Passage. Part 72

That's what I like to see! You keep eatin' like that, and you'll be out of this place in no time?"

She had put on her pants and socks before lunch. As soon as he took her tray out, she put on her shoes and turtleneck. She put her robe on over her clothes, pulled the covers up, and lay down, catching her breath and listening.

The little boy in 420 started crying. Footsteps came down the hall and went in the room.

She'd better turn on the TV so the nurses would think she was watching a video and wouldn't come in to see what she was doing. She got the remote off the bed table, rewound The Secret Garden, and hit "play."The crying stopped. After a few minutes footsteps came out of the room and went back toward the nurses' station. On the TV, the little girl was sneaking up a long winding staircase. Maisie got out of bed, and took off her robe. She stuck it under the covers and tiptoed to the door. There was n.o.body in the hall, and she couldn't see Barbara or anybody in the nurses' station. She snuck really fast to the elevators, pushed the b.u.t.ton, and then stood inside the door of the waiting room till the elevator light blinked on. The elevator door opened, and she darted across and pushed "six."

Her heart was pounding really hard, but it was partly because she was scared that somebody would see her before the door shut. "Come on!" she whispered, and it finally shut, really slow, and the elevator started going up.

Okay. Now all she had to do was find 602. When the elevator opened, she got out and looked around. There were lots of doors, but none of them had numbers on them. TTY-TDD, a sign on one of them said.

She walked down the hall. LHS, the doors said, and OT, but no numbers. A lady carrying a clipboard came out of a door marked PT. She stopped when she saw Maisie, and frowned, and for a minute Maisie was afraid she knew she was a patient. The lady came over to her, holding the clipboard against her chest. "Are you looking for somebody, honey?" she asked.

"Yes," Maisie said, trying to sound very certain and businesslike. "Dr. Wright."

"He's in the east wing," the lady said. "Do you know how to get there?"

Maisie shook her head.

"You need to go back down to fifth and take a right, and you'll see a sign that says 'Human Resources.' You go through that door, and it'll take you to the east wing."

Is it real far? Maisie wanted to ask, but she was afraid the lady would ask her where she had come from, so she said, "Thank you very much," and went back to the elevator, walking fast so the lady wouldn't know she was a patient.

She rested in the elevator and then got out and turned right, like the woman said, and walked down the hall. The sign was a long way down the hall. Her heart started to beat real hard. She stopped and rested a minute, but a man came out of one of the doors, carrying a tray full of blood tubes, so she had to start walking again.

The door to the walkway was heavy. She had to push really hard on the handle to get it to open.

Inside was a straight gray hallway. Maisie didn't know how long it was, but it was way farther than she was supposed to walk. Maybe she'd better not go down it. But it was a long way back to the elevators, too, and after she found Dr. Wright and he told her Joanna's address, she could tell him he needed to take her back, and he could get a wheelchair or something. And she could walk really slow.

She started down the hallway. It was a funny hallway. It didn't have any windows or doors or anything, and no railings along the side to hang on to like in the rest of the hospital. She put one hand on the wall, but it wasn't as good, you got a lot tireder than with a railing."I think I'd better rest for a little while," she said, and sat down with her back against the wall, but it didn't help. She still couldn't get her breath, and the lights on the wall kept swimming around in a funny way. "I don't feel good," she said, and lay down on the floor.

There was a loud noise, and the lights flared into brightness and then went nearly all the way out, turning a dark red. Like the lights on the t.i.tanic, Maisie thought, right before they went out. I hope these don't go out, or the hall'll be really dark. But it wasn't the hall. It was the tunnel she had been in before. She could sense the tall, straight walls on either side of her.

This is an NDE, she thought, and sat up off the tile floor. Only it wasn't tile. It felt funny. She wished it weren't so dark, and she could see it. She had to look at everything so she could tell it to Joanna.

And listen to everything, she thought, remembering the sound before the lights turned red. It had been a boom, or a loud clap. Or maybe an explosion. She couldn't remember exactly. I should have been listening, she thought. I'm supposed to report on what I saw.

Her heart had stopped pounding, and she didn't feel dizzy anymore. She stood up and started walking along the tunnel between the high, straight walls. It was dark and foggy, like before, and really warm. She turned and looked back. It was dark and foggy both ways.

"I told Mr. Mandrake there wasn't any light," she said, and right then a light flickered at the end of the tunnel. It was red, like the lights in the hall had been, and wobbly, like somebody running carrying a lantern or something, and that must be what it was, because she could see people running toward her, though she couldn't see who they were because of the fog.

"Hurry!" they shouted. "This way! Call a code! Now!"

They ran past her. She peered at them as they went past, trying to see their faces through the fog. Mr. Mandrake said they were supposed to be people you knew who'd died, like your grandma, but Maisie didn't know any of them. "Get that cart over here," one of the ladies said to her as she ran past. She had on a white dress and white gloves. "Stat!"

"Clear," a man said. He was wearing a suit, like Dr. Murrow always wore. "Again. Clear."

"Do you know who she is?" the lady with the white gloves said.

"My name's Maisie," she tried to say, but they weren't listening. They just kept on running past.

