Passage

of Eden.” “Beyond the doorway I could see a garden.”

Gladys Meers had been the most specific. “There were trees all around, and white trellises with vines growing up them. ‘Pray be seated,’ the angel said, and I sat down in a white wicker chair, the kind they have on patios.”

There couldn’t possibly have been a garden on the Titanic, Joanna thought, and wished she could believe that, but it had had a swimming pool, it had had a Turkish bath. Maybe it had had a garden, too.

She called Kit, but the line was busy. She printed out the list of garden references and then went to see Maisie. She was lying in bed, watching TV, but her shallow breathing and flaring nostrils gave her away. She just jumped into bed, Joanna thought, wondering what book she’d just hidden, and then saw that there were wires leading under her Barbie pajama top to the heart monitor.

“I didn’t find out the wireless messages yet,” Maisie said when she saw Joanna. She pointed her remote at the TV and turned it off. “I’m in A-fib again. I’m not supposed to read even. I found out two.” She took a couple of panting breaths before she went on. “They’re in the drawer,” turning her head to indicate the nightstand. “I’ll look up the others as soon as I feel better.”

Joanna opened the drawer and took out Maisie’s tablet. On the first page was written, “Sinking. Cannot hear for noise of steam.” And under it, “Come quick. Our engine-room flooded up to the boilers.”

Like you, Joanna thought, and tried not to think of Maisie on the listing decks of the Titanic, on the slanting steps of the Grand Staircase. But she saw fog, Joanna thought, and the night the Titanic sank, it was clear. And if there wasn’t a garden on the Titanic, then Mr. Briarley’s wrong.

“Maisie,” she said. “Did the Titanic have a garden?”

“A garden?” Maisie said, incredulous. “On a ship?”

“Or something that looked like a garden, with flowers and trees,” but Maisie was shaking her head. And if there were one, Joanna thought, she would have known about it.

“I never heard of a garden,” Maisie said. “I bet if there was, though, there’d be a picture of it in my Titanic Picture Book.” She pushed the covers off and sat up.

“No,” Joanna said. “No looking things up till you’re out of A-fib.”

“But—”

“Promise me, or I’ll fire you as my research assistant.”

“Okay,” Maisie said grudgingly. “I promise,” and, at Joanna’s skeptical look, “Cross my heart.”

Which isn’t worth a damn, Joanna thought. “You get some rest, kiddo,” she said, picking up the remote and switching it on, “and I’ll come see you soon.”

“You can’t go yet,” Maisie said. “I haven’t told you this neat thing I found out about the Mackay-Bennett.”

“Okay,” she said. “Two minutes, and then you have to rest. What’s the Mackay- Bennett?”

“It was this ship they sent out to pick up the bodies.”

“I thought the bodies all sank,” Joanna said.

“I did, too, but some of them were wearing lifejackets, so they floated.” She laid her head back against the pillows, arms outstretched, mouth open in a grotesque imitation of a floating corpse. “And they were afraid people on other ships would see them, so they sent the Mackay-Bennett out to get them. It had all these coffins and a minister. What’s an embalmer?”

“It’s a person who prepares bodies for burial. To keep them from spoiling.”

“Oh,” Maisie said. “Well, they had an embalmer, and all this ice. That was to keep them from spoiling, too, right?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “Okay, your two minutes are up.” She stood up.

“No,” Maisie said. “I haven’t told you the thing yet. One of the bodies was this little boy who nobody knew who he was, and nobody came to claim him, so the captain and the guys on the Mackay-Bennett had a funeral for him and a little white coffin and they put up a headstone to ‘The Unknown Child Whose Remains were Recovered after the Disaster to the Titanic.’ ”

“Just like Little Miss 1565,” Joanna said.

“No,” Maisie said, “ ’cause this one they found out who he was.” She wrapped her hand around her dog tags, as if it were a rosary. “Gosta Paulsson,” she said. “That was his name. Gosta Paulsson.” Joanna ended up sitting with Maisie till her mother came in, bubbling with cheer.

“The nurses say you’re doing much better,” Joanna heard her say as she scooted out of the room. “I brought you a brand-new video. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”

Joanna went back to her office, feeling relieved. There wasn’t a garden on the Titanic, and no fog, and Maisie wasn’t the only NDEer to have seen fog. It was listed as a separate NDE category in one of the books, Entranced by the Light. She read the section. “A number of patients describe being in an open, undefined, foggy space. Some say it is dark, like fog at night, others that it is light. Nearly all describe it as being a cold and frightening place. This is clearly Purgatory, and those who see it can be described as nonreligious or unsaved.”

Joanna closed the book with a slap and did a global search of “fog,” and scrolled down through the references. “It was cold,” Paul Smetzer had said, “and there was so much fog I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.”

Paul Smetzer. That name rang a bell. She called up his file and read the full account. Oh, yes, Paul. “…I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Of course, if I was dead, I guess I wouldn’t have had a hand, would I? Or a face, for that matter.”

Paul Smetzer, the Ricky Inman of NDEers. He had also told her he’d seen an angel, “almost as cute as you,” and asked her if it was true there wasn’t any sex in heaven, “because if it is, I told her, I want to go to the other place.”

His remarks could be discounted, but he wasn’t the only one who had mentioned fog: “There were people standing there, but I couldn’t see who they were because of the fog.” “No, it was dark” (this in response to Joanna’s asking Ray Gomez to describe the tunnel), “and all blurry, like fog or something.” “I was floating in a kind of fog.”

And there definitely hadn’t been any fog that night. Just to make sure, Joanna called Kit, but her number was still busy. She printed out the list of fog references to take home and began gathering up her things.

The phone rang. “Hi, it’s Richard,” he said to the answering machine. “I just wanted to tell you Mrs. Troudtheim’s coming in at four tomorrow if that will—”

She picked up the phone. “Hi, I’m here.”

“Oh, I thought you’d gone home,” he said. “I came by earlier and didn’t see any light under your door.”

“Nope, I’m still here. I’ve been working on the backlog of transcripts,” she said, which was at least partly true. “I thought you weren’t going to send Mrs. Troudtheim under again until you’d figured out why she keeps kicking out.”

“I wasn’t, but when I told Dr. Jamison about the DABA, she suggested I go talk to Dr. Friedman over at St. Anthony’s. He’s worked extensively with DABA and artificial DABA surrogates. He said DABA alone couldn’t inhibit endorphins, but combined with cortisol, it definitely could.”

“And inhibiting the endorphins would kick her out?”

“I don’t know yet. I asked him about theta-asparcine, too, but it’s not an inhibitor. His specialty’s inhibitors, so he didn’t know much about it. He said he thought it had a regulatory function and that an artificial surrogate’s been produced. I need to do some more research, but not till I’ve checked Mrs. Troudtheim’s NDEs to see if cortisol’s been present in all of them. If it has, there are a number of ways to counteract the cortisol and keep her under. So I’ll see you tomorrow at four o’clock.”

Four o’clock. And by that time, she should know one way or the other. Or maybe sooner, if she could reach Kit. She called her again, and as soon as she got home, slightly worried, and at fifteen-minute intervals till she finally got through.