When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned.’ ”
Luann came back in, looking frazzled.
“I’d like to come talk with you again,” Joanna told Mrs. Woollam. “May I?”
“If I’m still here,” Mrs. Woollam said, and twinkled. “The HMO keeps cutting the amount of time the hospital can keep me. I’d like to talk to you, too. I’d like to know what you think these experiences are and what you think about death.”
I think the more I find out the less I know, Joanna thought, heading back upstairs. She wished she didn’t still have two or more hours of transcribing tapes ahead of her. She couldn’t leave them till tomorrow, not with a full schedule of sessions, and she was already a week behind. She went into her office, took a tape out of the shoe box she kept her untranscribed tapes in, and turned on the computer.
“Oh, good, you’re back,” Richard said, sticking his head in the door. “I had to reschedule Mr. Sage’s first session to this afternoon. This shouldn’t take long. Tish has already got him prepped.”
Richard was wrong. It took forever. Not because Mr. Sage had lots to relate, however. Getting him to say anything at all was like pulling teeth. “You say it was dark,” Joanna asked after fifteen minutes of questioning. “Could you see anything?”
“When?”
“When you were in the dark.”
“No. I told you, it was dark.”
“Was it dark the whole time?”
“No,” followed by an interminable pause while Joanna waited for him to add something.
“After it was dark, what happened?” she asked.
“Happened?”
“Yes. You said it wasn’t dark the whole time…”
“It wasn’t.”
“Was it light part of the time?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you describe the light?”
He shrugged. “A light.”
She didn’t do any better when she asked him what feelings he’d had during the NDE. “Feelings?” he repeated as if he had never heard the word before.
“Did you feel happy, sad, worried, excited, calm, warm, cold?”
The shrug again. “Would you say you felt good or bad?” she asked.
“When?”
“Good or bad about what?” And so on, for over an hour.
“Boy,” Richard said when Mr. Sage had taken his silent leave, “when you said people vary in their descriptive powers, you weren’t kidding.”
“Well, at least we established that it was dark, and then light,” Joanna said, shaking her head.
They were alone in the lab. Tish had stayed till halfway through the interrogation and then left, saying to Richard, “I’m going over to Happy Hour at the Rio Grande with a bunch of people, if you’re interested. Either of you,” she’d added as an afterthought.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get anything out of him about what he was feeling, if he was feeling,” Joanna said. “I don’t think he had any negative feelings. He didn’t respond when I asked him if he’d felt worried or afraid.”
“He didn’t respond at all,” Richard said, going over to the console, “but at least we’ve got another set of scans to look at.” He began typing in numbers. “I want to compare his endorphin levels with Amelia Tanaka’s.”
And so much for Happy Hour at the Rio Grande, Joanna thought, but it was just as well. She had Mr. Sage’s account, such as it was, to type up, and all the other tapes she hadn’t transcribed yet. She went back to her office.
Her answering machine was blinking. Don’t let it be Mr. Mandrake, she thought, and hit “play.” “This is Maurice Mandrake,” the machine said. “I just wanted to tell you how delighted I am you’re working with Dr. Wright. I’m sure you will be an excellent influence. When can you meet with me to plan strategies?”
There were messages from Mrs. Haighton and Ann Collins, the nurse who had assisted at Mr. Wojakowski’s session, asking Joanna to call them. And play another round of telephone tag, Joanna thought wearily, but she called them both back. Neither one was there. She left a message on both answering machines, and then sat down at her computer and transcribed Mr. Sage’s account.
It only took five minutes. She popped out the tape and stuck another one in. “It was…,” an interminable pause, “…dark…,” another one, “…I think…” Mrs. Davenport. “I was in…,” very long pause, “…a kind of…” very, very long pause, and then her voice rising questioningly, “…tunnel?” This was ridiculous. She could put the tape on fast- forward and still type faster than Mrs. Davenport was speaking. And why not? she thought, reaching for the recorder. Even if she had to rewind to get it all, it would be an improvement on this.
It didn’t work. When she hit “fast-forward,” it produced a high-pitched squeal. She tried hitting “fast- forward” and “play” at the same time. The “fast-forward” button clicked off and there was a deafening whine. A man’s voice said, “Turn off that damned alarm.”
A sudden silence, then the same voice saying, “Let me see a rhythm strip.”
Greg Menotti coding, Joanna thought, I must have left the recorder on; she reached to hit “rewind.”
“She’s too far away,” Greg said, his voice distant and despairing, and Joanna took her finger off the “rewind” button and listened. “She’ll never get here in time.”
Joanna grabbed the shoe box of untranscribed tapes and rummaged through them as the tape played, looking at the dates. February twenty-fifth, December ninth.
“She’ll be here in just a few minutes,” Vielle’s voice said from the tape, and the cardiologist’s, “What’s the BP?” January twenty-third, March—here it was. “Eighty over sixty,” the nurse said, and Joanna hit “rewind,” let it run, hit “play.” “Fifty-eight,” Greg said, and Joanna stopped the tape. She popped it out of the recorder, stuck the other one in, fast-forwarded to the middle.
“It was beautiful,” Amelia Tanaka said. Too far. Joanna rewound, listened, rewound again, hit “play.”
“She’s coming out of it,” Richard’s voice said. Joanna leaned forward. “Oh, no,” Amelia said, “oh, no, oh, no, oh, no.”
Joanna played it twice, then popped the tape out and the other one back in, even though she already knew what it would sound like, already knew why Amelia’s voice had been so troubled. She had heard it before. “Too far for her to come,” Greg had said, and his voice had held the same terror, the same despair.
She hit “rewind” and played it again, but she was already certain. She had heard the identical tone twice today, the first time reading the Bible, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee. When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned.”
And if she had gotten Mrs. Woollam’s voice on tape, all three voices would have sounded exactly the same. Just like Maisie’s, saying, “Do you think it hurts?”
12
“Why, man, they couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist—”
Mr. Wojakowski was right on time the next morning. “That’s one thing they teach you in the navy, being on time,” he told Richard and launched into a story about GeeGaw Rawlins, a perennially tardy gunner’s mate. “Killed at Iwo. Tracer bullet right through the eye,” he finished cheerfully and trotted off into the dressing room to put on his hospital gown.