"She must be a patient," the man said. "Do you know who she is?" he said to somebody else.

"It's on my dog tags," Maisie said.

"What's she doing up here?" the man said. "Clear."

The light flared brightly, like an explosion, and she was back in the hallway and a bunch of nurses and doctors were kneeling over her. "Awwll riight!" the man said.

"I've got a pulse," one of the nurses said, and another one asked, "Can you hear me, honey?""I had a near-death experience," Maisie said, trying to sit up. "I was in a tunnel, and-"

"There, there, lie down," the nurse said, just like Auntie Em in The Wizard of Oz. "Don't try to move. We're going to take care of you."

Maisie nodded. They put her on a gurney and put a blanket over her, and when they did, she saw she wasn't wearing her turtleneck anymore, and she reached for her dog tags, afraid they'd taken those off of her, too. That was the one bad thing about dog tags, people could take them off of you.

"Just lie still," the nurse said, holding her arm, and Maisie saw they were starting an IV and hanging a bag of saline on a hook above her. Her other arm was under the blanket. She reached up real slowly across her chest till she could feel the chain. Good, she still had them on.

"What's your name, honey?" the nurse starting the IV said.

"Maisie Nellis," she said, even though it was right there on her hospital bracelet and her dog tags.

What good was having I.D. stuff if people didn't read them? "You need to tell Dr. Wright to call Dr.

Lander," she said. "You need to tell him-"

"Don't try to talk, Maisie," the nurse said. "Is Dr. Lander your doctor?"

"No," Maisie said. "She-"

"Is Dr. Wright your doctor?"

"No," Maisie said. "He knows Dr. Lander. They're working on a project together."

Another nurse came up. "She's from Peds. Viral endocarditis. Dr. Murrow's on his way up."

"Jesus," the man who had. shouted, "Awwll riight!" said, and somebody else she couldn't see, "There'll be h.e.l.l to pay for somebody for this."

At the same time, the nurse who'd started her IV said, "Ready," and they started to wheel her really fast back down the hall the way she'd come.

"No, wait!" Maisie said. "You need to tell Dr. Wright to call Dr. Lander first. He's in the other wing. Tell him to tell her I didn't just see fog this time, I saw all kinds of stuff. A light and people and a lady in a white dress-"

The nurses looked at each other above her head. "Just lie still," the nurse who'd done her IV said. "You're going to be fine."

"You just had a bad dream," the other one said.

"It wasn't a dream," Maisie said. "It was an NDE. You have to tell Dr. Wright to call her."

The first nurse patted her hand. "I'll tell her."

"No," Maisie said. "She moved away to New Jersey. You have to tell Dr. Wright to tell her.""I'll tell him," the nurse said. "Now just lie still and rest. We're going to take care of you."

"Promise," Maisie said.

"I promise," the nurse said.

Now she'll call for sure, Maisie thought happily. She'll call as soon as she hears I had a near-death experience.

But she didn't.

44.

"It is another thing to die than people have imagined."

-Last words of St. Boniface, as boiling lead was poured into his mouth.

Joanna stood at the railing a long time, looking out at the darkness, and then went over to the deck chairs and sat down.

She clasped her hands around her knees and looked down the Boat Deck. It was deserted, the deck lamps making pools of yellow light, illuminating the empty lifeboat davits, the deck chairs lined up against the wall of the wheelhouse and the gymnasium. There was no sign of the officers who had been loading the boats, or of J. H. Rogers, or the band. Or of Greg Menotti.

Well, of course not. " 'All alone, so Heav'n has will'd, we die,' " Mr. Briarley had said, reading aloud from Mazes and Mirrors, and Mrs. Woollam had said, "Death is something each one of us must go through by ourselves."

" 'Alone, alone, all all alone, alone on the wide wide sea,' " Joanna said, and her voice sounded weak and self-pitying in the silence. Don't be such a baby, she told herself. You were the one who said you wanted to find out about death. Well, now you're going to. Firsthand. "To die will be an awfully big adventure," she said firmly, but her voice still sounded shaky and uncertain.

It was very quiet on the deck, and somehow peaceful. "Like waiting, and not waiting," Mr.

Wojakowski had said, talking about the days before World War II. Knowing it was coming, waiting for it to start.

She wondered if there was something she was supposed to do. Benjamin Guggenheim and his valet had gone below and changed into formal evening dress, but the staterooms were already underwater. And you can't do anything, she thought. You're dead. You'll never do anything again.

You're not even here. You're in the ER, on the examining table where you died, with a sheet over your face, and you're not capable of doing anything at all.

"Except thinking," she said out loud to the silent Boat Deck, "except knowing what's happeningto you," and she remembered Lavoisier, who had still been conscious after he had been beheaded, who had blinked his eyes twelve times, knowing, knowing, she thought, horror rising in her throat, that he was dead.

But only for a few seconds, she thought, and wondered how long twelve blinks took. "Bud Roop went down, bam! just like that," Mr. Wojakowski had said. "He never even knew what hit him.

