Passage

19

“You know what it is?” Richard said blankly, thinking, Joanna can’t possibly know. Temporal-lobe feelings of recognition were just that, feelings, with no content behind them. But she clearly thought she knew. Her voice was full of suppressed excitement.

“It all fits,” she said, “the floor and the cold and the blanket, even the feeling that I shouldn’t have shut off my pager, that something terrible had happened I should have known about. It all fits.” She looked up at Richard with a radiant expression. “I told you I recognized it but had never been there, and I was right. I told you I knew what it was.”

He was almost afraid to say, “Well, what is it?” When he did, she would look bewildered or angry, or both, the way she had for the last two weeks whenever he’d asked her. It was amazing how strong the conviction of knowledge was with temporal-lobe stimulation, even in someone like Joanna who understood what was causing it, who knew it was artificially induced.

“I told you the sound wasn’t a sound,” she said, “that it was something shutting off, and it was. That was what woke them up, the engines shutting off. Hardly anyone heard the collision. And they went outside on deck to see what had happened—”

“On deck?”

“Yes, and it was bitterly cold. Most of them had just thrown a coat or a blanket on over their nightclothes. It was after midnight and they’d already gone to bed. But not the woman with the piled-up hair. She and her husband must still have been up. They were wearing evening clothes,” she said thoughtfully, as if she were puzzling all this out as she spoke. “That’s why she was wearing white gloves.”

“Joanna—”

“The third-floor walkway is recessed, with a step at the end that makes it look like it’s curving up,” she said. “And your lab coat.”

“Joanna, you’re not making any sense—”

“But it does make sense,” she said. “A stoker came up behind Jack Phillips and tried to steal his lifejacket right off him, and he didn’t notice. He was so intent on sending the SOSs, and—”

“SOS? Lifejackets?” Richard said. “What are you talking about, Joanna?”

“What it is,” she said. “I told you I knew what it was, and I did.”

“And what was it?”

“I knew the word palace had something to do with it. That’s what they called it, a floating palace.”

“What they called what?”

“The Titanic.”

He was so surprised by the answer, by any answer, that he simply gaped at her for a moment.

“I told you it was someplace I recognized but had never been,” she said.

“The Titanic.”

“Yes. It’s not a hall, it’s a passageway, and the door’s the door that opens out onto the deck. After the Titanic hit the iceberg, they stopped the engines to see how much damage had been done, and the passengers went out on deck to see what had happened. The cold should have been a clue. The temperature had dropped nearly twelve degrees during the evening because of the ice. I should have realized what it was when the woman in the nightgown said, ‘It’s so cold.’ ”

The Titanic. And he had called her an island of sanity. He had told Davis there was no way she would ever turn into R. John Foxx.

“It all fits,” she said eagerly. “The feeling I had in the walkway of being oblivious while something terrible was happening. That was the Californian. It turned its wireless off for the night five minutes before the Titanic sent its first SOS, and then sat there, fifteen miles away all night, completely unaware that the Titanic was sinking.”

Davis had said that everybody who studied NDEs went wacko sooner or later. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was some sort of infectious insanity. But surely not Joanna, who saw right through Mandrake and his manipulations, who knew the NDE was a physical process. There must be some mistake. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’re saying you were there? On board the Titanic!”

“Yes,” Joanna said eagerly. “In one of the stateroom passages. I don’t know which one. I think it may have been in second class because of the wooden floor—it was the curve of the deck that made the passage look longer than it was. First class would have been carpeted, but the people outside on the deck looked like first-class passengers, so it might have been in first class. The woman with the piled-up hair was wearing jewels, and white gloves. I wonder who she was,” she murmured. “She might have been Mrs. Allison.”

“And who were you?” Richard asked angrily. “Lady Astor?”

“What?” Joanna said blankly.

“Who exactly were you in this previous life?” Richard said. “The Unsinkable Molly Brown?”

“Previous life?” Joanna said as if she had no idea what he was talking about.

“Were you Shirley MacLaine? Wait, don’t tell me,” he said, holding up a warning hand. “You were Bridey Murphy, and she came over from Ireland on the Titanic.”

“Bridey Murphy?” Joanna said, and her chin went up defiantly. “You think I’m making this up?”

“I don’t know what you’re doing. You said you were on the Titanic.”

“I was.”

“Who else was on board? Harry Houdini? Elvis?”

She stared at him. “I can’t believe this—”

“You can’t believe this? I can’t believe that you’re sitting here telling me you had some past-life regression!”

“Past-life—”

“ ‘You should send me under,’ you said. ‘I’ll be an impartial scientific observer. I won’t fall prey to thinking I see Angels of Light.’ Oh, no, you saw something even better! Do you have any idea what Mandrake will do when he gets hold of this, not to mention the tabloids? I can see the headlines now.” He swept his hand across the air. “ ‘Near-Death Scientist Says She Went Down on Titanic.’ ”

“If you’d just listen—I didn’t say it was a past-life regression.”

“Oh? What was it?” he said nastily. “A time machine? Or were you teleported there by aliens? I believe that first day I met you, you said that fourteen percent of all NDEers also believed they’d been abducted by UFOs. What you should have told me was that you were part of that fourteen percent.”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” she said and flung herself off the examining table, clutching at the back of her hospital gown, and stomped, stocking-footed, over to the dressing room.

He started after her. “I should have stuck with Mr. Wojakowski, the compulsive liar,” he said. “At least the only ship he was on was the Yorktown.”

“Fine,” she said, and slammed the door in his face.

She opened it again immediately and came out, buttoning her blouse, yanking on her cardigan. “Mr. Mandrake’s the one you should have asked to be your partner,” she said, pushing past him. “You two would make a perfect couple. You both want to hear what fits your preconceived theories and nothing else.”

She halted at the door. “For your information, it wasn’t time travel or a past-life regression. It wasn’t the Titanic. It was—oh, what’s the use? You won’t listen anyway.” She yanked the door open. “I’ll tell Mr. Mandrake you’re looking for a new partner.”

It wasn’t the Titanic? “Wait—” he said, but the door had already slammed behind her.

He wrenched it open. She was already at the elevators. “Joanna, wait!” he shouted and sprinted down the hall after her.

The elevator dinged. “Wait!” he shouted. “Joanna!”

She didn’t so much as glance at him. The doors slid apart, and she stepped on. She must have pushed the “door close” button because the doors immediately began to slide shut.

“Joanna, wait!” He forced the doors apart and shoved onto the elevator. The doors closed behind him. “I want to talk to you.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk to you,” she said. She reached for the “door open” button.

He blocked her from reaching it. The elevator started down. “What did you mean, it wasn’t a past-life regression?”

“Why are you asking me? I’m Bridey Murphy, remember?” She made another try for the buttons, and he grabbed the red emergency button and turned it. An unbelievably loud alarm went off, and the elevator lurched to a stop.

Joanna looked at him disbelievingly. “You’re crazy, you know that?” she shouted over the alarm. “And you accuse me of being a nutcase!”

“I’m sorry,” he shouted back. “I jumped to conclusions, but what am I supposed to do when you tell me you’ve been on board the Titanic?”

“You’re supposed to let me at least finish my sentence,” she shouted. “Turn that off.”

“Will you come back to the lab with me?”

She glared at him. The alarm seemed to be getting louder by the minute. “I promise I won’t jump to conclusions,” he bellowed over it. “Please.”

She nodded reluctantly. “Just stop that thing!” she yelled, her hands over her ears.

He nodded and pushed the emergency button. It kept ringing. He pushed “door open.” Nothing. He twisted the emergency button again, and then the floor buttons, one after the other. Nothing. He tried turning the emergency button the other way, but that only seemed to make the alarm louder. If that were possible.

Joanna reached past him to press the “door open” button again, and the elevator moved upward, though the ringing still didn’t stop. Richard yanked at the emergency button again, and the noise abruptly shut off, leaving an echoing ringing in his ears.

“Whoa, was it a ringing or a buzzing?” he said, hoping she’d smile.

She didn’t. She pressed “six,” and the doors slid open. Richard had half-expected a crowd of anxious rescuers, or at least someone who’d come out to see what all the noise was, but the hall was empty. Joanna stalked off the elevator and down to the lab ahead of him, her chin in the air. Inside, she turned to face him, her arms folded across her chest.

“Do you realize we could have been trapped in there forever,” Richard said, trying to break the ice, “and nobody would ever have come to rescue us?”

Nothing.

“Look,” he said. “I’m sorry I flew off the handle like that. It’s just that—”

“—you thought I’d turned into one of Mr. Mandrake’s nutcases,” she said. “How could you think that?”

“Because people do it all the time. Perfectly rational people who suddenly announce they’ve seen the light and start spouting nonsense. Look at Seagal. Look at Foxx.”

“But you knew me,” she said.

“Like you knew Mr. Wojakowski?”

“Touché,” she said quietly. “But when he told me about being on the Yorktown during Pearl Harbor, I didn’t just accuse him. I checked my facts first. I got outside confirmation. You didn’t even listen to what I was trying to tell you.”

“I’m listening now,” he said.

Her chin shot up again. “Are you?”

“Yes,” he said seriously. He indicated a chair, and she sat down, looking wary. He sat down, too, and bent forward, his hands between his knees. “Shoot.”

“All right.” She pushed her glasses up on her nose. “It was the Titanic…” He must have tensed involuntarily, because she said, “I thought you said you were going to listen.”

“I am. It was the Titanic.”

“But it didn’t feel like I was in 1912, or like I was seeing the ship that night. It wasn’t like that.”

“What was it like?”

She got the thoughtful, inward look she had had when she was trying to identify the noise. “It was the Titanic, but not the Titanic. I knew I wasn’t on board the actual ship, that what I was seeing wasn’t an event from that night. But, at the same time, it was the Titanic.”

“It didn’t feel real?” Richard asked. “Was it a superimposed vision?”

“No,” she said. “The vision was substantial and three-dimensional, just like the other times. The illusion that you’re really in that place is complete. I was really there in the passage and standing on the deck, only…” She seemed to draw into herself. “It was as if there was something else behind it, some deeper reality…” She looked curiously at him. “But why would I see the Titanic?”

“I don’t think you did,” he said. “I think you confabulated it. You didn’t recognize it as the Titanic during the NDE. You concluded that afterward while you were giving your account. You’re familiar with the process. Your conscious mind…”

“No,” Joanna said. “I recognized it in the passage that very first time. I told you. I knew I recognized it but that I’d never been there. And if it was a confabulation, why would I confabulate the Titanic, of all things? Confabulations are the result of expectations and influences. I’ve never heard of anyone seeing the Titanic in his or her NDE. If I confabulated it, why didn’t I see an Angel of Light or a golden stairway?”

“There are a couple of possibilities. Come over here a minute,” he said, standing up and going over to the console. He called up four images from her NDE. “Look at this,” he said, pointing to a scattering of orange, red, and yellow points in the frontal cortex of each scan. “Those are random neural firings in the area of the frontal cortex devoted to long-term memory. One of those firings may have been a memory of the Titanic.”

“But it wasn’t just one memory, it was dozens of memories. The engines stopping and the passage and the passengers standing outside on the deck—”

“Which may all be confabulations growing out of that memory, the sensations of sound, light, and figures in white you were experiencing, and the same sort of persistence of meaning that causes dreams to be a coherent story rather than a series of separate images.”

She didn’t look convinced. “But why would a Titanic neuron fire, out of all the—how many are there? Millions, billions of memories?”

“That’s what random means,” Richard said, “and your remembering something about the Titanic wouldn’t be that statistically unlikely.”

Now Joanna was looking at him like he was crazy. “It wouldn’t?”

“No. After all, it’s a disaster, and you spend a lot of time talking to Maisie about disasters.”

Joanna shook her head. “But not the Titanic. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Maisie mention the Titanic.”

“She talked about the Lusitania, and I’ll bet you anything there are pictures of the Titanic in those books of hers,” Richard said. “The day I met her she turned every single page, looking for some photo. You could have seen that picture of the Titanic half out of the water,” but Joanna was shaking her head.

“If it was Maisie, I’d have been more likely to have seen Pompeii, and that isn’t where the memory’s from.”

That’s interesting, Richard thought. “You know the source of the memory?”

She got that odd, inward look again. “No. But I know it wasn’t Mr. Wojakowski or Maisie. And it wasn’t random.”

“How do you know?”

“Because… I don’t know,” she said, defeated. “It doesn’t feel random. It feels like it came from something.”

“It might have,” Richard said. “Frequently accessed long-term memories have stronger neuronal pathways than the average memory, which makes them easier to retrieve.”

“But the Titanic’s not a frequently accessed memory. I haven’t thought of it since—”

“The movie came out?” Richard said. “That’s the most obvious source. It even has a scene at the end where the old woman sees herself on the Titanic in a white dress surrounded by a halo of light. You saw the movie—”

“Five years ago,” Joanna said, “and I didn’t even like it.”

“Liking wouldn’t have anything to do with it,” Richard said, “and there are references to the Titanic everywhere—TV specials, books. I heard that godawful song of Celine Dion’s on my way to the hospital this morning, and I know for a fact you’ve accessed Titanic-related memories twice recently.”

“When?” she demanded.

“The day I met you, you told me about the spiritualist—what was his name? Stead?—going down on the Titanic, and that night at Vielle’s, you said Dish Night was a Titanic-free zone, so the neural pathway would have been not only recent, but reinforced. Your memory of the scene in the movie where the engines stopped and the passengers went out on deck to see what had happened—”

She was already shaking her head. “That scene, with them standing around out on the deck, wearing nightgowns and evening clothes, wasn’t in Titanic.”

“All right, then a book or—”

“No,” she said, but less certainly, “I don’t think it was a book.”

“Or a conversation—” but she was already shaking her head.

“Not a conversation. The memory came from somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. You say my seeing the Titanic is determined by the random firing of a synapse—”

“And temporal-lobe stimulation.”

“But nearly all the NDEers conclude they’re seeing heaven. If random firings were determining the content, wouldn’t they be reporting a whole variety of places and experiences?”

“Not necessarily,” Richard said. “The firing of the synapses may be too weak in most cases to produce an image. Or the sense of cosmic significance may override any other images.”

“Then why didn’t it in mine?”

“Because you were on guard against those interpretations. As you said when you were trying to talk me into letting you go under, when you saw a radiant figure, you wouldn’t automatically assume it was an Angel of Light.”

“But why would I assume it was the Titanic, of all things? Why not a railroad tunnel? Just last week Vielle said, ‘What if the light at the end of the tunnel’s an oncoming train?’ And I live in Colorado. There are dozens of tunnels in the mountains. One of them would have been the logical association, not a ship. I’ve never even been on a ship.”

“You’re thinking logical explanations,” Richard said, “but these synapse firings are random—”

Joanna was shaking her head again. “It doesn’t feel random. I have this feeling that I saw the Titanic for a reason, that it means something.”

And here we are, Richard thought, right back at the temporal lobe and the sense of significance. “This feeling,” he said, “can you describe it?”

“It has to do with where the memory that triggered the image of the Titanic came from,” she said. “I have this strong feeling that I know where the memory came from, and that if I could just remember—”

“But you can’t?”

“No, it’s right…” her hand reached out, as if trying to grasp something, “…on the tip—” She stopped and yanked her hand back to her side. “You don’t think that means anything either, do you?” she said angrily. “You think it’s temporal-lobe stimulation again.”

“It would explain why you can’t remember where you got the memory,” he said mildly. “Are you having the feeling now? That you know where the memory came from?”

“Yes.”

“Get on the table,” he said, going rapidly over to the supply cabinet. “I want to see if we can catch this on the scan.” He got out a syringe.

“Do you want me to get undressed?”

“No, and I’m not going to bother with an IV, since all I’m going to inject is the marker,” Richard said, filling the syringe. “Take off your sweater and roll up your sleeve.”

Joanna took off her cardigan and got up on the table, unbuttoning the cuff of her blouse and pushing the sleeve up.

He began positioning the RIPT scan. “You had a feeling of recognition in the first three scans, and in this one you recognized the Titanic. Those two things may have nothing to do with each other.”

“What do you mean, nothing to do with each other?”

He swabbed the inside of her elbow with alcohol and injected the marker. “The feeling of recognition you experienced in the walkway and when the heater shut off may have been just that, a feeling, triggered by random stimuli, and unrelated to your recognition of the Titanic.”

“But they weren’t random,” she said, flushing. “They all fit, your lab coat and the cold and the—”

“Those could apply to any number of situations.”

“Name one,” Joanna said.

“You yourself said the people you saw could have been at a party or a ball.”

“The woman was in her nightgown!”

“You concluded it was a nightgown after you realized it was the Titanic. Earlier, you said it was an old-fashioned dress. You originally thought it was an angel’s robe. Lie down.”

“But what about the curving floor,” she said, lying down on the examining table, “and your lab coat, and—?”

“Don’t talk,” he said, moving the scan into position. He walked over to the console. “All right,” he said, starting the scan. “I want you to count to five in your head.”

He looked up at the image on the scans. “Now, I want you to visualize the tunnel. Think about what you saw.”

A number of frontal-cortex sites lit up, indicating a variety of sources for the memory, both auditory and visual, which might be why Joanna couldn’t remember whether she’d heard or read something about the engines stopping and the passengers going out on deck to see what had happened.

Or seen it in the movie, he thought. He still considered that the most likely possibility, in spite of Joanna’s protests. The movie had been an enormous hit, and for over a year it had been impossible to turn around without being bombarded with information about it—books, CDs, newspaper articles, TV specials. And a few years before that the same thing had happened with the discovery of the wreck. It was impossible not to know something about the Titanic, and Joanna obviously did. She not only knew that there’d been carpets in the first-class passageways, but that the wireless operator had been Jack Phillips. “All right, now, Joanna, concentrate on the source of the memory,” he said and looked up at the temporal-lobe area on the screen, expecting it to light up.

It did, a vivid orange-red. He asked her several more questions and then shut off the scan. “You can get up now,” he said and started graphing the scans.

Joanna came over to the console, rolling down her sleeve. “I still haven’t recorded my NDE.” She pulled on her cardigan. “I’ll be in my office.”

“Don’t you want to see your feeling of significance?” He called the scan up. “There it is,” he said, pointing to the temporal lobe. “That’s why you feel seeing the Titanic isn’t random.”

She looked at it glumly, her hands jammed in her lab coat pockets, as he showed her the areas of activity.

“But the feeling that I know where the memory came from is so strong…” she murmured.

“Like the feeling you had in the dressing room and the walkway,” Richard said.

“Yes,” she admitted.

He pointed at the red-orange temporal lobe. “Your mind is simply trying to make sense of an irrational feeling by giving it an object, in this case the source of the memory, but it’s only a feeling.”

She looked like she was going to contradict him, but all she said was, “I still haven’t recorded my account.” She picked up her recorder.

“When you write it up—”

“I know,” Joanna said. “Don’t let it fall into enemy hands.”

“Mandrake would—”

“I know,” she said. “Have a field day with this.”

She started out of the lab. At the door she turned and looked back at the scan. “I think I liked it better when you were accusing me of being Bridey Murphy,” she said ruefully and went out.

20

Richard’s wrong, Joanna thought, opening the door to her office. It isn’t a content-free feeling. The memory didn’t come from the movie, and it’s not the first thing my long-term memory happened to stumble over. It’s the Titanic for a reason.

And no doubt he’ll be down here in a minute to tell me my thinking that is yet another symptom of temporal-lobe stimulation, and show me a scan that proves it. I don’t want to see it, she thought, and I don’t want to hear another lecture on what will happen if Mr. Mandrake finds out about this. I’ll record my account somewhere else.

She yanked her door shut, locked it, and walked quickly down the hall to the stairs. She would go record her account in the cafeteria, if it was open, or in one of the nurses’ lounges. Anywhere where I don’t have to listen to him telling me the Titanic was a random synapse, she thought, clattering down the stairs. It’s not random. I’m seeing the Titanic for a reason. I know it.

And could hear Mr. Darby’s voice insisting, “I was there. It was real. I know it.” She sounded just like him. And that’s why you don’t want to talk to Richard, she thought, because you know he’s right.

He’s not right, she thought stubbornly. I know the memory isn’t from the movie.

Yes, and Mr. Viraldi knew he’d seen Elvis, Mr. Suarez knew he’d been abducted by aliens, Bridey Murphy knew she’d lived a previous life in Ireland. Her psychiatrist had been certain Bridey’s memories were proof of reincarnation, even though it had later been proved they’d been concocted out of folk songs and half-remembered stories her nanny’d told her, and that subjects under hypnosis could be talked into all sorts of false memories. And how do you know this isn’t the same thing? How do you know the memory isn’t from the movie, like Richard said?

But that scene isn’t in the movie, she thought, and knew it very well might be. Memory had been proved notoriously unreliable in study after study, and she and Vielle had had more than one argument about what was and wasn’t in various movies. After they’d watched A Perfect Murder at Dish Night, Vielle had been convinced that Gwyneth Paltrow had stabbed Michael Douglas to death with a meat thermometer instead of shooting him. Joanna had had to rent the video again and show her the ending to prove it to her. A scene with the passengers standing around asking the steward what had happened might very well be in Titanic, and she’d simply forgotten it. And there was a simple way to prove it, one way or the other. Watch the movie.

But Richard was already convinced her NDE had been influenced by the movie. If she watched it, her memory of her NDE would be hopelessly contaminated by its images, and so would any future NDEs she might have. And no matter what she saw in them, Richard would claim the memory came from the movie.

I need to have somebody else watch it and see if the scene’s there, she thought. But who? Vielle would have a fit if she told her she’d seen the Titanic. She’d be convinced it was a warning from the subconscious about going under.

Maisie? She was a disaster expert, but, as Joanna had told Richard, she’d never heard her so much as mention the Titanic, and, anyway, it was unlikely Maisie’s mother would allow her to see the movie. Quite apart from the “negative subject matter,” there was a nude scene and sex in the backseat of a Renault.

Tish? No, Joanna couldn’t trust her to keep her mouth shut, and Richard was right, Mr. Mandrake would have a field day if he found out about this, which eliminated anybody connected with Gossip General.

It would have to be Vielle, who, she hoped, wouldn’t ask too many questions. Joanna went down to the basement, past the morgue, and across to the ER.

It was jammed, as usual, with drugged and dangerous-looking people, though there didn’t seem to be any rogue-ravers on the premises at the moment. The new security guard was looking bored in a chair by the door. Joanna worked her way through the mess to Vielle, who was handing a patient on a gurney over to two orderlies. “She goes up to four-west,” Vielle said to them. “Do you know how to get there?”

The orderlies nodded uncertainly. Vielle gave them complicated instructions, laid the chart on the patient’s stomach, then turned to Joanna. “You’re too late,” Vielle said. “We had a patient who coded twice. You just missed him.”

“He died?”

“No, he’s fine,” Vielle said. “It would have been a case of natural selection if he’d died, though. He electrocuted himself taking down his Christmas lights.”

“His Christmas lights?” Joanna said. “It’s February.”

“He said it was the first day it hadn’t snowed.”

“I thought Christmas lights were shielded.”

“They are. Except when you walk your ladder straight into a power line. Your metal ladder.” She grinned at Joanna. “He’s up in CICU—a little fried, but able to talk. You better get up there fast, though. Maurice Mandrake was just down here, looking for you, and I saw him talking to Christmas Lights Guy’s doctor.”

“Mr. Mandrake was looking for me?” Joanna asked. That was all she needed.

“Yeah. He said if I saw you, I was to tell you he was going up to your office. That was before Christmas Lights Guy, though, but if he did go up to your office, you might be able to beat him to the CICU.” She walked away.

Joanna followed her. “I didn’t come down to see if anyone’d coded,” she said. “Vielle, you remember the movie Titanic. Was there a scene in it where people were standing on deck trying to find out what had happened?”

“All I remember about Titanic was the two of them wading around in ice-cold water for two hours and not getting hypothermia. Do you know how long they really would have lasted in water that cold? About five minutes.”

“I know, I know,” Joanna said. “Try to remember. People standing out on deck, wondering what’s happened.”

“There’s that scene where the iceberg scrapes by, and people are out on the deck, throwing snowballs—”

“No, no,” Joanna said impatiently. “These people didn’t know they’d been hit by an iceberg. They were just standing there, some of them still in their nightclothes. The engines’ stopping woke them up, and they went out on deck to see what had happened. Do you remember a scene like that?”

Vielle shook her head. “Sorry.”

“I’ve got a favor to ask,” Joanna said. “Could you rent the video and see if there’s a scene like that in it?”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to rent it yourself? You’re the one who knows what you’re looking for. If you want, we can watch it at Dish Night, so long as you fast-forward through that stupid ‘king of the world’ scene.”

“No,” Joanna said. “Look, I’ll pay for the rental and your gas. I just need you to see if the scene’s in there.” She fumbled in her cardigan pocket.

“You can pay for the videos on Dish Night,” Vielle said, eyes narrowing. “What’s this all about? It has something to do with your project, doesn’t it? Don’t tell me one of your subjects found themselves on the Titanic.”

“Shh,” Joanna said, glancing anxiously around. She had had no business asking Vielle where people could hear her.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Vielle said, dropping her voice. “One of your NDE subjects saw the Titanic when he went through the tunnel.”

“No, of course not,” Joanna said. “This is something Richard and I were talking about.” Well, it’s true, she thought defensively. We did talk about it, and Vielle asked me if my subjects had seen it, not if I’d seen it. And besides, it wasn’t the Titanic.

“Something you and Richard were talking about, huh?” Vielle said, her whole manner changing. “Well, at least you’re discussing something other than RIPT scans and endorphin levels, though why you picked Titanic, I don’t know.”

Joanna forced herself to smile and not look around to see if anyone else had heard them.

“Surely there are better movies you two could fight over,” Vielle said. “I thought you hated the movie. When I wanted to rent it, you had a fit about how some officer hadn’t shot himself—”

“Officer Murdoch,” Joanna said. Vielle was right. She had had a fit. The movie was full of historical inaccuracies. Not only was there no proof that Officer Murdoch had shot a passenger and then killed himself, but the movie had made Officer Lightoller look like a coward instead of the hero he’d been, unlashing the collapsible lifeboats on top of the officers’ quarters, keeping overturned Collapsible B afloat all night—

The memory can’t have come from the movie, she thought, because I already knew about the Titanic when I saw the movie. “Everyone knows about the Titanic,” Richard had said, but he was talking about the basic facts. Everyone knew it had sunk, they knew about the iceberg and the lack of lifeboats, and the band playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee” as the ship went down. Not about Murdoch. Or Collapsible B.

“Why don’t you just rent the movie, invite him over, and make some of my special deviled ham dip—?”

“It involves our memories of the movie,” Joanna said evasively. “So if you could rent it and see if there’s a scene like that in it, I’d appreciate it. You don’t have to watch the whole movie, just the part right after the iceberg.”

“Anything to help this romance along. Tell me again what I’m looking for.”

“People standing out on deck, wondering what’s happened and asking the steward why they’ve stopped, some of them in evening clothes and some of them looking like they just got out of bed. And not frightened or shouting, not trying to get up to the Boat Deck, just standing there.”

“Got it,” Vielle said. “I don’t remember anything like that in the movie.”

I don’t either, Joanna thought. “Can you watch it tonight?”

“No,” Vielle said. “It’ll have to be tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“Oh, there’s a stupid meeting tonight,” Vielle said carelessly.

“What about?”

“I don’t know. ER safety or something. Apparently they didn’t think their memo was enough, so now they’re going to subject us to a seminar. ‘Be alert to your surroundings. Avoid sudden movements.’ I wonder if that includes jerking awake after you’ve nodded off during the seminar.”

“Don’t make jokes,” Joanna said. “The ER is dangerous. You have to ask for a transfer out of here.”

“Can’t,” Vielle said breezily. “I’m too busy watching videos for my friends.”

“I’m serious,” Joanna said. “You’re going to get killed one of these days if you stay down here. I think you should—”

“Yes, Mother,” Vielle said. “Now, what am I looking for again? People standing in the hall in their PJs talking about hearing the engines shut off?”

“Out on deck. Not in the passages. How soon do you think you can find out?”

“As soon as I can get out of here tomorrow night, get to Blockbuster, and fast-forward through the first two hours of Leo and Kate hanging out over the railing and saying lines like, ‘I’m so lucky to be on this ship,’ ” Vielle said, miming sticking a finger down her throat. “Eight o’clock?”

Eight o’clock tomorrow, Joanna thought, wishing it were sooner. “Call me as soon as you find out.”

“You’re sure one of your volunteers didn’t see the Titanic?” Vielle said, looking worried.

“I’m sure. Where did you say Christmas Lights Guy was?”

“CICU.”

“CICU,” Joanna said and left before Vielle could ask any more questions. She didn’t have any intention of interviewing Christmas Lights Guy till she had this figured out. She’d just asked where he was to get Vielle off the subject of the Titanic, though if she wanted to get his NDE she really needed to do it now, get it recorded before he’d confabulated the—

I haven’t recorded mine, she thought, appalled. She’d been so distracted by wanting to prove the images hadn’t come from the movie, she’d forgotten where she’d been going in the first place. And all this speculation about where the memory came from and what it meant would be useless if her NDE wasn’t documented.

I need to get it down now, she thought, before any more time goes by, and ran up to first to the cafeteria. Halfway there, Lucille from CICU stopped her in the corridor. “Did Maurice Mandrake find you?” she asked. “He was looking for you.”

“Where did you see him?” Joanna asked.

“Up in CICU. He came up to interview a patient.”

Of course, Joanna thought, and there goes Christmas Lights Guy. But at least if he was up there, he wasn’t in the cafeteria. She thanked Lucille and went on down. The cafeteria was closed.

Of course. Joanna yanked on the locked double doors and then stood looking through them at the red plastic chairs upended on the Formica tables, trying to think where else she could go. Not her office, obviously, and not the doctors’ lounge. She couldn’t run the risk of anyone overhearing her talking about the Titanic. The visitors’ lounge in outpatient surgery was usually empty this time of day, but she’d have to go through three corridors and two walkways to get there, increasing the risk of running into Mr. Mandrake.

I need someplace deserted where Mr. Mandrake won’t think to look for me, Joanna thought, which was where? My car, she thought, and fumbled in her cardigan pocket for her car keys. She didn’t have them. The only key she had was to her office. Her car keys were in her bag in the drawer of her desk, and her car was locked. And it was too cold to sit on the hood.

The stairway, she thought, remembering the blocked-off stairwell she and Richard had sat in the day they met. But surely they were finished painting it by now, and people were using it again. Still, it was comparatively private and out of the way.

And warmer than the parking lot, Joanna thought, taking the service elevator up to third. And if she sat in the middle of the landing, where she could see both doors, she could hear people coming in plenty of time to stop recording, so she wouldn’t be overheard.

The elevator door opened. Joanna leaned out cautiously, looking for signs of Mr. Mandrake, but there was no one in the corridor. She walked down the hall and across the walkway, turned the corner, and started through Medicine.

“…and then my uncle Alvin said, ‘Come,’ ” a woman’s voice said from the half-open door of one of the rooms, “and he stretched out his hand to me and said, ‘There is naught to fear from death.’ ”

Oh, no, Joanna thought, stopping short of the door. She had thought Mrs. Davenport would have been discharged by now. What HMO did she have that would let her stay in the hospital this long? More important, who was she talking to, Mr. Mandrake? And would he suddenly emerge from the room?

But another woman’s voice—a nurse? Mrs. Davenport’s hapless roommate?—said breathlessly, “And then what happened?”

“Light came from his hand, and it sparkled like diamonds and sapphires and rubies.”

Mrs. Davenport was in full cry now, and, Joanna hoped, was looking at her audience and not at the door. She tiptoed quickly past and down toward the door marked “Staff Only.”

“And he took my hand and led me to a beautiful, beautiful garden,” Mrs. Davenport said, “and I knew what I was seeing wasn’t a dream or a hallucination, it was real. I was actually seeing the Other Side. And do you know what Alvin said then?”

Joanna didn’t wait to hear. She opened the stairwell door and ducked in. Nothing had changed since the last time she’d been in there. The yellow “Do Not Cross” tape still stretched between the railings, and below it, the pale blue steps still looked shiny and wet.

They weren’t, she determined with a careful finger. The paint was long since dry, but that didn’t matter. People obviously thought the stairway was still blocked, which meant she’d have it all to herself. She positioned herself on the left side of the landing, where she could see the door, and switched on her recorder.

“NDE account, Joanna Lander, session four, February 25,” she said and then stopped, staring at the pale blue steps, thinking about the collapsibles.

She had already known about them when she saw the movie, and about Lightoller and Murdoch. And Lorraine Allison, she thought. She remembered ranting, “Why didn’t they tell the stories of the real people who died on the Titanic, like John Jacob Astor and Lorraine Allison?” and Vielle asking, “Who was Lorraine Allison?” and her telling her, “She was six years old and the only first-class child to die, and her story’s a lot more interesting than dopey Jack and Rose’s!”

She had known about Lorraine Allison before the movie, so the memory couldn’t have come from Titanic, or from Maisie’s disaster books. It had to come from something earlier. A book, no, it wasn’t something she’d read, though there was a book involved somehow. Something someone had read to her, or said.

And what they had said was connected to why she was seeing the Titanic instead of a railroad tunnel or a hospital walkway. And it was important.

This was getting her nowhere. Record your account, she told herself. Describe what you saw and heard. She switched the recorder on and started again. “I was in the passage. It was dark.” She described the unheard sound, the light under the door, the people. “The bearded gentleman was in evening dress, with a long formal coat and a white tie and vest, and the woman had long white gloves and a beaded cream-colored dress.” And you have just described Kate Winslet’s gown, she told herself, clicking the recorder off. You’re starting to confabulate.

She rewound to “the woman” and started again. “She was wearing a long white gown or robe and a sparkling light seemed to come from her hand. She said, ‘Do you suppose there’s been an accident?’ and then the steward came up—”

No, that wasn’t right. The steward had been talking to the woman in the nightgown. She’d said, “I heard the oddest noise,” and he’d said, “Yes, ma’am,” and then the bearded man had come over, but that wasn’t right either, because the woman in the white gloves had been standing there, too…

She clicked off the recorder and pressed her fingers to her forehead, trying to remember where the bearded man had been standing, what the steward had said.

The woman in the nightgown had spoken to the steward and then gone over to the bearded man and said, “Did you hear it?” And the bearded man had said, “I shall see what’s happened,” and motioned the steward to come over. “What’s happened? Why have we stopped?” he asked the steward, and the steward said there was nothing to be alarmed about, and the bearded man said, “Go find Mr. Briarley. He will know what’s going on.”

“Mr. Briarley,” she said. Her English teacher her senior year of high school.

She could see him standing in front of the blackboard in his gray tweed vest and bow tie, an eyebrow cocked ironically, hear him saying, “Well, Mr. Inman, can you tell us what happens in ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’?” No answer. “Ms. Lander? Mr. Kennedy? Anyone?” Still nothing. “What’s that?” Mr. Briarley putting his hand behind his ear, listening, and then shaking his head. “I thought it was an answer, but it was only the band, playing ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee.’ ”

And how could she have forgotten that? Forgotten Mr. Briarley, who had talked about the Titanic constantly in class, who’d used it as a metaphor for everything. “Water up to the boilers,” he had written on an essay of hers, “Putting the women off in boats.” He was always telling them stories about the loading of the lifeboats and the lights going out, reading them long passages about the band and the Californian and the passengers. “I knew I hadn’t read it,” Joanna said out loud. “I heard Mr. Briarley say it.”

