Passage (10 page)

She unfolded the paper and handed it to Joanna. It was a Xerox of a page out of a book. “I don’t know if it was a real near-death experience or not because, if he was dead, he would have let go, wouldn’t he? But he saw stuff like in one. Snow and a train and a whale flipping its tail up out of the ocean.”

She leaned forward, careful not to unhook her electrodes, and handed the folded paper to Joanna. “I like the part the best when he’s in the birdcage and he has to hang on with his feet like on a trapeze so he won’t fall into the fire.”

Joanna unfolded the paper and read the account of what the crewman had seen: glittering white fields and the whale Maisie had described and then the sensation of a train going by. He had been surprised that it didn’t stop, he had decided it must be an express, but that couldn’t be right. There was no express to Bregenz.

Joanna looked up. “I think you’re right, Maisie,” she said. “I think this was a near-death vision.”

“I know,” Maisie said. “I figured it was when I read about him seeing the snow, because it’s white like the light everybody says they see. Did you get to the part where the snow turns into flowers?”

“No,” Joanna said and began reading again. He had seen his grandmother, sitting by the fire, and then himself as a bird in a cage being thrown into it, and then the white fields again, but not of snow, of apple blossoms in fields stretching beneath him in endless heavenly meadows.

“Well, what do you think?” Maisie said impatiently.

I wish he were one of my interview subjects, Joanna thought. His account was full of details and, except for the mention of the heavenly meadows, devoid of the standard religious imagery and tunnels and brilliantly white lights. The kind of NDE account she dreamed of and hardly ever got.

“I think he was brave to keep hanging on, don’t you?” Maisie said, “with his hands hurting so bad and everything.”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “Can I keep this?”

“That’s what I made Nurse Barbara copy it for, so you could use it in your research.”

“Thank you,” Joanna said, and folded the paper up again.

“I don’t think I could’ve,” Maisie said thoughtfully. “I think I would’ve probably let go.”

Joanna stopped in the act of sticking the paper in her pocket. “I’ll bet you would’ve hung on,” she said.

Maisie looked seriously at her for a long minute, and then said, “Did I help you with your research?”

“You did,” Joanna said. “You can be my research assistant anytime.”

“I’m going to look for other ones,” she said. “I’ll bet lots of people in disasters had them, like during earthquakes and stuff.”

I’ll bet they did, Joanna thought.

“I’ll bet the people at Mount St. Helens
really
had them.” She shoved the covers back and started to get out of bed.

“Not so fast,” Joanna said. “You’re all hooked up. You can only be my research assistant if you do what the nurses tell you. I mean it. You’re supposed to be resting.”

“I was just getting my earthquake book,” Maisie said. “It’s on the windowsill. I can rest and read at the same time.”

I’ll bet, Joanna thought, getting the book for her. “You can read for fifteen minutes, that’s it.”

“I promise,” Maisie said, already opening the book. “I’ll page you when I find some more.”

Joanna nodded. “I’ll see you later, kiddo,” she said, giving Maisie’s foot under the covers a squeeze, and started for the door.

“Don’t leave!” Maisie said, and when Joanna turned around, “I have to show you this picture of the piano.”

“Okay. One picture,” Joanna said, “and then I
have
to go.”

Three pictures of the piano and the smoking skeleton-like wreck of the
Hindenburg
later she finally succeeded in getting away from Maisie and back to her office. And at some point along the way, her second wind deserted her, and she felt utterly exhausted.

Too exhausted to water her Swedish ivy or listen to her voice messages, even though her answering machine was blinking in the double-time that meant it was full. She laid her turned-off pager on the desk, got her coat and gloves, and locked the office behind her.

“Oh, good, you haven’t left yet,” Vielle said. Joanna turned around. Vielle was coming down the hall toward her, still in her dark blue scrubs and surgical cap.

“What are you doing up here?” Joanna asked. “Please tell me it’s not another NDE.”

“No, all quiet on the western front,” she said, pulling her surgical cap off and shaking out the tangle of narrow black braids. “I came up to see if Dr. Right ever found you, and to ask you what movies you wanted me to rent for Dish Night Thursday.”

Dish Night was their weekly movie rental night. “I don’t know,” Joanna said wearily. “Nothing with dying in it.”

“I know,” Vielle said. “I never got a chance to talk to you after—we worked on him for another twenty minutes, but it was no use. He was gone.”

