Passage. Part 54

"Don't change the subject," Vielle snapped. "You looked white as a ghost. You still look white as a ghost."

"And how am I supposed to look? I just found out my best friend was shot by a lunatic."

Stalemate. They stood there, bristling like a pair of dogs for a long minute, then Vielle said patiently, "You're overwrought, you're losing weight-"

"I've been busy," Joanna said defensively. "The cafeteria's always closed-"

"The cafeteria has nothing to do with your disappearing for hours, jumping if anybody talks to you. You know who you're acting like?"

"Julia Roberts in Flatliners?" Joanna said sarcastically.

"Julia Roberts in Mary Reilly. She had shadows under her eyes, too, and she nearly got herself killed because she refused to stop working for Dr. Jekyll."

"Richard's not Mr. Hyde."

"Richard wouldn't notice if you fell over unless it showed up on one of those scans of his. You have to tell him you can't go under anymore."

"I can't," Joanna said.

"Why not?"

Because it means something, Joanna thought. Because it's important. "Richard doesn't have any other subjects," she said, "except Mr. Sage, and he's useless. The progress report is due in two weeks, and if we don't discover how the NDE works soon-" She broke off and started again. "If it's a survival mechanism, it could be used to revive patients who've coded, and the key is the images I'm seeing in my NDEs. I have to figure out what they mean."

Vielle was regarding her solemnly. "This is about Maisie Nellis," she said wonderingly. "You think you're going to make some big discovery about NDEs that'll bring back patients whose hearts have given out. That's why you joined the project in the first place, not because you could find outfirsthand what NDEs were like or because Dr. Wright was Dr. Right. You did it because you thought you could save Maisie from drowning."

"I don't-"

"Nurse Howard," Nina called, leaning her head out the side door. "Nurse Gilbert wants to talk to you."

"Tell her I'll be there in a minute," Vielle said.

Nina's head disappeared and then popped out again. "Where's the fiberoptic gastroenterology scope?"

"Examining Room Two," Vielle said, "lefthand side of the cabinet above the sink," and Nina disappeared again.

Vielle turned back to Joanna. "When I first started in the ER," she said, "I thought if I just worked long and hard enough, I could fix everything, I could save everybody's life." She smiled wryly.

"You can't. You're only human."

"You still have to try," Joanna said.

"Even if it means risking your own health? And don't tell me about wanting to die like Sullivan or Gilbert, whichever one it was, because, trust me, dying isn't something you want to do. I work with death every day in there. It's something to avoid at all costs."

"Then why are you still working in there?"

Nina leaned out again. "It's locked."

"The key's in the station desk. Top drawer, right side."

"And Stan wants to know if he's supposed to work a double s.h.i.+ft tonight."

Vielle sighed. "Tell him to ask Mr. Avila in Ops. He'll know what's happening."

He'll know what's happening. "Ask Mr. Briarley," the bearded gentleman had told the steward.

"He'll know what's happening." He was right. The Mr. Briarley on board had remembered Ricky Inman and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

He'd remember what he had said in cla.s.s. I should have asked him there in the writing room, Joanna thought. He would have been able to tell me, and then, with a shock of comprehension, That's why he was there. Not because he was dead. Because he knew the answer.

"Well, then ask her where Mr. Avila is," Vielle was saying.

I have to get Richard to send me under again, Joanna thought, so I can ask Mr. Briarley what he said."All right," Vielle was saying resignedly. "I'll be right there." She turned to Joanna. "What say we both quit right now and walk out that door?" She pointed to the door that led to the parking lot. "We get in my car and go someplace where it never snows and there aren't any Ninas."

"Or rogue-ravers."

"Or sick people."

"Or Mrs. Davenports."

Vielle smiled. "And the cafeteria's open twenty-four hours a day."

"You've just described Mr. Mandrake's Other Side." Joanna grinned.

"Except for the Mrs. Davenport part," Vielle said. "Can you imagine how awful that would be?

You die and go through the tunnel, and there, waiting for you in the light, is Mrs. Davenport. Can you imagine anything worse than that?"

Yes, Joanna thought.

"I'd settle for just no snow," Vielle said. "How about this? We go to Hollywood and get jobs as film consultants. I tell them why people can't survive in twenty-eight-degree water, and you tell them what John Belus.h.i.+'s last words were. We've got the credentials. All those Dish Nights."

Nina leaned her head out the door again. "Dr. Carroll said to tell you we've got incoming. A three-car crash on I-70."

"Coming," Vielle said and started toward the door. She put her hand on it. "Think about it, okay?"

"About Hollywood?"

"About quitting. I really am worried about you, you know."

"Ditto," Joanna said.

"Or, if you won't quit, about taking a couple of weeks off to catch up on your sleep and get any excess dithetamine out of your system. Promise me you'll think about it."

"I promise," Joanna said, but as soon as Vielle had gone into the ER, she tore up the stairs, across the walkway, and up to the lab to talk Richard into sending her under right away.

33.

"Everything has gone wrong, my girl."-Novelist Arnold Bennett's last words.

Richard wasn't there. Which was just as well, Joanna thought, catching sight of herself in the dressing-room-door mirror. Tish had left it open after her makeup session, and Joanna's reflection looked wild-eyed and disheveled, like someone escaping from Pompeii.

If Richard saw me like this, he'd never send me under again, she thought. And he had to. She had to ask Mr. Briarley what the connection was.

The affidavit and the sealed tape she'd had Tish sign were both on Richard's desk where she'd left them. She picked them up. She could tear up the affidavit and unseal the tape, and Richard would never have to know about it. If Tish said anything, she could say she just wanted the fact that she'd recorded her NDE immediately after her session doc.u.mented.