And he held the answer. He had said something about the Titanic, something in English class, and—“I have to find him,” Joanna said, jamming her recorder in her pocket. “I have to ask him what he said.”

She ran up the stairs to the nurses’ station. “I need a phone book,” she said breathlessly.

“White or yellow pages?” Eileen asked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Joanna said. “White.”

Eileen set the heavy phone book on the counter, and Joanna flipped rapidly through the B’s, trying to remember Mr. Briarley’s first name. She wasn’t sure she’d ever heard it. He’d simply been Mr. Briarley, like all her teachers. Bo, Br—

A buzzer sounded. Eileen reached to turn it off. “Patient calling,” she said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” Joanna murmured, running her finger down the list of Br’s. Braun. Brazelton.

“Okay,” Eileen said, “just stick the phone book on the desk,” and went off to answer the patient’s call.

Breen. Brentwood. Joanna hoped there weren’t dozens of Briarleys. Brethauer. She needn’t have worried. There weren’t any. The list went straight from Brian to Briceno. He probably has an unlisted number, she thought, to keep students from making prank calls. I’ll have to talk to him at school.

She glanced at her watch. Three o’clock. School got out at three-fifteen, or at least it had when she was in high school, but the teachers had been required to stay till at least four. If she hurried, she might make it there by then. She shut the phone book and started quickly down the hall toward the elevator, fumbling for her car keys as she walked.

She didn’t have them. They were up in her office, where Mr. Mandrake, and probably Richard, lay in wait. I’ll have to borrow a car, she thought and ran back to the nurses’ station to ask Eileen, but she wasn’t there, and there wasn’t time to look for her. She’d have to borrow Vielle’s. She started back toward the elevator.

“Oh, good, Dr. Lander,” a familiar voice said, and Joanna looked up in horror to see Mrs. Davenport heading toward her in an orange-and-yellow-and-electric-blue-splotched robe. “You’re just the person I wanted to see.”

21

This is what you get for not watching where you’re going, Joanna thought. “Be alert to your surroundings,” the hospital memo on protecting yourself from rogue-crazed ER patients had said. Joanna should have paid attention to it.

“I’ve remembered more details of my NDE,” Mrs. Davenport said, planting her multicolored self squarely between Joanna and the elevator. She looks just like an RIPT scan in that robe, Joanna thought. “After the Angel of Light showed me the crystal, my uncle Alvin led me over to a shimmering gray curtain, and when he drew it aside, I could see the operating room and all the doctors working over my lifeless body, and—”

“Mrs. Davenport,” Joanna interrupted, “I have an appointment—”

“—and Alvin said, ‘Here on the Other Side we know everything that happens on Earth,’ ” Mrs. Davenport went on as if Joanna hadn’t spoken, “ ‘and we use that knowledge to protect and guide the living.’ ”

“I have to be on the other side of town by four,” Joanna said, looking pointedly at her watch.

“ ‘All you have to do is listen, and we will speak to you,’ Alvin said, and he was right,” Mrs. Davenport said. “Just the other day he told me where my pearl earring that I’d lost was.”

I wonder if he can tell me how to get away from his niece, Joanna thought. “I wish I could stay, Mrs. Davenport, but I have to go.”

“And two nights ago, in the middle of the night, I heard him say, ‘Wake up,’ and when I looked at the time, it was 3 a.m.”

Mrs. Davenport was never going to let her go. She was simply going to have to walk around her. She did. Mrs. Davenport followed her, still talking. “And then I heard him say, just like he was there in the room, ‘Turn on the TV,’ and I did, and do you know what was on?”

A Ronco infomercial? Joanna thought. She hit the elevator “down” button. “A show on paranormal experiences,” Mrs. Davenport said, “which is proof that those who have passed over are in communication with us.”

The elevator opened and Joanna practically jumped in, praying Mrs. Davenport wouldn’t follow her. “And just this morning I heard Alvin say—”

The closing elevator door cut her off before she could communicate Alvin’s message. Joanna hit “G” and, as soon as the elevator opened, sprinted over to the ER, praying nobody had coded and Vielle was in the middle of trying to revive him.

Nobody had, and Vielle wasn’t. She was yelling at an intern. “Who gave you authorization to do that?” she was saying.

“I… I… nobody,” the intern stammered. “In medical school…”

“You’re not in medical school,” Vielle snapped. “You’re in my ER.”

“I know, but he was—” He stopped and looked hopefully at Joanna as if she might rescue him.

“Sorry,” Joanna said to Vielle. “Can I borrow your car?”

“Sure,” Vielle said promptly, and to the intern, “Stay right there. And don’t touch anything.” She started across the ER. “My keys are in my locker. What happened? Died, huh?”

“Who?” Joanna said, following her into the ER lounge, and realized belatedly that Vielle meant her car. “No. My car’s fine.”

Wrong answer. Vielle turned, her hand already on the locker combination, and frowned at her. “Then what do you need mine for? This doesn’t have anything to do with the Titanic scene you asked me about, does it?”

“I just don’t want to go up to my office to get my keys. Mr. Mandrake’s got it staked out,” she said evasively, “and I don’t want to see him.”

“I don’t blame you,” Vielle said and turned back to the combination. “What time will you be back?” she asked, digging in her purse and coming up with the keys. She dropped them in Joanna’s hand. “I get off at seven.”

“Where’s your car?”

“North side, second or third row, I don’t remember,” Vielle said. “Where are you going?”

“I’ll be back in an hour or so,” Joanna said and hurried out to the parking lot.

Vielle’s car was in the fourth row, at the very end, and it was three-thirty before Joanna located it and headed south to Englewood. He’ll be gone by the time I get there, she thought, but Mr. Briarley had always stayed later than the rest of the teachers, and even if he wasn’t there, she could get a phone number and an address from the people in the office. And places called up all sorts of memories—just standing in her old English classroom might be enough to jog her memory. It was something he said in a lecture, she thought, turning west on Hampden, or read out loud to us.

It looked like it could snow any minute. Joanna parked as close as possible to the door that led to the English classrooms, and went up to the door. It was locked. A computer-printed sign taped to the glass said, “No visitors allowed in building without authorization. Please check in at main office.” A diagram with arrows indicated how to get there, which entailed tramping all the way around the building.

They had done a lot of adding on since Joanna had been here. She rounded a long wing with a new auditorium at the end and came, finally, to the front door. Next to it were the words Dry Creek High School, and a pouncing tiger with purple-and-gold stripes.

Purple and gold, Joanna thought, and suddenly remembered Sarah Dix and Lisa Meinecke in their cheerleader outfits coming in late in the middle of class and Mr. Briarley putting his textbook down on the desk and saying, “Where’s the Assyrian?”

“Assyrian?” Lisa and Sarah had said, looking bewilderedly at each other.

“Your cohort. ‘The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,’ ” Mr. Briarley had said, pointing at their short skirts with the purple-and-gold pleats. “ ‘And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold.’ ”

I knew it had something to do with high school, Joanna thought triumphantly. Richard’s wrong. It isn’t contentless. It means something, and Mr. Briarley knows what it is. She opened one of the double doors and walked through it into a gold-carpeted lobby, with wide wood-and-steel stairs leading up and down to three different levels. And a metal detector.

A uniformed security guard was standing next to it, reading Clear and Present Danger. He put the paperback down as soon as Joanna came in and switched on the detector. “Can you tell me where I can find the office?” she asked.

He nodded and indicated her bag. She handed it to him, thinking the ER could use a setup like this, and then tried to imagine the ambulance crew trying to get a metal gurney through it. All right, maybe not a metal detector, but something.

The guard unzipped the compartments of her bag, poked through them, and handed the bag back to her. “I’m looking for a teacher I had when I went to school here,” she said. “Mr. Briarley?”

The guard motioned her through the detector. “Up those steps and to the left,” he said, pointing, and picked up his paperback.

The office of Mr. Briarley? Joanna wondered, going up the stairs, but of course he had meant the office. The wide, glass-fronted space wasn’t anything like the cramped cubbyhole of a principal’s office she remembered, but there was a large sign taped to the glass that said, “All visitors must obtain a visitor’s pass upon entering the building.”

Joanna went in. “Can I help you?” the middle-aged woman seated at a terminal said.

“I’m looking for Mr. Briarley,” Joanna said, and at the woman’s uncomprehending look, “He teaches here.”

The woman came over to the counter and consulted a laminated list. “We don’t have any faculty members by that name.”

Joanna hadn’t even considered that possibility. “Do you know if he moved? Or retired?”

The woman shook her head. “I’ve only worked here a year. You might check with the administration office.”

“And where is that?”

“4522 Bannock Street,” she said. “But they close at four.”

Joanna looked at the clock on the wall behind the woman’s head. It said five to four. “What about a teacher who would have been here when he was?” Joanna said, wracking her brain trying to think of her other teachers’ names. “Is Mr. Hobert still here? Or Miss Husted?” she asked. What was the name of the PE teacher, the one everybody hated? A color. Mr. Green? Mr. Black? “What about Mr. Black?”

The woman consulted her list. “No. Sorry.”

“An English teacher then. Mr. Briarley taught senior English. Who teaches that class now?”

“Ms. Forrestal, but she’s already left for the day.”

“Can you give me her home number?”

“We’re not allowed to give out that information. I’d suggest you contact the administration offices. They open at ten,” she said and walked back over to her terminal.

“Thank you,” Joanna said and went out into the hall. Now what? she thought, walking back toward the stairs. The administration office was closed till tomorrow at ten, and they would only tell her the same thing, that they weren’t allowed to give out that information.

She started down the stairs toward the lobby. The guard, deep in his thriller, didn’t look up. She would have to come back tomorrow, during school, and see Ms. Forrestal—if the office would give her a visitor’s pass. And there was no guarantee that Ms. Forrestal would have Mr. Briarley’s address. Or be willing to give it to her. I need to just go up and down the halls and talk to teachers till I find someone who knew him, Joanna thought.

She stopped, her hand on the railing, and looked across at the guard. He still hadn’t seen her. She retreated silently back up the stairs, wishing the office didn’t have such a large expanse of window, but the woman she’d talked to was bent over her terminal, typing something in. Joanna sped past the windows and into the stairwell at the far end. This is ridiculous, she thought, racing up the stairs. You’re going to get yourself expelled. Or worse, she amended, remembering the security guard’s shoulder holster.

But when she paused for breath at the top of the stairs, there was no sound of shouts and cries, or even of following footsteps. She stepped out into the corridor. The English classrooms had been at the north end of the school, on the second floor. She went up to second at the first opportunity and started along the hall, looking for something, anything familiar.

The high school had apparently employed the same architects as Mercy General. It was a maze of locker-lined halls and connecting walkways, and they all looked exactly alike except for the posters on the walls. And even the posters had changed radically. No posters with cut-out hearts advertising the Valentine Dance or the Sophomore Class Bake Sale. They all announced rape hot lines or listed the warning signs of anorexia and suicide. “Do you know someone at risk?” several of them asked.

Most of the classroom doors were shut. She leaned into the ones that were open, but didn’t see anyone inside. The corridor made an abrupt ninety-degree turn, past a drunk-driving poster that proclaimed, “You can save a life!,” went up four steps, and zigzagged again. Joanna had no idea where she was, and there was no one she could ask directions of. The hallways were deserted.

That’s because they can’t get in, Joanna thought, trying the locked classroom doors, peering in through the squares of glass in the doors. The hallway ended in a stairwell with a pale blue banner that asked, “Need Help?” Joanna flipped a mental coin, went down, and found herself outside what must be the band room. There was a battered-looking upright piano inside, surrounded by a semicircle of chairs and music stands. A tuba stood propped against the wall.

“Excuse me,” Joanna said to the stout, balding man stacking sheet music on top of the piano. He wasn’t anyone she knew, but he was the right age to have been here when Mr. Briarley was, and he was cheerful-looking. “I’m looking for Mr. Briarley. He used to teach English here. I was wondering if you might know how I can get in touch with him, Mr.—”

“Crenshaw. Do you have a visitor’s pass?” he said, looking pointedly at the lapel of her cardigan.

“No,” Joanna said, and added hastily, “You see, I had Mr. Briarley for senior English. He was my favorite teacher, and I wanted to—”

“No one is allowed in the building without a visitor’s pass,” Mr. Crenshaw said, still looking sternly at her chest. “It’s school policy.”

“I only—” Joanna began, but he was already holding the door open.

“You have no business being here. You need to go back to the office and sign in. Go down this hall,” he said, pointing, “and turn right, down the stairs, and then right again.” He ushered her out the door. “I don’t want to have to call Security.” He watched her all the way to the end of the hall, his arms crossed over his chest, making sure she turned right.

He was right about one thing. She had no business being here. It was a wild goose chase. Mr. Briarley wasn’t here, and it was becoming obvious why he had left. She could imagine what his response to visitors’ passes and metal detectors would have been.

She turned right and went down the hall, but there weren’t any stairs, just a hallway that led off at right angles in both directions. Mr. Crenshaw had said right. She went right. It ended in an outside door marked “Emergency Exit Only. Alarm Will Sound.” She went back and took the left-hand fork, wondering what time they locked the front doors.

The place was a labyrinth, the kind you could get lost in forever. She began to long for another Mr. Crenshaw to order her back to the office. She would ask him to go with her to show her the way. But there was nobody in any of these classrooms. All the doors were locked up tight.

This hall was deadending, too. There was a glass-fronted room at the end of it. The assistant principal’s office? No, his office had been midway down a hall. The library, she thought, recognizing it even though it had a sign saying “Media Resource Center.” Banks of terminals stood where the study tables had been, and she couldn’t see any books at all, but it was still the same library. And that meant she was at the south end of the building, as far from the English classrooms as it was possible to be.

But at least it was something familiar, and the doors were open. She took off her cardigan and draped it over her arm with a sleeve showing, so the librarian might conclude her visitor’s badge was pinned to it, and went in.

The librarian was younger than Joanna, but at least her eyes didn’t dart immediately to Joanna’s chest. “We’re just closing up,” she said. “Can I help you?”

“I doubt it,” Joanna said, thinking, I should just ask for directions back to the office. And a map. “I’m looking for Mr. Briarley. He used to teach senior English here.”

“Oh, yeah, Mr. Briarley,” the librarian said. “My husband went to school here. He had him. He hated him.”

“Do you know where I could find him?”

“Gosh, no,” she said. “He wasn’t here when I came. I think I remember somebody saying that he’d died.”

Died. That had somehow never occurred to her, which was ridiculous, considering she spent her whole life dealing with death. “Are you sure?”

“Just a minute,” the librarian said, walking toward the stacks. “Myra? Didn’t you tell me Mr. Briarley had died? The English teacher?”

A gray-haired woman emerged from the stacks, a pile of books pressed against her chest. “Mr. Briarley? No. He retired.”

“Do you know how I could get in touch with him?” Joanna asked. “Is there anybody who might know his address?” but the old woman was already shaking her head.

“Everybody who would have known him’s gone, too. The district offered an early-retirement bonus three years ago, and everybody who had over twenty years took it.”

“And that was when Mr. Briarley retired? Three years ago?”

“No, longer than that. I don’t know when.”

“Well, thank you,” Joanna said. She reached in her bag for her card and handed it to the woman. “If you think of anybody who might know how I could find him, I can be reached at this number.”

“I doubt if there’s anybody,” Myra said, pocketing the card without even looking at it.

Joanna went over to the door. The young librarian was already locking up. She turned the key to let Joanna out. “Any luck?”

Joanna shook her head.

“He used to live over by DU. My husband pointed out his house to me one time.”

Joanna’s pager began to beep. Not now, she thought, digging in her bag for it. She scrambled to turn it off. “Your husband showed you where Mr. Briarley’s house was?”

She nodded, grinning. “He and a bunch of his friends had egged it the night before graduation.”

“Do you remember the address?” Joanna said eagerly.

“No. I don’t remember the name of the street either. It was next to the park with the observatory.”

“Do you remember what the house looked like?”

“Green,” the librarian said, squinting in thought. “Or white with green trim, I don’t remember. There was a weeping willow in the front yard. It was on the west side, I think.”

“Thank you,” Joanna said and went out the door. The librarian started to shut it behind her. “Oh, wait,” she said, putting her hand on the doorjamb. “One more quick question. Does an alarm go off if you open the outside doors?”

“No,” the librarian said, bewildered, and Joanna took off down the hall and went out the first door she came to. It was still snowing, and she was, of course, on the opposite side of the building from her car, but she didn’t care. She knew where Mr. Briarley lived. Over by DU. The park with the observatory. She didn’t know the name of the street either, but she knew the park, and the observatory could be seen from Evans.

She drove to University and turned north. A house with green on it and a weeping willow in front. Unless they had painted the house. Or the willow had died. Or Mr. Briarley had. “I remember somebody saying he had died,” the librarian had said, and just because Myra hadn’t told her that, didn’t mean she hadn’t heard it from somebody else. He had been middle-aged when Joanna had him, and more than ten years had gone by. And he might have retired early because he was ill. Or he could have gotten ill and died in the years since.

Or moved away, she thought, turning east onto Evans and looking down side streets for the park. This area had been upper middle class a few years ago, but now a lot of the houses had been turned into apartments. There were “Apt. for Rent” signs in nearly every yard. For all she knew, the park wasn’t even there anymore.

No, there it was, and the domed observatory still stood at the end of it, but the house on the corner had a “To Let” sign and parked out in front was a rusted Cadillac.

She hadn’t seen the park in time to turn. She drove on to the next street, turned south, and drove back, looking for a willow tree and wishing she’d asked the librarian whether the house had been on the end of the block or in the middle.

A green house with a willow tree. That meant it was probably a one-story brick with a crab apple out front. Or had belonged to some other teacher. “My husband hated him!” the librarian had said, which didn’t sound like Mr. Briarley. He could be sarcastic, and his tests had been notoriously difficult, but nobody had hated him. Even Ricky Inman, whose smart mouth had gotten him in trouble at least twice per class period, had loved him. It was Mr. Brown they’d hated.

Mr. Brown, that was the name of the PE teacher, not Mr. Black. No wonder the woman in the office had never heard of him. And that proved just how unreliable memory could be. The house the librarian’s husband had pointed out to her might be across from a warehouse or a Starbucks and flanked by fir trees.

She turned onto Fillmore. Mr. Brown. If the house didn’t pan out, she could see if Mr. Brown was still at the high school. He had said he’d never retire, that they’d have to carry him out feet first. He would definitely still be there.

And so was the house. It stood in the middle of the block, a three-story house with a wide porch. Joanna pulled the car over to the curb and stopped. The house was pale green, and that was definitely a weeping willow out front. It looked like a white fountain under its coating of snow.

But that doesn’t mean Mr. Briarley still lives here, she thought, getting out and going up the sidewalk. And that was obviously the case. There was a bicycle on the porch, and when she rang the bell, a girl in jeans and a thin flannel shirt over a tank top appeared in the door. She was barefoot and had short, fair hair like Maisie’s.

Mr. Briarley hadn’t been married. “Ms. Austen is correct in her comment regarding people’s assumptions about bachelors,” he had said when they read Pride and Prejudice, “but let me assure you that many men, including myself, are not in want of a wife. They move your books so that you cannot find them.” And anyway, this girl was far too young to be his wife, or anyone’s wife, for that matter. She looked about seventeen.

“Can I help you?” the girl said warily. She had a fragile prettiness, but she was too thin. Her collarbones showed sharply above the tank top.

“Does Mr. Briarley live here?” Joanna asked, even though it was obvious he didn’t.

“Yes,” the girl said.

“Oh… oh,” Joanna said, stammering in her surprise. “I—I’m a former student of his.” She’d realized in the course of saying this that the girl had made no motion to open the door, that in fact she was holding on to it as if Joanna were a salesman and she intended to shut it on her at any minute.

“My name’s Joanna Lander,” Joanna said. “Mr. Briarley was my high school English teacher. Could I talk to him for a few minutes?”

“I don’t know…” the girl said uncertainly. “Is it something I could help you with?”

“No,” Joanna said. “He was my teacher for senior English, and I need to ask him a couple of questions about the class.”

“Questions?”

“Yes. Oh, not about the grade I got on my term paper or anything. It’s too late for that,” she laughed, knowing she sounded like an idiot. “I work at Mercy General Hospital, and—”

“Did my mother send you?”

“Your mother?” Joanna said blankly. “No, as I said, I had Mr. Briarley as a teacher. I went to the school to find out if he was still teaching, and one of the librarians told me where he lived. I do have the right house, don’t I? The Mr. Briarley I’m looking for taught English at Dry Creek High School?”

“Yes,” the girl said, “but I’m afraid he can’t—”

“Is there somebody at the door?” a man’s voice called from the depths of the house.

“Yes, Uncle Pat,” the girl shouted back, and Joanna thought, This can’t possibly be the right Mr. Briarley. She couldn’t imagine his being anyone’s uncle, let alone Uncle Pat.

“Who is it?” the voice said, and this time she recognized the voice. It was Mr. Briarley. Uncle Pat.

“Is it Kevin?” Mr. Briarley called.

“No, Uncle Pat. It’s not Kevin,” the girl said, and to Joanna, “I’m afraid this isn’t a good—”

“Tell him to come in,” he said, and Mr. Briarley appeared in the door. He looked exactly the same, his hair still dark with a little gray at the temples, his eyebrows still arched sardonically. Joanna would have sworn he was wearing the exact same gray tweed vest.

The girl opened the door farther. “Uncle Pat, this is—”

“Joanna Lander. I’m an ex-student of yours,” Joanna said, sticking out her hand. “I don’t expect you to remember me. I had you for senior English twelve years ago. Second period,” she added irrelevantly.

“I have an excellent memory,” he said. “Kit, where are your manners? Don’t make Ms. Lander stand out in the cold. Open the door.”

Kit opened the door all the way, and Joanna stepped into the narrow hallway. “Come into my library,” Mr. Briarley said, and led the way into a room that looked exactly like Joanna would have expected. Three entire walls were covered with books from floor to ceiling, and on the fourth, between the windows, hung engravings of Westminster Abbey and the Globe Theater. There was a mahogany desk and two dark red leather chairs, both piled with books, and there were books stacked on the end tables, on the wide windowsill, on the floor.

Kit scurried to move the books off one of the chairs and motioned Joanna to sit down. She did, and he sat down opposite her. Kit stood next to his chair, still looking wary.

Now that Joanna had had a chance to look at Kit, she wondered if she were as young as she’d first thought. There were faint bluish shadows under her eyes, and unhappy lines around her mouth. Behind her, on one of the bookcases, was a picture of her carrying a stack of books and standing in front of University Hall at DU, and one of her and a young man. The Kevin Mr. Briarley had thought was at the door? Kit looked twenty pounds healthier in both photos and considerably happier. What had happened since they were taken? Anorexia? Drugs? And was that why she was living here? Somehow she couldn’t see Mr. Briarley as a rehab counselor, but then again, she couldn’t imagine him as being anyone’s uncle, and there had been her odd, sharp reaction when Joanna had said she worked at Mercy General.

“I really appreciate this,” Joanna began. “I would have called but I didn’t have your phone number. I went over to the high school, hoping you still taught there, and they told me you’d retired. When did you retire?”

“Five years ago,” Kit volunteered.

He glared at her. “Kit,” he said, “don’t just stand there. Offer our guest some—”

“Tea,” Kit said, too eagerly. “Ms. Lander, can I get you a cup of tea? Or coffee?”

“Oh, no, nothing,” Joanna said.

“Tea,” Mr. Briarley said firmly. “ ‘And sometimes counsel take,’ ” he quoted, “ ‘and sometimes tea.’ ”

“The Rape of the Lock,” Joanna said, delighted that she remembered. “Alexander Pope. I remember your reading him out loud to us,” Joanna said. “And ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ by Coleridge. That was my favorite. ‘Water, water everywhere, and all the boards did shrink—’ ” she said and paused, expecting him to say the next two lines.

“Coleridge,” he muttered, “overrated Romantic,” and then turned abruptly to Kit and snapped, “Where’s my tea?”

It was the tone used to a servant. Joanna looked at him, and then at Kit, in surprise, but Kit merely said, “I’ll get it right away,” and started for the door.

“And I want the water boiled,” Mr. Briarley snapped, “not heated to lukewarm in that ridiculous—”

“Microwave,” Kit said. “Yes, Uncle Pat.”

“And don’t take all day, Kit. Kit,” he repeated contemptuously, turning to Joanna. “What sort of a name is that? It’s a label for a box full of first-aid bandages, not a name for a person.”

What was going on here? Joanna wondered. Had she walked in on an argument? She remembered Kit’s reluctance to let her in. She glanced up at her, expecting her to look sullen or angry, but she looked wary, or worried, the way she had when she opened the door, her reactions all wrong for the situation.

“Go on, Kit,” Mr. Briarley said, emphasizing the name nastily. “I want to speak with my student.”

“I’ll only be a minute,” Kit said with a last worried glance at Joanna and disappeared.

I hope that doesn’t mean he’ll turn on me now, Joanna thought, but when she turned back to Mr. Briarley, he was smiling benignly at her. “Now then,” he said. “What can I do for you? You said you’d been to the high school—?”

“Yes, looking for you,” Joanna said.

“I don’t teach there anymore,” he said in an odd, uncertain tone, as if he were trying to convince himself. “ ‘Neither fish nor fowl, neither out nor in.’ ”

He must miss it, she thought. “It looked so different, I hardly recognized it. I don’t know if you remember the class I was in, Ricky Inman was in it, and Candy Simons—”

“Of course I remember,” he said, almost belligerently.

“Good, because I need to ask you about something you said in class about—”

“The tea will only be a minute,” Kit said, appearing in the doorway with a tray. She’d slid her feet into a pair of flip-flops. Joanna cleared a stack of books off the little table, and Kit set the tray down. “I brought the cups and saucers, and the sugar,” she added unnecessarily.

Mr. Briarley looked the tray over irritably. “You didn’t bring any—”

“Spoons,” Kit said, darting out to the kitchen. “I forgot the napkins, too.”

“And the milk,” Mr. Briarley called after her. “How difficult is it to make a cup of tea? I was wrong,” he said to her as she came back, carrying a pitcher and the silverware. “The name Kit suits you admirably. As in mess kit. Don’t you agree?” he asked Joanna.

This was not the way Joanna remembered Mr. Briarley as being at all. He had been sarcastic, yes, and sometimes even cutting, but never spiteful. He would never have humiliated Ricky Inman the way he had just done Kit.

“Here’s the tea,” Kit said, coming in again with a teapot. “You take milk and sugar, don’t you, Uncle Pat?” she asked, already adding them. She handed the cup to him.

Joanna was afraid he would complain about the amount, or, after she’d taken a sip from the cup Kit handed her, the temperature. In spite of Mr. Briarley’s snapped orders, it was obvious Kit had used the microwave. The tea was barely lukewarm. But he seemed to have lost interest in the tea. And in Kit’s shortcomings, and her name. He leaned back in his chair, the cup and saucer on his knee, and gazed pensively at the rows of books.

“It was so nice of you to come visit Uncle Pat,” Kit said, taking the half-drunk cup from her as if the visit were over.

“I didn’t just come to visit,” Joanna said to Mr. Briarley. “I came to ask you about something you talked about in English class, something you taught—”

“I taught a good many things,” he said. “The definition of an adverb, the number of metric feet in blank verse, the difference between assonance and alliteration—” Mr. Briarley said. “You will have to be more specific.”

Joanna smiled. “This was something about the Titanic.”

“The Titanic?” Kit said sharply.

“Yes, I don’t know if you read it out of a book or if it was in a lecture you gave,” Joanna said. “I work at Mercy General Hospital—”

“Hospital?” he said. The teacup clattered on the saucer.

“Yes. I’m working on a project that involves memory, and—” She could tell by the look on his face that she was explaining herself badly. “I’m working with a neurologist who—”

“I have an excellent memory,” Mr. Briarley said, glaring at Kit as if holding her responsible for Joanna’s being here.

“I’m sure it is,” Joanna said. “In fact, that’s what I’m counting on. I’ve forgotten something you taught us or read to us, and I’m hoping you remember what it was. It was about the Titanic. One of the parts I remember was about people standing out on deck after the collision. They were in their nightclothes, and they didn’t know what had happened. They’d been awakened by the engines stopping.” She leaned forward, holding her cup and saucer. “Do you remember talking about that? Or reading something to the class about it?”

“I remember,” he said contemptuously, “that I scarcely had time to teach Dickens and Shakespeare, let alone a book about the Titanic.”

“I don’t know that it was a book,” Joanna said. “It might have been an essay, or a lesson—”

“A lesson? On what? The onomatopoeia of the iceberg scraping along the side? Or an exercise diagramming the passengers’ drowning cries? What on earth does a shipwreck have to do with the teaching of English literature?”

“B-but you talked about it all the time in class,” Joanna stammered, “about the band and Lorraine Allison and the Californian—”

“I realize, of course, that nowadays English classes teach everything but English—rope-skipping rhymes and Navajo tribal chants and deconstructionist drivel. Why not maritime disasters?”

“Uncle Pat,” Kit said, but he didn’t even hear her.

“Perhaps the Titanic and Toni Morrison constitute what is taught nowadays, but in my classes I taught Wordsworth and Shakespeare.”

“Uncle Pat—”

“You asked me when I retired,” he said. “I’ll tell you when. When I could no longer bear to cast my pearls of English literature before my swinish students, when I could no longer tolerate their appalling grammar and their stupid questions.”

Joanna’s cheeks flushed with anger. Was this how he’d been the last few years he’d taught? If so, she could see why they’d egged his house. She set her cup and saucer down and stood up. “I’m sorry to have bothered you,” she said stiffly.

“I’ll see you out,” Kit said, standing up, too, and looking distressed.

“No, thank you, I can find my own way out.” She started for the door.

“Perhaps if you had paid more attention in class, Ms. Lander,” she heard him say as she went out the door, “you would not have found it necessary to—”

She shut the door behind her, and walked blindly out to her car, some part of her mind that wasn’t furious registering that it was late, that the afternoon light was fading. She opened the door of the car, fumbling for Vielle’s keys.

“Wait!”

Joanna looked up. Kit was on the porch. She ran down the steps, the tails of her flannel shirt flapping behind her. “Don’t leave! Please!” She caught up to Joanna. “Please. I wanted to explain.” She put her hand on the open car door. “I’m so sorry about what happened just now. This was all my fault. I shouldn’t have—” She stopped to catch her breath. “I don’t want you to think—”

“I had no right to come barging in without calling like that,” Joanna said. “He had every right to be angry with me.”

Kit shook her head. “It wasn’t you Uncle Pat was angry at.”

“Well, he gave a pretty good imitation of it,” Joanna said. “It’s all right. I’m sure it’s very irritating to have ex-students bothering him and asking him about—”

“You don’t understand. He didn’t know what you were talking about. He suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. He’s got severe memory loss. He—”

“Alzheimer’s?” Joanna said blankly.

“Yes. He didn’t know who you were. He thought you were a doctor—he’s afraid he’ll have to go into a nursing home. That’s why he was so angry, because he thought I’d asked you to come examine him.”

“Alzheimer’s,” Joanna said, trying to take this in. “He has Alzheimer’s disease?”

Kit nodded. “The anger’s part of the disease. He uses it to cover the fact that he can’t remember. I didn’t think that would happen. He was having a good day, and… I am so sorry.”

Kit’s hesitation when Joanna had said she wanted to ask Mr. Briarley a few questions, her finishing of his sentences, the alarm he’d shown at the mention of the word hospital. Alzheimer’s. “But he was able to quote The Rape of the Lock,” Joanna said, and remembered he hadn’t continued with the quotation from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” “How bad is it?”

“It varies,” Kit said. “Sometimes he only has trouble remembering a few words, other days it’s pretty bad.”

Pretty bad. That was hardly the word. Alzheimer’s was a form of death by inches as the person lost his memory, his ability to speak, his control of bodily functions, descending into paranoia and darkness. She remembered one of her NDE subjects whose husband had suffered from Alzheimer’s. In the middle of the subject’s interview, he had stood up suddenly and said in a frightened voice, “What’s that stranger doing in my house? Who are you? What do you want?” and Joanna had started to try to explain, but he hadn’t been talking to her. He’d been talking to his wife of forty years.

“And you live with him?” Joanna asked. “You take care of him?”

She nodded. That was why he retired, Joanna thought suddenly, and not because the district offered an early-retirement bonus. Because he could no longer teach. She remembered him in class, reeling off pages and pages of Macbeth and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” from memory. Dates and plots and poetic meters. Conjunctions, couplets, quotations. The Briarley Anthology of English Literature, Ricky Inman had called him. Unable to remember the word for “spoons.”

“I didn’t want you to think he’s the way he was in there,” Kit said, shivering. She had to be freezing in that tank top and those flip-flops.

“You’d better get back inside,” Joanna said. “You’ll catch your death.”

“I’m okay,” she said, her teeth chattering. “I wanted to tell you not to give up, that sometimes he remembers things out of the blue, and other times he’ll answer a question you asked days, even weeks before, as if his mind had been searching for the memory all that time and finally found it. So he still might remember. You said it was something to do with the Titanic?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “He said something, or he read something out loud—”

Kit nodded. “He is—was—a huge Titanic buff. If he remembers, or says anything about it, I’ll call you. I can reach you at Mercy General, right?”

Joanna nodded. “I’ve got an answering machine. Just leave a message and I’ll call you back—or is that a problem?”

“No,” Kit said. “If he answers, just tell him you want to talk to me.” She told her the number.

“And I should ask for Kit?” Joanna asked. “Or is your name Katherine?”

“It’s Kit. Kit Gardiner. I was named after Kit Marlowe, Uncle Pat’s favorite writer. He was the one who picked my name.”

And he’s forgotten that, Joanna thought, appalled. “I’ll call you if he says anything about the Titanic,” Kit said.

“I’d appreciate that.”

“Kit,” Mr. Briarley said, appearing at the door, “where have you put my Tragical History of Dr. Faustus?” He came out onto the porch.

“I’ll find it, Uncle Pat,” Kit called, and took off for the porch, hugging the flannel shirt to her thin form. “I’ll call you.”

“Thank you,” Joanna said.

“I’ve told you not to move my books,” Mr. Briarley said. “I can never find them.”

Kit ran back up the walk. Joanna got in the car, watching Kit run up onto the porch, watching her take Mr. Briarley’s arm and lead him inside. She put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. She drove two blocks and then pulled the car over and turned it off and sat there with her hands on the steering wheel, staring blindly out at the fading winter light.

He didn’t know what he’d said about the Titanic. The memory was gone, as lost as if he had died. And he had died, was dying, syllable by syllable, a memory at a time, Coleridge and sarcasm and the word for sugar. And the name of his own niece, whom he had christened.

It had to be torture, forgetting the poems and the people that had made up your life, and torture for Kit, too, watching it happen. And the fact that he couldn’t remember a lecture about the Titanic was the least important aspect of the tragedy she’d just witnessed. But it wasn’t because of Kit or Mr. Briarley that she put her hands to her face, it wasn’t their loss she sat in the cold car and mourned in the fading light. It was her own.

He couldn’t tell her what he had said about the Titanic. He didn’t know. He didn’t remember. And it was important. It was the key.