Gone, Joanna thought. NDEers weren’t the only ones who talked about going and coming back in regard to dying. Doctors and nurses did, too. The patient passed away. He passed over. He left a wife and two children. He passed on. Joanna’s mother had told people her father “slipped away,” and the minister at her mother’s funeral had spoken of “the dear departed” and “those who have gone before us.” Gone where?

“It’s always bad when they go like that, with no warning,” Vielle said, “especially when they’re as young as he was. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m okay,” Joanna said. “It’s just—what do you think he meant, ‘It’s too far for her to come’?”

“He was pretty far gone when his girlfriend arrived,” Vielle said. “I don’t think he realized she was there.”

No, Joanna thought, that wasn’t it. “He kept saying ‘fifty-eight.’ Why would he say that?”

Vielle shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he was echoing what the nurses were saying. His blood pressure was eighty over fifty.”

It was seventy over fifty, Joanna thought. “Did the cell phone number of his girlfriend have a fifty-eight in it?”

“I don’t remember. By the way, did Dr. Right ever find you? Because if he didn’t, I think you should stop trying to avoid him. I ran into Louisa Krepke on my way up here, and she said he’s a neurologist, absolutely gorgeous, and single.”

“He found me,” Joanna said. “He wants me to work on a research project with him. Studying NDEs.”

“And—?”

“And I don’t know,” Joanna said wearily.

“He isn’t cute? Louisa said he had blond hair and blue eyes.”

“No, he’s cute. He—”

“Oh, no, please don’t tell me he’s one of those near-death nutcases.”

“He’s not a nutcase,” Joanna said. “He thinks NDEs are the side effect of a neurochemical survival mechanism. He’s found a way to simulate them. He wants me to work with him, interviewing his subjects.”

“And you said yes, didn’t you?”

Joanna shook her head. “I said I’d think about it, but I don’t know.”

“He doesn’t want
you
to do this simulation stuff, does he?”

“No. All he wants me to do is consult, interview subjects, and tell him if their experiences match the NDE core experience.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I don’t know . . . I’m so far behind in my own work. I have dozens of interviews I haven’t transcribed. If I take on this project, when will I have time for my own NDE subjects?”

“Like Mrs. Davenport, you mean?” Vielle said. “You’re right. Gorgeous guy, legit project, no Maurice Mandrake, no Mrs. Davenport. Definitely sounds like a bad deal to me.”

“I know. You’re right,” Joanna said, sighing. “It sounds like a great project.”

It did. A chance to interview patients Mr. Mandrake hadn’t contaminated and to talk to them immediately after their experience. She almost never got the chance to do that. A patient ill enough to code was nearly always too ill to be interviewed right away, and the greater the gap, the more confabulation there was. Also, these would be subjects who were aware they were hallucinating. They should be much better interview subjects. So why wasn’t she leaping at the chance?

Because it isn’t really about NDEs, she thought. Dr. Wright saw the NDE as a mere side effect, a—what had he said?—“an indicator of which areas of the brain are being stimulated and which neurotransmitters are involved.”

It’s more than that, Joanna thought. They’re seeing something, experiencing something, and it’s important. She felt sometimes, like this afternoon with Greg Menotti, or with Coma Carl, that they were speaking directly to her, trying to communicate something about what was happening to them, about dying, and that it was her duty to decipher what it was. But how could she explain that to Vielle or to Dr. Wright, without sounding like one of Maurice Mandrake’s nutcases?

“I told him I’d think about it,” Joanna said evasively. “In the meantime, would you do something for me, Vielle? Would you check Greg Menotti’s records and see if his girlfriend’s phone number had a fifty-eight in it, or if there was some other number he might have been talking about, his own phone number or his Social Security number or something?”

Vielle said, “ER records are—”

“Confidential. I know. I don’t want to know what the number is, I just want to know if there was some reason he kept saying ‘fifty-eight.’ ”

“Okay, but I doubt if it’s anything,” Vielle said. “He was probably trying to say, ‘I can’t have had a heart attack. I did fifty-eight push-ups this morning.’ ” She took Joanna’s arm. “I think you should do the project. What’s the worst that could happen? He sees what a great interviewer you are, falls madly
in love with you, you get married, have ten kids, and win the Nobel Prize. You know what I think? I think you’re afraid.”

“Afraid?” Joanna echoed.

