Passage

Barbara nodded, and Joanna’s heart started beating again. “She was only out a few seconds, and it doesn’t look like there was any major damage. I left a message on your answering machine.”

“I haven’t been in my office since early this morning.”

“I figured as much,” Barbara said. “I’d have paged you if it looked bad.”

I had my pager off, Joanna thought guiltily.

“Anyway, Maisie’s up in CICU, and she wants to see you. I have to get back,” she said, twisting the hand holding the two Pepsis around so she could see her watch.

“I’ll come with you,” Joanna said, pushing the walkway door open for her. “Can she have visitors?”

“If she’s still awake.”

“What time is it?” Joanna said, looking at her watch as they started down the hall. A quarter to nine. She’d been stalking obsessively around the hospital for nearly two hours, oblivious to everything and everybody, while Maisie—

The feeling of nearly knowing washed over her abruptly, almost sickeningly, and she glanced instinctively at the floor, at the end of the hall, but there was no door there, only a bank of telephones. And that wasn’t it. It was something to do with what she’d just been thinking, about her being oblivious to what was happening, and having her pager off, and—

“Are you all right?” Barbara said, looking at her worriedly, and she realized she’d stopped short, her hand to her stomach. “Maisie’s okay, really. I didn’t mean to scare you like that. I know how attached you are to her. She’s fine. She was regaling Paula with stories about Mount Vesuvius when I left. I’ll bet you didn’t have dinner either. Here.” Barbara popped open one of the Pepsis and handed it to her. “Your blood sugar’s probably even lower than mine. That cafeteria should be taken out and shot.”

It was gone, as suddenly as it had come, and if she went straight up to the lab right now, the traces would surely show up on her RIPT, it had been so strong. But she had already let Maisie down once today. She wasn’t about to do it again.

She took a grateful swig of the Pepsi. “You’re right,” she said. “I haven’t had anything since this morning.” She immediately felt better. And maybe it was just low blood sugar, she thought as they went down to Peds, combined with worry over Maisie.

And there was certainly reason to worry. “The doctors can’t keep her stabilized,” Barbara told her in the elevator. “They’ve put her on stronger and stronger antiarrhythmics, which all have serious liver and kidney side effects, but nothing seems to be working. Except in Mrs. Nellis’s mind, where everything’s wonderful, Maisie’s getting better every day, and her coding is just a little blip. That’s what she called it,” she said disgustedly. “A little blip.”

Which on the Yorktown would have meant a Japanese Zero, Joanna said silently, thinking of Mr. Wojakowski. Or a torpedo.

She went up to the CICU. Maisie was asleep, an oxygen line under her nose, electrodes hooked to her chest, her IV hooked to almost as many bags as Ms. Grant’s had been. Joanna tiptoed a few inches into the partly darkened room and stood there watching her a few minutes. And there was no need to wonder where the sense of dread came from this time. Because it was one thing to simulate dying and another altogether to be staring it in the face.

What did you see, kiddo, when you coded? Joanna asked her silently. A partly opened door, and people in white, saying, “What’s happened?” Saying, “It’s so cold”? I hope you saw a beautiful place, Joanna thought, all golden and white, with heavenly music playing, like Ms. Grant. No, not like Ms. Grant. Like Mrs. Woollam. A garden, all green and white.

Joanna stood in the dark a long time, and then went back up to her office, telling Barbara, “I’ll be around at least till eleven. Page me,” and typed in interviews until after midnight, waiting for her pager to go off, for the phone to ring.

But in the morning Maisie was as chirpy as ever. “I get to go back to my regular room tomorrow. I hate these oxygen things,” she told Joanna. “They don’t stay in your nose at all. Where were you yesterday? I thought you said you were supposed to tell what you saw in your NDE right away so you wouldn’t forget or confabulate stuff.”

“What did you see?” Joanna asked.

“Nothing,” Maisie said disgustedly. “Just fog, like last time. Only it was a little thinner. I still couldn’t see anything, though. But I heard something.”

“What was it?”

Maisie scrunched her face into an expression of concentration. “I think it was a boom.”

“A boom.”

“Yeah, like a volcano erupting or a bomb or something. Boom!” she shouted, flinging her hands out.

“Careful,” Joanna said, looking at the IV in Maisie’s arm.

Maisie glanced casually at it. “It was a big boom.”

“You said you think it was a boom,” Joanna said. “What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t exactly hear it,” Maisie said. “There was this noise, and then I was in this foggy place, but when I tried to think about what kind of a sound it was, I couldn’t exactly remember. I’m pretty sure it was a boom, though.”

Like a volcano erupting, Joanna thought, and she just happened to be reading about Mount Vesuvius right before she coded. But Maisie was still a better subject than anyone else she’d interviewed lately. “What happened then?”

“Nothing,” Maisie said. “Just fog, and then I was back in my room.”

“Can you tell me about coming back? What was it like?”

“Fast,” Maisie said. “One second I was looking around trying to see what was in the fog, and the next I was back, just like that, and the crash team guy was rubbing the paddles together and saying, ‘Clear.’ I’m glad I came back when I did. I hate it when they do the paddles.”

“They didn’t shock you?” Joanna asked, thinking, I need to ask Barbara.

“No, I know ’cause the guy said, ‘Good girl, you came back on your own.’ ”

“You said you were looking around at the fog,” Joanna said. “Can you tell me exactly what you did?”

“I sort of turned in a circle. Do you want me to show you?” she asked and began pushing the covers back.

“No, you’re all hooked up. Here,” she said, grabbing a pink teddy bear, “show me with this.”

Maisie obligingly turned the bear in a circle on the covers. “I was standing there,” she said, holding the bear so it was facing her, “and I looked all around,” she turned the bear in a circle till it was facing away from her, “and then I was back.”

She was facing back down the tunnel when she returned, Joanna thought. If it was a tunnel. “Did you walk this way before you came back?” she asked, demonstrating with the bear.

“Hunh-unh, ’cause I didn’t know what might be in there.”

A tiger, Joanna thought. “What did you think might be in there?”

“I don’t know,” Maisie said, lying tiredly back against the pillows, and that was her cue.

She switched the recorder off and stood up. “Time for you to rest, kiddo.”

“Wait, you can’t leave yet,” Maisie said. “I haven’t told you about the fog, what it looked like. Or Mount St. Helens.”

“Mount St. Helens?” Joanna said. “I thought you were reading about Mount Vesuvius.”

“They’re both volcanoes,” Maisie said. “Did you know at Mount St. Helens this guy lived right up on the volcano, and they kept telling him he couldn’t stay there, it was going to blow up, but he wouldn’t listen to them? When it erupted, they couldn’t even find his body.”

I need to tell Vielle that story, Joanna thought. “Okay, you told me about Mount St. Helens,” she said. “Now it’s time for you to rest. Barbara said I wasn’t supposed to tire you out.”

“But I haven’t told you about Mount Vesuvius. There were all these earthquakes and then they stopped, and then, about one o’clock, there was all this smoke and it got all dark, and the people didn’t know what happened, and then all this ash and rocks started falling down, and the people got under these long porch things—”