22

I should go back to the hospital, Joanna thought, I still haven’t finished my account, but she continued to sit in the parked car, thinking about Mr. Briarley. Kit had said he sometimes remembered things he hadn’t been able to the day before. Maybe if she continued to ask him what it was he’d said…

Don’t be ridiculous, she thought. He has Alzheimer’s. The neurotransmitters have shut down and the brain cells are deteriorating and dying, and his memory along with them, and if you ever wanted proof that there isn’t an afterlife, all you have to do is look at a patient in the final stages of Alzheimer’s, when he’s not only forgotten his own niece and the word for sugar, but all words, and how to talk, how to eat, who he is. The soul not only doesn’t survive death, with Alzheimer’s, it doesn’t even survive life. The Mr. Briarley who knew what he’d said in class that day was dead. He could no more tell her what she needed to know than Greg Menotti.

And I do need to know, she thought. What he said in class is the reason I saw the Titanic. And the reason’s important. It has something to do with the nature of the NDE.

What had he said? She could see him, perched on the edge of his desk, with the textbook in his hand. Somebody had said something, and he had shut the book with a snap, and said… what? She squinted through the windshield at the darkening gray sky, trying to remember. Focusing on extraneous details sometimes triggered memories. What was on the blackboard? Where were you sitting?

The second row, Joanna thought, by the window, and it was foggy out. So foggy Mr. Briarley had to ask Ricky Inman, who sat by the light switch, to turn on the overhead lights, and then Ricky said something, and he shut the book with a snap, and—

No, not foggy, overcast. But fog had something to do with it. Or had she confabulated that from Maisie’s having seen fog? Or from some other day in class? And how many times had Mr. Briarley perched on the edge of his desk and slapped a book shut for emphasis? It was gray, overcast. Or snowy, and Mr. Briarley said something—

It was no use. She couldn’t remember. All right, then, who could? Who else had been in that class? Not Ricky Inman. He’d never paid attention in the first place. Candy Simons? No, the only thing she’d paid attention to was her appearance. Joanna could remember her sitting in the desk in front of her, combing her blond tresses and putting on her makeup in the mirror she’d propped against her textbook.

Who else had been in that class? She’d lost her yearbook in the move to grad school. The high school library would have one, if she could get past security to get up there, but if this afternoon was any indication, even if she did find out who’d been in the class, the school wouldn’t be willing to give out any information regarding their whereabouts, and she’d been very bad about keeping in touch. The only person from high school she ever saw was Kerri Jakes, and that only because she worked at Mercy General, in outpatient surgery, but Kerri had had English fifth period. She might remember who else had been in second period, though.

I’ll call her when I get home, Joanna thought. There was no point in going back to the hospital now. It must be after five. She glanced at her watch. Good Lord, seven-thirty. She’d been sitting here for hours. Vielle would have a fit. She’d tell her she could have gotten hypothermia sitting there without a coat on in a freezing car—

In her freezing car. This is Vielle’s car, Joanna thought, horrified. I promised to have it back hours ago. She started the car and pulled out into traffic. Vielle had finished her shift at seven and was probably trying to page her right now.

She fumbled to get her pager out of her pocket and switched it back on. She had forgotten about someone paging her while she was in the high school library, she had been so eager to hear the young librarian’s directions. It had probably been Vielle, wanting to know where her car was. And what reason could she give her for being over three hours late? My English teacher can’t remember something he said when I was in high school, and it’s the end of the world?

Maybe there’ll have been a five-car pileup, and Vielle will be too busy to ask me where I’ve been, Joanna thought, pulling into the hospital parking lot, but there were only the usual suspects in the ER waiting room: a Hispanic teenager holding an icebag to his eye, a homeless man muttering to himself, a five-year-old boy holding his stomach, his mother sitting next to him, holding an emesis basin and looking worried. At least Vielle wasn’t standing by the door, tapping her foot in impatience. Maybe she’d caught a ride home with someone.

Joanna went over to the admitting desk and asked the nurse, “Is Nurse Howard still here?”

She shook her head. “She’s at the meeting.”

“What meeting?” Joanna started to ask and then remembered. The meeting about ER safety. “How long do you think it will last?”

“I don’t know,” the admitting nurse said. “The staff was pretty upset. After that last rogue incident—”

“Rogue incident?” Joanna said. “I thought it was a gangbanger.”

“Gangbanger? No,” the nurse said, looking puzzled. “Oh, you mean the nail gun thing. Then you didn’t hear about this last incident.”

“No,” Joanna said.

“Well,” the nurse said, glancing at the Hispanic man and the mother and then leaning forward confidentially, “this guy comes in, scared to death and talking about the Vietcong and Phnom Penh, and everybody thinks they’ve got a ’Nam junkie or maybe posttraumatic stress syndrome, and the next thing you know he’s gotten a bloody syringe from someplace and is screaming that he’s gonna take us all with him. This rogue stuff is bad news, a lot worse than angel dust.”

“When did this happen?”

“Tuesday. I would’ve thought Vielle would have told you.”

“So would I,” Joanna said grimly. Of course Vielle hadn’t told her. She’d known exactly what Joanna would have said. Would say, as soon as she saw her.

“You borrowed her car, right?” the nurse was saying. “Vielle said to just leave the keys here at the desk.”

I’ll bet she did, Joanna thought, handing the keys over, but she was nonetheless grateful that she didn’t have to face her tonight. She went up to the lab. The door was shut and locked. Good, she thought. I won’t have to deal with Richard till tomorrow either.

The answering machine was blinking insistently. She hesitated and then hit “play.” “You have eighteen messages,” it said. She hit “stop.” She pulled the minirecorder out of her pocket. She really should record the rest of her account tonight, before any more time elapsed, but she felt too emotionally drained. I’ll do it in the morning, she thought, gathered up her coat, bag, and keys, and locked her office.

“Oh, good, you’re still here,” Richard said, coming down the hall. “I was afraid you’d gone home. I have something to show you.”

More scans, Joanna thought.

“I tried to page you earlier,” he said. “Where were you?”

“I had to go see someone,” she said. “You tried to page me?”

He nodded. “I had some questions to ask you, and I wanted to let you know Maisie called.”

“Maisie?” Joanna said. She’d promised to go see her, and then her NDE and the fight and Mr. Briarley had driven it out of her head. “Is she all right?” she asked urgently.

“She sounded fine when I talked to her,” Richard said, “at three. And four. And four-thirty. And six. Did you know the inhabitants of Pompeii were suffocated by ash and poisonous gases? With, I might add, very impressive sound effects.”

“I can imagine,” Joanna said, smiling. “I need to go see her.” She glanced at her watch. Eight o’clock. It was late, but she’d better at least go say hi, or Maisie might insist on waiting up for her. “I don’t suppose she’d be willing to wait till tomorrow morning, would she?”

“I doubt it. She said she’d been trying to page you all afternoon.”

That’s who paged me when I was in the library, Joanna thought, and felt a flash of guilt and fear, like the one she’d felt in the walkway with Barbara. Like the one the captain of the Californian must have felt when he realized the Titanic had gone down.

“She told me to tell you that you were supposed to come see her immediately,” Richard said, “that she had something important to tell you.”

“Did she say what it was?”

“No. My guess would be that it has something to do with Mount Vesuvius. Did you know the archaeologists found the body of a dog? It had struggled all the way to the end of its chain before it died, trying to stay on top of the falling ash.”

“You’d think somebody would have unchained it instead of just leaving it there with a volcano erupting,” Joanna said.

“Maisie thought so, too,” he said. “She was pretty incensed about it, also that it didn’t have a dog tag.”

“A dog tag?” Joanna said, frowning.

“So we’d know what its name was,” he said. “I told her its name was Fido, that all Roman dogs were named Fido.”

“Did she believe you?”

“Are you kidding? This is Maisie we’re talking about.”

Joanna nodded. “I’d better go at least check in with her so she won’t think I’ve forgotten her.” She rubbed her forehead tiredly. She was getting a headache, probably because she hadn’t had anything to eat for hours. I’ll stop by for a minute, and then I’m going home, she thought.

“Before you go see Maisie, I want to show you something,” Richard said. He led the way up to the lab. “You were right about the Titanic. It wasn’t a random memory.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No,” he said, stopping at the door and unlocking it. “I’ve just been up conferring with Dr. Jamison. After you left, I got to thinking about what you said about the NDEs not being varied enough to support a theory of randomness,” he opened the door and switched on the lights, “and I decided I should take another look at the synapse firings in the frontal cortex.” He walked over to the console and switched it on. “And when I did, I noticed something interesting.” He began typing in commands. “Are you familiar with Dr. Lambert Oswell’s work?”

Joanna shook her head.

“He’s done extensive research on long-term memory, mapping L+R patterns,” Richard said. “When you ask a subject a straightforward question, like, ‘Who won the Battle of Midway?’ you get a fairly simple L+R pattern.”

“Unless you’re Mr. Wojakowski,” Joanna said, “in which case it reminds you of a story.”

Richard grinned. “Or a whole novel. Anyway,” he said, typing, “the pattern looks like this.” He called up a series of scans. “See how the neural firings very quickly become localized? That’s the mind zeroing in on the target, as Mr. Wojakowski would say. Now, no two people would have the same pattern for ‘Who won the Battle of Midway?’ because not only is there no particular storage location for a given memory, but the same memory may be stored in any number of categories: World War II, islands, Pacific Ocean, or words beginning with M, to name just a few. The pattern’s not even always the same for a given question. Oswell asked identical questions at intervals of three months and got different L+R patterns each time. But,” he said, “he was able to come up with mathematical formulas for the patterns that make it possible for us to tell if a pattern is an L+R or something else.”

He typed some more, and the right-hand scan disappeared and was replaced by another one. “The pattern’s different, and so is the formula, for a question like ‘What is the Yorktown?’ ”

Or, “What was it Mr. Briarley said that day in class?” Joanna thought, watching the neural pathways wink on and off, red to green, yellow to blue, blossoming like fireworks and then fading out. He had been sitting on the edge of his desk, talking about what? Macbeth? Subjunctive clauses? “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”?

“If I ask a question like ‘What is the Yorktown?’—assuming you’re not Mr. Wojakowski—the L+R pattern involves the selection and discarding of possibilities and is much more complex. It’s also broader, since it’s searching through a whole variety of memories for the information. Is it a place? A battle? The name of a movie? A racehorse? The pattern has a much higher degree of apparent randomness.”

Joanna squinted at the screen, trying to follow what he was saying, her headache getting worse by the minute. “And that’s what the pattern in the scans resembles?”

“No,” he said. “However, Dr. Jamison reminded me that Dr. Oswell also did a series of experiments on image interpretation. He showed his subjects an abstract—”

“Do you have any food?” Joanna interrupted.

Richard turned and looked at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I didn’t get any dinner. Or lunch, now that I think of it, and I thought maybe you—”

“Sure.” He was already reaching in his pockets. “Let’s see, I’ve got a Mars bar,” he said, examining the items as he pulled them out, “…some cashews… Listen, we could go get some real dinner if you’d rather. I don’t suppose the cafeteria’s open at this hour?”

“The cafeteria’s never open.”

“We could run to Taco Pierre’s.”

“No, I’ve still got to go see Maisie,” she said, taking the Mars bar. “This is fine. You were saying?”

“Oh, yeah, well, in a separate series of experiments, Oswell showed subjects a scene in which objects and shapes were kept intentionally vague and abstract.”

“Like a Rorschach,” Joanna said.

“Like a Rorschach,” Richard said. “The subjects were asked, ‘What is this a picture of?’ Here’s an orange.” He handed it to her. “In most cases the pattern was similar to that of the open-ended L+R with increased activity in the memory cortex, and the subjects described the pattern as being… Skittles… and a package of cheese crackers with peanut butter. Nothing to drink, though, so maybe peanut butter’s a bad idea. I could get you a Coke from the vending machine—”

“I’m fine,” Joanna said, peeling the orange. “They described the pattern as being?”

“Just what you’d expect,” Richard said. “A big white oblong object on a blue background with a round blob of pink off to the right. However, in some instances, the subjects answered, ‘It’s Antarctica. There’s the ice and the sky. And there’s the sun setting.’ In those cases, the subject had searched through long-term memory to find a scenario that explained not only the separate images, but a metaphor for all the shapes and colors the subject was seeing.”

A metaphor. Something about a metaphor. That’s what triggered the feeling at Dish Night, Joanna thought, Vielle’s saying something about a metaphor. No, Vielle had called optioning Richard a simile, and she had corrected her, had told her a simile was a comparison using “like” or “as” while a metaphor was a direct comparison. Mr. Briarley taught me that, she thought, and tried to remember exactly what he had said. Something about fog.

“…with an abstract scene, the scans showed an entirely different pattern,” Richard said, “one that was much more scattered and chaotic—”

Fog. Ricky Inman, she thought, asking Mr. Briarley about a poem. “I don’t get it,” he’d said, rocking back in his chair. “How can fog come on little cat feet?”

And Mr. Briarley, picking up an eraser as if he were going to throw it and sweeping it across the blackboard in wide strokes, searching for a stub of chalk, printing the words in short strokes. She could hear the tap of chalk against slate as he printed the words. “Metaphor. [Tap.] A direct or implied comparison. [Tap.] ‘This is a nightmare.’ [Tap.] As opposed to simile. [Tap.] ‘Silent as death.’ [Tap.] Does that help, Mr. Inman?”

And Ricky, rocking so far back he threatened to overbalance, saying, “I still don’t get it. Fog doesn’t have feet.”

“The mathematical formula for the frontal-cortical activity is identical,” Richard said. “Your mind was clearly searching through long-term memory for a unifying image that would explain all the sensations you were experiencing—the sound, the tunnel, the light, figures in white. And, as you said, it all fit. The Titanic was that unifying image.”

“And that’s why I saw it,” Joanna said, “because it was the best match for the stimuli out of all the images in my long-term memory.”

“Yes,” Richard said. “The pattern—”

“What about Mercy General? Or Pompeii?”

“Pompeii?” he said blankly.

“Mercy General fits all the stimuli—long dark walkways, figures in white, buzzing code alarms—and so does Pompeii. The people wore white togas, the sky was pitch-black from ashfall,” she said, ticking the reasons off on her fingers, “it had long covered colonnades like tunnels, the volcano’s erupting made a loud, hard-to-describe sound, and Maisie talked to me about it not two hours before I went under.”

“There may be more than one suitable image in long-term, and the one that happens to be accessed first is chosen,” Richard said. “That wouldn’t necessarily be the most recent memory. Remember, acetylcholine levels are elevated, which increases the brain’s ability to access memories and see associations. Or the brain may only be able to access memories in certain areas. Some areas may be blocked or shut down.”

Like Mr. Briarley’s memory, Joanna thought. “That isn’t why I saw the Titanic,” she said. “I know where the memory came from.”

“You do?” Richard said warily.

He’s still afraid I’m going to turn into Bridey Murphy at any moment, she thought. “Yes. It came from my high school English teacher, Mr. Briarley.”

“Your high school—when did you figure this out?”

“This afternoon.” She told him about recording her account and remembering that the steward had said Mr. Briarley’s name. “And I remembered he’d talked about the Titanic in class.”

Richard looked delighted. “That fits right in with the mind’s attempting to unify everything into a single scenario, including the source of the memory. Your mind did an L+R, searching for a unifying image that would explain the outline of figures in a light and an auditory-cortex stimulus, and—”

She shook her head. “That isn’t why I saw it. There’s something else, something to do with something Mr. Briarley said in class.”

“Which was?”

“I don’t know,” she had to admit. “I can’t remember. But I know—”

“—that it means something,” Richard finished. He was looking at her with that maddening superior expression.

Joanna glared at him. “You think this is the temporal lobe again, but I told you I recognized the passage, and I did, and I told you I knew the memory wasn’t from the movie, and it wasn’t, and now—”

“Now you know the Titanic wasn’t chosen for a unifying image because it fit the stimuli,” Richard said.

“Exactly. I was right the other times, and—”

“And when you discovered what the passage was, the feeling of almost knowing should have disappeared, but it didn’t, did it? It transferred to the source of the memory and now to Mr. Briarley’s words. And if you’re able to remember his words, the feeling will transfer to another object.”

Was that true? Joanna wondered. If Kit called right now and said, “I asked Uncle Pat again, and he said what he said was…” and told her, would she transfer the feeling to something else?

“How the feeling of significance factors into the choice of scenario is one of the things I want to explore,” Richard said. “Also, does the scenario remain the same, or does it change depending on the stimuli, or the initial stimulus?”

“The initial stimulus? I thought you said—”

“That the unifying memory fit all the stimuli? I did, but the initial stimulus may be what determines the choice of one suitable image over another. That would explain why religious images are so prevalent. If the initial stimulus was a floating feeling, there would be very few suitable memories, except for angels.”

“Or Peter Pan.”

Richard ignored that. “You didn’t have an out-of-body experience. Your initial stimulus was auditory.”

So I saw a ship that sank nearly a hundred years ago, Joanna thought.

“If the initial stimulus changes, does the unifying image change? That’s one of the things I want to explore the next time you go under.”

“Go under?” Joanna said. He wanted to send her under again. To the Titanic.

“Yes, I’d like to schedule you as soon as possible.” He called up the schedule. “Mrs. Troudtheim’s scheduled for one. We could do yours at three, or would you rather switch with Mrs. Troudtheim and do yours at one?”

One, Joanna thought. It’s already gone down by three.

“Joanna?” Richard said. “Which one will work better for you? Or is morning better? Joanna?”

“One,” she said. “I might need to go see Maisie in the morning if I can’t get in to see her tonight.”

“Which you’d better go do,” Richard said, glancing at the clock, which said eight-thirty. “Okay, I’ll call Mrs. Troudtheim and reschedule. I hope she doesn’t have a dental appointment. And if you have any time—tomorrow, not tonight—I’d like you to go through your interviews and see if there’s a correlation between initial stimulus and subsequent scenario.”

There isn’t, she thought, going down to Maisie’s. That isn’t what the connection is. It’s something else. But the only way to prove that was to get hard evidence, which meant finding out what Mr. Briarley had said.

But how? Even if Mr. Briarley didn’t have Alzheimer’s, he probably wouldn’t have remembered a stray remark he’d made in class over ten years ago, and his students were even less likely to. If she could find them. If she could even remember who they were. I need to call Kerri, she thought again. But first she needed to go see Maisie, who she hoped wasn’t asleep.

She wasn’t. She was lying back against her phalanx of pillows, looking bored. Her mother sat in a chair next to the bed, reading aloud from a yellow-bound book: “ ‘Oh, don’t be such a gloomy-gus, Uncle Hiram,’ Dolly said. ‘Things will work out all right in the end. You just have to have faith,’ ” Mrs. Nellis read. “ ‘You’re right, Dolly,’ Uncle Hiram said, ‘even if you are a little slip of a girl. I shouldn’t give up. Where there’s a will—

Maisie looked up. “I knew you’d come,” she said. She turned to her mother. “I told you she would.” She turned back to Joanna, her cheeks pink with excitement. “I told her you promised you’d come.”

“You’re right, I did promise, and I’m sorry I’m so late,” Joanna said. “Something came up…”

“I told you something happened,” Maisie said to her mother, “or she’d have been here. You said she probably forgot.”

I did forget, Joanna thought, and even worse, shut my pager off and was out of touch for hours, hours during which something could have happened to you.

“I told Maisie you were very busy,” Mrs. Nellis said, “and that you would come and see her when you could. It was so nice of you to drop by with all the other things you have to do.”

And dropping by was clearly all it could be with Maisie’s mother in the room. She said, “I was wondering if it would be all right if I came back tomorrow morning, Maisie?”

“Yes,” Maisie said promptly. “If you stay a really long time.”

“Maisie!” Mrs. Nellis said, shocked. “Dr. Lander is very busy. She has a great many patients to see. She can’t—”

“I promise I’ll come and stay as long as you want,” Joanna said.

“Good,” Maisie said, and added meaningfully, “ ’cause I have lots of stuff to tell you about.”

“She certainly does,” Mrs. Nellis said. “Dr. Murrow’s got her on a new antiarrhythmia drug, and she’s doing much better. She’s completely stabilized, and her lungs are sounding better, too. Which reminds me, sweetie pie, you haven’t done your breathing exercises this evening.” She laid the book down on the bed and went over to the counter next to the sink to get the plastic inhalation tube.

“I’ll be here first thing tomorrow morning,” Joanna said, looking at the book. Written in curly green letters was the title, Legends and Lessons.

Legends and Lessons. Her English textbook had had a title like that, Something and Something. She had a sudden image of Mr. Briarley sitting on the corner of his desk, holding it up and reading from it. She could see the title in gold letters. Something and Something. Poems and Pleasures or Adventures and Allegories or Catastrophes and Calamities. No, that was Maisie’s disaster book.

“When tomorrow morning?” Maisie was asking.

“Ten o’clock,” Joanna said. Something about a trip. Journeys and Jottings. Tales and Travels.

“That’s not first thing in the morning,” Maisie said.

“Sugarplum, Dr. Lander is very, very busy—”

V. It began with a V. Verses. No, not Verses, but something like that. Vases. Voices.

“Dr. Murrow says he wants you to get the ball above eighty, that’s this line, five times,” Mrs. Nellis was saying, indicating a blue line on the plastic cylinder, “and I know you can do it.”

Maisie obediently put the mouthpiece in her mouth. “I’ll see you tomorrow, kiddo,” Joanna said and hurried out of the room and down to her car. V. What else began with a V? Victorians. Vignettes. Voices and Vignettes. No, that didn’t sound right either, but it definitely began with a V.

She got in her car and pulled out of the parking lot. The windshield immediately fogged up. She switched on the heater and slid the bar to “defrost,” peering through the foggy window at the traffic. Vantage. Mount Vesuvius. Visions. Voices and Visions. No, that sounded like one of Mr. Mandrake’s books.

She stopped at a stoplight, waiting for it to turn green. What color had the book been? Red? No, blue. Blue with gold letters. Or purple. Purple and gold. You’re confabulating, she thought. It wasn’t purple. It was blue, with—

The car behind her honked, and she looked up, startled. The light had turned green. She stepped on the gas, stalled the car, and fumbled to get it into gear. The car behind her honked again. You’re not only confabulating, you aren’t paying attention to what you’re doing, she thought, turning the key in the ignition. The car finally started, though not before the car behind her had roared around her, dangerously close, the driver shaking his fist. And not, Joanna hoped, a loaded gun.

Stay alert to your surroundings, she thought, and tried to concentrate on her driving, but the picture of Mr. Briarley, sitting on the corner of his desk, kept intruding. He was holding the book up. It was blue, with gold letters, and there was a picture of a ship on the cover, its bow cutting sharply through the water, throwing up spray. She could see it clearly. And how did she know that wasn’t a confabulation? Or maybe it was the other way around, and she’d confabulated the Titanic from the ship on the cover of her textbook.

But it wasn’t that kind of ship. It was a sailing ship, with billowing white sails. Mr. Briarley had shut the book with a clap, as if he’d finished reading something aloud. And if it was from a story or a poem, it wouldn’t matter that Mr. Briarley had no memory of it. She could simply find it in the book. If she could find the book.

They wouldn’t still be teaching from it. It had been out of date when she’d had it, and, as Mr. Briarley said, they taught a whole new curriculum now, but Mr. Briarley might have a teacher’s edition. From the looks of those overflowing bookshelves, he hadn’t ever thrown a book away. But he wouldn’t remember where it was.

Kit might, though, or might be able to look through the bookshelves and find it, if Joanna told her what it looked like. I know it had a sailing ship on a blue background, she thought, and it was called… She squinted, trying to see the gilt letters, and found herself sitting at another green light, staring at the 7-Eleven across the street. “Marlboros,” the sign read. “$19.58 a carton.”

Luckily, there was no one behind her this time, or coming across, because she managed to stall the car again halfway through the intersection. This is a good way to get yourself killed, she told herself, starting it and pulling through the intersection, and then you won’t have to wonder what Greg Menotti was trying to tell you and why you saw the Titanic. You’ll be able to find out firsthand.

She forced herself to focus on the road, the lights, the traffic, the rest of the way home. She turned onto her street, past the local Burger King. “X-Men Action Figures,” the marquee read. “Collect All 58.” Could he have been trying to tell her a page number? She could see Mr. Briarley, picking up the blue book, opening it. “All right, class, open your textbooks to page fifty-eight.”

Stop it, Joanna told herself, pulling into her parking space and getting out of the car. Richard’s right. You are turning into Bridey Murphy. Or Mr. Mandrake. You need to go upstairs, take a bath, watch the news, and let your right temporal lobe cool down, because that’s what this obsession with Tales and Travels, or whatever it’s called, is, a symptom of temporal-lobe stimulation.

She opened the door and flicked on the lights. And if you did call and get her to find Verses and Victorians, it wouldn’t solve anything. Because even if there were a story about the Titanic’s engines stopping on page fifty-eight, the feeling of significance would just transfer itself to something else.

Besides, it’s too late to call. You’d upset Mr. Briarley, and Kit has enough to deal with already. And the person you need to call is Vielle. You need to thank her for letting you borrow her car and apologize for taking so long to bring it back and ask her what she wants you to rent for Dish Night on Friday. And not The Sixth Sense.

Joanna picked up the phone and punched in the number. “Hello, Kit, this is Joanna Lander,” she said when Kit answered. “Does your uncle still have the textbooks he used when he taught?”

23

Joanna called Kerri Jakes and then went straight to see Maisie as soon as she got to the hospital the next morning. She’d told her ten, but she didn’t want to get sidetracked and forget again, and she also wanted to get there before Maisie’s mother did.

And Kit said she’d call as soon as she found the textbook, Joanna thought, crossing the walkway and taking the stairs up to Peds, and I might have to go get it. Or go see someone who had English second period. She’d had to leave a message for Kerri—mornings were outpatient surgery’s busiest times—and she hadn’t wanted to play telephone tag, so she’d asked her about second period and the book, hoping she remembered the title. She hoped that when she got back from seeing Maisie, Kerri or Kit would have called. Although I don’t know how Kit could be expected to find it with the pathetic description I gave her, Joanna thought.

But Kit had acted like her calling was the most normal thing in the world (and maybe it was, considering what she must be living with) and had immediately asked what year Joanna had been a senior, how big the book was, how thick. “And you think the title is Something and Something,” she’d said. “Beginning with a V.”

“I think so,” Joanna had said. “I’m sorry I’m giving you so little to go on.”

“Are you kidding?” Kit had said. “I’m an expert at figuring out things people can’t remember. This may take a while. Uncle Pat’s got a lot of books. They used to be organized, but—”

“You’re sure you don’t mind doing this?” Joanna had asked.

“I’m delighted I can help,” Kit had said and actually sounded like she was.

“Is that Kevin on the phone?” Mr. Briarley’s voice said in the background. “Tell him I’m delighted. And congratulations.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Kit said.

Joanna wasn’t sure it would be that soon, considering how many books were in that house and how many of them were blue. If it was blue. This morning she wasn’t so sure. It seemed like the book Candy “Rapunzel” Simons had propped her hair-combing mirror against had been red. You’re confabulating, she told herself sternly, and ran up the stairs to Peds. The breakfast cart was still in the hall, and a skinny black orderly was loading empty trays onto it. Joanna waved at him and went in to see Maisie.

Her breakfast tray of scrambled eggs and toast and a glass of juice was still on the bed table pulled across her lap. “Hi, kiddo,” Joanna said, coming in. “What’s up?”

“I’m eating breakfast,” Maisie said, which was an exaggeration. Two mouselike bites had been nibbled out of the piece of toast she was holding, and the eggs and juice looked untouched.

“I see,” Joanna said, pulling a chair over to the bed and sitting down. “So, tell me all about Pompeii.”

“Well,” Maisie said, putting down her toast, “the people tried to run away from the volcano, and some of them almost made it. There was this one mother who had two little girls and a baby that made it almost all the way to the gate. It’s in my big blue book.”

Joanna obediently went over to the closet and got Catastrophes and Calamities out of the Barbie duffel bag. She handed it to Maisie, who pushed the bed table away and opened the book. “Here it is,” she said, turning to a page with a garish painting of a volcano spewing red and black on one page and a black-and-white photo on the other. Maisie put her finger on the photo and pushed it over toward Joanna.

It wasn’t a black-and-white photo. It only looked that way because it was a group of plaster casts that looked as though they were made out of the gray ash themselves. They lay where they had fallen, the mother still clutching the baby in her arms, the two girls still clutching her hem.

“This is the servant,” Maisie said, pointing to a curled-up figure lying near them. “He was trying to help them get out.” She took the book back. “Lots of little kids got trampled,” she said, flipping through the pages. “There was this one—” She looked up sharply, clapped the book shut, and shoved it under the covers. She was just pulling the bed table toward her when Barbara came in.

“Good morning, ladies.” Barbara came over to look disapprovingly at Maisie’s uneaten breakfast. “Didn’t like the eggs, huh? Would you like some cereal?”

“I’m not very hungry,” Maisie said.

“You need to eat something,” Barbara said. “How about some oatmeal?”

Maisie made a face. “I don’t like oatmeal. Can’t I eat it later? I have to tell Dr. Lander something important.”

“Which can wait till after you finish breakfast,” Joanna said, immediately standing up and starting for the door.

“No, wait!” Maisie yelped. “I’ll eat it.” She picked up the triangle of toast and took another mouselike nibble. “I can eat while I’m talking to Dr. Lander, can’t I?”

“If you eat,” Barbara said firmly. She turned to Joanna. “Half the eggs, a whole piece of toast, and all the juice.”

Joanna nodded. “Got it.”

“I’ll be back to check,” Barbara said. “And no hiding things in your napkin.” She went out.

Maisie immediately pushed the bed table away and leaned over to open the drawer of the nightstand. “Whoa,” Joanna protested. “You heard what Barbara said.”

“I know,” Maisie said, “but I have to get something.” She reached in the drawer and pulled out a folded piece of lined tablet paper like the one she’d written the Hindenburg crewman’s name on and handed it to Joanna.

“What’s this?” Joanna asked.

“My NDE,” Maisie said. “I wrote the rest of it down after you left so I wouldn’t forget anything.”

Joanna unfolded the sheet. “The fog was gray-colored,” Maisie had written in her laboring round cursive, “and dark, like at night or if somebody turns out the lights. I was in this long narrow place with real tall walls.”

“I probably forgot some stuff,” Maisie said.

“Eat,” Joanna said. She pushed the bed table over in front of her and continued to read. Maisie picked up her fork and poked listlessly at her eggs.

“If you’re not going to eat, I guess I’ll have to come back another time,” Joanna said.

Maisie immediately scooped up a forkful of eggs and popped it in her mouth. Joanna watched until she’d chewed, swallowed, and taken a sip of her apple juice, and then sat down on the chair and read through the rest of the NDE. “I don’t know if there was a ceiling. It kind of felt like the place I was in was outside, but I don’t know for sure. It kind of felt like inside and outside at the same time.”

“The walls were tall?” Joanna asked.

Maisie nodded. “They went up really high on both sides.” She raised both arms to demonstrate. “I thought some more about the coming-back part. It was different from the other time. That time it wasn’t as fast. I wrote that down.”

Joanna nodded. “Can I take this paper with me?”

“Sure,” Maisie said, and Joanna folded it up and stuck it in her pocket. “But you can’t go yet, I have lots more stuff to tell you.”

“Then eat,” Joanna said, pointing at the eggs.

Maisie picked up her fork. “They’re cold.”

“Whose fault is that?”

“Did you know they found eggs when they dug up Pompeii?” Maisie said. “They got covered up by the ash and turned into stone.”

“Four bites,” Joanna said, her arms folded. “And the juice.”

“Okay,” Maisie said and plodded through four minuscule bites, chewing laboriously.

“And the juice.”

“I am. I have to open the straw first.”

The Queen of Stallers, Joanna thought. She leaned back in the chair and watched Maisie peel the paper, stick the straw in the juice, sip daintily, waiting her out. Finally, Maisie finished, slurping to prove it was empty. “You know the dog that was chained up, and they don’t know its name ’cause it didn’t have a dog tag?” she asked. “Well, there was a little girl like that.”

“In Pompeii?”

“No,” Maisie said indignantly. “In the Hartford circus fire. She was nine years old. Anyway, that’s what they think, nobody knows, ’cause they don’t know who she was. She died from the smoke. She wasn’t burned at all, and they put her picture in the paper and on the radio and everything. But nobody ever came to get her.”

“Ever?” Joanna said. Someone would have had to identify her eventually. A child couldn’t just disappear without anyone noticing, but Maisie was shaking her blond head.

“Hunh-unh. They had this big room where they put all the bodies, and the mothers and fathers came and identified them, but nobody ever did her. And they didn’t know her name, so they had to give her a number.”

Joanna was suddenly afraid to ask. Not fifty-eight, she thought. Don’t tell me it’s fifty-eight.

“1565,” Maisie said, “ ’cause that was the number of her body. She should have had a name tag or put her name in her clothes or something, like Mr. Astor.”

“Who?” Joanna said, sitting up straight.

“John Jacob Astor. He was on the Titanic. His face got all smashed in when one of the smokestack things fell on him, so they couldn’t tell who he was, but he had his initials inside of his shirt”—she reached around to the back of her hospital gown and grasped the neck of it to demonstrate—“J. J. A., so they were able to figure it out.”

“You know about the Titanic, Maisie?” Joanna asked.

“Of course,” she said. “It’s like the best disaster that ever happened. Lots of children died.”

“I never heard you talk about it.”

“That’s ’cause I read about it before, when I was in the other hospital. I wanted to see the movie, but my mother wouldn’t let me watch the video because it had…” she leaned forward and dropped her voice to a whisper, “S-E-X in it. But this girl Ashley who had her appendix out said it didn’t, just naked people. She said it was really cool, especially when the ship went up in the air and everything started falling down, all the dishes and furniture and pianos and stuff, with this big enormous crash. Did you know the Titanic had five pianos?”

“Maisie—” Joanna said, sorry she had brought this up.

“I know all about it,” Maisie said, oblivious. “They had all these dogs. A Pekingese and an Airedale and a Pomeranian and this really cute little French bulldog, and their owners would take them for walks on the deck, only most of the time they had to be kept in this kennel down in the hold, except for this little tiny dog Frou-Frou, he got to stay in the cabin—”

“Maisie—” Joanna said, but Maisie didn’t even hear her.

“—and after it hit the iceberg, this passenger, I don’t know his name, went down to the kennel and—”

“Maisie—”

“—let out all the dogs,” Maisie finished. “They all still drowned, though.”

“You can’t tell me about the Titanic,” Joanna said. “I’m doing some research—”

“Do you want me to help you?” Maisie said eagerly. “Ms. Sutterly could bring me some books, and I know lots of stuff already. It didn’t really hit the iceberg, it just sort of scraped along the side. It wasn’t even a very bad cut, but the watertight compartments—”

She had to put a stop to this. “Dr. Wright told me they found the body of a dog in Pompeii,” she said.

“Yeah,” Maisie said. She told her about the chain and it trying to climb on top of the ash. “Dr. Wright told me all the Pompeii dogs were named Fido, but I don’t think so. How would they know to come when their master called if they all had the same name?”

“I think Dr. Wright was kidding,” Joanna said. “Did you know Fido means ‘faithful’ in Latin?”

“No,” Maisie said, appeased. “That would have been a good name for this one dog they found.” She pulled the book out from under the covers and began flipping through it till she found another of the photos. “It was trying to save this little girl.” She showed the picture to Joanna. The plaster casts of the long-muzzled dog and the little girl lay huddled against a wall, their limbs tangled together. “But he couldn’t. They both died.”

She took the book back. “It didn’t have any dog tags either,” she said and then suddenly lunged for her book again.

Joanna looked toward the door. Maisie raised the blankets to stick the book under them, and then stopped and laid it back on the bed as the black orderly came in. “Hi, Eugene,” she said, picking up her tray and handing it to him.