Vielle nodded. “I think you like Dr. Right, but you’re afraid to take a chance. You’re always telling me to take risks, and here you are, turning down a terrific opportunity.”

“I do not tell you to take risks,” Joanna said. “I try to get you to avoid risks. It is the front down there in the ER, and if you don’t transfer out—”

The elevator dinged. “Saved by the bell,” Vielle said and stepped quickly into the elevator. “This could be the chance of a lifetime. Take it,” she said. “See you Thursday night. Nothing with dying in it. And remember,” she burst into song, “ ‘You’ve got a lot of living to do!’ ”

“And no musicals,” Joanna said. “Or dopey romances,” she added as the door closed on Vielle. Joanna pressed the “up” button, shaking her head. Love, marriage, children, the Nobel Prize.

And then what? Boating on the lake? An Angel of Light? Wailing and gnashing of teeth? Or nothing at all? The brain cells started to die within moments of death. By the end of four to six minutes the damage was irreversible, and people brought back from death after that didn’t talk about tunnels and life reviews. They didn’t talk at all. Or feed themselves, or respond to light, or register any cortical activity at all on Richard’s RIPT scans. Brain death.

But if the dying were facing annihilation, why didn’t they say, “It’s over!” or, “I’m shutting down” ? Why didn’t they say, like the witch in
The Wizard of Oz
, “I’m melting, I’m melting” ? Why did they say, “It’s beautiful over there,” and, “I’m coming, Mother!” and, “She’s too far away. She’ll never get here in time” ? Why did they say “placket” and “fifty-eight” ?

The elevator opened on fifth, and she walked across the walkway to the elevators on the other side. The Other Side. She wondered if this was how Mr. Mandrake envisioned the NDE, as a walkway like this. It was obvious he thought of the Other Side as a Hallmark card version of this side, all angels and hugs and wishful thinking: everything will be all right, all will be forgiven, you won’t be alone.

Whatever death is, Joanna thought, taking the elevator down to the parking lot, whether it’s annihilation or afterlife, it’s not what Mr. Mandrake thinks it is.

She pushed open the door to the outside. It was still snowing. The cars in the parking lot were covered, and flakes drifted goldenly, silently down in the light from the sodium streetlights. She lifted her face to the falling snow and stood there, watching it.

And how about Dr. Wright? Was dying what he thought it was—temporal-lobe stimulation and a random flickering of synapses before they went out?

She turned and looked up at the east wing, where Coma Carl lay boating on the lake. I’m going to tell Dr. Wright no, she thought, and started out to her car.

She should have worn boots this morning. She slipped on the slick snow, and snow filled her shoes, soaking her feet. Her car was completely covered. She swiped at the side window with her bare hand, hoping against hope it was just snow and not ice. No such luck. She unlocked the car, threw her bag in the backseat, and began rummaging for the scraper.

“Joanna?” a woman’s voice said behind her.

Joanna backed out of the car and turned to face her. It was Barbara from Peds.

“I’ve got a message from Maisie Nellis,” Barbara said. “She said to tell you she’s back in and that she has something important to tell you.”

“I know,” Joanna said. “I’ve already been up to see her. I understand she’s doing really well.”

“Who told you that?”

“Her mother. She said Maisie was just in for tests, and the new antiarrhythmia drug was working wonders. It isn’t?”

Barbara shook her head. “She
is
in for tests, but it’s because Dr. Murrow thinks there’s a lot more damage than showed up on the heart cath. He’s trying to decide whether to put her on the transplant list or not.”

“Does her mother know that?”

“That depends on what you mean by knowing. You’ve heard of being in denial, haven’t you? Well, Maisie’s mother is Cleopatra, the Queen of Denial. And positive thinking. All
Maisie has to do is rest and think happy thoughts, and she’ll be up and around in no time. How did you get permission from her to interview Maisie about her NDE? She doesn’t even let us use the term
heart condition
, let alone
death.”

“I didn’t. Her ex-husband was the one who signed the release,” Joanna said. “A heart transplant? What are Maisie’s chances?”

“Of surviving a transplant? Pretty good. Mercy’s got a seventy-five percent survival rate, and the rejection stats keep improving all the time. The chances of keeping her alive till a nine-year-old’s heart becomes available? Not nearly as good. Especially when they haven’t found a way of controlling the atrial fib. She’s already coded once,” she said. “But you know that.”