Passage

had stood on. The roof of the tent came down on top of all of it, on fire, covering it up, and smoke boiled up.

The clown in the funny fireman’s hat shouted, “There’s no way out!”

“Yes, there is, kiddo,” Emmett Kelly said. “And you know what it is.”

“There isn’t any way out. The main entrance is blocked,” she said. “The animal run’s in the way.”

“You know the way out,” he said, bending down and gripping her by the shoulders. “You told me, remember? When we were looking at your book?”

“The tent,” Maisie said. “They could’ve got out by crawling under the tent.”

Emmett Kelly led Maisie, running, back across the ring to the far side of the tent. “There’s a Victory garden on the far side of the lot,” he said as they ran. “I want you to go over there and wait till your mother comes.”

Maisie looked at him. “Aren’t you coming with me?”

He shook his head. “Women and children only.”

They reached the side of the tent. The canvas was tied down with stakes. Emmett Kelly squatted down in his funny, too-big pants and untied the rope. He lifted up the canvas so Maisie could go under. “I want you to run to the Victory garden.” He raised the canvas up higher.

Maisie looked out under the canvas. It was dark outside, darker even than the tunnel. “What if I get lost?” she said and started to cry. “They won’t know who I am.”

Emmett Kelly stood up and reached in one of his tattered pockets and pulled out a purple spotted handkerchief. He started to wipe Maisie’s eyes with it, but it wouldn’t come all the way out of his pocket. He yanked on it, and the end of it came out in a big knot, tied to a red bandanna. He pulled on the bandanna, and a green handkerchief came out and then an orange one, all knotted together.

Maisie laughed.

He pulled and pulled, looking surprised, and a lavender handkerchief came out, and a yellow one, and a white one with apple blossoms on it. And a chain with Maisie’s dog tags on the end of it.

He put the chain around her neck. “Now hurry,” he said. “The whole place is on fire.”

It was. Up above, the roof of the tent was one big flame, and the grandstands and the center ring and the bandstand were all burning, but the band was still playing, blowing on their trumpets and tubas in their red uniforms. They weren’t playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” though. They were playing a really slow, sad song. “What is that?” Maisie asked.

“ ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee,’ ” Emmett Kelly said.

“Like on the Titanic,” Maisie said.

“Like on the Titanic,” he said. “It means it’s time to go.”

“I don’t want to,” Maisie said. “I want to stay here with you. I know a lot about disasters.”

“That’s why you have to go,” he said. “So you can become a disasterologist.”

“Why can’t you come, too?”

“I have to stay here,” he said, and she saw that he was holding a water bucket.

“And save people’s lives,” Maisie said.

He smiled under his painted-on, sad-looking expression. “And save people’s lives.” He squatted down and lifted up the canvas again. “Now go, kiddo. I want you to run lickety-split.”

Maisie ducked under the canvas and stood poised in the opening a moment, clutching her dog tags, and then looked back at him.

“I know who you are,” she said. “You’re not really Emmett Kelly, are you? That’s just a metaphor.”

The clown put his gloved finger up to his wide white mouth in a sh-shhing motion. “I want you to run straight for the Victory garden,” he said.

Maisie smiled at him. “You can’t fool me,” she said. “I know who you really are,” and ran into the darkness, as fast as she could.

59

“There! If the boat goes down, you’ll remember me.”

—Words spoken to Minnie Coutts by a crewman on the Titanic who had given his lifejacket to her little boy

Two days after successfully reviving Maisie, Richard’s special pager went off again. This time, trying not to think of what the strain of two codes in three days might do to Maisie’s system or what deadly side effect the theta-asparcine might have produced, he made it up to CICU in three minutes flat.

Evelyn met him as he skidded into the unit, all smiles. “Her heart’s here,” she said. “Maisie’s in being prepped. I tried to call you.”

“My special pager went off,” he said, still not convinced there wasn’t a disaster, and Evelyn said, unruffled, “She was quite insistent that you and Vielle Howard be informed, and I guess she took matters into her own hands.”

She had, in more ways than one. After the transplant surgery, which took eight hours and went without a hitch, one of the attending nurses told him Maisie had taped her dog tags to the bottom of her foot and was furious that they’d been removed. “What if I’d died?” she’d demanded indignantly as soon as her airway was removed, and, in spite of the danger of infection due to the immunosuppressants she was taking, she was allowed to wear her dog tags, swabbed with disinfectant, wrapped around her wrist, “just in case.”

Maisie’s mother, absolutely impossible now that her faith in positive thinking had been confirmed, had, according to the nurse, tried to talk her out of them, to no avail.

“I need them,” Maisie had said. “In case I get complications. I might get a blood clot or reject my new heart.”

“You won’t do any such thing,” her mother had said. “You’re going to get well and come home and go back to school. You’re going to take ballet lessons”—something Richard could not in his wildest dreams imagine Maisie doing, unless a ballet-related flood or volcanic eruption was involved—“and grow up and have children of your own.” To which Maisie, ever the realist, had replied, “I’ll still die sometime. Everybody dies sooner or later.”

After a week of family only, Maisie was allowed visitors, provided they wore paper gowns, booties, and masks, and limited their visits to five minutes, and visited two at a time. That meant her mother was always present, which cramped Maisie’s style considerably, although she still told Richard plenty of grisly details about her surgery. “So then they crack your chest open,” she demonstrated, “and they cut your heart out and put the new one in. Did you know it comes in a cooler, like beer?”

“Maisie—” her mother protested. “Let’s talk about something cheerful. You need to thank Dr. Wright. He revived you after you coded.”

“That’s right,” Evelyn said, coming in to check the numerous monitors. “Dr. Wright saved your life.”

“No, he didn’t,” Maisie said.

“I know he didn’t do your transplant surgery, like Dr. Templeton,” Mrs. Nellis said, looking embarrassed, “but he helped by starting your heart again so you could get your new heart.”

“I know,” Maisie said, “but—”

“A lot of people worked together to get you your new heart, didn’t they?” Mrs. Nellis said. “Your Peds nurses and Dr.—”

“Maisie,” Richard said, leaning forward, “who did save your life?”

Maisie opened her mouth to answer, and Evelyn, adjusting her IV, said, “I know who she means. You mean the person who donated your heart, don’t you, Maisie?”

“Yes,” Maisie said after a moment, and Richard thought, That isn’t what she was going to say. “I wish they told you what their name was,” Maisie said. “They don’t tell you anything, not how they died or whether they were a boy or a girl or anything.”

“That’s because they don’t want you to worry about it,” Mrs. Nellis said. “You’re supposed to be thinking positive thoughts to help you get well.”