“Hi, Eugene,” Joanna said. “You have to leave the tray. Maisie’s supposed to finish her eggs.”

“He’s supposed to take all the trays back at the same time,” Maisie said.

“No, that’s all right,” Eugene said, setting the tray back down. “I can come back for it later.” He winked at Joanna.

“Thanks,” Joanna said. Eugene went out. Joanna stood up. “I’ve got to go, too.”

“You can’t. You promised you’d stay as long as I wanted. I have to show you this one picture.”

She showed her at least twenty pictures before she finally let Joanna go—excavated ruins, reconstructed Roman baths, a gold bracelet, a silver mirror, paintings of people in white togas running terrified from a red-and-gold-spewing volcano, of people cowering in ash-darkened colonnades. And if I don’t see Vesuvius this time, Joanna thought, going back up to her office, then Richard’s theory’s got to be wrong.

She unlocked her office, went in, and checked her answering machine. The light was blinking almost hysterically. “You have twenty-three messages,” it said when she pressed the button. And all from Mr. Mandrake and none from Kit or Kerri Jakes, she thought, hitting “play.”

Not all. Three were from Maisie, one from Richard, and four from Vielle, all trying to find her yesterday afternoon. “Hi, you remember you’ve got my car, don’t you?” Vielle’s last one began. “I’m leaving now. When you get back, just leave my keys with the admitting nurse. I think I’ll rent Gone in Sixty Seconds or Grand Theft Auto for our next Dish Night.”

There was a pause, and then Vielle gasped, “Oh, my God, you won’t believe who just walked in. Do you remember that cute police officer who came in to tell us about the nail gunner, the one who looks just like Denzel Washington? Well, he’s here, and it looks like he’s going to be at the meeting. Officer Right, here I come!”

Joanna grinned and hit “delete” and “next message.”

“Hi, this is Kerri Jakes. Do I remember the name of our high school English textbook? Are you kidding? I barely remember high school. What do you need to know for? Don’t tell me you didn’t really graduate and they’re making you take senior English over. Anyway, no, I don’t remember the name of the book, and the only one I remember being in second period was Ricky Inman because I had this awful crush on him, and I used to hang around Mr. Briarley’s door before third period, waiting for him to come out.”

Kerri was right. She didn’t remember high school. Joanna hit “next message.” “This is Elspeth Haighton. I’m trying to reach Dr. Lander. The session we set up won’t work. I have a Junior League meeting that day. Please call me and reschedule.”

Fat chance, Joanna thought, but she dialed Mrs. Haighton’s number. It was busy. How can it be busy? Joanna thought, she’s never home, and went back to listening to messages.

There were three in a row from Mr. Mandrake, all beginning, “You never answer your pages, Dr. Lander,” and wanting to talk to her about some astonishing new details Mrs. Davenport had remembered, “which are so vivid and authentic that they cannot fail to convince you that what is being experienced during the NDE is, in fact, real.”

But it’s not, Joanna thought, even though he’s right about the details being vivid and authentic. She could see the lace insets on the young woman’s nightgown, the frightened expression on her face, the filigreed light sconces in the passage. But it wasn’t the actual Titanic, in spite of the reality of the vision. It was something else.

“…not only Mrs. Davenport’s uncle Alvin, but the spirits of Julius Caesar and Joan of Arc, waiting to welcome her to the Other Side,” Mr. Mandrake was saying.

Joanna erased him, and went on through the rest of the messages, jotting them down and promptly forgetting them, except the one from Mr. Wojakowski, who had ostensibly called to tell her the hearing research was going to last eight weeks and after that he’d be available for the project again, but really to tell her the story of the Yorktown’s sinking and the men lining their shoes up along the deck all over again. That one she didn’t jot down. She deleted it and hit “next message,” wondering how long before she got to the end of the messages.

“This is Kit Gardiner. I’m trying to reach Joanna Lander,” Kit’s voice said. “I think I’ve found the book.”

In the background, Mr. Briarley’s voice said, “Joanna? Bride,” and then he must have moved away from the phone because Joanna only caught part of what he said. “—wasn’t… the key…”

“It’s blue with gold lettering, and it’s called Voyages and Voices,” Kit continued. “Does that ring a bell?”

It didn’t, but the title did begin with a V, like Joanna had remembered.

“I’m pretty sure it’s the right one. It has a ship on the cover. Uncle Pat,” Kit dropped her voice, “usually takes a nap from eleven to one, so that would be a good time.”

“ ‘The bride hath paced into the hall,’ ” Mr. Briarley’s voice said. “ ‘Red as a rose is she.’ Have you seen my grade book, Kit?”

“I’d better go,” Kit said. “ ’Bye.” The machine beeped the end of the message.

Joanna glanced at her watch. Eleven-thirty. She grabbed up her bag, keys, and coat and went up to the lab. Richard was at the console, his chin in his hand, staring at scans. “I have something I need to check on,” she said. “I’ll be back by one.”

He nodded without turning around, and she went out and down to the elevator. “Wait!” Richard called, sprinting after her, and she thought, watching him come toward her, He really is cute. “I wanted to talk to you before Tish gets here. I don’t think we should talk about the Titanic in front of her. If you see the Titanic, which I don’t think you will,” he said. “I’m increasing the dosage, which should change the temporal-lobe stimuli, particularly the initial stimulus, and I think it will produce a totally different L+R pattern.”

“But just in case I do see it, you want me to record my account in my office.”

“Or on the other side of the lab. I know you need to record it as soon as possible after the NDE,” he said and looked sheepish. “It’s not that I think Tish would go tell Mr. Mandrake, but—”

“Loose lips sink ships,” Joanna said.

“In this case, literally,” Richard said, grinning. “You said you’ll be back by one?”

Joanna nodded.

“Great,” he said, starting back to the lab. “Did you have a chance to look at those multiple NDEs?”

“Not yet,” she said, pushing the “down” button. “I’ll start them as soon as I get back. Oh, and Mrs. Haighton called. She can’t come Thursday.”

“I knew it was too good to be true,” he said. “See you at one.” He nodded, waving good-bye to her over his shoulder. The elevator opened. Joanna stepped in. And found herself face to face with Vielle. She was in her scrubs and surgical cap and was wearing sterile booties over her shoes.

This is what you get for not taking the back way, Joanna thought. “Vielle, what are you doing up here?” she said. “You haven’t had another incident, have you?”

“Incident?”

“Yes, you know, crazy druggie on rogue trying to stab people. Like the last incident, which you neglected to tell me about. Vielle, you have got to transfer out of—”

“I know, I know,” Vielle said, waving her hand dismissively. “You’ll have to lecture me some other time. I’m on break. I have to get back, and I came up here to tell you three things. Are you going down?” she asked, looking at Joanna’s coat and bag.

She obviously was. “Yes,” she said and pushed “G.” “What three things?”

“One,” Vielle said, “tomorrow night will work for Dish Night if it will work for you and Richard. Two, Dr. Jamison was down in the ER the other day—she’s working with one of the interns on some project—and you don’t have anything to worry about. She’s sixty if she’s a day. And three, I found out what you asked me about.”

“About Dr. Jamison?” Joanna said, confused.

“No, about the movie. You asked me if there was a scene in it with people out on deck after the engines stopped? There’s not. There’s a scene where people are sticking their heads out of their cabins and the stewards are telling them to go up to the Boat Deck and there’s another scene where Kate Winslet’s mother and her creepy fiancé are standing around in lifejackets next to the Grand Staircase waiting for their lifeboat to be called.”

“But I thought you said your meeting went till eleven-thirty,” Joanna said, confused. Vielle surely hadn’t gone out after the meeting and rented the video.

“It did,” Vielle said. “I would’ve called you last night and told you, but it was so late. There’s a scene out on deck where passengers are playing with pieces of ice, and one where they’re letting the steam off, and it’s so deafening nobody can hear anything, but Heidi says she doesn’t remember anything with people just standing around not knowing what happened.”

“Heidi?” Joanna said sharply.

“Yeah, during one of the potty breaks at the meeting I saw Heidi Schlagel. She’s an LPN, works graveyard, but she used to work the three-to-eleven, and she has the world’s biggest crush on Leonardo DiCaprio. She used to drive us all crazy talking about Titanic. She saw it about fifty times. I figured if anybody knew the answer to your question, it’d be Heidi, and she did,” Vielle said, smiling, and obviously pleased at having been so clever.

“I asked you to rent the video,” Joanna said, glancing anxiously at the floor indicator, hoping no one got on in the middle of this.

“I know,” Vielle said, looking surprised, “but I knew I wouldn’t be able to watch it till tonight, and you sounded like you needed it right away.”

If Mr. Mandrake got hold of this—“I told you not to tell anyone.”

Vielle frowned. “I didn’t tell her what I wanted it for. I didn’t even mention your name. She thinks I’m the one who wanted to know.”

“But what if she saw you talking to me?”

“What?” Vielle said, amazement in her voice. “You sound completely paranoid. I told you, Heidi works graveyard, and even if she did hear us, she wouldn’t think anything about it. She assumes everyone spends their time discussing Titanic. When I told her I had a question about it, I had to listen to a whole spiel on how wonderful Leo,” she said the word in a schoolgirl squeal, “was in The Beach, and how the critics don’t appreciate him, before I even got to ask it. And after I got my answer, she spent the rest of the break telling me how the Grand Staircase was an exact replica of the one on the Titanic, clock and skylight and all. Trust me, I don’t think she even remembered I’d asked a question, she was so glad to find somebody who’d let her talk about it.”

I hope so, Joanna thought, but how many people had heard them talking? Gossip General—

“I don’t understand why a bet between you and Richard has to be a state secret anyway, but if you’re worried about it, I can ask Heidi not to say anything about—”

“No!” Joanna said. If Heidi wasn’t suspicious, this would definitely make her suspicious, and if she already was, it would make it worse. “No, that’s okay, it doesn’t matter,” she said, trying to sound casual. “I’m just worried that now every time you see her you’ll be subjected to how wonderful Leo is.” She tried to smile. “Did you make any headway with Officer Right at the meeting?”

“I didn’t get a chance to,” Vielle said. “I’d been kind of hoping you wouldn’t bring my car back from wherever you went, and I could talk him into giving me a ride home. Speaking of which, where did you take off to in such a hurry?”

“So my bringing your car back ruined your plan?” Joanna asked. “If I’d known—”

“It wasn’t your fault. He left before the break. Where did you go?” The elevator opened on the ground floor. “And where are you going now?”

“I’ve got an errand to run,” Joanna said. And the last thing she wanted to do was walk all the way to the ER with Vielle, on her way to the parking lot, and give her a chance to grill her. “I just remembered, I wanted second,” Joanna said, pressing “two.” “Tomorrow’s fine for Dish Night for me,” she said, wishing the door would close. “I’ll ask Richard if he can come.”

Vielle stopped the closing door with her hand. “Are you all right? Yesterday you—”

“I’m fine,” Joanna said. “Just awfully busy. There’ve been so many NDEs—”

“Is that where you went in such a hurry yesterday? To interview an NDEer?” Vielle asked, and the door alarm began, blessedly, to buzz.

“Is it your turn or mine to rent the movies?” Joanna shouted over the sound.

“Yours,” Vielle said and reluctantly let go of the door. “You still haven’t—”

The door began to close. “I’ll try to get something with Denzel Washington in it. What was the one about the Civil War called?”

“Glory.”

“Glory,” Joanna said and watched the door shut in Vielle’s worried face.

24

The streets were nearly as empty of traffic as they had been the night before. Joanna made it over to Mr. Briarley’s in less than fifteen minutes. Now, if only the book Kit had found was it.

It wasn’t. She knew as soon as Kit, barefoot and wearing a white spaghetti-strap top and jeans, led her into the library, explaining in a hushed voice, “Uncle Pat just lay down,” and showed her the book.

It should have been the right one. It had a blue cover, gold lettering, a graceful clipper ship in full sail, its prow cutting sharply through blue-green waves, everything Joanna had described. But it wasn’t the book.

“It wasn’t a clipper ship.” Joanna squinted at the cover. “It was one of those ships like Sir Francis Drake had, a caravel,” she said, the word suddenly coming to her from somewhere deep in long-term memory, “and it was smaller. I’m sorry.” She shook her head apologetically. “It’s exactly what I told you, I know.”

“If it’s not the right one, it’s not the right one,” Kit said philosophically. She waved her hand around at the rows of books lining the library. “I have only just begun to look. The book was smaller?” she asked, pointing at Voyages and Voices.

“No, the book’s the right size, but I remember the picture as smaller.”

“What about the color? Was it light or dark blue?”

“Dark, I think,” Joanna said. “I’m not sure. I’m sorry I’m being so vague. I’d know it if I saw it.”

Kit nodded, putting the book back on the shelf. “I called the high school this morning on the off-chance they were still using the same book in their English classes, but I couldn’t get them to give me any information. You’d have thought I was trying to steal highly classified documents or something.”

Joanna nodded, remembering the woman in the office. “I didn’t mean for you to go to all this trouble.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Kit said cheerfully. “It gives me something to think about besides—it’s kind of fun,” she amended, “a sort of treasure hunt.”

“Well, I really appreciate it,” Joanna said, moving toward the door. “And if I remember anything more specific, I’ll call you.”

“Oh, you’re not leaving yet, are you?” Kit said, and sounded just like Maisie. “I was hoping you’d have time to stay for a cup of tea.”

Joanna glanced at her watch. “I have to be back by one,” she said doubtfully.

“It’ll only take a minute to heat up the water,” Kit said, leading the way down the hall past the stairs to the kitchen. “I made cookies this—oh, no!”

“What is it?” Joanna said, trying to see past Kit into the kitchen.

“I thought he was asleep,” Kit said as if she hadn’t heard Joanna and hurried back past her through the hall and up the stairs. “Excuse me a minute. I’ll be right back.”

Joanna looked into the kitchen, afraid of what she might see. An empty plate with some crumbs sat on the table. Next to it was a skillet and two saucepans, and, on the red-and-white tiled floor, more pans and lids and muffin tins, cookie sheets, pie tins, and a big roasting pan.

Kit pattered back down the stairs. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact now. She went into the kitchen and began to pick up the pans. “He is asleep now. He must have come down while we were in the other room.” She stacked two small saucepans inside a larger one and stuck them down in a cupboard next to the sink. “Taking things out of drawers and cupboards is a common behavior with Alzheimer’s,” she said, putting a skillet away.

And a nightmare for the people who live with them, Joanna thought. “Can I help?” she asked.

“No, I’ve got it,” Kit said, taking the lid off a Dutch oven and pulling out two books. She reached up and set them on the table. “Sit down. I’ll start the tea.”

She got two mugs out of an upper cupboard, filled them with water, and stuck them in the microwave, punching in the code. “The problem is he’s sleeping less and less,” she said, setting sugar and teabags on the table. “He used to sleep a couple of hours during the day,” she got out two spoons, “but now it’s hardly any, even at night. Now, the question is,” she said, looking around the room, her hands on her hips, “where did he put the cookies?” She looked in the refrigerator, the freezer, the wastebasket.

“Would he have eaten them?” Joanna asked, thinking, I can’t believe we’re talking about Mr. Briarley, who knew all about Dylan Thomas and Henry the Eighth’s wives and Restoration drama, like this.

“He doesn’t usually take food,” Kit said. “He has almost no appetite.” She opened drawers one after the other, and then stood looking speculatively around the kitchen. “There’s usually a logic in what he does and says, even though sometimes it’s hard to figure out the connection.”

She walked swiftly over to the oven and opened it. “Ah, here we are,” she said, pulling out the top rack, on which sat the cookies, arranged in neat rows on the wire rack. She grabbed the cookie plate and began putting the cookies on it. “Luckily, it wasn’t the dishwasher,” she said, setting the plate on the table. The microwave dinged, and Kit took the mugs out and handed one to Joanna and sat down opposite her.

“How long has Mr. Bri—your uncle been like this?” Joanna asked.

“Taking things out of the cupboards, or the Alzheimer’s? The cupboards, only a couple of months. The Alzheimer’s was diagnosed five years ago, but I started noticing things two years before that.”

That surprised Joanna. She’d thought from what Kit said before that she’d moved in with her uncle when they’d found out he had Alzheimer’s, but apparently she’d been living with him before that. While she went to school? she wondered, remembering the photo of Kit in front of University Hall. DU was only a few blocks from here.

“The memory loss probably started several years before that,” Kit was saying, dipping her teabag. “It takes a while for symptoms to develop, and Alzheimer’s patients learn to cover really well.”

Joanna thought about Mr. Briarley muttering, “Coleridge. Overrated Romantic,” the day before. She wondered if he even remembered who Coleridge was.

“I don’t know how much you know about the disease,” Kit said, offering Joanna a cookie. “The first symptoms are little things, forgetting appointments, misplacing things—Uncle Pat kept losing his grade book and a couple of times he forgot a faculty meeting—the kind of things you put down to age or stress.” She put sugar in her tea and stirred it. “It was funny, you mentioning the Titanic yesterday, because that was how I realized there was something really wrong. I went to see the movie, which, having listened to Uncle Pat talk about the disaster for years, I hated.”

“I did, too,” Joanna said.

“Oh, good, then you know what I mean. Well, anyway, I came home and told Uncle Pat how the movie made everyone look like cowards, even Lightoller and Molly Brown, and how they’d gotten all kinds of facts wrong—like Murdoch shooting a passenger!—and he was furious, just like I knew he would be. He said he was going to write a stinging letter to James Cameron in the morning, and when I went up to bed, he had all his Titanic books out, looking things up so he could quote them exactly.”

She took a sip of tea. “The next morning I asked him if he’d written the letter yet,” she said, and all the despair of Amelia Tanaka and Greg Menotti was in her voice. “He didn’t have any memory of the letter or our conversation, not even of my having gone to the movie. He didn’t even know who Lightoller was.”

And yesterday I came blundering in, Joanna thought, not only talking about the Titanic, but asking Mr. Briarley if he remembered what he’d said in class. “Kit, I am so sorry,” she said. “If I’d known—”

“Oh, no, it’s okay. I just wanted you to know that was why I acted so peculiar yesterday, asking you if my mother had sent you and everything. My mother and I have a difference of opinion regarding Uncle Pat’s care. She’s always sending people over to try to talk me into putting him into a care facility. She thinks taking care of him is too much for me.”

I can see why she thinks that, Joanna thought, looking at Kit’s painfully thin collarbones, her shadowed eyes. She had said Mr. Briarley wasn’t sleeping. Joanna would bet she wasn’t either.

“I know Uncle Pat will have to be institutionalized someday,” Kit said, “but I want him to be able to stay here as long as he can. He was very kind to me, and—anyway, when you said you worked at Mercy General, I assumed—what do you do at Mercy General?” she asked curiously.

“I’m a cognitive psychologist,” Joanna said and wondered if she should let it go at that, but Kit reminded her of Maisie in more ways than one, and Maisie hated not being told the truth. “I’m working on a research project involving near-death experiences,” she said. “You know, the tunnel-and-light phenomenon?”

Kit nodded. “I read The Light at the End of the Tunnel. My cousin made me read it after—” She stopped, her cheeks red with anger or embarrassment.

And what could be worse than discovering your uncle had Alzheimer’s? Joanna thought. Having your cousin comfort you by inflicting Maurice Mandrake on you.

“You don’t work with Mr. Mandrake, do you?” Kit asked challengingly.

“No,” Joanna said.

“Good. I thought it was a horrible book. ‘Don’t worry, the dead aren’t really dead, and they aren’t really gone. They can still send messages to you from the Other Side.’ ”

“I know. I work with Dr. Wright. He’s a neurologist. We’re trying to figure out what near-death experiences are and why the dying brain experiences them.”

“The dying brain?” Kit said. “Does that mean everyone has them? I thought they were something only a few people had.”

“No, about sixty percent of revived patients report having a near-death experience, and those are concentrated in certain kinds of deaths—heart attacks, hemorrhaging, trauma.”

“You mean like car accidents?” Kit asked.

“Yes, and stabbings, industrial accidents, shootings. Of course there’s no way to tell how many people who aren’t revived have them.”

“But they’re pleasant, for the ones who do have them, I mean?” Kit said. “They’re not frightening?”

Joanna thought of the young woman, standing out on deck, asking the steward, “What’s happened?” her voice filled with fear. And Amelia, saying, “Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no.”

“Are they frightening?” Kit asked. “Uncle Pat has hallucinations sometimes. He sees people standing at the foot of his bed or in the door.”

In the door. Joanna would have to tell Richard that. Alzheimer’s was caused by a malfunctioning of neurochemicals. Maybe there was a connection.

“…and sometimes the things he’s saying seem to indicate he’s reliving past events,” Kit was saying.

L+R, Joanna thought. “Most people who’ve had near-death experiences report feeling warm and safe and loved,” she said reassuringly. “Dr. Wright’s found evidence of elevated endorphin levels, which supports that.”

“Good,” Kit said and then shook her head. “Uncle Pat’s are almost always upsetting or frightening things. It’s like he can’t forget them and can’t remember them at the same time, and he goes over and over them. It’s like he’s trying to make sense of them, even though his memory of them is gone.” She put her hands over her face for a moment. “The books say not to confront him or contradict him, but not to go along with the hallucination either, which is hard.”

“It sounds like it’s all hard,” Joanna said.

Kit smiled wryly. “I thought a sudden death was the worst thing that could possibly happen, and now it’s obvious it’s not.” She sat up. “I’m sorry, you don’t want to hear all this. I didn’t mean to go on like that. It’s just that I hardly ever get to talk to anybody about this, and when I do, I—” She made a face. “I obviously need to get out more.”

“You should come to Dish Night tomorrow night,” Joanna said impulsively.

“Dish Night?”

“Yes. It’s not an organized event or anything, just a casual get-together. Dr. Wright comes, and my friend Vielle—you’d love her. We get together and watch movies on video and eat and talk. Mostly talk. We use it as a safety valve, and it sounds like you could use one, too. Do you like movies?”

“Yes. I haven’t seen one in a long time. Uncle Pat confuses what’s happening on the screen with reality. That’s a common occurrence with Alzheimer’s patients, too. It would be wonderful to watch a movie, but…” She shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Is it because you don’t have anyone to stay with him?”

“Oh, no, my mother comes over when I have to go to the grocery store, but—” She was looking at the pan cupboard, and Joanna could guess what she was thinking. If Mr. Briarley took all the pans out again, her mother would use it as ammunition for putting Mr. Briarley in a care facility.

“Have you ever used Eldercare?” Joanna asked. “Mercy General has a program where the caregivers come to your home. They’re very good. I know one of the people who works with the program. I’d be glad to call her.”

“But if Dish Night is tomorrow night?”

“They have a twelve-hour emergency program,” Joanna said. “They know the people who call them are usually at the end of their rope. They have caregivers specifically trained in Alzheimer’s,” she said, but Kit was already shaking her head.

“They sound wonderful, but I’m always afraid something will happen while I’m gone, and if I call home to check, that can upset him,” she said. “So thank you for inviting me, but I’d better not.”

“You should get a pager,” Joanna said, pulling hers out of her pocket to show her. “Or a cell phone. That way they could reach you wherever you are.” Unless she left it in the car while she ran into the grocery store, like Greg Menotti’s girlfriend.

“A cell phone,” Kit said. “I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll have to see… you think they could come by tomorrow night?”

Joanna nodded. “If you want to come, I could pick you up.”

“I don’t know… can I call you tomorrow and let you know?”

“Sure,” Joanna said.

“Or sooner, if I find the book. If Uncle Pat stays asleep for a while, I’ll go down to the basement and start in on those books—”

“Oh, you made cookies,” Mr. Briarley said, coming into the kitchen.

“I thought you were lying down, Uncle Pat,” Kit said.

“I was, but I heard voices, and I thought Kevin was here. Oh, hello,” he said to Joanna.

“Hello, Mr. Briarley,” she said.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Kit asked, reaching for a china cup and saucer.

“No, I’m rather tired. I think I’ll go lie down. It was nice meeting you,” he said to Joanna, and started down the hall.

“Be right back,” Kit said and darted after him.

Joanna could hear them starting up the stairs, and then Mr. Briarley’s voice saying, “They know it when they see it. It is the very mirror image.”

I’d better think about getting back, Joanna thought, and looked at her watch. It said twelve-thirty. “Oh, my gosh,” she said and started putting on her coat. She went out to the foot of the stairs. “Kit,” she called up the narrow wooden stairs, her hand on the railing. “I’ve got to go. I’ll call you tomorrow about Dish Night.”

Kit appeared at the head of the stairs. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll call you if I find the book.”

Joanna opened the front door. As she let herself out, she heard Mr. Briarley say, “Aren’t you going to go say good-bye to Kevin?”

Was there a Kevin, Joanna wondered, driving back to the hospital as fast as the traffic would allow, or was he one of the hallucinations Kit had talked about? She remembered the picture of Kit and a blond young man in the library. Had he been unwilling or unable to cope with the day-in, day-out nightmare of caring for an Alzheimer’s patient, or had Kit simply given him up, as she had apparently given up movies, her education, her freedom?

And how did she end up as his caregiver? Joanna wondered, gunning her car through a yellow light. Her mother would seem to be the logical choice to take care of him, and she was obviously worried about what it was doing to Kit. “As well she should be,” Joanna muttered.

She roared into the hospital parking lot. There was some mystery here, but, whatever it was, she didn’t have time to solve it now. She needed to get upstairs. It was ten to one. She didn’t even have time to take the back route. She’d have to take the main elevator, and please, don’t let me run into Mr. Mandrake.

Her luck was in. She made it up to sixth without seeing a soul she knew and skidded into the lab, already taking off her coat. Richard was at the console, Tish over by the examining table, hooking a bag of saline to the IV stand. “…found this new place for Happy Hour,” Joanna heard her say as she came in.

“Sorry I’m late,” Joanna said. “I found out something interesting. Mr. Briarley”—Richard shot her a warning glance and nodded in Tish’s direction, but Joanna ignored him—“has Alzheimer’s, and his niece says he has hallucinations where he sees people around his bed or standing in the door.”

“Interesting,” Richard said. “Alzheimer’s is caused by a lack of acetylcholine, though, not elevated levels. Did she say if he had any of the other NDE elements?”

“She said he seemed to be reliving past events.”

“The life review,” Richard said. “I wonder—”

“Can we get going?” Tish asked. “I have an eye appointment.”

Dentist appointment, Joanna corrected, going into the dressing room. She put on her hospital gown, went over to the examining table, got up on it, and lay down. Tish began placing the foam cushions under her arms and legs. “Do you like Tommy Lee Jones?” she said, looking at Richard. “He’s got a new movie out I’m dying to see.” She moved to Joanna’s other side and began attaching the electrodes.

Richard came over. “You ready?” he asked Joanna. She nodded, hindered by the electrodes. “I’ve adjusted the dosage, and I’m going to increase the time spent in non-REM sleep,” he said. “We shall see what we shall see.”

Which was what? Joanna wondered, watching Tish start the IV. “I loved him in Volcano,” Tish said, taping it in place. “Did you see it?”

No, but at this rate, I might, Joanna thought. She could see the wall clock from where she lay, even though Richard had moved it. It said five to one. We need to take it down altogether, she thought.

“I loved that scene in the subway tunnel,” Tish said, covering Joanna’s eyes with the black mask and beginning to attach the electrodes. “Where they could see this light at the end, and they didn’t know what it was, and then they realized it was molten lava, and it was heading right for them. And the part where the lava caught the guy and—”

At that point Tish mercifully put the headphones on her, and Joanna lay, waiting for Richard to come over and lift the earphone and ask her if she was ready.

Ready for what? she wondered. A fall of ash? Tommy Lee Jones? Vesuvius erupted at one o’clock, she thought, and was in the tunnel.

The passage was silent, as if a loud sound had just stopped. The light shone, blinding gold, from the open door. If it’s Vesuvius, just put your hand over your mouth and nose and run back into the tunnel, she told herself, starting toward the door. But it wasn’t Vesuvius, or an oncoming train, or the walkway down on third, and she had known it from the moment she came through. It was the Titanic, and through the open door she could see the woman in the white nightgown talking earnestly to the woman with the white gloves.

“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, Edith,” the woman with the white gloves said.

“Go and find Mr. Briarley,” the bearded man said to the steward. “He’ll be able to tell us.”

“Yes, sir,” the steward said.

“We’ll be in our cabin.”

“Yes, sir,” the steward said and started into the light.

Joanna tried to see where he was going, but the glare was too bright. She moved forward, trying to see, and then stopped. I need to cross the threshold, she thought, and felt the sense of dread again.

“A voice said, ‘You are not allowed on this side,’ ” Ms. Grant had said, and Mr. Olivetti, “I knew if I went through that gate, I could never come back.” What if, once out on the deck, she couldn’t return? Or what if Vielle was right, and the NDE was some kind of death process that crossing the threshold set in motion?

It’s not, Joanna thought. They’re both wrong, and so is Mr. Mandrake. The NDE isn’t a gateway to the Other Side. It’s something else, and I have to find out what it is. But when she came up even with the door, she halted again and looked down at the floor. Light spilled onto it, and the line between the waxed wood of the passageway and the unvarnished boards of the deck was sharply marked.

Joanna put her hand to her chest, as if to quiet her heart. “ ‘To die will be an awfully big adventure,’ ” she said and stepped across the threshold and out onto the deck.

25

“Mr. Briarley will be able to explain things,” the bearded man said to the women. None of them had turned to look at Joanna when she came out onto the deck. She wondered if they could see her.

“In the meantime,” the bearded man said, “you ladies should go back inside where it’s warmer.”

The young woman nodded, clutching her coat to her. “It’s so cold.”

The steward had disappeared into the light. Joanna started through the group of people, trying to see where he had gone, past the young woman and a stout white-haired man in tweeds.

“What do they say is the trouble?” the stout man asked a taller man in a black overcoat as Joanna edged by him.

“What are you doing here?” the bearded man said loudly.

Joanna jumped and looked back at him, startled, but he wasn’t talking to her. He was addressing a young man in a grubby-looking sweater and a soft cap.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the bearded man said sternly. “This area is restricted.”

“Sorry,” the young man said, looking around nervously. “I heard a noise and came over to investigate.”

So did I, Joanna thought, and walked toward the light. As she got closer, she saw it was radiating from a lamp on the white-painted metal wall. One of the deck lights, Joanna thought, and it must still be very early. Toward the end, the lights had begun to dim and glow red because the engineers couldn’t keep the dynamos going.

And then they went out, Joanna thought. But this light was reassuringly bright, so bright she couldn’t see anything through its radiance, even when she shielded her eyes. She would have to walk past it to be able to see anything.

She paused again, the way she had at the threshold, her hand to her chest, and then walked down the deck in the direction the steward had gone and into the light, through it, beyond it.

She had been wrong. It wasn’t outside, in spite of the biting cold. The deck was glassed in, with long, wide, white-framed windows that stretched the length of the deck. Joanna went over to them and looked out, but the glass reflected the light so she couldn’t see anything but the reflection of the white wall and the empty deck. Joanna turned and looked back at the door to the passage. It yawned blackly.

The passengers must have gone back inside. The bearded man had told the steward, “We’ll be in our cabin,” and the women had complained about being cold. They must have gone back to their staterooms, Joanna thought, and started after them, back toward the passage.

Toward the tunnel. Don’t, she thought. You don’t want to go back yet, not till you’ve found out why you’re seeing the Titanic, not till you’ve found out what the connection is. Don’t even look at it. Remember what happened to Orpheus, she thought, and turned forcibly away from the door.

“But what if I can’t find it when I’m ready to go back?” she said out loud, and her voice echoed hollowly in the enclosed deck. She wished she’d brought some breadcrumbs with her, or a ball of Mrs. Troudtheim’s yarn. You’ll just have to keep track of where you go, she thought, and not stay too long. You have a little over two and a half hours. Or four to six minutes.

But this wasn’t a real NDE. This was a simulation, and she only had till Richard stopped giving her dithetamine, which might be any minute. So you need to get going.

She started down the deck. The steward had disappeared, and the long deck was empty except for deck chairs and low, white-painted lockers with the word Lifejackets stenciled on the lid. At intervals, shuffleboard courts were painted on the deck.

Far down the deck, she caught a glimpse of the steward’s white jacket as he emerged from a door and started on down the deck. His white coat flickered to brightness as he passed one of the deck lights and then disappeared into the shadows between, like a light blinking on and off.

Joanna walked faster, trying to catch up with him, but he was already opening another door. She hurried down the deck to where he’d gone in, searching the inside wall for a door, but the wall was blank, though it seemed to Joanna she had already walked past the spot where he had disappeared.

No, here it was, a white metal door. Joanna reached for it, wondering what would happen. Would she be able to open it, or would her hand go through it like a ghost’s?

Neither. Her hand closed firmly on the handle and pulled, but it was locked. She tried again, with both hands, and then gave up and started down the deck again. There was another door a few yards past the first one, and another farther on, but they were both locked when Joanna tried them.

The deck began to bend inward, following the line of the ship, and become narrower. Farther down, directly under a deck light, was a door. She hurried down to it and pulled on the handle.

It gave under her hand, and she started in and then stopped and looked back down the deck the way she had come. She couldn’t see the passage because of the curve of the deck, and she hesitated, wondering if she should go back and check to make sure the door was still open, and then opened the door and went in.

She was in some sort of lobby. There were rugs on the polished wooden floor and high-backed benches against the walls. In the center was a straight wooden staircase with carved banisters. Joanna went over to it and leaned over the polished railing. She could see the stairs going down to the next deck and the one below that, receding into darkness.

She looked up, trying to see to the top of the stairs, but it was dark up there, too, and there was no sign of the steward. She hesitated, her hand on the railing, trying to decide which way to go. Not down, she thought, not on the Titanic, and started up the stairs.

At the top was another flight of stairs, narrower, steeper, and another lobby, this one much more elegant. The rugs on the floor were Persian, and paintings hung on the wallpapered walls. Off to the right was a pair of doors inset with beveled glass. Through the glass, Joanna could see a large rose-carpeted room filled with tables set for dinner.

The First-Class Dining Saloon, Joanna thought and tried to open the double doors, but they were locked. She couldn’t see anyone inside and no waiters moving among the white-linen-draped tables. Each table had flowers and a small rose-silk shaded lamp on it, and the silver and crystal and china glittered pinkly in its glow.

There were rose lamps on the walls, too, which were paneled in some pale, fawn-colored wood, and a lamp on the top of the grand piano. The piano was made of the same pale wood, only highly polished. Its angled top glittered goldenly in the light from the crystal chandelier overhead. A gilt birdcage stood in front of it, though from this distance Joanna couldn’t make out whether there was a bird in it or not. Had there been birds on the Titanic? Maisie hadn’t mentioned any.

A narrow wooden stairway led up past the windows of the dining saloon, and there was another flight above that. Joanna climbed up. The stairs ended at a door with a porthole in it. It must lead to the deck outside, she thought, but when she looked through the porthole, she couldn’t see anything but darkness. She opened the door.

She still couldn’t see anything. The sudden coldness told her she was outside, but she couldn’t feel any wind on her face, not even a breeze. It was utterly still that night, she thought. Mr. Briarley had talked about that in class, about how the survivors had all commented how still the water had been, without any waves at all.

She stared into the darkness, her hand on the door, waiting for her eyes to adjust. Maybe it’s like the passage, she thought, and there’s no light for them to adjust to, but after what seemed like a very long time, she began to make out shapes. Railings, and a horn-shaped vent, and, looming above her on the right, a tall, massive shape.

