Passage

“I can’t talk now,” Richard said, his hand over the receiver. “I’ll call you back.”

“You’ll never get through,” Vielle said. “It’s a total disaster here. The fog—”

Richard switched the phone off. “Good-bye,” he said to the dial tone and handed the phone back to Kit. “Sorry,” he said, turning to Carl.

“Perfectly all right,” Carl said. “Where were we? Oh, yes, you were asking me what I remember of my coma, and I’m afraid the answer is, nothing at all.”

Damn you, Vielle, Richard thought. He was going to tell us. “The last thing I remember is my wife putting me in the car to go to the hospital,” Carl said. His hands on the arms of the chair were relaxed, steady. “She was having trouble getting my seat belt on, and the next thing I know this nurse I never saw before is opening the curtains, and this friend of yours comes in and talks to me for a few minutes, maybe five minutes at the most. She asked me how I was and we chatted a little, and then she stood up and said she had to go.” He smiled at Kit again.

“What did you chat about?” Richard said.

“I don’t really remember.” Carl shrugged. “I’m afraid there’s a lot I don’t remember about that first couple of days. The medications. I suppose that must be true for the dreams I had while I was in the coma, too.”

“You said they weren’t dreams,” Richard said.

“Did I?” Carl said easily. “I meant I didn’t remember having any dreams.”

You’re lying, Richard thought.

“Here’s your tea, Carl,” Mrs. Aspinall said, coming into the room. She handed him the mug. “And after you drink it, I think you should lie down. You look pale.” She laid her hand on his forehead. “And it feels like you’ve got a fever. I’m sure Dr. Wright and Ms. Gardiner will understand.”

“Sorry I couldn’t help you,” Carl said and turned to his wife. “You’re right, I am tired. I think I will lie down.”

“I’ll show Dr. Wright and Ms. Gardiner out,” Mrs. Aspinall said, “and then I’ll come back and get you settled.”

They stood up. “If you remember anything,” Kit said, “please call us.”

“I doubt if I’ll remember anything,” Carl said. “Dr. Cherikov said the more time has passed, the less I’ll remember about the whole thing.”

“Which is good,” Mrs. Aspinall said. “You need to forget about what’s past and concentrate on the present, and the future. Isn’t that right, Dr. Wright? I want to thank you for coming.”

End of interview. Mrs. Aspinall led them quickly down the hall to the front door and helped them into their coats, obviously anxious to get rid of them so she could get back to her husband. “It was so nice of you to come all this way,” she said, opening the door.

They went out onto the porch. “I’m sorry my husband couldn’t be more help,” she said.

“Maybe you can help us,” Richard said. “Your husband told Joanna something that put her on the right track. Something he remembered from his coma.”

“He told you, he doesn’t remember. His memory of his time in the hospital’s very hazy—”

“But he might have said something to you,” Kit said, “after he woke up. Made some reference to what he saw or—”

Richard interrupted. “Your husband said the things he saw weren’t dreams,” Richard said. “Did he say what they were?”

Mrs. Aspinall looked uncertainly down the hall toward the family room. “Please,” Kit said. “Your husband’s the only one who can help us. It’s so important.”

“What’s important is my husband’s recovery,” Mrs. Aspinall said. “He’s still very weak. His nerves—I don’t think you understand what a terrible ordeal he’s been through. He was this close to death. I couldn’t bear to lose him again. I have to think of his welfare—”

“You said Joanna was kind to you—” Richard said.

“She was,” Mrs. Aspinall said, and took her hand off the door.

“Did he say anything about where he was?” Richard said rapidly. “Did he mention a Grand Staircase?”

The loud thump of the walking stick sounded suddenly from the end of the hall. “My husband’s calling,” Mrs. Aspinall said. “I have to go get him settled for his nap.”

“He said, ‘She was only there for a few minutes,’ and the idea of her having been in the same place obviously frightened him,” Richard said over the thumping. “Did he say where he was or why it was frightening?”

“I have to go.”

“Wait,” Richard said, fumbling in his pocket. “Here’s my card. That’s my pager number. If you or your husband happen to remember anything—”

“I’ll call you. Thank you again for coming all this way,” she said politely, and shut the door in their faces.

53

“V… V…”

—Last wireless message from the Titanic, heard faintly by the Virginian

Joanna sank.

She was suddenly in water and darkness. She couldn’t see, the rain on the windshield was suddenly a downpour, so heavy the wipers couldn’t keep up. She flicked them to high, but it was no use, the rain was turning to sleet, to ice. She was going to have to pull off the road, but she couldn’t even see the shoulder, she couldn’t feel the bottom. Her toes stretched desperately down, trying to feel sand, her head going under. Under. Flailing and gulping for air, swallowing, choking. Drowning.

“Drowning’s the worst way to die,” Vielle had said, but they were all terrible. Heart attack and kidney failure and beheading, drug overdoses and nicked aortas and being crushed by a falling smokestack. Joanna looked up, trying to see the Titanic, but there was only water above her. And darkness.

She reached up for the surface, but it was too far above her, and after a while she let her arms fall, and she fell. Her hair fanned out around her like Amelia Tanaka’s had, lying on the examining table, her dead hands drifting limp and open in the dark water.

I let go of the French bulldog, she thought, and knew that she could not have held on to him or onto his memory, or onto the memory of Ulla or the dog at Pompeii, struggling against its chain, or of the Titanic passenger letting the dogs out of their cages, because the falling was itself a letting go, and as she fell, she forgot not only the dog but the meaning of the word dog and of sugar and sorrow.

They fell away from her like snow, like ash, memories of saying, “Can you be more specific?” and eating buttered popcorn, of standing in the third-floor walkway, looking out at the fog, and sitting next to Mrs. Woollam’s bed, listening to her read passages from the Bible, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee,” and “Rosabelle, remember,” and “Put your hands on my shoulders and don’t struggle.”

Names fell away from her in drifting tatters, the names of her patients and of her best friend in third grade, of the movie star Vielle’s police officer had looked like and the capital of Wyoming. The names of the neurotransmitters and the days of the week and the core elements of the NDE.

The tunnel, she thought, trying to remember them, and the light, and the one Mr.—what was his name?— she had forgotten—was so insistent about. The life review. “There’s supposed to be a life review,” he had said, but he was wrong. It was not a review but a jettisoning, events and happenings and knowledge being tossed overboard one by one: numbers and dates and faces, the taste of Tater Torros, and the smell of crayons, Indian red and gold and sea green, the combination of her junior high locker and her Blockbuster password and the best way to get from Medicine to ICU.