But then she was as bad as Vielle. Worse, she thought, because this is a scientific experiment, and Richard can't possibly come up with a theory without all the data. You have to tell him. But she didn't have to look like a nutcase while she was doing it. She combed her hair and put on some lipstick so she wouldn't look so pale, and then stood there trying to think of a way to explain it to Richard, but the image of Vielle and a kid brandis.h.i.+ng a gun kept intruding. If he'd waved it a little more to the right, if it had ricocheted a little differently- Richard came in, and walked straight to the console. "I think we may finally have something.

Your readouts aren't identical, but they show at least one of the same neurotransmitters as Mrs.

Troudtheim's, and I need to check the cortisol numbers, but I think they're the same, too. Have you written up your NDE yet? If you have, I need a copy. I'm meeting with Dr. Jamison at two-thirty, and-" he stopped. "My G.o.d, what's wrong? Are you all right?"

"No," she said. "Vielle got shot."

"Shot?" he said. "Good G.o.d, is she okay?"

She nodded. "It was only a flesh wound."

"My G.o.d! When did this happen?"

"Three days ago," Joanna said, and burst into tears.

He was across the lab in two steps, his arms around her. "What happened?"

She told him through her tears. "She didn't tell me because she knew what I'd say."

"I don't blame you," he said. "She's got to transfer out of there. It's getting ridiculously dangerous."

"I know, but she won't," she said, wiping at her tears with her hand. "She says they're too shorthanded."He reached in his lab coat pocket and pulled out a package of Kleenex, which made her laugh.

"I'm sorry to cry all over you," she said.

"Anytime," he said. "You doing okay now?"

She nodded and blew her nose. "I just keep thinking about what might have happened-"

"I know. Look, let me call Dr. Jamison and cancel our meeting, and you and I go get something to eat."

It sounded wonderful, but if she went out with him, she was liable to blurt out what had happened with Mr. Briarley just like she'd blurted out the news about Vielle, and, worse, try to explain her conviction that Mr. Briarley could tell her the reason she was seeing the t.i.tanic, and he'd decide she was too distraught or unstable to go under again.

And she had to go under again, had to ask Mr. Briarley, "What did you say in cla.s.s that day?

What does the t.i.tanic have to do with NDEs?"

"No, I'm okay now, really," she said. "I don't want to take you away from what you're doing, especially if you're on to something, and I need to go transcribe my account." She picked up the sealed tape and quickly stuck it in her cardigan pocket. "You said you needed it by two-thirty?"

"Actually, all I need is the very end," he said. "You said you came back through the same pa.s.sage, but it was in a different place?"

"No." She explained about following Mr. Briarley, opening the door to the pa.s.sage, realizing it was the same one. "The pa.s.sage is always in the same location. Everything is. It's a real place. I mean," she said at his look, "it feels like a real place."

"And the return was sudden?"

"Yes, like someone slapping a book shut-" she said. "I just thought of something. Mrs.

Woollam said one of her returns was like that, and I think it was a time when she revived on her own."

"I'd like to see her account, too," Richard said. "You're sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine," she said. "Thank you for the Kleenex. And the shoulder."

He grinned. "As I said, anytime," and went back over to the console.

She stood there a minute, looking at his blond head bent over the keyboard, wanting to tell him everything, and then said, "When do you think you'll send me under again?"

"Tomorrow, if possible. I'd like to do another session at this lower dosage and see if it's a factor.

And see how the scans compare."

"I'll call Tish," Joanna said and went to her office, cut the taped and signed paper off the tape, and began typing up the transcript.Listening to the tape was like experiencing it all over again: leaning over the bow, looking down at the side of the s.h.i.+p, gazing down into nothingness, seeing Mr. Briarley in the library. "Have you met my niece?" Joanna typed, and thought, He didn't remember that. She looked back over the conversation. He'd greeted her as if he hadn't seen her since high school. There'd been no mention of having seen her just a few days before.

Because he didn't remember those things, she thought. It wasn't a whole and healthy Mr.

Briarley she'd seen, but the old Mr. Briarley, whom she'd had in second period, the part of Mr.

Briarley that had died. "Dying in pieces," Vielle had said. And her acetylcholine-enhanced mind had given the idea concrete form. No wonder she had been convinced he was dead. Part of him was, and maybe that, and not his holding the key to the connection, was why she'd seen him on the t.i.tanic. In which case he wouldn't be able to tell her what the connection was and what the NDE was.

He has to, she thought, and continued going through the account, looking for clues. " 'And what noise soever ye hear, come not unto me, for nothing can rescue me,' " she typed, and, "I must take this to the post office first."

She stared at the screen, her chin in her hands. When he'd said that, she'd a.s.sumed he meant the mail room. That was why she'd run after him, because the mail room was flooded. But she was almost sure he'd said "post office," and, now that she thought about it, it was unlikely that pa.s.sengers would have been allowed all the way down on G Deck. More likely, they would have handed their letters to a steward or dropped them in a mailbox or a mail slot. But Mr. Briarley had said "post office," and he'd disappeared into one of the pa.s.sages on C Deck, and the other rooms Joanna had seen-the A La Carte Restaurant and the lounge and the gymnasium-had all existed.

She called Kit. "I need to know if there was a post office on the t.i.tanic, and if so, where it was."

"You don't mean the mail room?" Kit said. "I found out about it and the mail, by the way."

"No, this would have been a post office for the pa.s.sengers," Joanna said.

"Post... office... for... pa.s.sengers," Kit said, obviously writing it down. "Anything else?"

Yes, but this was the one she needed before she went under again so she could find Mr.

Briarley, and if she gave Kit the other rooms to find and a list of quotations to look up, she might not find out about the post office in time.