One of the funnels, she thought, looking up at its black shape against the blacker sky. She was in a little area bounded by railings. At first she thought the railings completely enclosed it, but after a minute she saw a little metal staircase, four steps leading up to a higher deck.

She started toward it, letting go of the door. It began to swing shut. Joanna grabbed for the handle and then stood there, unwilling to let it shut. She looked around the little deck, but she couldn’t see anything on the deck to prop the door open with, and she didn’t dare shut it in case it locked.

She transferred the handle to her other hand, bent down, and took off her shoe. She wedged it in the door, closed it carefully, and walked over to the stairway. She climbed the steps, holding on to both railings, and started along the upper deck. This had to be the Boat Deck. There were the giant funnels, four of them, looming above, and the thick cables of the rigging, the cargo cranes. But where were the lifeboats? She couldn’t see them. They should be all along the deck.

What if they’re already gone? she thought, and felt a stab of panic. But they couldn’t be. Collapsible A hadn’t gone until two-fifteen, when the bow was already underwater and the slant of the deck was so bad they had had to cut the ropes and float her off, and the deck here was still level.

And even after the boats had gone, there had been people on the Boat Deck, the Strauses and the Allisons, and all the men who hadn’t been allowed in the boats, all the steerage passengers who’d found their way up from belowdecks too late.

And the band, Joanna thought. They’d been on the Boat Deck, playing ragtime and waltzes the whole time they were loading the boats, and then “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” They had been on deck playing till the very end.

So it can’t be after the boats have gone, Joanna thought, because there was no one on the darkened deck. No one at all, and no sound, except for the uneven patter and tap of Joanna’s bare foot and remaining shoe.

The stretch of deck ended abruptly in a low white structure with a latticed roof. Next to it, a set of metal stairs, longer than the first one, led down through a cut-out roof to a covered deck. Joanna climbed down, looking back as she did to memorize the route she’d come so she could retrace it, and then turned around.

And there were the boats. They hung in their white metal davits, suspended from pulleys and thick bundles of ropes, and Captain Smith must not have given the order for the boats to be lowered yet. They were still shrouded in their canvas covers.

But there should still be officers on the deck. Captain Smith had sent two of the officers to investigate the damage, but he’d stayed on the bridge with the other officers till they returned, and some of the passengers had come up to see what had happened. And there were always officers on watch, and passengers walking around the deck. It had never been completely deserted like this.

Maybe it’s not the Titanic, maybe it’s the Mary Celeste, Joanna thought, and then, jamming her hands in her pockets, The ship’s not deserted. It’s just too cold for them to be out here. They’re all inside.

That had to be it. She could see her breath, and her bare foot was freezing. They were inside. Far up ahead, she could see light coming from a line of windows. It shone out in a golden square onto the deck. That’s where they are, she thought, and walked toward it, past a long, low, white building. “Officers’ Quarters,” a sign on the door said.

That’s where they stored the collapsibles, Joanna thought, and looked up at the flat roof, trying to see the lifeboats, but it was too dark, she couldn’t make them out.

And if this was the officers’ quarters, the lights ahead were from the wheelhouse, and the bridge. She walked on till she was standing in the light that shone out on the deck. There were steps leading up. Passengers aren’t allowed on the bridge, Joanna thought, and climbed up.

The bridge was deserted. The huge wooden wheel stood in the center, in front of the windows. Beyond it were two large metal drums with knobbed levers. The boiler room and engine room telegraphs. They had writing on them: Astern. Ahead. Full. Dead Slow. Stop. The levers on both were at Dead Slow.

Joanna walked between them to the windows and looked out, but she couldn’t see anything but darkness. It was utterly black. No wonder they couldn’t see the iceberg, she thought, peering forward into the darkness. You can’t even see where the water meets the sky. It had been a dark moonless night, she remembered Mr. Briarley saying, so dark the stars came right down to the horizon. But she couldn’t see any stars either, only black, blank darkness.

“No time for that,” a man’s voice said below her and off to the side.

Joanna looked through the side window of the bridge, but she couldn’t see anyone. She ran back to the head of the steps. Two men were below her, one in the dark blue uniform of an officer, the other in sailor’s whites.

“The captain wants you to set up the Morse lamp,” the officer said. “Over here.”

As he spoke, the two men moved off, and Joanna scrambled down the ladder after them, straining to see where they’d gone in the darkness.

“The Morse lamp?” the sailor said, his voice registering disbelief. “To use it on what?”

“On that,” the officer said. They were over by the railing, and the officer was pointing into the blackness. She could see the sailor, both hands on the railing, lean far over it, his neck extended. “What? I don’t see anything.”

“The light,” the officer said, pointing again. “There.” The Californian, Joanna thought. They’re signaling the Californian. She looked out across the darkness. She couldn’t see any sign of a light, just featureless blackness, but the sailor must have seen it because he said, “I doubt if she’ll be able to see us at this distance. They need to use the wireless.”

“They are. They can’t raise her. Do you have the key?”

“It’s in the…” Joanna lost the last word as he turned away. They started across the deck in front of the bridge, and Joanna followed them, but this part of the deck was littered with coiled ropes and chains, and by the time she’d picked her way through them, the two men had disappeared.

Joanna hesitated, trying to decide which way they’d gone, and, after a minute, the men came back across the deck past her and over to the railing, the sailor carrying an old-fashioned lantern.

He hoisted it up onto the forecastle railing. The officer struck a match and reached inside the lantern. Yellow light flared. The sailor shifted the lantern, so it sat at an angle, and slid a piece of metal down in front of the glass, obscuring the light. A shutter, Joanna thought. It made a scraping noise as he slid it down. “What do you want me to send?” he asked.

The officer shook his head. “Mayday. SOS. Help. I don’t know, anything that’ll work.”

The sailor pulled the shutter up, and the light flared out again. Down, up, down, the shutter scraping along the glass as he raised and lowered it. Up, down, up.

Joanna stared out across the darkness, looking for an answering flicker, a light, but there was nothing, not even a glimmer. And no sound except the scrape of the lantern. Down, up, down. Scrape, scrape. She moved away from the men a little, listening for the lap of water, but there was no sound of water slapping the bow, no breeze. Because we’ve stopped, she thought, because we’re dead in the water.

“She’s not responding,” the sailor said, lowering the shutter. “Are you sure it’s a light and not just a star?”

“It better not be a star,” the officer said. “We’re taking on water.”

The sailor’s hand jerked on the lantern, making the light flicker. “Isn’t anyone coming?”

“The Baltic, but she’s over two hundred miles away.”

“What about the Frankfurt?”

“She’s not answering,” the officer said, and the sailor began signaling again, the light flaring on, off, on, the shutter scraping like fingernails on a blackboard.

“I’m not getting anything,” he said. “How long do you want me to do this?”

“Till you get through to her.”

The Morse lamp went on sending. Light, dark, scrape, scrape. “Sir?” a voice called, off to Joanna’s left, and an officer ran past Joanna and up to the men. He saluted smartly. “I was just below, sir. Boiler rooms five and six and the mail room’s flooded, and there’s water coming in on D Deck.”

D Deck. She was on C Deck. That was why the staterooms were numbered C8, C10, C12. But she had come up three flights, and the deck below this was the Promenade Deck. Was that A Deck, or was this? If this was, that would make the Promenade B Deck, and the one with her passage in it—

She took off running, the sound of the Morse lamp steadily scraping, down, up, down, reaching all the way down the deck. And please let the door be open, she prayed, racing up the metal stairs. Still let my shoe be in it.

It was, and there was no time to retrieve it. She flung the door open and was down the stairs. One flight. Two. Past the dining room, with its glittering crystal and piano. Three. Please let it not be flooded, she prayed, and pushed through the door.

The deck was dry, but because of the curve, she couldn’t see all the way to the passage. She ran past the locked doors, around the curve. And there it was, the black rectangle of the passage door, still open, still above water. She pelted toward it, her bare foot slapping an awkward rhythm with her remaining shoe as she ran.

Down the deck, which was still—thank God—dry, past the deck chairs, her reflection flickering in the glass of the windows as she sped past. Past the light. Into the passage, and into darkness.

And more darkness. What happened? Joanna thought, panic clutching at her. Why didn’t I go back? And realized she was back, her sleep mask still on, the IV tugging at the inside crease of her elbow, white noise playing in her ears. “Tish?” she said and pulled the headphone down off her ear with her left hand.

“…pulse just spiked,” Tish was saying. “Pulse 95, BP 130 over 90. Wait, she’s awake.”

“Good,” Richard said, and she could hear his footsteps as he came over to the examining table. She felt Tish removing the electrodes along her scalp, and then the sleep mask was off, and she was looking up at Richard.

“Well?” he said.

She shook her head against the pillow. “I didn’t have a different vision, like you expected,” she said, and tried to sit up. “It was—”

“Stay put,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“But I need to tell you,” Joanna said, lying back, “it was definitely—”

“Hang on,” Richard said. “Don’t say anything until I get the recorder started.” He began pushing buttons randomly on the minirecorder. The tape feed popped open. He took the tape out and examined both sides. What was he doing? He’d watched her put a new tape in right before they started. “Tish, can you get Joanna a blanket?” he said. “She’s shivering.”

No, I’m not, Joanna thought, and realized he was stalling until Tish moved away so she wouldn’t hear what she said.

“Sure,” Tish said, and went over to the supply cabinet.

“Tell me what you saw,” Richard said as soon as she was out of earshot.

“The Titanic.”

“You’re sure? You had the same vision as last time? The passage and the people milling around beyond the door?”

“Yes, but this time I went out on deck, and—” She stopped as Tish came back with the blanket.

“I’m going to wait on recording the account till after you’ve done monitoring her,” Richard said to Tish. “Go ahead and finish unhooking the electrodes.” He went back over to the console without another look at Joanna and started going through the scans. And what would he say when Tish left? Joanna wondered, watching Tish spread the blanket over her legs and pull it up to cover her shoulders. Would he accuse her of being Bridey Murphy again for seeing the Titanic?

I can’t help it, she thought. It was the Titanic. She went over the NDE in her mind again while Tish unhooked the electrodes and checked her pulse and BP so she wouldn’t forget any of the details—the stairway, the First-Class Dining Saloon, the door to the Boat Deck—

I left my shoe in the door, she thought, and sat up. It’s still on the ship.

“Whoa, what are you doing?” Tish said.

“I—” Joanna said, and stared at her navy-stockinged feet sticking out below the blanket. But I was barefoot, she thought.

“I haven’t got your IV out yet,” Tish said, and Joanna obediently lay back down. It had felt so real. She could remember her bare foot on the icy deck, could remember taking her shoe off and wedging it in—She started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Tish asked, taping a piece of cotton over the site of the needle.

“My shoe—”

“They’re in the dressing room,” Tish said, “but you’re not going anywhere yet. I need to take your vitals one more time.” She did and then said, “So what’s so hilarious about your shoes?”

Nothing, Joanna thought. They weren’t what I was wearing.

“Come on, tell me, what’s the joke?” Tish said.

I can’t, Joanna thought, you wouldn’t understand. Because the shoe she’d left behind, wedged in the door, was a red tennis shoe, just like the one the patient had supposedly seen outside on the ledge when she floated up above the operating table.

Tish was still waiting for her to explain what was so funny. “Nothing, I’m sorry,” Joanna said. “I think I’m still a little disoriented,” and lay still while Tish took the foam cushions out from under her arms and legs. I need to tell Richard about this, she thought. I wonder if this counts as an out-of-body experience.

But Richard wasn’t interested in which core elements she’d had or what she’d seen. He was only interested in whether or not she’d seen the Titanic.

“You had the same vision this time?” he asked as soon as Tish was gone.

“No,” Joanna said, sitting up. “Not the exact same vision.” Richard looked both pleased and relieved. “But it was still the same place, and it is the Titanic.”

“How do you know?”

Joanna told him about the dining room and the Boat Deck. “It had to be the Titanic. They were signaling the Californian with a Morse lantern.”

“Dr. Wright?” Tish said from the door. Joanna wondered how long she’d been standing there. “I forgot to ask you before I left, are you interested?”

“In what?” Richard asked.

“Seeing Tommy Lee Jones’s new movie.”

“Oh,” he said, and it was clear from his tone that he had no idea at all what she was talking about. “Uh, no, Joanna and I have to go over her account, and I have to analyze the scans. It’ll probably be pretty late.”

“It doesn’t have to be tonight,” she said, and then, before he could give her another excuse, “I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes. Mr. Sage. At ten?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Right. Mr. Sage. See you then.”

“Wait,” Joanna said. “What about Mrs. Troudtheim? Doesn’t she have a session at three?”

“She called and canceled,” Richard said.

“While you were under,” Tish added helpfully.

“She said she thinks she’s coming down with the flu and she’ll call and reschedule when she’s feeling better,” Richard said; and to Tish, still lingering in the door, “Tomorrow at ten.”

Tish left, and he turned back to Joanna. “Did they say it was the Californian they were signaling?”

“No, but they said they were taking on water and that the Baltic and the Frankfurt were coming. And the dining room had to be the First-Class Dining Saloon—”

“Tell me about the beginning. Was it the same?”

“Yes,” she said, “except for the young man in the sweater.” She told him about the bearded man telling him the area was restricted and the young man replying that he’d heard a noise and come to investigate.

“But the noise was the same?”

“Yes,” Joanna said.

“And the passage, and the door? And the light?”

“Yes,” Joanna said, puzzled.

“And the unifying image was the same,” he murmured. “Come here,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

Joanna wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, slid down off the examining table, and followed him over to the console. He’d already called up her scans.

“This is the NDE you just experienced,” he said, and typed rapidly. All the areas went black except the frontal cortex. “What you’re looking at now is the long-term-memory activity.” He typed some more. “This is fast-forward,” he said, and the scans shifted rapidly, small scattered areas winking on and off, orange, red, and then back to blue, exploding across the screen like fireworks in a complex pattern.

“Okay,” he said, freezing the screen and putting another scan up beside it, “this is Tuesday’s NDE.” He went through the same process. “Now I’m going to superimpose the two,” he said and did. “Today’s is the darker shades, Tuesday’s is the lighter.”

Joanna watched the colors blink on and off, blue to orange, then red and back to blue-green, lighting randomly and going out again in different spots, at different speeds. “They don’t look anything like each other.”

“Exactly,” Richard said. “The L+R is completely different, which should indicate a completely different experience and a completely different memory as a unifying image. There’s not a single point of congruity, and yet you say you experienced the same images and the same central image.” He stared at the screen. “Maybe the frontal-cortex activity is random, after all, and it’s the temporal lobe that’s dictating the experience.”

He turned to her. “I’d like you to record as detailed an account as possible. Put down exactly what you saw and heard.” He stared at the scans. “When you had patients who’d coded more than once, did they have the same NDE each time?”

“No,” Joanna said. “Mrs. Woollam saw a garden one time, and a stairway, and a dark, open place. She did see that more than once, and she said she had been in a tunnel twice.”

He nodded. “Have you had other patients with more than one NDE?”

“Yes,” she said, trying to remember. “I’ll have to look up their accounts.”

“I’d like to have a list of them with what they saw each time, especially if it was the same thing.” He went back to looking at the screens. “There’s got to be a clue in here somewhere as to why you’re still seeing the Titanic.”

There is, Joanna thought, but it’s not in the scans. It’s in something Mr. Briarley said in class, or read to us out of a blue book with a caravel on it, and wondered if Kit had found the book yet.

That was hardly likely. She’d only had a few hours to look, and Joanna hadn’t exactly given her helpful clues, but she checked her answering machine anyway. Mr. Mandrake had called, and Guadalupe. “Do you still want us to write down what Carl Aspinall says?” her voice asked.

Yes, Joanna thought, feeling guilty. She hadn’t been over to five-east in nearly two weeks. Guadalupe probably thought she’d forgotten all about him. She thought about running down right then, but it had already been over an hour since she’d come out of the NDE. She’d better get her account down before she forgot anything. Oh, and she’d promised to contact Eldercare and put them in touch with Kit.

She did, and then recorded her account, putting it directly on the computer to save time. She printed it out and ran it up to Richard, who was on the phone, then went down to talk to Guadalupe, taking the stairs down to fifth and cutting through Pathology to the walkway.

The painters had been here, too. The walkway doors were swathed in yellow “Do Not Cross” tape, and someone had jammed a metal bar through the door handles for good measure. She would have to go down to third, which meant going straight past Mrs. Davenport’s room. An unacceptable risk.

She went down to second, crossed the walkway, and took the service elevator up to fifth. And ran into the painters themselves, working on the hallway ceiling. “You can’t come through here,” the nearest one said, pointing off to her left with a paint roller. “You need to go down to fourth and take the visitors’ stairs.” Which would take her through Peds and right past Maisie’s, but better Maisie than Mrs. Davenport, and maybe she was watching one of her videos and wouldn’t notice.

Fat chance. “Joanna!” Maisie called the second she started past the door, and when Joanna leaned in and said, “Hi, kiddo,” she said breathlessly, “I’ve got something to show you.”

The fluid retention was back. Her arms and legs were swollen, and her face was puffy.

“I can only stay a minute,” she said. “I have to go see a patient.”

“It’ll just take a minute,” Maisie said, hauling books out from under her covers. “I had Ms. Sutterly bring me a whole bunch of Titanic books. Look!” She held up a large picture book. On the cover was the familiar picture of the Titanic, its stern out of the water, propellers dripping and unlikely smoke still coming out of her funnels, poised for the final plunge, her lights still blazing.

“Did you know the band played right up till the very end?” Maisie asked.

“Yes,” Joanna said, thinking, I never should have mentioned the Titanic to her. “They played ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee.’ ”

“Huh-unh,” Maisie said. “Nobody knows for sure what they played. Some people think it was ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee,’ and some people think it was this other song, ‘Autumn.’ But nobody knows for sure, ’cause they all died.”

“Your teacher brought you all these books?” Joanna asked to change the subject.

“Uh-huh,” Maisie said, digging under the covers again. “She brought me a lot more, but some of them were little-kids’ books. Did you know there’s a Titanic ABC book?” she said, disgusted.

“No,” Joanna said, glad that it was possible to offend even Maisie’s sensibilities. She wondered what the letters stood for. I is for Iceberg? L is for Lorraine Allison? D is for Drowning?

“Do you know what they had for F?” Maisie said contemptuously. “First-Class Dining Saloon.”

“What should they have had?” Joanna said, almost afraid to ask.

Maisie gave her a withering look. “F is for French bulldog. You know, the one I told you about. Did you know there was this little girl who played with it on the Promenade Deck all the time?”

“Maisie—”

“There’s a Titanic pop-up book, too,” Maisie said. “I made Ms. Sutterly take those back to the library, but these have lots of stuff in them, so now if you need me to help with your research, I can,” she said, still breathless. With the exertion of digging for the books? Or with something else? Not only was she retaining fluid, but her lips looked bluer than usual, and when she inhaled, Joanna could hear a faint catch, like the beginning of a wheeze. She’s getting worse, Joanna thought, watching her leaf through the book.

“So, do you want me to look up something for you?” Maisie said.

“I think right now I want you to just read about the Titanic, so when I have questions, you’ll be ready to answer them. And I want you resting and doing everything the doctors and nurses tell you.” She began stacking up the books. “Where do you want these?”

“In my Barbie bag in the closet,” she said, “except for this one.” She grabbed a tall red book called The Child’s Titanic.

Joanna put the rest in the pink duffel bag and shoved it out of sight on the side of the closet. “Now I’ve got to go see my patient,” she said. “I’ll come see you soon, kiddo,” and started out of the room.

“Wait!” Maisie said before she’d taken two steps. “I have to ask you something.” She paused for breath, and Joanna heard the wheezing catch in her breath again. “What happens if your bracelet gets too tight?” She held out her puffy wrist with the plastic ID bracelet on it.

“Barbara will just cut it off and make a bigger one,” Joanna said. Was she worried about getting puffier? The bracelet wasn’t even snug, let alone pressing into the flesh.

“What if after they cut it off something bad happens,” Maisie said, “like a disaster, and they can’t put another one on?”

Had she been thinking about the abandoned gold bracelet they’d found in the ruins of Pompeii? “There won’t be a disaster,” Joanna started to say, and then decided not to. “I’ll tell Barbara if she has to cut this one off, she should put the new one on first,” she said. “All right?”

“Did you know the firemen go visit her grave every year?” Maisie said.

“Who?”

“The little girl,” Maisie said, as if it were obvious. “From the Hartford circus fire. They go put flowers on it every year. Do you think maybe her mother died?”

“I don’t know,” Joanna said. The mother’s dying in the fire, too, would explain why no one had come forward to identify the little girl, but all the other bodies had been identified, and if someone had identified the mother, why not the child? “I don’t know.”

“The firemen buried her in the cemetery, and every year they go put flowers on her grave,” Maisie said. “They put up a tombstone and everything. It says ‘Little Miss 1565’ on it and the year she died and stuff, but it’s not the same as a name.”

“No,” Joanna said. “It’s not.”

“I mean, at least all the little kids on the Titanic, they knew who they were, Lorraine Allison and Beatrice Sandstrom and Nina Harper and—is Sigrid a boy or a girl?”

“A girl.”

“And Sigrid Anderson. Of course they didn’t have tombstones, but if they did—”

“Maisie—”

“Can you put in a video?” Maisie said, lying back against the pillows.

“Sure. Which one? Winnie the Pooh?” Joanna said, reading out titles. “The Wizard of Oz? Alice in Wonderland?”

“The Wizard of Oz,” Maisie said.

“That’s a good one,” Joanna said, sliding it in and pushing “play.”

Maisie nodded. “I like the tornado.” Of course, Joanna thought. What was I thinking?

“And the part where the hourglass is running out,” Maisie said, “and they don’t have much time left.”

26

Joanna didn’t make it up to Coma Carl’s. By the time she escaped from Maisie’s room—Maisie insisted on telling her a few choice details about the 1953 Waco, Texas, tornado first—it was four.

Guadalupe will already have gone home, Joanna thought. It was just as well. She wanted to talk to Barbara and ask her about Maisie’s condition and find out what all this talk about her hospital wristband was about. But Barbara was in with a three-year-old boy with advanced leukemia, trying unsuccessfully to get an IV started.

Joanna went back up to her office and spent the rest of the afternoon working on the list of people who’d had more than one NDE. They seemed to be split evenly between people who’d seen radically different scenes and people who’d seen the same thing each time. Mr. Tabb had seen by turns an opening with a light coming through it and “bright figures beyond,” a stairway, a reddish darkness, and a feeling of intense warmth, while Ms. Burton, a brittle diabetic who’d coded four separate times, had had the exact same vision each time, “which is how I know it’s real.”

It seemed to Joanna that its always being exactly the same thing would more likely be proof that it was a prerecorded experience, played over and over again by the brain like a record stuck in a groove. She wished she’d asked Ms. Burton exactly what she meant by “real,” wished she’d asked all of her patients if it had seemed like an actual place, if it seemed to them like they had really gone there.

Because that was how it felt, even though Joanna knew intellectually that it was a hallucination and that she hadn’t gone anywhere, that she had really been lying on an examining table in her stocking feet while Tish monitored her blood pressure and flirted with Richard. But it felt as real, as three-dimensional, as her office with its Swedish ivy and shoe box full of interviews she hadn’t transcribed yet.

Joanna went over Ms. Burton’s separate accounts, and they did in fact seem to have been exactly the same, but Mr. Rutledge’s varied slightly from NDE to NDE, even though he said his were the same, too.

She found Mrs. Woollam’s two interviews. Joanna had told Richard she’d been in the tunnel twice, but Mrs. Woollam had said she didn’t think it was the same one, that the second time the tunnel had been narrower and the floor more uneven. Apparently the “dark, open place” she’d been in the remaining four times had been the same place, but, looking at Mrs. Woollam’s account, Joanna wondered. She had said it was too dark to see anything. The same went for Maisie’s fog. And several people who’d been completely blinded by the light.

Joanna worked till after seven, compiling a partial list, and then put on her coat and took the list to the lab. Richard was still there, staring at the scans, his chin in his hands. When she gave him the list, he barely grunted an acknowledgment.

“We’re having Dish Night tomorrow night. Can you come?”

“Sure,” he said, and turned back to the scans.

Well, it’s not exactly wild enthusiasm, Joanna thought, going out into the hall, but at least he didn’t turn me down. Down the hall, the elevator dinged, and Joanna ran to catch it. It opened, and Mr. Mandrake stepped out. “Oh, good, Dr. Lander,” he said. “I’m glad you’re still here. I’ve been trying to reach you for two days.” He pursed his lips.

“Mr. Mandrake, I’m afraid this isn’t a good time to talk,” she said, knowing it was hopeless. She was obviously on her way home, so she couldn’t claim she had an appointment. A date? No, he’d simply say, “This will only take a few minutes.”

“This will only take a few minutes,” he said. “I wanted to ask you about these NDEs of yours.”

He knew she’d been under! How had he found out? Tish? She’d been upset that Richard wouldn’t go out with her. Had she told another nurse about the scene and accidentally revealed that Joanna was the subject, and then the nurse had spread it through the rest of Gossip General? Or had Heidi seen her and Vielle talking and somehow figured it out, and he knew about the Titanic, too? “NDEs of mine?” she said, glancing anxiously toward the door of the lab.

“And of Dr. Wright, of course,” Mr. Mandrake said. “That is, assuming that you have succeeded in producing these so-called NDE simulations with your subjects. Have you?”

“Yes,” Joanna said in her relief that he didn’t know, and was instantly sorry.

“And the subjects have experienced the tunnel, the light, and the dead waiting for them?”

Yes, Joanna thought, and the Boat Deck and a Morse lamp and a red tennis shoe. “The NDEs have varied,” she said.

“Which means they haven’t experienced those things. As I expected. Have they experienced the Life Review and the Revelation of the Mysteries of the Cosmos?”

“No.”

“And the Bestowing of Powers?”

“Bestowing of Powers?” Joanna said. That was a new one.

“Yes, many of my subjects display enhanced paranormal abilities after their return: clairvoyance, telepathy, communications from the dead. I don’t suppose any of your subjects have evidenced such abilities?”

No, Joanna thought, because if I had, I’d be using them to send a telepathic message to Richard to come and save me.

“I take it your silence means they haven’t, which is not surprising. No laboratory stimulation of the brain could do any more than create physical sensations and the NDE is not physical, it is spiritual. It shows us the world that lies beyond death, the Reality beyond reality, and a number of my subjects have been in touch with that reality. Mrs. Davenport…”

Maybe I do have telepathic powers, Joanna thought. I knew we’d get around to Mrs. Davenport sooner or later.

“…received a message from her great-grandmother last night, a message she knew to be authentic. Do you know what that message was?”

“ ‘Rosabelle, believe?’ ” Joanna said.

Mr. Mandrake glared at her.

“She said, ‘There is no fear here,’ ” Mr. Mandrake intoned, “ ‘and no regret.’ Have any of your subjects spoken to the dead? Of course not, because these so-called simulations of the NDE are just that, mere physical imitations. Mrs. Davenport has also received messages from a number of…”

Joanna looked longingly at the door, and Richard, impossibly, emerged with an armful of scan printouts and file folders. “Oh, Dr. Lander, there you are,” he said, bending to lock the lab door. “I was afraid you’d forgotten.”

“Forgotten?” Joanna said.

“Our meeting.”

“Oh, our meeting,” Joanna said, clapping her hand over her mouth, “with Dr. Tabb. I did forget. You’re lucky you caught me. I was just on my way home. I’m sorry, Mr. Mandrake. Dr. Wright and I have a meeting—”

“Ten minutes ago,” Richard said, looking pointedly at his watch. “And you know how Dr. Tabb is about punctuality.” He took Joanna’s arm.

Mr. Mandrake pursed his lips. “This is extremely—”

“We’re late. If you’ll excuse us,” Richard said to Mandrake. He led Joanna rapidly toward the stairs and through the door.

“Thank you,” Joanna said, racketing down the stairs beside him. “In another minute he’d have had me going down to see Mrs. Davenport, who is now receiving messages from the dead. How did you know we were out there?”

“Telepathy,” he said, grinning. “And Mandrake’s piercing voice. Who’s Dr. Tabb?”

“Mr. Tabb is a patient I interviewed two years ago. I didn’t want to name a real doctor for fear he’d go try to get information out of him.”

“Well, hopefully he’ll spend the next few days searching for Dr. Tabb instead of paging us.” They’d reached the bottom of the stairs. “Which way are we least likely to run into him?”

“This way,” Joanna said, leading him through the oncology ward to a service elevator. “I can get out to the parking lot from here,” she said, “oh, but you can’t go back to the lab, can you? Not if we’re supposed to be in a meeting.”

“That’s okay. I wanted to talk to you anyway. Shall we go get something to eat?”

“That’d be great,” Joanna said, feeling inordinately pleased, “but I’d imagine the cafeteria’s closed.”

It was. “Is it ever open?” Richard asked as they stared through the locked glass doors.

“No,” Joanna said. “What now? You don’t have any food in your lab coat, do you?”

He made a search and came up with a Mountain Dew and half a Hostess cupcake. “I need to restock,” he said. “How does Taco Pierre’s sound? Oh, wait,” he rummaged through his pockets again, “I don’t have my keys.”

“I’ve got mine,” Joanna said, “but you don’t have a coat.”

“Taco Pierre’s has hot sauce, and your car does have a heater, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Joanna said.

She cranked it all the way up to high as soon as they got in and handed him her mittens, but he was shivering by the time they got to Taco Pierre’s, and he ordered two coffees with his tacos. “One for each hand,” he explained, and picked up six packets of extra hot sauce on the way to the table.

The dining area was littered with taco wrappings and straw papers. Joanna had to wipe off their table with a napkin before they sat down. “Somebody has got to open a restaurant closer to the hospital,” Richard said.

“A nice restaurant,” Joanna whispered, smiling at him. The place was a mess, the blond, tattooed kid behind the counter looked like the mug shot of the nail gunnee, and it wasn’t exactly a romantic setting, but it was warm, and deserted. And it’s a date of sorts, Joanna thought, Vielle will be so pleased, and felt pleased herself, taking a bite of a Tater Torro that had been fried at least a week ago. “At least it’s warm in here,” she said.

“And the coffee’s cold. So what did Mandrake have to say? I missed the first part.”

She told him while they ate. “And now Mrs. Davenport’s receiving messages from the dead.” She sipped thoughtfully at her Coke. “I wonder if they’re in code.”

“In code?” Richard asked, drinking his cold coffee. “Yes, like the message Houdini promised to try and send his wife after he died,” Joanna said, taking a bite of taco.

“ ‘Rosabelle, believe,’ he told her, but the message was really ‘Rosabelle answer, tell, pray-answer, look, tell, answer-answer, tell.’ The words stood for the letters in ‘believe.’ It was the code they’d used in their old mind-reading act.”

“Did he succeed?”

“No, and if anybody could have gotten a message through, it was Houdini,” Joanna said, taking a drink of her Coke, “though doubtless in a couple of days Mrs. Davenport will announce that she’s spoken to him personally and he’s told her,” she affected a sepulchral voice, “ ‘There is no fear here, and no regret.’ ”

“ ‘And no daring underwater escapes,’ ” Richard said in the same ghostly tone. “Why does the afterlife always sound like the most boring place imaginable?”

“Boring might be good,” Joanna said, thinking of the empty darkness beyond the bridge, of the officer saying, “There’s water on D Deck.”

“You mean as opposed to the Titanic,” Richard said, as if he were telepathic. He crumpled up the papers his burrito had been wrapped in. He took the tray over to the trash. “Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” He rummaged through the file folders on the seat next to him and pulled out the transcript of her NDE. “You keep saying it’s the Titanic,” he said. “How do you know it is?”

So much for this being a date, Joanna thought. “I’m not claiming it’s the actual Titanic,” she said patiently. “I explained that before. It isn’t the historical ship that went down in 1912. It’s—I don’t know—some sort of Titanic of the mind.”

“I know,” Richard said. “That’s not what I’m asking. How do you know what you’re seeing is the Titanic?”

“How do I know it is?” she said. “I heard the engines stop and saw the passengers out on deck. I saw them signaling the Californian.”

“Correction,” Richard said, looking through her stapled account, “you saw them signaling something. No mention was made of the Californian. You assumed that.” He took a sip of coffee. “There’s no mention by any of these people you saw of an iceberg or a collision. In fact, the steward says he thinks it was a mechanical problem.”

“But the young woman in the nightgown heard it,” Joanna said.

Richard shook his head. “She heard a sound like a cloth tearing. That could be any number of things.”

“Like what?”

“A collision, an explosion, the mechanical problem the steward described. Did you see anything that identified the Titanic by name? Something with SS Titanic written on it?”

“RMS,” Joanna corrected. “She was a royal mail ship.”

“All right, with RMS Titanic on it.” He flipped through the stapled pages of her account. She could see that a number of lines had been marked with yellow highlighter. “You said you saw the lifeboats. Was there a name on the side of them?”

“They had canvas covers over them,” Joanna said, trying to remember if she’d seen the Titanic’s name anywhere. Had the steward’s white jacket had an insignia on it? Or the officer’s cap? She couldn’t remember. What else would have had an insignia on it, or the Titanic’s name?

The life preservers, she thought, trying to remember if she’d seen one on the Boat Deck. No, but it seemed like one had been on the inside wall of the deck just outside the passage next to the deck light, with RMS Titanic stenciled on it in red.

You’re confabulating, she told herself sharply. That’s an image from the movie, and if it was next to the deck light, you wouldn’t have been able to see it for the glare. “No,” she said, “I didn’t see anything with Titanic on it.”

“I didn’t think so,” he said. “I’m not sure it is the Titanic. I’ve been going over your transcript.” He turned to a page halfway through, heavily marked in yellow, and read, “ ‘Isn’t anyone coming?’ ‘The Baltic, but she’s over two hundred miles away.’ ‘What about the Frankfurt?’ ” He looked at her. “It was the Carpathia who came to her aid. And, as you say yourself in your account,” he said, looking back through the pages, “the Californian was the ship that didn’t answer, not the Frankfurt.”

“But they would have radioed more than one ship,” Joanna said. “They said both ships were too far away to help. They might have been two out of a dozen they tried to reach.”

“There’s also the staircase. I know,” he said, putting up his hands defensively, “you said the memory didn’t come from the movie, but one thing the movie did show was the staircase outside the dining room, with the fancy winding stairs and the big skylight—”

“The Grand Staircase,” Joanna murmured. He was right. The stairs leading down to the First-Class Dining Saloon had been marble, with filigreed gold and wrought-iron balustrades and a bronze cherub on the newel post, holding an electric torch, and at the head of the stairs a huge clock, with two bronze figures placing a laurel wreath atop the clock face. Honour and Glory Crowning Time.

I must have been on another staircase, she thought, but there wouldn’t have been two stairways next to the First-Class Dining Saloon, would there? And there was the empty deck and the deserted bridge. “So, what do you think?” Joanna asked. “That I’m seeing some other ship?”

“I think it’s possible. Nothing you’ve described would eliminate it from being the Lusitania, for instance.”

“Except that the Lusitania sank in broad daylight. And nobody stands around calmly asking what’s happened when a torpedo hits them.”

“Or some other ship you’ve heard about from Maisie,” he continued imperturbably. “Or from Mr. Wojakowski.”

“The Yorktown was an aircraft carrier,” Joanna said. “This was an ocean liner. I saw the funnels.”

