag.

“Ready for defib, clear,” a voice, not the cardiologist’s, said, and there was a different kind of buzz. “Again. Clear.”

“Too far away,” Greg Menotti’s voice said, and Joanna breathed a sigh of relief.

“Let me see a rhythm strip,” the cardiologist said.

“Come on, Mr. Menotti,” Vielle said. “Just hang on. You’re going to be fine.”

“Greg,” he said, his voice still strong. “Mr. Menotti’s my father.”

“All right, Greg,” Vielle said. “You’re going to be fine. Just hang on.”

“No,” Greg said. “To far for her to get here in time.”

“Your girlfriend’s on her way,” Vielle said. “Stephanie will be here in just a few minutes.”

There was another pause. Joanna strained to hear the reassuring beep of the monitor.

“What’s the BP?” the cardiologist said.

“Fifty-eight,” but it was Greg Menotti’s voice.

“Forty over thirty,” another voice said.

“No,” Greg Menotti said angrily.
“Fifty-eight.
She’ll never get here in time.”

“She was just a few blocks away,” Vielle said. “She’s probably already pulling into the parking lot. Just hang on, Greg.”

Another pause.

“I can’t get his blood pressure.”

“Fifty-eight,” Greg Menotti said, but weaker.

The nurse’s aide who’d been in the room before came hurrying toward it, a pretty blonde in a blue parka behind her, trying not to look panicked. The blonde pushed into the room. “How bad is it?” Joanna heard her say.

“Stephanie’s here, Greg,” Vielle said. “I told you she’d get here.”