Died instantly." Only it wasn't instant. Brain death took four to six minutes, and Richard believed there was no correlation between time in the NDE and actual time. That time she had explored the entire s.h.i.+p, she had only been under for a few seconds. "I could be here for hours," she said, her voice rising.

But you've already been here a long time, she told herself. You went down to the writing room and the First-Cla.s.s Dining Saloon. You've already been here a long time, and the brain cells are dying, the synapses being shut down one by one. Soon there won't be enough of them to sustain the central unifying image, and it will start to break down. And in four to six minutes, all the cells will be dead, and you won't be capable of memory, or thought, or fear, and there won't be anything.

Nothing. Not even silence or darkness, or the awareness of them. Nothing.

"Nothing," she said, her hands gripping the hard wooden arms of the deck chair. You won't know it's nothing, she told herself. There's nothing to be afraid of. You'll be unconscious, oblivious, asleep.

" 'To sleep, perchance to dream,' " Joanna murmured, but there was no possibility of dreaming.

There were no synapses to dream with, no acetylcholine, no serotonin. Nothing. "You won't exist,"

she told herself. "You won't be there."

Not there. Not anywhere. And no wonder people loved Mr. Mandrake's book-it wasn't the relatives and the Angels of Light they loved-it was the rea.s.surance that they still existed, that there was something, anything, after death. Even h.e.l.l, or the t.i.tanic, was better than nothing.

But the t.i.tanic's sinking, she thought, and the panic rose like vomit in her throat. Her heart began to pound. I'm afraid, she thought, and that proves the NDE isn't an endorphin cus.h.i.+on. She looked at her palm, clammy and damp, and pressed it to her chest. Her heart was beating fast, her breathing shallow-all the symptoms of fear. She pressed two fingers to her wrist and took her pulse.

Ninety-five. She reached in her pocket for a pen and paper to note it down so she could tell Richard.

So she could tell Richard. "You still don't believe it," she thought, and put her hand to her side.

"You still can't accept that you're dead."

"It's impossible for the human mind to comprehend its own death," she had blithely told Richard, and imagined that that would be a comfort, a protection against the horrible knowledge of destruction.

But it wasn't. It was a taunt and a tease, beckoning tantalizingly just out of reach, like the light of the Californian, promising rescue even after the boats were all gone and the lights were going out.

"Hope springs eternal" isn't a saying of Pollyanna's, it's a threat, Joanna thought, and wondered, horrified, if Lavoisier had been signaling for help, dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot. He had blinked twelve times. SOS. SOS.

Hope isn't a protection, it's a punishment, Joanna thought. And this is h.e.l.l. But it couldn't be,because the sign above the gate to h.e.l.l read, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." But that was an order, not a statement, and maybe that was the true torture of h.e.l.l, not fire and brimstone, and d.a.m.nation was continuing to hope even as the stern began to rise out of the water, as the flames, or the lava, or the train overtook you, that there was still a way out, that you might somehow be saved at the last minute. Just like in the movies.

And it was sometimes true, she thought, you were sometimes able to summon the cavalry.

"That's what I was trying to tell Richard," she said, and remembered trying to move her lips as Vielle's worried face leaned over her, trying to hear, her hand holding tight to hers.

I didn't say good-bye to Vielle, Joanna thought. She'll think it was her fault. "It was my fault, Vielle," she said as if Vielle could hear her. "I didn't stay alert to my surroundings. I was too busy working Cape Race. I didn't even see it coming." "I didn't say good-bye to anyone," she said, and stood up hastily as though there were still time to do it. Kit. She'd left Kit without a word. Kit, whose fiance and uncle had already left her. "I didn't even say good-bye to Richard," she said. Or Maisie.

Maisie. She had promised Maisie she would come see her. She'll be waiting, Joanna thought, the dread filling her chest, and Barbara will come in and tell her that I died. She had taken a step forward on the deck as if to stop Barbara, but she could not stop anyone from doing anything, and she had been wrong about the punishment of the dead-it was not hope or oblivion, but remembering broken promises and neglected good-byes and not being able to rectify them. "Oh, Maisie," Joanna said, and sat back down on the edge of the deck chair. She put her head in her hands.

"Are you supposed to be out here, Ms. Lander?" a stern voice said. "Where is your hall pa.s.s?"

She looked up. Mr. Briarley was standing over her in his gray tweed vest. "Mr. Briarley...

what?" she choked out. "Why are you here? Did you die, too?"

"Did I die?" He pondered the question. "Is this multiple choice? 'Neither fish nor fowl, neither out nor in.' " He smiled at her and then said seriously, "What are you doing out here alone?"

"I was trying to send a message," she said, looking over at the darkness beyond the railing.

"Did it get through?"

No, she thought, remembering Vielle's worried voice saying, "Shh, honey, don't try to talk," and her own, choking on the blood pouring out of her lungs, out of her throat, the resident's voice cutting across them, shouting, "Clear. Again. Clear," and behind it, above it, around it, the code alarm, drowning out everything, everything.

No, she thought, Vielle didn't hear me, didn't understand, didn't tell Richard, and the knowledge was worse than realizing she was dead, worse even than Barbara telling Maisie she'd died. Worse than anything. "No," she said numbly. "It didn't get through."