“Correction,” he said, consulting the account again. “You saw a large black looming shape. The central island of an aircraft carrier would be a large black looming shape, wouldn’t—” and looked up at the kid from behind the counter, who was standing over them.

“We’re closin’,” he said and continued to stand there, his tattooed arms folded across his chest while Richard disposed of his coffee cup, and Joanna put on her coat.

They went out into the freezing darkness. It had started to snow while they were inside, a wet, sleety snow. “How long did Vielle say the passengers could survive before they got hypothermia?” Richard asked, blowing on his hands.

“It wasn’t an aircraft carrier,” Joanna said, starting the car and heading back to the hospital. “Aircraft carriers have flat decks, and they don’t have dining saloons with crystal chandeliers and grand pianos.”

“And this ship doesn’t have a Grand Staircase,” he said, “which makes me think it’s an amalgam of ships and ship imagery stored in your long-term memory. You said yourself it might be the Mary Celeste.”

“The Mary Celeste was a sailing ship,” she said, but he was right. There were discrepancies. The deck had been empty and deserted, and there had been no one on the bridge.

She pulled into the parking lot. “Where’s your car parked? Oh, wait, you’ve got to go get your coat.”

“Yeah, and I want to look at your scans again.”

Joanna pulled around by the north entrance and stopped. “Thanks for rescuing me from the clutches of the Evil One,” she said.

“I hope he isn’t still crouched outside the lab, waiting.”

“I hope Mrs. Davenport isn’t really telepathic.”

Richard laughed and got out, and then leaned back in. “You said before you know it’s the Titanic. Is this sense of conviction you have the same as the one you had when you first recognized the passage as being on the Titanic?”

I know where this is going, Joanna thought wearily. “Yes.”

He nodded. “That could be it. The temporal lobe rather than a memory out of long-term is what’s producing the spurious feeling that it’s the Titanic.” He slapped the roof of the car. “I’m freezing. Good night. See you in the morning.” He shut the car door.

I hope you succumb to hypothermia, Joanna thought as she drove away. It isn’t a spurious feeling. It’s the Titanic.

The phone was ringing when she got home. It’s probably Mr. Mandrake, she thought, leaving his fourteenth message. She let the answering machine pick up. “Hi, this is Kit Gardiner—”

Joanna snatched up the phone. “I’m here, Kit, sorry, I just walked in the door.”

“I know it’s late,” Kit said, “but I found something. Not the textbook,” she hastened to add. “You said you were trying to remember something Uncle Pat said about the Titanic. Well, this afternoon I found all his Titanic books, and I thought what you were trying to remember might be in one of them and I wondered if you were interested in looking at them. Or I could look it up for you, if you like. You said it was something about the engines stopping and passengers being out on deck in their nightclothes.”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “Listen, Kit, could you look up something else for me, too? I need to know what the First-Class Dining Saloon on the Titanic looked like.”

“Sure, I’ll be glad to look it up. Anything else?”

“Yes,” Joanna said, trying to think what would prove the ship was the Titanic. “I need you to find out if they used a Morse lamp to signal the Californian that night. And the names of the ships they contacted by wireless. If that’s not too much.”

“It’s not,” Kit said cheerfully. “When do you need it? Would tomorrow night be soon enough? If your invitation to Dish Night still holds. I decided I’d like to try to come, after all. You were right about the Eldercare program. They are willing to come on short notice.”

“Great,” Joanna said. “Can I pick you up?”

“That would be wonderful. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” Kit said, as if Joanna were the one searching for textbooks and looking up facts instead of her. “What time?”

“Dish Night starts at seven,” Joanna said. “I’ll pick you up at six-thirty.”

“Great,” Kit said, “I’ll see y—”

There was a sudden, earsplitting sound. “Oh, my gosh!” Kit said. “Can you hang on a minute?”

“Is everything okay?” Joanna said, but the only sound was the high-pitched ringing. Or buzzing, Joanna thought, wondering if she should hang up so that Kit could call 911. Or if she should hang up and call it herself.

“It’s all right, Uncle Pat,” she heard Kit’s faint voice say calmly in the background, “everything’s fine,” but the sound didn’t shut off. I wonder what’s making it, Joanna thought. It sounded like a cross between a teakettle’s shrill whistle and a code alarm. Or how the funnels on the Titanic must have sounded, she thought, blowing off steam in a deafening roar, and wondered if that, and not the engines stopping, was the sound she’d heard in the passage.

“Most of them didn’t hear it at all,” Mr. Briarley said suddenly into the phone. He must have come into the library while Kit was trying to deal with whatever was making the sound.

“Mr. Briarley?” Joanna said.

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“Joanna Lander.”

“Joanna Lander,” he repeated, no recognition at all in his voice.

“I’m an ex-student of yours. From Dry Creek High School.”

“High school,” he said. There was a soft clunk, like he’d laid the phone down, but apparently he hadn’t because after a few seconds he said, “It was the sudden ceasing of the engines’ vibration. Jack Thayer heard it, and the Ryersons, and Colonel Gracie, and they all went out on deck to see what had happened.”

He’s telling me about the engines stopping on the Titanic, Joanna thought, clutching the phone. Kit said he sometimes remembers things the next day.

“No one seemed to know,” Mr. Briarley said. “Howard Case thought they’d dropped a propeller. One of the stewards said it was a minor mechanical problem. No one thought it was serious…” He paused, as if waiting for her to say something.

“Mr. Briarley,” Joanna said, her heart beating painfully, “what did you say about the Titanic that day in class?”

27

For a long moment all Joanna could hear was the high-pitched scream going on and on, and then Mr. Briarley said, “They speak to us.” Joanna waited, not understanding, but afraid if she interrupted his train of thought she’d destroy it. “Boring, dusty artifacts. That’s what literature is,” he said, and then, impatiently, “Yes, Mr. Inman, this will be on the final. Everything is on the final,” and the scream abruptly cut off.

That’s definitely what I’m hearing in the passage, Joanna thought irrelevantly, listening to the ringing silence. It’s definitely a sound cutting off. “Mr. Briarley,” she said, “can you remember what you said in class that day?”

“Remember?” he said vaguely. There was a long, breathing pause, and then he said, in a tone full of sorrow and despair, “I shall remember it forever.”

I had no business asking him, Joanna thought. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I—”

“Who is this?” Mr. Briarley demanded. “Are you a friend of Kevin’s?”

“I’m an ex-student of yours, Mr. Briarley. Joanna Lander.”

“Then you’ll sit on this side,” he said, and in the background she could hear Kit say, “Don’t hang up, Uncle Pat. It’s for me.”

“I don’t know who it is,” Mr. Briarley said grumpily. “People don’t give you their names,” and the sound of the phone being handed over.

“Sorry,” Kit said. “Uncle Pat somehow got the kitchen smoke alarm down and the alarm button stuck, and I couldn’t get it shut off. You said you’ll be here at six-thirty?”

“Yes. Kit—”

“Oops, gotta go. ’Bye,” Kit said and hung up.

Joanna stood there, staring at the receiver. “I shall remember it forever,” Mr. Briarley had said, but it wasn’t true. He couldn’t remember it, and neither could she. She felt suddenly bone-tired.

She put the phone down. Her answering machine was blinking. She hit the “play” button. “You have one message,” the machine said. “Vielle here. Did you remember to pick up the videos?”

“No,” Joanna said aloud, “I’ll do it in the morning,” and went to bed. But Blockbuster didn’t open till eleven, she found out on her way to work the next morning. Isn’t anything ever open? she wondered, staring at the locked doors and wondering when she was going to be able to get back.

It would have to be this afternoon. Mr. Sage’s session was at ten, and it usually took a half hour for his session and at least two hours to pry his account out of him. That meant twelve-thirty, and then she had to transcribe his account. At least that won’t take long, she thought. But she also needed to finish the list of multiple NDEs for Richard and try to get in touch with Mrs. Haighton. And talk to Guadalupe. And tell Vielle she’d invited Kit to Dish Night.

She did that as soon as she got to work, hoping Vielle would be busy so she couldn’t interrogate her again. She was. The ER was jammed. “Spring has sprung!” Vielle said, and when Joanna looked confused, remembering the sleet she’d just driven to work in, explained, “Flu season, in force. Fevers, dehydration, projectile vomiting—you’d better get out of here.”

“You, too,” Joanna said. “I just came to tell you I invited someone to Dish Night.”

“Oh, please tell me it’s Officer Denzel!”

“It’s not,” Joanna said. “It’s the niece of my high school English teacher. That’s who I went to see the other day when I borrowed your car. Mr. Briarley,” Joanna said, wondering how she was going to explain why she’d gone to see him. “He has Alzheimer’s.”

“Alzheimer’s,” Vielle said, shaking her head sympathetically. “Didn’t he have a Do Not Resuscitate order? His relatives should definitely get one for him if this happens again. We get last-stage Alzheimer’s patients in here, and reviving them isn’t a kindness,” Vielle said, and Joanna realized Vielle thought that Mr. Briarley had coded and been revived, and that she’d gone over to record his NDE.

Maybe I can let her go on thinking that, Joanna thought, but Kit might say something. And Vielle’s your best friend. You have no business lying to your best friend. But she couldn’t tell her the truth. If she so much as mentioned the Titanic—

“Remember when we were talking the other night about the best way to die?” Vielle was saying. “Well, Alzheimer’s has got to be the worst, forgetting everything you ever knew or loved or were, and knowing it’s happening. Was he a good teacher?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “He used to recite pages and pages of Keats and Shakespeare, and his tests were incredibly hard.”

“He sounds like a real gem,” Vielle said sarcastically.

“He was. He had this dry sense of humor, and he knew everything, all about literature and writers and history. He was always telling us the most fascinating things. Did you know Charles Lamb’s sister stabbed their mother to death one night at the dinner table with a table knife?”

“It sounds like you paid a lot more attention in English class than I did,” Vielle said.

But not enough, Joanna thought, not enough, because I can’t remember what he said about the Titanic. “He knew everything. That’s why I went to see him,” Joanna said, hoping Vielle wouldn’t ask her to be more specific. “I didn’t know he had Alzheimer’s, and I met his niece, and I had to invite her. She’s his full-time caregiver and she never gets out, the only time she leaves the house is to go to the grocery store, and they never have any visitors—”

“Gilbert and Sullivan try to rescue another drowning victim,” Vielle murmured.

“I’m not—well, all right, maybe I am, but she’s very nice, you’ll like her.”

“So that was why you tore off like that in my car and were gone for over four hours,” Vielle said skeptically. “To ask your old English teacher a question? About Charles Lamb’s sister?”

“No,” Joanna said. “Is there any particular video you want me to get for tonight? Besides Glory?”

“How about Meet Joe Black?” Vielle said. “About a woman who falls so much in love with Death she nearly ends up dying.”

“I’ll get a comedy,” Joanna said and went up to see Guadalupe, who wasn’t there.

“She’s out today,” an unfamiliar nurse at the charge desk said. “She’s got this flu that’s going around.”

“Oh,” Joanna said. “Well, will you tell her when she comes back that, yes, I’m still interested in having the nurses write down what Mr. Aspinall says.”

“I’ll leave a note for her,” the nurse said, grabbing a pad of Post-it notes. “Still interested… nurses… write down…” she said, writing, and looked up. “Are you sure you mean Mr. Aspinall? He—”

“Yes, I’m aware he’s in a coma,” Joanna said. “Guadalupe will know what the message means.”

She watched the nurse finish writing the message and stick it in Guadalupe’s box and then went down to Coma Carl’s room. His wife was sitting next to his bed, reading aloud from a paperback. “ ‘ “We got him now,” Buck drawled, reining in his horse,’ ” she read. “ ‘ “He can’t get through thataway. Even an Apache tracker’d get lost in among them canyons.” ’ ”

Joanna looked at Carl. In the week since she’d seen him he’d clearly gone downhill. His chest and his face both looked more sunken than before, and grayer. The number of bags on his IV stand had multiplied, and so had the number of monitors.

“Dr. Lander!” Mrs. Aspinall said, surprised and pleased. She closed the book.

“I just thought I’d stop in for a moment and see how Mr. Aspinall was doing,” Joanna said.

“He’s holding his own,” Mrs. Aspinall said, and Joanna wondered if she was as much in denial as Maisie’s mother, but it was obvious from looking at her that she wasn’t. She’d lost weight, too, and strain was apparent in her face. “Carl?” Mrs. Aspinall said, leaning forward to touch his arm. “Carl, Dr. Lander’s here to see you.”

“Hello, Carl,” Joanna said.

Mrs. Aspinall laid the book, which had a picture of a galloping horse and rider on the cover, on the nightstand. “I’ve been reading aloud to Carl,” she said. “The nurses say he can hear my voice. Do you think that’s true?”

No, Joanna thought, remembering the silence of the Boat Deck, the darkness beyond the railing. Even if Tish had taken the headphones off and Richard had shouted in her ear, she couldn’t have heard them.

“Sometimes I think he does hear me,” Mrs. Aspinall said, “but other times he seems so… Still, it can’t hurt,” she said, smiling up at Joanna.

“And it may help,” Joanna said. “Some patients have reported being aware of the presence of their loved ones while they were in a coma.”

“I hope so.” Mrs. Aspinall clasped his unresisting hand. “I hope he knows I’m here, and that I’d do anything for him,” she said fiercely, “anything.”

Joanna thought of Maisie. “I know,” she said, and Mrs. Aspinall looked embarrassed, as if she had forgotten Joanna was there.

“It’s so kind of you to come see Carl,” she said and picked up the book again.

“It was nice to see you, Mrs. Aspinall,” Joanna said, and, even though she was convinced he was somewhere he couldn’t hear her, “You hang in there, Carl.”

She went back up to her office, also using the back way and opening the door of the stairway a crack before she came out. Mr. Mandrake wasn’t there, but he’d left three more messages on her answering machine. There was also one from Mrs. Troudtheim saying she wasn’t getting the flu after all and when did they want her to come in, but none from Kit.

She’d been half-hoping she’d hear from her, though she’d said tonight, and if there had been a message from her, it would most likely have been her canceling because Mr. Briarley was having a bad day. But she’d hoped Kit would call and say, “The Titanic contacted the Baltic and the Frankfurt,” or “The dining saloon had pink lamps and a rose carpet,” so she could convince Richard it was the Titanic, and not an amalgam.

Because it was. It wasn’t just an assortment of ship-related images dredged up out of long-term memory. There was a reason it was the Titanic. Mr. Briarley had slapped the book shut and dropped it on the desk and said… Joanna stared at the answering machine, trying to remember. It was foggy out, she thought, and had a sudden image of a snowy, sunny day, the light from the icicles flashing, glittering…

You’re confabulating, she told herself sternly. Maybe she should take a different tack, not try to remember that particular incident, but what she knew about the Titanic, and maybe that would trigger the memory.

All right. She knew about the ship going full speed ahead, even though there had been dozens of ice messages, and about the men calmly playing bridge in the first-class smoking room after the boats had gone, about Mrs. Straus, who’d refused to leave her husband, and Benjamin Guggenheim, who’d gone below and put on tails and a white waistcoat. “We’ve dressed in our best,” he’d said, “and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.” And about the Californian, who hadn’t seen the Morse-lamp messages the Titanic was sending, hadn’t understood that the rockets it saw were distress signals—

“Dr. Lander?” Tish said, knocking on the door. “Dr. Wright said to tell you he’s ready to begin the session.”

“He is?” Joanna said, glancing at her watch. Good God, it was nearly ten.

“Sorry,” she said, “be right there,” and scrambled to collect her minirecorder, a new tape, and her notebook. “Is Mr. Sage here?”

“Yes,” Tish said. “Talkative, as usual.”

Joanna grinned, shut the door, and locked it, just in case Mr. Mandrake came snooping around. They started back toward the lab.

“But at least Mr. Sage doesn’t have his head in RIPT scans like some people I could name,” Tish said sarcastically, “and he actually listens to you when you talk to him. The reason I came to get you,” she said, leaning confidentially toward Joanna, “was to tell you I’ve given up on Dr. Wright. He’s all yours.”

“He doesn’t listen to me either,” Joanna said, thinking of their conversation at Taco Pierre’s.

“That’s because he spends all his time thinking about NDEs. And I mean all his time. Do you know what he said when I told him I’d rented that Tommy Lee Jones movie that we’d talked about?”

That you talked about, Joanna thought.

“And that I’d bought steaks and made a salad? He said he can’t, that he’s busy tonight. Probably staring at his scans.”

This is probably not a good time to tell her about Dish Night, Joanna thought.

“He’s completely obsessed with those scans. If he doesn’t watch it, he’ll start believing NDEs are real, like Mr. Mandrake.”

“Somehow I can’t see that happening,” Joanna said and went in the lab.

Richard was at the console, staring at the scans, his hand up to his chin. “See?” Tish mouthed to Joanna.

Joanna went over to the examining table, where Mr. Sage was sitting, his hospital gown on. “Good morning, Mr. Sage,” she said. “How are you this morning?”

Mr. Sage thought about it a good forty seconds. “Okay,” he said. Tish gave Joanna a significant look.

At least his account won’t take long to record, Joanna thought, watching Tish prep Mr. Sage. Ten minutes for the session and another fifteen to pry out of him the fact that it was dark.

She was wrong. After two minutes and forty seconds in non-REM sleep, he went into the NDE-state. And stayed there.

After ten minutes, Richard asked, “How long was he under last time?”

“Two minutes, nineteen seconds,” Joanna said.

“Tish, how do his vitals look?”

“Fine,” Tish said. “Pulse 65, BP 110 over 70.”

A minute later, Richard asked, “What about his vitals now?”

“The same,” Tish said. “Pulse 65, BP 110 over 70. Is he in non-REM sleep?”

“No,” Richard said, sounding bemused. “He’s still in the NDE-state. Let’s stop the dithetamine.”

Tish did, but it didn’t change anything. Ten minutes later, Mr. Sage was still in the NDE-state. “Is there a problem?”

“No,” Richard said. “His EKG’s fine, his vitals are fine, and the scan patterns aren’t showing any abnormalities. He’s just having a long NDE.”

Joanna looked down at Mr. Sage. What if he can’t find the passage, or the tunnel, or the whatever it is where he is, back? she thought. What if he forgot to wedge his tennis shoe in whatever door or gate or barrier he went through, and it swung shut behind him and locked?

At twenty-eight minutes and fourteen seconds, Richard said, “All right, that’s long enough,” and told Tish to administer the norepinephrine and bring him out. “One good thing,” he said, watching the scans finally shift to the non-REM and then the waking pattern. “Mr. Sage should have plenty to tell us.”

But he was as noncommunicative as ever. “It was dark…” he said, pausing forever between phrases, “and then there was a light… and then it was dark again.”

“Were you there longer this time?” Joanna asked.

“Longer?”

I honestly think he’s dimwitted, Joanna thought. “Yes,” she said patiently. “Did it feel like more time had passed?”

“When?”

“In the dark,” Joanna said, and when he looked confused, “or in the light.”

“No.”

“Were you in the same place?”

“Place?”

She tried for nearly two and a half hours to get something, anything, out of him, to no avail.

At least his account won’t take long to type up, she thought, and I can run over to Blockbuster, but when she ran the transcript up to Richard, he asked for any and all references to elapsed time in her NDE interviews and any information on the actual time, if documented, of the clinical death. That took all afternoon. Halfway through writing it up, Richard knocked on her door. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it to Dish Night tonight,” he said. “I’m not done analyzing Mr. Sage’s scans, and I’ve still got the neurotransmitter analysis to go.”

“What time is it?” Joanna asked, glancing at her watch. “Oh, my gosh, it’s a quarter to six,” she said, hitting “save” and grabbing her coat. She was supposed to pick up Kit at six-thirty. And she still hadn’t gotten the videos.

“Tell Vielle I’m sorry. Maybe next time,” Richard said as she searched for her keys.

“I will,” she said and took off for Blockbuster. All right now, she told herself, skidding into the parking lot, just go in, grab a couple of movies, and go get Kit. Easier said than done. Glory was checked out, and so was Jumpin’ Jack Flash, and when she browsed the aisles, the first movie she picked up was a Woody Allen, the second starred Kevin Costner, and everything else seemed to have been made by demolitions experts.

“Are you finding everything?” a short kid in a blue-and-yellow shirt said.

No, she thought. Do you know where the Grand Staircase is? Or why I’m seeing the Titanic? “Can you suggest a good comedy?” she said.

“You bet,” he said, striding purposefully down the New Releases aisle and picking up a box with a photo of Robin Williams made up as a clown on the cover. “Die Laughing,” he said. “It’s about a man who’s dying of a heart condition.” Joanna shook her head. “Or how about this? Missing Link. It’s a comedy about a man with amnesia who doesn’t know who he is or what his name is—”

“What about Julia Roberts?” Joanna said. “Do you have anything with Julia Roberts in it?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said and walked over to the drama section. “Dying Young. Julia Roberts and Campbell Scott. It’s about a young woman who’s a caregiver for a man dying of leukemia—”

“I meant a Julia Roberts comedy,” Joanna said desperately.

He frowned. “Her new one’s all checked out. How about Runaway Bride?”

“Great,” she said, snatching the blue-and-yellow box from him, and when he started to walk away, “Nobody dies in this, do they? Or loses their memory?”

He shook his head.

“Great,” she said and began rummaging for her Blockbuster card. She knew Dish Night was supposed to be a double feature, but there was no way she could live through another round of this. One would have to do.

There was also no time. She’d promised she’d pick up Kit at six-thirty, and it was already twenty-five after. She took Runaway Bride from the outstretched hand of the short kid and ran, hoping her being late wouldn’t give Kit time to change her mind about going, but Kit met her at the door with her coat on. “Hi, come on in,” she said. “I’m almost ready to go.”

“Where are you going?” Mr. Briarley called sharply from the library.

“I’m going out, Uncle Pat,” Kit called back. “With Joanna. We’re going to watch a movie.”

“I’m sorry,” Joanna whispered. “Should I have waited for you in the car?”

Kit shook her head. “I tried sneaking out a couple of times so he wouldn’t see me leave,” she whispered back, “but it just made it worse. Come on in. I just need to tell the caregiver something. I found the answers to some of your questions.”

She led the way into the library. Mr. Briarley was sitting in his dark red leather chair, reading a book. He didn’t look up when they came in.

A gray-haired woman in a shirtwaist was sitting on the couch. She reminded Joanna of Mrs. Troudtheim. She had the same friendly, no-nonsense, “I can survive anything” manner, and she even had a tote bag full of olive-green-and-bright-purple yarn. What is it with crocheting? Joanna wondered. Do people automatically go color-blind when they learn to crochet?

“Now, you have my cell phone number,” Kit said to her. “I borrowed my cousin’s till I can get one of my own,” she explained to Joanna.

“Right here,” Mrs. Gray said, patting the breast pocket of her dress.

“Do you want Vielle’s number, too?” Joanna asked Kit, and, when she nodded, recited it to Mrs. Gray.

“And you’ll call me if there’s anything?” Kit said anxiously. “Anything at all?”

“I’ll call you,” Mrs. Gray said, pulling out her crocheting. “Now, you go have a nice time, and don’t worry. I’ve got things under control here.”

“Go?” Mr. Briarley said, shutting his book and marking the place with his thumb. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going out, Uncle Pat,” Kit said. “I’m going to watch a movie. With Joanna, Joanna Lander,” she said, presenting Joanna to him.

He gave no sign of recognition. “She was a student of yours at Dry Creek,” Kit said. “We’re going to go watch a movie.”

Joanna thought of the steward, repeatedly starting off down the deck, of the young woman in the nightgown, saying over and over again, “It’s so cold.” Was that what having Alzheimer’s was like, being trapped in a hallucination, in a dream, repeating the same lines, the same actions, over and over again? And how about Kit? She was trapped, too, in an endlessly repeating nightmare, though you couldn’t tell by the quiet, loving way she answered him, patted his arm.

“What about Kevin?” he asked. “Isn’t he going with you?”

“No, Uncle Pat.” She turned to Joanna. “Ready? Oh, wait, I had a book I wanted to show you before we go,” she said, and ran upstairs.

At the word go, Joanna looked apprehensively at Mr. Briarley, but he had returned to his book. Kit reappeared, carrying two textbooks. “I don’t think either of these is it,” she said, handing them to Joanna, “but since you’re here—”

Neither of them was it. Joanna knew as soon as she saw them. “Well, it was worth a try,” Kit said, ran them back upstairs, and came down again, cell phone in hand. “Okay. I’m ready. Good-bye, Uncle Pat.” She kissed him on the cheek.

“ ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ is not, contrary to the way it is popularly taught, a poem about similes and alliteration and onomatopoeia,” Mr. Briarley said, as if he were lecturing to her second-period class. “Neither is it about albatrosses and oddly spelled words. It is a poem about death and despair. And resurrection.” He stood up, walked to the window, and pulled the curtain aside to look out. “Where’s Kevin? He should be here by now.”

Kit went over and led him back to his chair. He sat down. “I’ll be back soon,” she said.

He looked up innocently. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going out with Joanna. We’re going to go watch a movie,” she said and held her cell phone up to show Mrs. Gray, who was contentedly crocheting. “Call me,” she said.

“Does that happen every time you go out?” Joanna asked as they got in the car.

“Pretty much,” Kit said, turning on her cell phone. “This was such a great idea. Now I won’t worry that Mrs. Gray’s trying to reach me and I don’t know it.”

Like the Californian, Joanna thought, wondering how to broach the subject of the questions Kit had said she’d found the answers to. If she asked her now, on the way over, it would sound like she’d only invited Kit to Dish Night to get information out of her. But if she waited, Kit might bring it up in the middle of the movie, with Vielle right there, and Vielle was already suspicious.

It had better be now. But at least lead up to it, Joanna thought. “I’m so glad you decided to come, Kit,” she said.

“So am I,” Kit said, reaching in the pocket of her coat and pulling out a folded sheet of paper. “Okay, the Morse lamp,” she said. “They did use one on the Titanic, to signal the Californian. It was on the port bridge wing, which, according to the map in The Illustrated Titanic, was just in front of the bridge and off to the left. I had to look that up,” she said, smiling. “I never can remember which is port and which is starboard. Port is left as you’re facing the bow. Starboard’s right.”

In front of the bridge and off to the left. That was where the two men had stood, signaling with the lantern. “Did it say what the Morse lamp looked like?”

Kit shook her head. “Unfortunately, even though it’s called The Illustrated Titanic, there was no illustration, and no description. I’ll keep looking. Now, about the ships she tried to contact, I’m not sure I’ve got them all. The stuff about the wireless is scattered all over the place, and half the books don’t have indexes, so I don’t know if this is all of them, but the ones I have are…” she peered at the paper in the light from the passing streetlights, “…the Virginian, the Carpathia—that’s the one that picked up the survivors—the Burma, and the Olympic.”

The Virginian, the Carpathia, the Burma, and the Olympic. Not the Baltic or the Frankfurt. But Kit had said the information about the wireless was scattered all over the place, and the Titanic could have signaled dozens of ships. The books might only mention those that were close enough to help or had responded. The officer had said the Frankfurt wasn’t answering.

“And of course the Californian,” Kit said, “but you said ‘contacted,’ and they were never able to contact her. Did you know her wireless operator shut down his wireless and went to bed five minutes before the Titanic sent her first SOS?”

Joanna laughed.

“What is it?” Kit asked. “Did I say something funny?”

“You just remind me of somebody, a little girl I know who’s always beginning her sentences with ‘Did you know?’ ”

“A patient of yours?” Kit asked.

“Sort of,” Joanna said. “Were you able to find out anything about the first-class dining room?”

“First-Class Dining Saloon,” Kit corrected. “Yes, there was tons of stuff. It was…” she consulted her notes by the light of the streetlights again, “ ‘a sumptuous dining room patterned after England’s Haddon Hall and decorated in the Jacobean style.’ ”

Jacobean. Joanna had no idea what Jacobean furniture looked like. She pulled into the parking lot of Vielle’s apartment complex. “Now, I have to warn you,” she said, shutting off her headlights. “We have a rule against talking about work at Dish Night, so you’ll have to tell me about the rest of this on the way back.”

“Okay,” Kit said. “Just let me finish this part about the dining saloon.” Joanna nodded and switched on the overhead light. “It was located in the center of the ship, on the saloon deck, next to the Grand Staircase. It was one hundred and fourteen feet long and was capable of seating five hundred passengers at a time. It was painted white and had two rows of white pillars down the middle. The chairs and tables were dark oak, and the chairs were upholstered in dark green velvet with headrests embroidered in fleurs-de-lis.” Kit folded up the paper and stuck it back in the pocket of her coat. “I’ll tell you what I found out about the engines stopping on the way back,” she said, but that wouldn’t be necessary. Richard was right. It wasn’t the Titanic.

28

Vielle had a fit about Joanna’s having brought Kit. “Are you out of your mind?” she whispered when Kit took the popcorn into the living room. “Letting her near Richard? Did you look at her? She’s beautiful, and guys really go for the fragile, helpless type. If he gets one look at her, you can kiss your chances with Dr. Right good-bye.”

“Richard’s not coming,” Joanna said. “We had a problem with the session this afternoon, and he needed to—”

“What kind of problem?” Vielle demanded. “And whose session? Yours?”

“Dish Night Rule Number One, no talking about work,” Joanna said. “I’ve already warned Kit about that.”

“Is that why you brought her?” Vielle asked. “So I couldn’t ask you about the project? Or about why you’re so interested all of a sudden in a movie neither of us liked? Or why you don’t want to watch it—?” She broke off as Kit came in the kitchen with her cell phone, studying the buttons on it.

“How can you tell if it’s on and not just on standby?” she asked.

Vielle looked at it. “It’s on,” she pronounced. “Did you want to call and check on your uncle?”

“No, that’s okay,” Kit said. “Mrs. Gray has your number. I’m just a little nervous. He gets disoriented sometimes when I’m not there.” She turned to Joanna. “Sorry. I know we’re not supposed to discuss things like that at Dish Night. What are we supposed to discuss?”

“Movies,” Joanna said, “or, rather, movie. I had a little difficulty at Blockbuster. They didn’t have Glory. Or Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” She handed the video to Vielle. “It’s a comedy. With Julia Roberts.”

“Runaway Bride,” Vielle said, reading the box.

“Bride?” Kit echoed.

“Have you already seen it?” Vielle asked.

“No,” Kit said, but in a tone that made Joanna wonder if she had and was lying to protect their feelings. Her cheeks had gone very pink. “I haven’t seen any movies at all the last few years, and I loved Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. And Flatliners.”

“Except that in Flatliners she needlessly risks her life,” Vielle said, looking at Joanna.

“And ends up with Kiefer Sutherland,” Joanna said lightly. “I thought Kevin Bacon was a lot cuter.” She took the video away from Vielle. “This one’s got Richard Gere in it.” She stuck it in the VCR and turned on the TV. “So let’s get this show on the road. Kit doesn’t want to be gone too long,” and the cell phone rang.

Kit dived for it. “Hello?” she said anxiously, and to Joanna and Vielle, “It’s Mrs. Gray.”

“You can take it in the bedroom if you want,” Vielle said, and Kit nodded gratefully. Vielle led her in and shut the door behind her.

“Oh, I hope Mr. Briarley hasn’t gotten so upset she has to go home,” Joanna said. “She was looking forward to this so much.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Vielle said. “You said there was a problem with the session today? Who with?”

“Not me,” Joanna said, and Vielle immediately looked relieved. “And I shouldn’t have said ‘problem.’ Nothing went wrong.” She looked at the bedroom door.

“And what about your sessions?” Vielle asked. “Are you telling me nothing went wrong with them either?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you come racing down to the ER white as a ghost and demand to know whether there’s an engine-stopping scene in Titanic, and then when I find out for you, you’re not even interested, you’re just afraid I might have told somebody. And then Barbara from Peds tells me she saw you in the walkway up on fifth the night before and you looked like you’d just seen a ghost.”

Of course. Good old Gossip General, and this was exactly why she couldn’t tell Vielle. Because there was no such thing as a secret at Mercy General. “Did she also tell you I’d just found out Maisie Nellis had coded again?”

“She told me she was worried about you. I’m worried about you. It’s the project, isn’t it? You’re seeing things in your NDEs. You’re seeing the Titanic, aren’t you?”

No, Joanna thought, apparently not. “No. I’m not seeing the Titanic.”

“Then what are you seeing?”

“I don’t know,” Joanna said. “It’s—”

The door opened, and Kit came out, all smiles. “Mrs. Gray just wanted to call to try the phone out, so I’d know it was working, and to tell me how Uncle Pat was doing.”

“How is he doing?” Joanna asked.

“Not too bad. He keeps looking out the window for me and asking her where I am.”

I would have thought someone so much like Mrs. Troudtheim would have enough sense not to tell her that, Joanna thought. It will only worry her, and it must have shown in her face because Kit said, “If she’d told me everything was fine, I wouldn’t have believed her. I want her to tell me the truth.”

She sounds just like Maisie, Joanna thought, and, as they settled in to watch Runaway Bride, She looks like her, too, with her short blond hair and thin arms and shoulders. But it was more than that. She also had Maisie’s courage, her charm, her earnestness. She watched the movie as attentively as if Mr. Briarley would be giving one of his notorious finals on it.

Joanna, on the other hand, found her mind wandering. If it wasn’t the Titanic, what was it? An amalgam of ships and ship-related images, Richard had said. What ship-related images? She’d grown up in a completely landlocked state. She’d never been on a ship in her life.

She tried to concentrate on the movie. Richard Gere was being introduced to a gaggle of giggling women. “I’m Betty Trout,” one of them said, and Joanna thought, Betty Peterson. She sat next to me in second period. And she had been an A student. She would definitely remember the name of their textbook. She might even remember what it was that Mr. Briarley had said. But it’s not the Titanic, so he isn’t why you’re seeing it.

“It’s not fair,” Vielle said.

“What isn’t?” Joanna said, jolted out of her reverie.

“That,” Vielle said, gesturing at the screen where Richard Gere was kissing Julia Roberts. “She has five gorgeous guys to choose from and I can’t even find one, unless you count Harvey the embalming expert.”

Kit stopped with a handful of popcorn halfway to her mouth. “Embalming expert?”

“Yes, and a scintillating conversationalist,” Vielle said. “Did you know Ajax is the best thing to use to get teeth shiny and white?”

“Ajax?” Kit put the handful of popcorn down on a napkin.

“Rule Number Eighteen,” Joanna said. “No discussing embalming techniques at Dish Night.” She reached for some popcorn. “What about Officer Denzel? This police officer Vielle met who looks like Denzel Washington,” she explained to Kit.

“And who she can’t think of a way to meet again,” Vielle said. “Maybe I’ll get lucky, and another rogue-raver will shoot up the ER,” and immediately looked sorry she’d said it.

“Vielle works in the ER,” Joanna explained to Kit, “the most dangerous place in the hospital. I keep telling her she needs to transfer out—”

“And I keep telling her she has no business playing Flatliners,” Vielle said, pointing at Joanna.

“Flatliners?”

“She means the research project I’m working with Dr. Wright on, but it’s nothing like Flatliners,” Joanna said.

“Except that you’re having near-death experiences,” Vielle said.

“They’re drug-induced hallucinations, and they’re perfectly safe,” Joanna said. “Unlike working in the ER where people get shot and stabbed—”

“Rule Number One,” Vielle said, rewinding to the kissing scene. “No talking about work at Dish Night. Isn’t that right, Joanna?”

“Right. Which of Julia’s wedding dresses do you like the best, Kit?” Joanna asked, changing the subject.

