Greg demanded, and there was a sudden, deafening roar of steam. Smoke swirled around them, and she thought, Maybe I can escape in the fog, but when she tried, he grabbed for her wrist, his other hand clutching a fold of her cardigan.
He yanked her to her feet. “The collapsibles,” he shouted over the roar of the steam. “Where are they?”
“On top of the officers’ quarters,” Joanna said. She pointed with her pinioned hand in the direction of the bow. “Down there.”
He pushed her ahead of him, her wrist twisted behind her back. “Show me,” he said. He half-walked, half- shoved her past the funnel, past the wireless shack.
“I have to send a message,” Joanna said, her eyes on the light under the door of the wireless shack. “It’s important.”
“The important thing is getting off this ship before it goes down,” he said, pushing her forward.
He’s not real, Joanna thought, willing him to disappear. He’s a confabulation, a metaphor, a misfiring. I’ve invented him out of my own desperation to make sense of what’s happening, out of my own panic and denial. He isn’t really here. He died six weeks ago. He can’t do anything to anybody. But even though she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to see his lifeless body in the ER, his fingers still dug into her wrist, his hand still propelled her roughly forward, past the chart room to the officers’ quarters.
“They would have been there,” Joanna said, pointing with her chin at the flat roof above them.
“Where?” he said, looking up. “It’s too dark. I can’t see.”
“These are the officers’ quarters. They were stored on top,” she said. “But they aren’t there. This isn’t the
He climbed onto a deck chair, still grasping her wrist, pulling her up after him onto the chair, onto a windlass. He reached across to a stanchion, stretching, and let go of her wrist. Joanna didn’t wait. She jumped down off the windlass, off the deck chair, and ran for the wireless shack.
The door was shut, and on it was a large poster. “Do you know someone at risk?” it read. “You can save a life.”
She pushed the door open, praying, Please let him still be there, please let him still be sending.
He was. He sat bent over the wireless key, his coat off, his headphones on over his blond hair, his finger jabbing fiercely at the telegraph key. The blue spark leaped between the poles of the dynamo. It’s still working, she thought, a wave of relief washing over her. “I have to send a message,” she said breathlessly. “It’s important.”
Jack Phillips didn’t glance up, didn’t pause in his steady tapping. He can’t hear me, she thought, because of the headphones. “Jack,” she said, touching his shoulder. He turned impatiently, pulling one of the headphones away from his ear. “Mr. Phil—” she said and stopped, staring.
50
“We are 157–337 running north and south. Wait listening on 6210.”
Maisie insisted on hearing everything. “How did she die?” she asked Richard. “In a disaster?”
“No,” Richard said.
“She was stabbed by a man on drugs in the ER,” Kit said, and Maisie nodded in confirmation, as if they had said yes, in a disaster. And wasn’t it? Unexpected, undeserved death, caused by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. How was it different from being in Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius blew? Or on the
“Did he stab her lots of times?” Maisie was asking.
Richard looked worriedly at the door. The CICU nurse had already been in once and demanded to know what they were doing. “I felt funny before,” Maisie had said smoothly, “but then Dr. Wright and Ms. Gardiner came to see me and made me feel better.”
It was true. She even looked better, though Richard couldn’t have said quite how. Her eyes were still shadowed, her lips still faintly blue, but the strength was back in her voice, and the interest. “Did the crash team work on her?” she asked. “Did they use the paddles?”
“They did everything they could to save her,” Richard said, and there was no point in using layman’s terms with an expert like Maisie, “but the knife had sliced the aorta. She died of acute hemorrhage.”
Maisie nodded knowingly. “What happened to the one who stabbed her?”
“The police killed him,” Kit said.
“Good.” Maisie leaned back against her pillows, and then sat up again. “You said Joanna found out something important. What?”
“We don’t know,” Richard said. He explained about Joanna telling Mr. Wojakowski she had something important to tell him, about her trying to tell them something when she was dying.
“Was it about the
Richard looked across the bed at Kit. “What makes you say that?”
“She was always asking me about the
“Why?” Richard said, afraid to ask.
“She asked me to look up about the wireless messages the last time she came to see me,” Maisie said.
“When was that?” Richard asked. He started to say, “She died on the fourteenth,” and could hear Joanna saying, Don’t lead, don’t lead.
“Umm,” Maisie said, screwing her face in thought. “She asked me to look up the messages, and it took a long time because my mom was here a lot and I went into A-fib a couple of times and had to have all these tests. And then she came and asked me was there a garden on the
“A garden?” Kit asked. “There was a list of garden references in her patients’ NDEs,” she said to Richard.
“Was there a garden?” Richard asked Maisie.
“Kind of. There was a picture of the Verandah Cafe in one of my books, and it looked like a garden. You know, with flowers and vines and trees and stuff. I called her and told her she should come look at it and that I had the wireless messages all done.”
“Was that the same day she came and asked you about the garden?”
“No, she asked me the day before, and when I called her, she said she couldn’t come, she was too busy, and she promised she’d come later, but she didn’t. I thought she forgot, but she didn’t.” She looked up at Richard. “I don’t know exactly what day it was. You can ask Nurse Barbara. I bet she’ll know.”
There was no need to. Whoever Joanna had been to see the day she died, it wasn’t Maisie. “When did you call her, Maisie?” Richard asked. “What time of day?”
“Right after my mom left to go see her lawyer. I think nine o’clock.”
Nine o’clock, and she had told Maisie the same thing she’d told Kit, that she was busy, that she’d come see her later.
“Did she say when she was going to come see you?” Richard asked.
“She said right after lunch.”
“And when is lunch?” Kit asked.
“Eleven-thirty.”
Joanna had intended to go see Maisie and then hadn’t. That confirmed that something had happened, but not what. “Did she say what she was busy working on?”
“I think the