“I don’t know,” Kit said, leaning forward to make sure the cell phone was still on. “They’re all pretty.”

“The one with the train,” Vielle said. “I definitely want a dress with a train. And a big wedding, with all the trimmings. Bridesmaids, flowers, the works. Do police officers get married in their uniforms?”

“You’re thinking of the military,” Kit said.

“And counting your chickens before they’re hatched,” Joanna said. “She hasn’t even found out his name yet, let alone gotten him to the altar, and a lot can happen in between, right, Kit?”

“I think I’d better call and make sure my uncle’s okay,” Kit said, standing up.

“I thought you said calling upset him,” Joanna said.

“I know,” she said uncertainly.

“Do you want me to take you home?”

“No, that’s okay,” she said and sat back down. “I’m sure he’s okay. And Mrs. Gray said she’d call if there was a problem.” But as soon as they finished the movie, she insisted on leaving. “This has been great, but I think I’d better not stay too long,” she said. “It’s tempting fate.”

“I hope you’ll come again,” Vielle said. “We promise next time we won’t talk about work.”

“Or embalming,” Joanna said, and Kit smiled, but when they got in the car, Kit said seriously, “I have a question to ask you.”

“About embalming?” Joanna said, starting the car.

“No,” Kit said. “About your research project. If that’s okay. I mean, I know you have a rule about discussing work.”

“Which we obviously don’t follow,” Joanna said, pulling out of the parking lot. “And, besides, Dish Night’s officially over.” She turned onto the street and started toward Kit’s. She explained the way the project worked. “It’s not Flatliners, if that’s what you were going to ask.”

“No,” Kit said. She was silent for almost the length of a block, and then, as Joanna stopped at a light, said, “What does the Titanic have to do with your project? Do you think it’s what you’re seeing when you have these near-death experiences?”

You don’t have to tell her, Joanna thought. You can tell her the results of the project are confidential. But, like Maisie, she’d already figured it out, and, like Maisie, she deserved a straight answer.

She wished Kit had asked the question the way Vielle had, so she could say no. But I do think it’s what I’m seeing, in spite of the First-Class Dining Saloon being the wrong colors, in spite of the officer naming the wrong ships. And it has something to do with what Mr. Briarley said. He, and Kit, are my only chance of finding out what.

“Yes, I think I’m seeing the Titanic,” she said, and Kit sucked in her breath. “But I don’t know for sure, and if I read about the Titanic to find out—”

“You won’t be able to tell if reading about it is what made you see it. The Titanic,” she murmured. “How terrible.”

“It’s not really,” Joanna said. “The visions are very strange. They feel utterly real, but at the same time, you know they’re not.” She looked at Kit. “You’re afraid of what this means in regard to your uncle’s hallucinations, aren’t you?” she asked. “This isn’t the vision the malfunctioning brain normally produces. It seems to be peculiar to me. Most people have a warm, fuzzy feeling and see lights and angels. That’s why I came to ask Mr. Briarley what he’d said in class, because I think my mind saw some connection between that and what was happening in the NDE, and that connection is what triggered this particular vision.”

“But Uncle Pat was a Titanic expert. Wouldn’t he have made the same connection?”

“Not necessarily.” Joanna explained about the acetylcholine, and the brain’s increased associative abilities. “Dr. Wright thinks it’s a combination of random images out of my long-term memory, but I’m convinced there’s a reason for the vision, that the Titanic stands for something.” She looked at Kit. “If you don’t want to be involved with this anymore, I completely understand. I sound crazy even to myself when I try to explain it, and I had no business asking you. Or bothering Mr. Briarley.”

It was a relief to have told her, even if Kit did say, “I’d rather not be involved,” or look at her as if she were an NDE nutcase.

But she did neither. She said, “Uncle Pat would have loved to help you if he could, and since he can’t, I want to. Speaking of which, I still haven’t told you about the engines stopping. I think I found the thing you mean. It’s in Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember. The passengers noticed that the hum of the engines had stopped, and they went out on deck to see—wait,” she said, fumbling in the pocket of her coat. “I brought the book with me so I could read you the part—”

She pulled out a paperback book, and Joanna switched on the overhead light and then looked anxiously toward the house, wondering if Mr. Briarley would see the car and Kit, haloed in the light.

“Here it is… ‘wandered aimlessly about or stood by the rail, staring into the empty night for some clue to the trouble,’ ” Kit read, and Joanna looked at the book.

It was an ancient paperback, dog-eared and tattered, with the same picture of the Titanic that had been in Maisie’s book: the stern rising out of the water, the boats in the foreground full of people with blankets around their shoulders, watching in horror, the picture that was on every book about the Titanic, except that this one was in red, like a scene out of hell: the sea blood red, the ship burgundy, the enormous funnels black-red.

She had seen Mr. Briarley brandishing the book dozens of times, making a point, reading a passage. It was as familiar as her sophomore English textbook had been. But that wasn’t why she stared at it. It had been there, in Mr. Briarley’s hand, that day. He had shut it with a snap and dropped it on the desk. It hadn’t been the textbook, after all. It was A Night to Remember.

But the textbook had been there, too. She could see its blue cover and gold lettering, and a paperback didn’t make a snapping sound when you shut it, didn’t make a thud when you let it drop. But it was still the book.

“ ‘…their dress was an odd mixture of bathrobes, evening clothes,’ ” Kit read, “ ‘fur coats, turtle-neck sweaters—’ ”

“Kit,” Joanna interrupted, “was the First-Class Dining Saloon the only dining room on board?” No, of course it wasn’t, there had to be second-class and steerage dining rooms, too, but the silver and crystal, the piano had to be first-class. “I mean, the only first-class dining room?”

“No,” Kit said. “There were several smaller restaurants. The Palm Court, the Verandah Café—”

“What about stairways? Would there have been more than one?”

“Passenger stairways or crew stairways?”

“Passenger,” Joanna said.

“I know there were at least two,” Kit said, turning to the back of the paperback, “and maybe—rats, this is one of those books that doesn’t have an index. I can run inside, and—”

“No, that’s okay,” Joanna said. “I don’t need to know this second. You can call me when you find out.”

“You want to know how many staircases and how many dining rooms?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “Specifically, I want to know if there was a dining room with light wood paneling, a rose carpet, and rose-upholstered chairs.”

“And you want to know the other ships the Titanic tried to contact,” Kit said.

Joanna nodded. They’ll turn out to be the Baltic and the Frankfurt, she thought, scarcely hearing Kit’s thanks and good night. I need to see if Betty Peterson’s in the phone book, and if she’s not, tomorrow I’ll look on the Net.

She was in the phone book, and still living in Englewood, and when Joanna called her from the office the next morning, she sounded overjoyed to hear from her. Joanna asked her if she remembered the name of their textbook. “I should,” Betty said. “It was blue, I remember, with gold lettering, and the title began with an M. And there was an ‘and’ in it. M Something and Something.”

But when Joanna asked her about the Titanic, she said, “All I remember about that class is that Mr. Briarley made me redo the footnotes on my term paper four times. Why don’t you ask him?”

Joanna explained about him having Alzheimer’s. “Oh, yes, that’s right,” Betty said, “I remember hearing about that. How sad.”

“Can you remember who else was in that class with us?” Joanna asked.

“Gosh, in that class…” Betty said, considering. “Ricky Inman. Did you know he’s a stockbroker now? Can you imagine?” Joanna couldn’t. “John Ferguson, no, he’s in Japan. Melissa Taylor?”

Melissa Taylor was a possibility. “What about Candy Simons?” Joanna asked. “The one we called Rapunzel because she was always combing her hair. Do you know where she is?”

“Oh, Joanna,” Betty said, sounding shocked. “I guess you didn’t know. She died two years ago. Of ovarian cancer.”

“No,” Joanna said, thinking of Candy, endlessly combing her long blond hair. Her hair would have come out during the chemo, she thought, appalled.

Betty chattered on, talking about various students, none of whom had been in second-period English, and about herself. She worked for a computer company, was married, had three children. “I can’t believe you’re not married yet,” she said, sounding just like Vielle, and Joanna told her she had to go and gave her her number, “in case you remember anything else.”

“I will,” Betty promised. “Oh, wait. I do remember something about the book. It had a picture of Queen Elizabeth on it in one of those ruff things.”

Queen Elizabeth? Not a ship? “Are you certain?” Joanna asked.

“Positive. The reason I know is I remember Ricky Inman drawing glasses and a mustache on her.”

Joanna vaguely remembered that, too, but she also remembered a ship. So did Melissa Taylor, whom Joanna called after lunch. Which proved what? That memory is extremely unreliable, Joanna thought.

Her pager went off, and when she called the hospital switchboard, it was Vielle, saying, “I have a you-know-what for you.” An NDE or another series of questions? Probably both, Joanna thought, and decided to call her instead of running down to the ER, so she could hang up if Vielle started grilling her. But first she needed to call Mrs. Haighton. Her housekeeper said she was at a fundraiser for the Denver Theater Guild.

Joanna called the ER. The phone rang a long time. I’m going to have to go down there after all and talk to her, Joanna thought, and was about to hang up when a man answered. One of the interns, Joanna thought, to whom Vielle will say, “What do you think you’re doing?” in a moment and snatch the phone away from him. “This is Dr. Lander,” Joanna said. “Is Vielle there?”

“Vielle?” the young man said in a tone of blank surprise. Definitely one of the interns.

“Yes, Vielle Howard. Can I speak to her, please?”

“I… just a minute…” Joanna could hear a muffled conversation in the background and then another voice, a woman’s, came on the line. “Who is this?” the woman asked.

“Joanna Lander. I’m trying to reach Vielle Howard. She left me a message to call her.”

“Dr. Lander, hi. Vielle’s not here. She said if you called to tell you she went home sick.”

“Home sick?” Vielle never went home sick, even when she was on her last legs. “Is she okay? Is it this flu that’s going around?”

“She said to tell you she’ll call you later.”

“Did she say anything about this message she left me?” Joanna asked, though it was unlikely she would have left a message about an NDE with Mr. Mandrake snooping around constantly.

And she hadn’t. “No, nothing about a message. Just that she’d call you,” the woman said and hung up.

Joanna hoped Vielle hadn’t tried to call her to see if she could give her a ride home while she was on the phone with Mrs. Haighton. She called her at home, but there was no answer. She’s got the phone turned down so it won’t disturb her, Joanna told herself, but it worried her. Vielle had to be practically at death’s door for her to have gone home, which meant she was probably too sick to drive.

Joanna called down to the ER again to find out if somebody had driven Vielle home and when she’d left, but no one answered. Joanna wished Mrs. Troudtheim wasn’t scheduled. She’d run over to Vielle’s to check on her. Hopefully, Mrs. Troudtheim’s session wouldn’t take long.

It didn’t. Mrs. Troudtheim kicked out after only one frame and remembered nothing. As soon as she left the lab with her crocheting, Joanna called Vielle again. This time the phone was busy. “She probably took the phone off the hook,” Tish said. “If it’s the same flu my roommate had, it hits you like a ton of bricks. It doesn’t last all that long, but, boy, while it does, you wish you were dead.”

Not exactly reassuring, Joanna thought, and tried again. This time Vielle answered. “Hi, it’s me,” Joanna said. “Spring has sprung, huh?”

“What?” Vielle said blankly.

“The ER told me you’d gone home with the flu. Did you call me to give you a ride home? If so, I am really sorry. I was on the phone, trying to schedule a subject interview.”

“No,” Vielle said. She sounded exhausted to the point of tears. “I didn’t call you.”

“How did you get home?” she asked, and when Vielle didn’t answer, “You didn’t drive yourself home, did you?”

“No. Somebody at the hospital gave me a ride.”

“Good. I’m going to come over,” she said. “Is there anything you want me to bring you? 7Up? Chicken noodle soup?”

“No,” Vielle said. “I don’t want you to come over. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? I could at least fluff your pillows and make you some tea.”

“No. I don’t want you getting the flu, too. I’m fine. I just decided to stay home for once and get over it instead of ignoring it and ending up really sick. As soon as I hang up, I’m going straight to bed.”

“Good idea,” Joanna said. “Do you need me to do anything here at the hospital? Take any messages down to the ER for you?”

“No. They already know I’m going to be out for a few days.”

“Okay. I’ll stop by in the morning to see if you need anything.”

“No,” Vielle said adamantly. “I’m going to turn the doorbell and the phone off, and try to get some sleep.”

“Okay,” Joanna said doubtfully. “Call me if you need anything. I’ll have my pager on, I promise. And take care of yourself. This flu is supposed to be a real doozy. I don’t want you having a near-death experience.”

“No,” Vielle said, and the exhaustion was back in her voice.

“Okay, you get some rest. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“I’ll call you,” Vielle said.

As soon as she hung up, Joanna realized she’d forgotten to ask Vielle about the you-know-what she’d originally called about. She considered calling her back, but the last thing Vielle needed to be worrying about was somebody else’s NDE, and anyway, several hours had passed. Mr. Mandrake had probably gotten to whoever it was by now. Joanna called Kit instead and told her she might have been exposed to the flu.

“If I was, it was still worth it. It was so great to get out for a little while,” Kit said. “I found out the answer to one of the questions you asked me last night. The dining room you described—light wood paneling, rose curtains, grand piano—is the A La Carte Restaurant. Here, let me read you the description. ‘In the sumptuous A La Carte Restaurant, pale walnut paneling contrasts beautifully with the rich Rose du Barry carpet. The chairs are covered in rose Aubusson tapestry.’ ”

“Where was it on the ship?”

“On the Promenade Deck, all the way aft,” Kit said. “That’s toward the back of the ship.”

“The stern,” Joanna could hear Mr. Briarley say in the background.

“Right, the stern,” Kit said. “It was next to the second-class stairway. There were definitely two staircases, and I think there may have been three, but I can’t tell for sure. One book mentions an aft stairway and another one a rear stairway. I can’t tell if they’re both referring to the same thing. I do know the Grand Staircase was in the middle of the ship.” And I intend to find it, Joanna thought.

She called Vielle in the morning, but Vielle had apparently taken the phone off the hook like she’d said she was going to. There was no answer, and no messages on her answering machine when she got to work. I should have swung by, she thought, getting dressed to go under. If there was still no message after the session, she would.

“The switchboard just called,” Richard said when she came out of the dressing room. “Tish is out. She went home yesterday afternoon with the flu.”

“Does this mean I can’t go under?” Joanna asked. Good. She’d be able to run over to Vielle’s and make sure she was all right.

“They’re sending a sub up,” Richard said, “as soon as they can find one. The switchboard says a ton of people are out. How do you feel?”

“Fine.”

“Good. I’m raising the dosage this time. That will increase the amount of stimulation in the temporal lobe and alter the endorphin levels. That will alter the stimuli, which should produce a different unifying image.”

It won’t, Joanna thought as the sub nurse, a stolid sixtyish woman, put the headphones on her and pulled the sleep mask down over her eyes without a word. It can’t, because it’s the Titanic, and I’m going to prove it. I’m going to find the Grand Staircase, she thought, and was in the passage, looking toward the door. It was half-shut, light coming from around the edges, and the voices from beyond it were muffled.

“… noise…” she heard a man’s voice say.

“What… sound…?” a woman’s voice asked anxiously, and Joanna recognized it as that of the young woman in the nightgown. She pushed open the door.

The young woman was talking to the young man who’d come over to this side to investigate. “You said you heard a noise,” she said, clutching the white sleeve of his sweater. “Did it sound like something crashing down?”

“No,” the young man said. “It sounded like a child’s cry.”

Joanna looked over at the inside wall. There was a life preserver hanging next to the deck light, but she couldn’t read what it said. The stout man in tweeds was standing in the way. She started toward him.

The stout man said, turning to his friend, “What do they say is the trouble?”

Joanna strained to hear what his friend answered, but he spoke too softly, and he couldn’t have said, “We’ve struck an iceberg,” because the stout man sat down in a deck chair and opened his book, but at least he had moved from in front of the life preserver. She put up her hand, shielding her eyes from the glare, and tried to read the lettering.

She had been wrong. There was no lettering around the white ring of the life preserver, and no lettering on the backs of the deck chairs, or the metal lockers, or the doors. But one of them has to lead to the Grand Staircase, she thought, walking along the deck, trying each one.

The first two were locked. The third opened on a bare lightbulb and a metal stairway leading down. A crew stairway, Joanna thought, and tried the next one.

It was locked, too, but the one after that opened onto a darkened wooden staircase. It was wider than the one she’d climbed up before. The railings and newel posts were more elaborately carved, and rose-colored carpeting covered the stairs.

But the stairs should be marble, she thought, and why is it dark? There were light sconces on the wall, but no switch that she could see. She walked over to the railing and looked up. Far above, several decks up, she thought she caught a glimpse of gray. The skylight? Or the steward’s white jacket? Or something else? There was only one way to find out. Joanna put her hand on the railing and started up the stairs.

It grew progressively darker as she climbed, so that she could barely see the steps in front of her, and nothing of what she was passing. The First-Class Dining Saloon should be here, she thought, rounding the landing. No, that was down on the saloon deck, but the cherub should be here, and the clock with Honour and Glory Crowning Time, and the skylight.

The skylight was there, a dark gray dome above her head as she started up the third flight. She could see its wrought-iron ribs, darker between the curves of darkened glass, but there was no cherub. The newel post was carved wood in the shape of a basket of fruit. There was a clock at the top of the stairs, but it was a square wooden one. Yet this had to be the Grand Staircase. There wouldn’t be two elaborate skylights on one ship. What if Richard’s right, and it is an amalgam? she thought, and opened the door at the head of the stairs.

She was back on the Boat Deck and it was still deserted and dark. There wasn’t even a light on the bridge. She peered toward the bow, trying to make out the flicker of the Morse lamp or catch the scrape of the lantern shutter, but the deck was utterly silent. The boats, off to her right, still hung in their davits, shrouded in canvas.

The boats should have the name of the ship on them, she thought, and tried to raise the canvas on the nearest one, but it was lashed down tightly, the ropes knotted into fist-sized bundles. She couldn’t budge the canvas at all.

She walked along the line of boats, trying to find one whose canvas was looser, but they were all as immovable as the first one. She crossed to the other side of the deck. There was a light on this side. From the bridge? No, closer than that. An open door in the near end of the building that housed the officers’ quarters. Joanna went over to it and looked in.

It was some sort of gymnasium. There were Indian clubs and medicine balls stacked against the inside wall and pieces of exercise equipment scattered around the red-and-white tile floor: a mechanical horse and a rowing machine and a tall black weight-lifting apparatus, the same shape and size as a guillotine. A punching bag hung from the ceiling.

Against the right-hand wall stood a line of stationary bicycles. A young man in a T-shirt and gray sweatpants was riding the middle bicycle, pedaling furiously. On the wall in front of him was a large clock face with numbers and red and blue arrows pointing to them.

The young man had pedaled till both arrows were on the final number. He gave a final burst of effort, bent forward over the handlebars. The red-and-blue numbers swung up to zero, and he stopped pedaling and raised his fists, like a runner after a race. He dismounted and bent to pick up a towel, and she saw his face. “Oh,” she said and sucked in her breath.

It was Greg Menotti.

29

“I know you,” Greg Menotti said, dabbing at his face with a towel. He walked over to where she was standing. “Don’t I?”

“I’m…” Joanna said, and for one horrible moment could not think of her name, “…Joanna Lander,” and then remembered he had known her as Dr. Lander. “Dr. Lander.”

“Dr. Lander?” he said, clearly still trying to place her. “You look so familiar… oh, wait, I remember you. You were the one who asked me all those questions that day I got hit on the head. You wouldn’t give me your phone number. So what are you doing here? Did you change your mind?”

“Hit on the head?”

“Yeah, by a piece of ice a semi threw off. I was shoveling my car out of a ditch, and it knocked me unconscious, and they took me to the ER, and then you came and asked me a lot of questions about tunnels and lights and angels,” he said. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

“No,” Joanna said slowly. “I remember.”

“I kept trying to tell that to the ER people, but they insisted I’d had a heart attack.” He shook his head, amused. “So is that why you came back? You decided you’d give me your phone number after all?”

“No,” Joanna said, thinking, He doesn’t know he’s dead. “I came to find out the name of this ship.”

“Ship?” he said blankly. “What do you mean, ship? This is a health club. I work out here three times a week. Haven’t you been here before? Here, let me show you around.” He took her arm and led her over to the stationary bicycles. “See this dial? This blue arrow measures distance traveled and this red one measures your speed.”

He led her over to what looked like one of those mechanical bulls they had in bars, only with an uncomfortable-looking hump. “This is a mechanical camel, and over there’s the rowing machine. Excellent cardiovascular exercise. There’s also a squash court, a swimming pool, a massage room—”

Joanna was looking at the stack of Indian clubs and medicine balls. They should have “Property of” and the name of the ship on them. She disengaged her arm from Greg’s grip and went over to look at them. She picked up a medicine ball. It was almost too heavy to lift, but Greg took it easily out of her hands and tossed it against the wall. It rebounded with a loud thud.

Joanna bent and looked at the other medicine ball and then the Indian clubs, but there was no name on any of them. And Greg doesn’t even know he’s oh a ship, let alone which ship, she thought. “Greg,” she said. “Have you heard anything?”

He tossed the medicine ball again. “Heard anything?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Like what?” Thud.

“Like engines stopping?” she said. “Or a collision?” Leading, she thought, waiting for his answer.

“A collision? No, thank goodness. Especially since it was one of those Ford Explorers. They’re huge.” He tossed the medicine ball again. “No, just a bump on the head, but it must have really knocked me out cold because the paramedics thought I’d had a heart attack. I told them, ‘I can’t have had a heart attack—’ ”

“I work out three times a week at my health club,” Joanna said and then was sorry because Greg stopped, clutching the heavy medicine ball to his chest, and looked at her fearfully. He went over to the rowing machine, sat down, and began pulling the oars toward him with strong, steady strokes.

“Greg—” Joanna said, and caught a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye. She ran over to the door. The steward. He was walking toward the bridge with a folded note in his hand.

Joanna hurried after him. He walked past the officers’ quarters and turned into an unlit corridor. Joanna followed him, around a corner, down a short, narrow passage, around another corner. Like a maze, Joanna thought. Down another passage, and out onto the other side of the deck. There were boats on this side, too. Was that where the officer was going, to uncover the boats?

No. He knocked on a door and opened it. Golden light spilled out onto the deck, and she could hear the murmur of voices. “You may never get another chance,” the officer said, and reemerged, laughing, and walked down the deck toward the stern, obviously headed for the stairs. Joanna followed him, stopping as she passed to look in the still-open door.

A blond man in a white shirt sat with his back to the door, hunched over a table, tapping steadily on a telegraph key. His coat was slung over the back of his chair and he was wearing headphones, old-fashioned ones with a band around the back of his head as well as over the top. Above his head, a blue spark jumped the gap between two metal struts, flickering and snapping as he tapped the key.

This is the wireless room, Joanna thought, forgetting all about the officer. And the man was Jack Phillips, busily sending out messages. Not SOSs yet, Joanna thought, looking at the blue spark, dancing merrily above the wireless operator’s head, and remembering the officer’s laughter. And Jack wasn’t wearing his lifejacket yet.

These must be passenger messages he was sending, the backlog that had built up over the weekend. Joanna remembered Mr. Briarley telling the class that the wireless was such a novelty the passengers all wanted to send one, and Jack Phillips had been so busy the night of the collision that, when the Californian had tried to cut in with an ice message, he had cut them off, he had told them to shut up, that he was working the relay station, Cape Race.

And SOSs were simple. Three dots, three dashes, three dots. She remembered Mr. Briarley telling them that was why SOS had been chosen for the distress call, because it was so simple, anyone could send it. These messages weren’t simple. “Having wonderful time,” Joanna thought, listening to the complicated tapping. “Wish you were here.”

She leaned forward, trying to hear the pattern, trying to decipher the message, but he was tapping too fast for her to be able to separate out the dots from the dashes, and the buzzing from the spark overhead interrupted her concentration.

She walked up closer behind him, and as she did, she could hear a low murmur. He’s saying the letters as he taps them out, she thought. “C,” he said, making a rapid series of taps, “Q… D… C… Q… D.” Not a word. A code? The call letters of the Titanic?

There was a thud from somewhere out on deck. Greg Menotti, Joanna thought, throwing the medicine ball against the wall of the gymnasium, and glanced behind her. Jack Phillips didn’t look up or pause in his sending.

He can’t hear with his headphones on, Joanna thought, any more than I can hear Richard or Tish with my headphones on, and when the Titanic was sinking, he had been so intent on sending he hadn’t even noticed the stoker sneaking up behind him, attempting to steal his lifejacket. Joanna took another step closer, trying to hear his murmurings over the heavy thuds. “Q… D…”

Thud. It was impossible to hear the tapping with this thudding going on. She went outside on deck to tell Greg to stop, but the sound wasn’t coming from the gymnasium, it was coming from the stairway.

Joanna opened the door to the stairwell and went in. Thud. The sound was coming from below. She leaned over the railing and looked down but she couldn’t see past the first turning of the stairs. “Hang on!” a man’s voice said. Joanna recognized it as the voice of the officer who had ordered the sailor to use the Morse lamp. “What do you think you’re doing?”

There was no answer except a thud and then another one. Joanna went down to the first landing. A man in a dark blue uniform was dragging something heavy up the stairs. It looked like a body.

The officer was at the bottom of the flight and climbing up toward the man, looking angry. “You can’t bring that up here.”

“It’s the only way up that’s not flooded,” the man in the uniform said, and dragged the body up one step, then another, till he was only five steps below Joanna. It wasn’t a body. It was a big canvas sack with a crest stenciled on it. A mailbag, Joanna thought.

“There’s water all over the mail room,” the man, who must be a postal clerk, said. He opened the neck of the bag, reached in, and pulled out a handful of sodden letters. “Look at that!” he said, waving them in the face of the officer. “Ruined!” He brandished them at Joanna. She flinched back. “How’m I supposed to deliver that?” he demanded. He jammed it back in the bag, cinched the neck shut, humped the mailbag up over another step.

“Then you’ll have to bring it up some other way,” the officer said, stepping in front of him. “You’ll ruin the floors.” He pointed down at the carpet. Where the bag had rested, the rose carpet was wet.

“Can’t be helped,” the postal clerk said, heaving the bag up another step. “It’s got to get through. I have to get it into the boats. Give me a hand here,” he said to Joanna, but she was looking down at the wet carpet. The water had soaked into it, staining its rose a dark, disturbing red, like blood.

“How bad is it?” the officer asked.

“All the way up to the saloon deck,” the postal clerk said. “She doesn’t have much longer.”

“What does he mean, she doesn’t have much longer?” Greg Menotti said from behind her. She turned around. He was on the step above her, watching the postal clerk hoist the mailbag up another step. “Why is he doing that?”

“Because she’s sinking,” the postal clerk said, and to Joanna, “You’d better get into a boat, miss.”

“Which deck is the saloon deck?” Joanna asked him. “Is it C Deck?”

“What does he mean, sinking?” Greg said. “This isn’t a ship. It’s a health club.” He took hold of Joanna’s arm. “I thought you wanted to see the rest of the facilities.”

“There isn’t time,” Joanna said, trying to free her arm. “Is the saloon deck C Deck?”

“You have to make time,” Greg said, pulling her up the stairs. “Your health is the most important thing there is. We’ve got a full program of squash, racquetball, tennis—”

He was going too fast. She lost her balance and nearly fell. “Steady, looks like you could use some stair-walking exercise,” he said, pulling her to her feet, but she couldn’t get her balance. The stair was angled oddly, her foot kept sliding off it—

Oh, God, she thought, it’s beginning to list. “I have to go,” she said, tugging frantically to free her arm from Greg’s hand. “The saloon deck—”

“I work out here three times a week,” he said, remorselessly gripping her arm. “A regular exercise regimen is essential to—”

Joanna wrenched free and ran toward the stairs, stumbling, her arms out for balance, and pushed open the door to the stairway. The mail clerk had dragged the mailbag nearly all the way to the top of the stairs. Joanna ran past him down the steps, skirting the dark, wet stain where the mailbag had lain.

“You shouldn’t run without warming up first,” Greg called after her. “You’ll get a charley—” The door closed on his voice and she fled down the stairs, around the landings, her hand skimming the polished oak railings as she ran. Down and down, not counting landings or decks or doors, running blindly, blindly, out the door, down the deck, yanking the door open and plunging into the passage, into the dark and the dark—

And the dark. I’m still in the passage, Joanna thought desperately, and heard Richard say, “You need to remove the sleep mask.”

She opened her eyes and blinked in surprise at a total stranger. It took her another panicked minute to remember that Tish was out with the flu and this was the sub nurse. “Just rest. Don’t try to talk,” Richard said, and began explaining the post-session procedures to the nurse. He doesn’t want me to say it’s the Titanic in front of her, she thought.

But it wasn’t the Titanic. The staircase was all wrong and so was the gymnasium. The Titanic had had one. She remembered Mr. Briarley talking about it, telling them how opulent the ship had been, but it would hardly have been up on the Boat Deck. And, even though the Titanic had been a royal mail ship, they wouldn’t have dragged sacks of mail up from the mail room. Fifteen hundred people had drowned that night. They would hardly have been worried about the mail. And Greg Menotti obviously wasn’t on the Titanic, Joanna thought, frustrated.

Not half as frustrated as Richard, however. “You saw the Titanic again!” he said when the nurse had finished monitoring her vitals and left, and Joanna had told him. “How could you have? Look at these scans.” He’d dragged her over to the console. “The pattern of temporal-lobe activity is completely different, and the acetylcholine level is much higher than before.”

“That looks the same,” Joanna said, pointing at a red-orange patch in the hippocampus.

“It is, and so’s the activity in the amygdala. They’re the same in all the NDEs, but they don’t have anything to do with producing images.”

“Was the pattern in long-term completely different, too?” Joanna asked, looking at the shifting reds and blues and yellows.

“No,” he admitted. “The last few scans match, although they don’t fit any of the L+R formulas. Was the ending of your NDE the same as last time?”

“No,” she said. She told him about the flight down the stairs and into the passage. “It was the same passage, but this time the door was shut and I had to run a lot farther before I was back in the lab.”

“You say the same passage? Do you mean it looked the same?”

“No,” Joanna said. “I mean it’s the same passage. It’s in the same place, it always opens onto the same part of the deck,” she said. “It’s a real place. The doors always open on the same stairways, the Boat Deck’s always the same number of flights up, the lifeboats and the officers’ quarters and the bridge are always in the same relationship to each other.”

“You said this time there was a gymnasium,” Richard said skeptically.

“It was always there, but the door was shut before. It’s not like a dream where things shift around and you’re in one place and then another with no transition in between. It’s a real place.”

“Real,” he said, and all the wariness and skepticism were back in his face. In a minute he’d accuse her of being Bridey Murphy again.

“I don’t mean real,” she said, defeated. “I mean three-dimensional. I mean linear.”

He was shaking his head. “There’s no activation of the spatial cortex areas. What about the beginning? Was it the same?”

“No,” she said. “I came through a little later this time, after the young man came over to investigate the noise.”

“But the people and what they said were the same?”

“Basically.”

“Basically,” he muttered, staring at the screens. “Even though the temporal-lobe and L+R patterns are completely different. What were you thinking about just before you went into non-REM sleep? Maybe your conscious mind is influencing what you see.”

“The Titanic,” Joanna admitted, and Richard looked encouraged. “But last time I was thinking about Pompeii, and the first three times I obviously couldn’t have been thinking about the Titanic, and it’s been the same place every time.”

“And you hear the same sound as you go through,” Richard said thoughtfully and began to type, absorbed.

Joanna went down to her office to transcribe her account and check on Vielle. There was no answer, but she had seven new messages. Joanna listened to them, fast-forwarding as soon as she’d established it wasn’t Vielle. Records. Maisie. Guadalupe.

She must not have gotten the message I left for her, Joanna thought. And she must be back at work, and Tish was right about this flu not lasting long. Maybe Vielle’s back, too, and that’s why she’s not answering. She hit “next message.” Mr. Mandrake. She hit “delete.” Betty Peterson.

“I found out the title,” Betty’s voice said, and Joanna pulled back the finger she had poised over the “next message” button and listened to the message.

“You’ll never guess how!” Betty said. “Last night I dug out my old high school yearbook to see who else was in that class with us, and I was going through the section with our pictures—and, oh, my God, the hair! the clothes!—and as I’m looking through them, I saw that Nadine Swartheimer—do you remember Nadine? Wild hair that stuck out all over and Birkenstocks, even in the dead of winter?—well, anyway, she’d signed her picture, and there it was! But that’s not all. I found out something else. You need to call me. ’Bye.”

I don’t believe it, Joanna thought. After all that, she didn’t tell me the name of the book, and now I’ll have to call her back, and we’ll probably play telephone tag for a week. How did Betty ever get straight A’s?

She’d have to call her, but not until she’d finished checking to see if Vielle had called. She went rapidly through the rest of the messages. Mr. Mandrake again. Delete. Someone named Leonard Fanshawe.

But not Vielle. Joanna tried her again, but there was still no answer. I think I’d better go down to the ER and see if she’s back and, if she’s not, go check on her, Joanna thought, and gathered up her coat, keys, and purse, but just as she was starting out the door, the phone rang. Joanna let the answering machine pick up. “Hi,” Vielle said, and Joanna snatched up the receiver.

“How are you?” she said.

“Better,” Vielle said, and she sounded better. Her voice was stronger and steadier than the day before. “I’m still going to stay at home for a couple of days, and, no, I don’t need you to bring me anything. I don’t want you getting this.”

“Okay,” Joanna said, “although I’ve already been exposed. Tish has it, and so does Guadalupe.”

“Well, you’re not going to get it from me. I’m locking my door, and I’m not letting you in. So don’t even think about coming over.”

“All right,” Joanna promised, “but you have to promise to call me and tell me how you’re doing and if you need anything,” and, before Vielle could protest, “I can leave it outside your door.”

“I promise I’ll check in,” Vielle said and started to hang up.

“Oh, wait,” Joanna said. “What about the you-know-what?”

“The what?”

“I don’t know. That was what you called it. You left a message that I was supposed to call you, that you had a you-know-what for me. Yesterday. Before you went home sick. You paged me.”

“Oh,” Vielle said finally. “Yes. A patient came in with a gall bladder attack and happened to mention he’d had an NDE a couple of years ago. We admitted him for surgery.” Joanna wondered if that was the Leonard Fanshawe who had called her, but Vielle said, “His name’s Eduardo Ortiz.”

“Who else was there when he mentioned it?” Joanna asked, thinking of Mr. Mandrake.

“Just me,” Vielle said. “I thought he was a good bet since he wasn’t admitted for anything life-threatening, so he’d be flying below Mr. Mandrake’s radar.”

Joanna thought so, too. As soon as she got off the phone, she called the switchboard and got his room number, and then called the surgical floor. “He had surgery this morning, and he’s still out,” the nurse said.

“When does he go home?” Joanna asked.

The nurse checked. “Tomorrow.” Which is what’s wrong with HMOs, Joanna thought. They’re not in the hospital long enough to tell anyone they’ve even had a near-death experience, let alone describe it. The nurse had thought Mr. Ortiz would probably wake up around noon, which would give Joanna plenty of time to record and transcribe her NDE.

She did both and then took the transcript to Richard, who was glaring at the screens. “How’s it going?” she asked, handing him the transcript.

“Terrible. I thought maybe the initial stimulus was what was determining the unifying image, and that was why you continued to see the Titanic, even though the stimuli were different, but in this last NDE there was no activity in the superior auditory cortex at all.” He raked his hand through his hair. “I just don’t have enough data. Have you been able to reschedule Mrs. Haighton yet?”

“No.”

“And you haven’t heard from Mr. Pearsall about when he’s coming back?”

She shook her head.

“Then I’ve got to find out what’s aborting Mrs. Troudtheim’s NDE-state and fix it. We need her.”

“I’ll call Mr. Pearsall and Mrs. Haighton,” Joanna said. And go find her at the Spring Fling, or wherever she is, and drag her back here myself, she thought, going back to her office to call, but the housekeeper didn’t know where she was.

“Some kind of meeting,” she said. “She has so many I get them confused.” And there was no answer at Mr. Pearsall’s number.

Joanna made a note to try them both again and then listened to the messages she’d fast-forwarded through before. Guadalupe wanted Joanna to call her. Maisie had something important to tell her. Leonard Fanshawe said, “I understand you’re interested in near-death experiences. I had one six months ago, and since then I have discovered I have unusual powers: telekinesis, clairvoyance, distance-viewing, and teleportation. I would very much like to talk with you about this,” and gave his number.

Joanna called him and gave him Mr. Mandrake’s number. Then she called Mr. Pearsall again. No answer. She called Betty Peterson. Her line was busy.

She printed out a file copy of the transcript and then sat there staring at the screen, trying to make sense of it. It was the Titanic, she was sure of it, in spite of the staircase and the mailbag and the lack of activity in the auditory cortex.

She called Kit to ask her what the call letters of the Titanic had been and what deck the gymnasium had been on. And whether it had a mechanical camel. I surely wouldn’t have confabulated a detail that specific, she thought, punching in Kit’s number, and then remembered Mr. Wojakowski and “The Katzenjammer Kids.”

Kit’s line was busy. Joanna looked at her watch. It was eleven-thirty. She decided to take a chance on Mr. Ortiz’s having come out of the anesthetic early, and went down to the surgical ward. He was awake, but the surgeon was in with him. “And then we’ve got to do his post-op check,” the nurse subbing for Patricia said. “It’ll be about twenty minutes.”

Twenty minutes. Not long enough to go back up to her office and get anything useful done. She could go see Maisie—Peds was just two floors up and actually in the same wing—but the likelihood of getting away from Maisie in under an hour was nonexistent. I’ll go see Guadalupe instead, Joanna thought, and headed for the elevator.

A pair of nurses Joanna didn’t know were waiting for it, their heads together, talking. “…and she said, that’s it, I’m not coming to work in that ER one more day,” one of the nurses said, and the other said, “I don’t blame her.” Vielle should be listening to this, Joanna thought, and the elevator door opened.

Mr. Mandrake was inside. “…evidence which will prove to the skeptic that the near-death experience is real,” he was saying to a man with a copy of The Light at the End of the Tunnel. “No so-called ‘rational’ explanation is possible.”

All his attention was on the man, and the two nurses, still gossiping, shielded her for the moment. “…just a flesh wound, thank God,” one of them said, “but still.”

Mr. Mandrake hadn’t seen her yet. Joanna turned and walked rapidly away, her head averted. I’ll go see Guadalupe later, she thought. I’ll go down and pick up the release forms instead.

“Joanna Lander,” Mr. Mandrake said.

Oh, no, he’d seen her. She kept walking, resisting the impulse to look back and see if he was following her.

“…a colleague of mine,” he said.

He hadn’t seen her. He was just talking about her. “She’s working on a project that will confirm my findings.”

A colleague of mine, Joanna fumed, walking faster. It would almost be worth it to turn around and go tell the man she was not Mr. Mandrake’s colleague and their project proved no such thing.

Almost, she thought and ducked into a stairway. It only went down one flight, but at least she had gotten away from Mr. Mandrake. She could take the service elevator up to the fifth-floor walkway. No, she’d have to go through Medicine. She didn’t want to take the risk of running into Mrs. Davenport. Talk about out of the frying pan into the fire. She’d better take the walkway on second.

She went down the stairs and along a corridor full of offices. It was usually deserted, but not today. A group of elderly people were sitting in the hall on plastic chairs, playing cards. One of them stood up as soon as he saw Joanna and waved his cards at her. “Hiya, Doc,” he said.

30

This is not my day, Joanna thought. “Mr. Wojakowski,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Ed,” he corrected. He cocked his thumb at the door behind him. “This is that hearing project I told you about.” He leaned toward her confidentially. “I gotta say, Doc, your project was a hell of a lot more interesting than this thing. All we do is sit around with headphones on and raise our hands if we hear a beep.”

Joanna looked at the cardplayers. “And play acey-deucey?”

“Naw, none of them were ever in the navy. All they know how to play is hearts. I been trying to talk ’em into poker, but they’re all too cheap. Say, I heard one of the docs down in the ER got shot. You know anything about that?”

That must be what the two nurses by the elevator had been gossiping about. “No.”

“I hope it’s nothing serious. Did I ever tell you about the time on the Yorktown. when I got shot right in the—well, it ain’t polite to say where—and I start yelping and Big Bunion Pakigian says—”

“Mr. Wojakowski?” a lab-coated technician with a clipboard said from the door.

“Be right there,” Mr. Wojakowski said. “Well, anyway, Doc, you see you don’t go getting shot. And if you need me on your project, you just go ahead and schedule me. Like I say, all we do’s sit around. I got plenty of time to do your project and this one both.”

“Mr. Wojakowski,” the technician said disapprovingly.

Mr. Wojakowski leaned close to Joanna and whispered, “4-F.” Joanna had to laugh. The technician looked even crabbier. “See ya, Doc,” Mr. Wojakowski said jauntily, handed his cards to one of the volunteers, and disappeared through the door.

She looked at her watch and went back up to the surgical ward. Mr. Ortiz’s door was shut. “One of his drains came out,” the sub nurse told her. “It’ll be another twenty minutes at least.”

Joanna thanked her and went up to see Maisie. Mrs. Nellis was just coming out of the room, smiling brightly. “Maisie’s on a new drug and it’s working wonders. She’s stabilized, and it’s completely eliminated the fluid-retention problem. If this keeps up, I’ll be able to take her home before you know it.”

She was right. Maisie’s arms and legs weren’t as puffy, but, because the swelling had gone down, you could see how pitifully thin she’d gotten. Her hospital ID bracelet dangled loosely from her birdlike wrist. At least she can stop worrying about them having to cut it off, Joanna thought.

“I’ve been reading about the Titanic so I’d be ready to help you with your research,” Maisie said eagerly, reaching immediately in the bedside drawer for her tablet and pencil. “So, what do you want me to look up?”

“Are you sure you shouldn’t be resting?” Joanna asked. “I just saw your mom, and she said you’d just started on a new drug.”

“It’s not new,” Maisie said. “It’s nadolal, the same one I was on before I was on the amiodipril.”

The one that couldn’t keep her stabilized, Joanna thought. The one she was on when she coded.

“And all I do is rest. Looking up stuff doesn’t make me tired. It’s a lot more fun than watching stupid videos.” She waved her hand at the TV, where Winnie the Pooh was playing soundlessly.

“All right. I need to know the names of all the ships the Titanic sent SOSs to,” Joanna said. That should be safe, and, according to Kit, time-consuming.

Maisie frowned at her. “You don’t send SOSs to anybody. You just send them out and hope somebody hears you.”

“That’s what I meant,” Joanna said, “the names of the ships the Titanic’s wireless contacted.”

Maisie wrote “ships” in her childish round hand. “I bet there’s a lot of them ’cause the wireless operator kept sending right up till it sank.”

“Maisie—”

“His name was Jack Phillips, and the captain told him he could stop. ‘At a time like this, it’s every man for himself,’ he said, but he just kept on sending.”

“Maisie,” Joanna said seriously, “if you’re going to help me, you can’t tell me things about the Titanic, just the answers to my questions. Not anything else. It’s important. Do you understand?”

“Uh-huh,” Maisie said. “Because of confabulation, right?”

She is entirely too smart, Joanna thought. “Yes. Telling me things could contaminate the project. Do you think you can do that? Just tell me the answers and nothing else?”

“Uh-huh. Can I tell you stuff not about the Titanic?”

“Of course,” Joanna said. “Is that why you called me, because you had something to tell me?”

“Well, ask you, really,” Maisie said, and Joanna braced herself. “What if Mercy General burned down?”

And where did this come from? Joanna wondered. “The alarms would go off, and we’d get all the patients outside,” Joanna said. “And there’s a sprinkler system that comes on automatically.”

“No, I know that,” Maisie said. “I mean, what about their ID bracelets? They’re plastic. If the hospital burned up, they’d melt and nobody would know who they are.”

The hospital bracelet again. This has to do with Little Miss 1565, Joanna thought. Maisie’s afraid she’ll die and no one will identify her. But everyone in the hospital knew her, she was surrounded by family and friends. Why was she worried about that? Was she taking a small and manageable worry and making it stand for the things that were really worrying her, a metaphor for fears she was too frightened to face? Like loss of identity?

Which is the thing everyone’s afraid of when it comes to death, Joanna thought. Not judgment or separation or the fires of hell, but the idea of not existing. That’s why everyone likes Mr. Mandrake’s Other Side, Joanna thought. It isn’t because it promises light and warm, fuzzy feelings. It’s because it promises that, even though the heart has stopped and the body shut down, you won’t suffer the fate of Little Miss 1565. That the people gathered at the gate will know who you are, and so will you.

“Your doctor ID would burn right up, too,” Maisie was saying. She pointed at Joanna’s hospital ID hanging from its woven lanyard. “They should be metal.”

Like dog tags, Joanna thought.

“So, what else do you want me to find out?” Maisie said, as if the matter had been settled. “Do you want me to write down the wireless messages he sent to the different ships?”

“No, just the name of the ships,” Joanna said and then thought of something. “And the call letters of the Titanic.”

“I don’t have to look that up. I already know. It’s MGY, because—” she said, and then stopped.

“Because why?” Joanna asked, but Maisie didn’t answer. She folded her arms and stared belligerently at Joanna.

“Maisie?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”

“You told me I was supposed to tell you the answer and not anything else.”

“You’re right, I did. That’s just what I wanted.” Only what I really wanted was the call letters to be CQD, not MGY.

“Okay, what else?” Maisie said.

“That’s all, just the call letters and the names of the ships,” Joanna said.

“That’s hardly anything,” Maisie protested. “It’ll take me about five minutes. Don’t you have anything else you want me to find out?”

It was tempting to ask her about the Morse lamp. She’d have the answer more promptly even than Kit, and Joanna knew Maisie could keep a secret. She was a master at it. But she also wouldn’t be able to resist saying, “Did you know…?” “I need to know about the Carpathia,” Joanna said, deciding. The Carpathia hadn’t shown up on the scene until well after the Titanic had gone down, so information about it couldn’t contaminate her NDEs, and there was a ton of information on the Carpathia. It should keep Maisie occupied for days.

“Car-pa-thia,” Maisie said, writing it down. “What do you need to know?”

“Everything,” Joanna told her. “Where it was, when it found out the Titanic was in trouble and what it did, and how it picked up the survivors.”

“And who they were,” Maisie said, writing busily. “I know who one of them was. Mr. Ismay.” Her tone conveyed contempt. “He was the owner guy, but he didn’t even try to save people, he just climbed in one of the lifeboats even though the men weren’t supposed to, it was supposed to be women and children first, and saved himself, the big coward. Everybody else was really brave, though, like—”

“Maisie,” Joanna warned. “Only the answers I asked for.”

“Okay,” Maisie said. “Can I tell you what Molly Brown said to Mr. Ismay? She was on the Carpathia when she said it.”

“All right,” Joanna said, thinking, Maybe I should have picked the Californian. It didn’t have any contact with the Titanic at all. “What did Molly Brown say?”

“She went up to Mr. Ismay,” Maisie said, putting her hands on her hips, “and said, ‘Where I come from, we’d string you up on the nearest pine tree.’ And I think they should’ve. The big coward.”

“Maybe he was afraid,” Joanna said, thinking of her own panicked flight down the slanting stairs and into the passage.

“Well, of course he was afraid,” Maisie said. “He still should have tried to save Lorrai—” She bit off the word. “I was going to say somebody’s name,” she said virtuously, “but you said just the answer, so I didn’t.”

“Good girl,” Joanna said, looking at her watch. It was nearly two. “I have to go.” She stood up.

“I’ll page you when I find out stuff,” Maisie said, pulling The Child’s Titanic out from under the covers.

“No,” Joanna said, envisioning Maisie paging her every fifteen minutes. “Don’t page me till you know all the ships.”

“Okay,” Maisie said, opening her book, and, amazingly, didn’t try to stop Joanna from leaving.

I need to get down to see Mr. Ortiz, she thought, going through Peds, but instead she went back down to the hearing center. The group of volunteers had dwindled to four, but Mr. Wojakowski was still there. Joanna had the feeling he stayed for the company even when he was no longer needed.

“Well, hiya, Doc,” he said when he saw her, sounding genuinely surprised and pleased, and she wondered, ashamed, if he realized how she tried to avoid him.

I have no business asking him a favor, she thought, but this was for Maisie, and if he didn’t know, he could just say so. And how can he know? she thought. He probably wasn’t even in the navy. He made all this up, remember?

“Ed, you were in the navy. Do you know where I could get a set of dog tags made? It’s for a friend of mine.”

“Well, now, that’s a tough one,” he said, taking off his baseball cap and scratching his head. “During the war you got ’em when you signed up. They stamped ’em out with a hand press, looked like a cross between a typewriter and a credit card machine, and hung ’em around your neck straight out of the showers, before they even issued you your uniform. I says to the CO, ‘Don’t we need pants more’n dog tags?’ and he says, ‘You might get killed before you get your pants on and we’d need to know who you are,’ and Fritz Krauthammer says, ‘Hell, if I’m killed without pants on, I don’t want anybody to know who I am!’ Fritz was a card. One time—”

“Do you know where I could get dog tags nowadays? They wouldn’t have to be real ones.”

“You used to be able to get ’em made at the dime store or the train station.” He scratched his head again. “I’ll have to give it some thought. What would you want on ’em?”

“Just a name,” she said, taking her notebook out of her cardigan pocket. “And it wouldn’t have to look like dog tags. Just a name tag on a chain that goes around the neck. Metal,” she added. She printed Maisie’s name, tore the sheet out of the notebook, and handed it to Mr. Wojakowski.

“I’ll ask around,” he said doubtfully. “You sometimes can find stuff you never thought you could. Did I ever tell you about the time I had to ditch my Wildcat and ended up on Malakula?”

Yes, Joanna thought, but she had just asked him a favor. She owed him one, and she knew what it was like when no one would listen to your stories, or believe you. So she sat down on one of the plastic chairs and listened to the whole thing: the escape in a dugout canoe, the drifting at sea for days, the Yorktown steaming up, flags flying, sailors hallooing, to save him, “just like Jesus Christ Himself, raised from the dead,” and she had to admit that, true or not, it was a great story.

Mr. Wojakowski walked Joanna to the elevator. “I’ll see what I can do about these dog tags. How soon do you need ’em?”

“Soon,” Joanna said, thinking of Maisie’s thin wrist, her blue lips.

“It’s too bad Chick Upchurch isn’t still around. Did I ever tell you about Chick? Machinist’s mate on the Old Yorky, and he could make anything, and I do mean anything,” Mr. Wojakowski said, and she had to practically shut his hand in the elevator to get away from him, though he didn’t seem put out.

Neither did Mr. Ortiz, even though he had three drains in him, two of which had already had to be replaced. “I don’t care. I feel better than I have in two years,” he said. “They should’ve thought of this before.”

He was happy to talk to Joanna. “It’s still as real to me today as it was two years ago,” he said, and described it for her in detail: floating near the ceiling of the operating room, tunnel, light, the Virgin Mary radiating light, dead relatives waiting to welcome him to heaven.

Maybe Mr. Mandrake’s right, Joanna thought, listening to him describe his life review, and what I’m seeing isn’t a real NDE at all. Certainly no one else has seen a postal clerk dragging a sack of wet mail up a carpeted staircase.

“And then I had this feeling like it was time to go back,” Mr. Ortiz said, “and I went back down the tunnel, and at the end of it was the operating room.”

“Can you be more specific?” Joanna said. “About the feeling?”

“It was like a tug,” he said, but the gesture he made with his hand was of a shove. “I can’t describe it.”

Joanna consulted her notes. “Can you tell me how the Virgin Mary looked?”

“She was dressed in white. She had this light radiating from her,” he said, and this time the gesture matched his words, “like diamonds.” She asked him several more questions and then shut off the recorder and thanked him for his time.

“I’m not really all that interested in near-death experiences,” he said. “My real interest is in dreams. Is your project involved with dream imagery at all?”

“No,” Joanna said and stood up.

Mr. Ortiz nodded. “Most scientists are too hidebound and narrow-minded to believe in dreams. Analyzing the images in your dreams can cure cancer, did you know that?”

“No.”

Mr. Ortiz nodded wisely. “If you dream of a shark, that means cancer. A rope means death. If you want to tell me one of your dreams, I can analyze it right now.”

“I have an appointment,” Joanna said, and escaped.

Is everybody a nutcase? she wondered, going back up to her office. Dream imagery. But once in her office, going over the transcripts of the multiple NDEs, she began wondering if dream imagery might be the key. Not Mr. Ortiz’s brand, of course, where images were assigned arbitrary meanings: a snake means sex, a book means an unexpected visitor. That was only a kind of glorified fortune-telling.

And Freudian dream analysis wasn’t much better. It tried to reduce everything to basic sexual desires and fears when dreaming was actually much more complex. Some imagery in dreams was lifted directly from the events of the day before, some from underlying worries and concerns, some from outside stimuli, like an alarm clock, and some from the neurochemicals generated during REM sleep, most particularly acetylcholine, which Richard had said was elevated during NDEs.

It was acetylcholine that made connections between the inputted data and long-term memory, connections the dreaming mind expressed sometimes directly and sometimes symbolically, so that the alarm clock’s ringing was transformed into a siren or a scream, and it, the Pop-Tart you had for breakfast, and the patient you were worried about all became incorporated into a single dream narrative. And it was possible, taking all those things into consideration, to analyze the content of the dream. Which was what Richard had been doing when he’d said the acetylcholine made the Titanic as likely an association as a hospital walkway, but he had been talking about the NDE as a whole, not the individual images within it.

Joanna hadn’t thought of analyzing those in terms of dream imagery, partly because the NDE didn’t feel like a dream and partly because some of the imagery—the light and the tunnel—was obviously direct manifestations of the stimuli. But that didn’t mean all of them were. What if some of them were symbolic interpretations of what was happening in the NDE?

Could that be why she kept remembering Mr. Briarley’s lecture on metaphors, because the images in the NDE were metaphors? She had focused all her attention on trying to find out what Mr. Briarley had said, but maybe the connection was in the NDE itself, hidden in what she was seeing and hearing.

She called up the transcript of her last time under and began going through it line by line. Some things were obviously direct representations of temporal-lobe stimuli. The lights from the Morse lamp and the deck lights and the light spilling out from the gymnasium and bridge obviously were, and she wondered if all the instances of white clothing—gloves, nightgown, steward’s white jacket—weren’t, too.

Some of the images were clearly taken directly from the Titanic—the lifeboats, the passengers out on deck, the deck chairs—and still others from her waking life—Greg Menotti and the red sneaker, and maybe even the blanket, though that could also be from the illustration on the cover of A Night to Remember.

Which left the details that couldn’t be attributed to the Titanic or the temporal lobe and therefore might be significant: Jack Phillips’s tapping out CQD instead of MGY, the mail clerk dragging the wet sack of mail up the stairs, the stairs themselves, similar to the Grand Staircase and yet lacking the cherub and Honour and Glory, the location of the gymnasium, the mechanical camel. If they were symbols, they were much more subtle ones than “snake equals sex.”

If they were symbols. There was no point in trying to decipher them if in fact they were something that had come from her memories of the Titanic. She needed to have Kit find out. She made a list of things she needed to know and then called Kit. Mr. Briarley answered. “Do you have a hall pass?” he demanded, and when she told him she needed to speak to Kit, “ ‘He cut a rope from a broken spar and bound her to the mast.’ ”

Kit came on the line. “Sorry,” she said. “He’s been doing ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ all morning. I thought it might be a clue, but it’s Longfellow, so he would have taught it in junior English, not senior.”

“ ‘ “Oh, father! I hear the church-bells ring, oh, say, what may it be?” ’ ” Mr. Briarley said in the background. “ ‘ “ ’Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!” and he steered for the open sea.’ ”

“I need you to look up some things,” Joanna said. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

“I told you,” Kit said. “I want to help.” Joanna read her the list. When she got to the mechanical camel, Kit said, “I know that one. Yes, there’s a photo of it in one of the books.”

“Do you know what deck the gymnasium was on?”

“Yes, the—”

“They say the dead can’t speak,” Mr. Briarley said, “but they can!”

“It was on the Boat Deck,” Kit said. “I found that when I was looking for the Morse lamp.”

All right, scratch the gymnasium. She read her the rest of the list. “I’ll work on these tonight,” Kit said. “Oh, and I found out about the staircases. There were three of them. The rear one was the second-class stairway. It was all the way in the stern, next to the A La Carte Restaurant. The aft stairway was midway between it and the Grand Staircase. It’s described as a less elegant version of the Grand Staircase, with its own skylight and the same gold-and-wrought-iron balustrades.”

And scratch the stairway, Joanna thought, going back to the transcript after they hung up. She must have stored every single thing Mr. Briarley had ever said about the Titanic in long-term memory. Who says we don’t remember what we learned in high school?

She transcribed Mr. Ortiz’s NDE and then called Vielle, but the line was busy. She called her again when she got home and managed to wake her up. “I’m sorry,” Joanna said. “You sound like you’re feeling better.”

“I am,” Vielle said.

“Will you be back at work tomorrow?”

“No,” Vielle said. “I’m still pretty wobbly.” And she must be, Joanna thought after she hung up. Or groggy, because she hadn’t said a word about the dangers of going under.

Tish was still out the next day, too, and nursing subs were impossible to get. “Do you know what they said when I called and asked for a sub?” Richard said when Joanna got to work. “ ‘Spring has sprung.’ So I rescheduled Mr. Sage for tomorrow. It’s supposed to be a twenty-four-hour bug, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. Vielle’s already been out a couple of days,” Joanna said, thinking it was just as well they’d had to cancel. She needed to finish the list of people who’d had more than one NDE, and she wanted to go over her earlier NDEs and analyze them for possible clues.

She spent all morning in the office doing just that and ignoring the blinking light on her answering machine. At lunchtime she went down to the lab and foraged some lunch from the lab coat pockets of Richard, who had spent the morning like she had, staring at a computer screen. “How’s it going?” she asked him, taking the Butterfinger he gave her.

“Terrible,” he said, leaning back from the screen. “I still haven’t found anything to explain why Mrs. Troudtheim keeps kicking out. Or why you felt the fear you describe. Only a few cortisol receptors were activated.”

“I felt the fear I describe because I was on the Titanic and D Deck was underwater, and I was afraid I couldn’t get back.”

“You’re still having the feeling that what you’re seeing is the Titanic, huh?”

“Yes, and it’s not just a feeling,” she said. “The places I described to you were on the Titanic, and the reason the stairway didn’t have marble steps and a cherub was because it wasn’t the Grand Staircase. It was the second-class staircase, and it was right where it was supposed to be, next to the A La Carte Restaurant. That’s the dining room I saw, and it did have walnut paneling and rose-colored chairs and—”

“How do you know this?” Richard said, sitting forward, and then, accusingly, “Have you been reading about the Titanic? No wonder you keep seeing it.”

“No, of course I haven’t been reading about it,” she said. “I know that would contaminate the NDE. I asked someone—”

“Asked someone?” he said, coming up out of his chair. “At Mercy General? My God, if Mandrake—”

“It’s no one who works here,” Joanna said hastily. “I asked a friend with no connection to the hospital, and I specifically asked her not to volunteer any information, just to confirm whether the things I’ve seen were on the Titanic. And they were, the gymnasium with the mechanical camel and the wireless room and—”

He was giving her his Bridey Murphy look again. “What are you saying? That there’s no possible way you could know all these details, so what you’re seeing is real?”

“No, of course not.”

“You said you were afraid you couldn’t get back—”

“That’s because it feels like it’s a real place, like it’s really happening, but I know it’s not,” she added hastily, “and Mr. Briarley talked about the Titanic all the time. Every one of the details I’m talking about could have come from him or the movie or A Night to Remember.”

He visibly relaxed. “So what are you trying to tell me?”

“I’m trying to tell you it’s the Titanic, not an amalgam or the first image the L+R happened to find that fit all the stimuli. It’s the Titanic for a reason. It has something to do with what the NDE is, with how it works.”

“But you don’t know what the reason is,” Richard said. “Does everything you’re seeing match the Titanic?”

“No. There should have been people on the Boat Deck uncovering the boats, and the bridge shouldn’t have been empty, and the call letters the wireless operator was sending weren’t right.”

“And you still haven’t seen or heard the name Titanic or any reference to an iceberg. Or have you?”

“No, but I think those discrepancies and omissions may be a clue to deciphering the NDE.” She told him her dream-imagery theory. “I think the details that don’t fit may be symbolic.”

He nodded as if that were the answer he’d expected. And here it comes, she thought.

She was right. “Your conscious mind has confabulated a rationale to justify the sense of significance,” he said. “The fact that it’s so elaborate, even to explaining details that don’t belong in the scenario, has to mean temporal-lobe stimulation is central to the NDE. The feeling you’re having that there’s a connection—”

“I know, I know. Never mind,” she said. “The feeling I’m having is a sense of incipient knowledge, it’s a feeling of significance, and it’s all right there in the scans. I just have one question.”

“What is it?”

“What would the scans look like if it wasn’t just a temporal-lobe sensation, if there really was a connection? Would they look any different? Never mind.” There was no way she was going to convince him until she had the connection in her hands and could show it to him.

She couldn’t do that till she went under again, but she could at least try to decipher what she’d already seen. She broke her NDEs down into individual images and drew a map of the routes she’d taken and of the Boat Deck, marking the wireless room and the bridge and the place where the sailor had stood, working the Morse lamp, and then made a second list for Kit. Was there a grand piano in the A La Carte Restaurant? A birdcage? Was C Deck enclosed in glass or open? Did the Titanic have a squash court?

In the late afternoon—or at least she thought it was late afternoon; when she glanced at her watch, it was nearly six—someone knocked on her door. Mr. Mandrake, she thought, and glanced at the bottom of the door to see if the light showed under it.

The knock came again. “It’s Ed Wojakowski, Doc. I got your dog tags for ya.” She opened the door. “They’re not the real thing,” he said, handing her a chain with a metal tag. Maisie’s name was engraved on it in neat letters. “It’s really one of those medical alert things, but you said metal and a neck chain, and it’s got those.”

“It’s perfect,” Joanna said, turning the tag over, expecting to see the red medical alert symbol, but it was plain silver.

“I filed the medical stuff off,” he said, looking very pleased with himself. “I asked around like I told you I would, but nobody’d seen one of them dog tag machines in years, and then I went to get a prescription filled and there this was. Tags made while you wait.”

“Thank you,” Joanna said. “How much do I owe you?”

He looked insulted. “Glad to do it,” he said. “Reminds me of the time when I was on the Yorktown and me and Bucky Parteri needed to get us a couple of leave passes so we could go see these WACs on Lanai. Well, we asked around, but the captain and the shore patrol were really cracking down, so then we thought, What about getting somebody to make us a couple, and…”

It was a long story, some of it no doubt derived from real events and some symbolic. Joanna didn’t try to sort out which. She waited for something resembling a break in the action and said, “I’d love to hear the rest of this, but I really should take this to Maisie.”

He agreed. “Tell her hi for me. I wish they were the real thing, like the ones I had in the navy. Did I ever tell you how I fell overboard and lost ’em? We were on our way back to Pearl—”

It was after eight by the time Joanna got away from Mr. Wojakowski, and Maisie was asleep. “I’ll bring them by in the morning,” she told Barbara. “How’s she doing?”

“They had to take her off the amiodipril.”

“I know. Maisie told me they’d put her back on nadolal.”

Barbara nodded. “They’re out of new drugs to try. That’s why her mother fought so hard to get her into the clinical trials of amiodipril. They’re talking about putting her on a new ACE-blocker, but it has really severe side effects, and she’s already pretty weakened.”

“And a heart?”

“Pray for a school bus accident,” she said. “Sorry. It’s been a long day, and I think I’m getting the flu. She’s doing fine right now, and who knows, maybe there’ll be a miracle.”

“Maybe,” Joanna said and went back upstairs to go over her NDEs with a fine-tooth comb, looking for clues, till after eleven.

She didn’t find any, and in the morning when she went back to see her, Maisie was down having a heart cath. “She’s staying out of A-fib so far,” Barbara reported. “She said if you came by, to give you this.” She handed Joanna a sheet of paper from a tablet repeatedly folded into a tight packet.

Joanna waited to unfold it till she was back in her office. Written on it in pencil was a list of ships: Carpathia, Burma, Olympic, Frankfurt, Mount Temple, Baltic. I must really have paid attention in class, she thought, though, even hearing the names, she had no memory of Mr. Briarley having talked about them in class.

Which doesn’t mean he didn’t, she thought. And there were examples of people recalling books and movies almost verbatim. The phenomenon was called cryptomnesia. Which was what it had been determined Bridey Murphy had, Joanna thought wryly.

“We’ve got a problem,” Richard said as soon as she walked in.

“Tish is still out?”

“No, she’s back, but Mr. Sage just called to cancel.”

“Has he got the flu, too?”

“This is Mr. Sage,” Richard said irritably. “It took me ten minutes to get the fact that he was canceling out of him. So, can I send you under?”

“Sure,” Joanna said. “What time?”

“I told Tish eleven.”

She nodded and went back to her office. Kit had called. “The gymnasium was on the Boat Deck,” her message said, “on the starboard side just aft of the officers’ quarters. The Marconi shack was on the port side even with the officers’ quarters.”

Everything Mr. Briarley had ever said. Did that include his showing them a map of the Boat Deck? She couldn’t remember, but he might have. Maisie’s disaster books were full of maps and diagrams: the route Amelia Earhart’s plane had taken, the ruins of Pompeii, the layout of the Hindenburg’s gondola.

Joanna called Kit. The line was busy. She called Maisie. “Maisie, you said MGY were the call letters for the Titanic, and then you started to say something else. What was it?”

“You said I wasn’t supposed to talk about anything except what you asked.”

“I know. That still goes, except for this one thing. What were you going to say?”

“That I knew it was MGY because of the message the Titanic sent. ‘MGY CQD PB. Come at once. We have struck a berg.’ CQD means ‘help,’ ” Maisie explained.

“I thought the Titanic sent SOSs.”

“It did, but—are you sure it’s okay to tell you this?”

“I’m sure,” Joanna said.

“Well, first it sent CQDs, and then Harold Bride, that was the other wireless guy, said, kind of laughing, ‘Let’s send SOS. That’s the new distress code, and it may be your last chance to send it.’ ”

31

The entire time they were prepping Joanna, Tish chattered about how sick she’d been. “I thought I was going to die,” she said, sounding not at all unhappy about it. “I ached all over, and I was so dizzy.” She attached the electrodes to Joanna’s chest. “I practically passed out on the way down to my car,” she said, fitting the sleep mask over Joanna’s eyes, “and this doctor who was in the elevator with me had to drive me home. His name’s Ted.”

Well, no wonder she’s so chipper, Joanna thought, wishing Tish would hurry up and put the headphones on. She wanted to focus on what she was going to do and where she was going to go when she got on board.

If she got on board. Richard had announced he was decreasing the dosage, “which will decrease the amount of temporal-lobe stimulation. That should lessen the intensity of the sense of significance, which should allow a different unifying image.”

No, it won’t, Joanna thought, because that’s not what it is. There’s a connection, and I’m going to find out what. But first I have to make sure it’s not an amalgam.

“Ted insisted on going inside with me and getting me settled before he left,” Tish was saying, holding the headphones, ready to put them on. “He’s new here. He’s an obstetrician, and,” she bent over Joanna and whispered, “he’s really cute, his hair’s a little darker blond than Dr. Wright’s, and he has gray—”

“Tish, is Joanna ready?” Richard called from the console.

“Just about.” She dropped her voice again, “Gray eyes and no scans,” and blessedly, put on the headphones.

All right, Joanna thought, I’m going to try to find the Grand Staircase, and if that fails, the First-Class Dining Saloon. The green velvet fleur-de-lis’d chairs would prove it was the Titanic, and there might also be menus or a bill-of-fare with RMS Titanic on it. But the A La Carte Restaurant was locked, she thought. What if the dining saloon is, too? And she was in the passage.

It was dry, and level, and there were only a few people outside the door. It must be earlier, Joanna thought, but when she stepped over the threshold, the young woman had changed out of her nightgown and into a red coat and a fur stole made of red-fox heads with sharp noses and shiny black glass eyes. The woman with the piled-up hair was wearing a coat, too, and a lifejacket.

“It’s so cold,” the young woman said, shivering. “Shouldn’t we go up to the Boat Deck?”

Joanna hoped they would. Then she would know where the door to the Grand Staircase was. But the bearded man shook his head and said, “I have sent the steward to find out what is happening. Until then, I think it best that we remain here.”

“Yes, Edith,” the other woman said, putting a white-gloved hand on the young woman’s arm, “we’ll ask the steward to light a fire,” and they turned to go back into the passage.

Joanna stepped out of their way and out into the middle of the deck. The Grand Staircase should be in the middle of the ship or slightly forward, which meant she needed to go toward the bow. She wondered if she could, or whether any movement in that direction would take her back to the lab.

I’ll have to risk it, she thought, looking toward the bow. There was another deck light that way, shining with a blinding brilliance she couldn’t see past. She shielded her eyes and walked into it.

And into a wall. It extended all the way to the windows with no doors in it. Now what? she thought. I’ll have to access the Grand Staircase from one of the other decks, and remembered there was an entrance to it from the Boat Deck. The band had stood just inside the doors to it while they played.

She ran down the deck to the aft staircase. It was locked, but the door to the second-class stairway wasn’t. She ran up the three flights to the Boat Deck. Her red tennis shoe was still in the door, wedging it open. She left it there and walked toward the bow, trying every door. They were all locked, even the one to the wireless shack. She went around to the gymnasium.

Greg Menotti was just coming out, dressed in a white Nike sweatshirt and dark blue sweatpants, a water bottle strapped to his leg. “Greg,” she said. “Do you know where the Grand Staircase is?”

“Grand Staircase?” he said. “You mean the main staircase? It’s over here.” He jogged over to the aft stairway, Joanna in his wake.

“No, not that one,” she said breathlessly. “The Grand Staircase. It has marble steps and a bronze cherub.”

He was shaking his head. “You’re really out of shape, you know that?” he said. “How often do you jog?”

“You haven’t seen any other stairways? What about on the other decks? Did you see any other stairways there?”

“On the other floors, you mean? No. ’Bye. I’ve got six more laps to do.” He jogged off toward the stern, his white sweatshirt bobbing in and out of shadow.

What now? She was sure there was an entrance to the Grand Staircase from the Boat Deck. Heidi had said Kate Winslet’s mother and the creepy boyfriend had stood at the foot of its stairs waiting for their boat to be called, so all she had to do was find it. But the only doors left to try were those to the officers’ quarters.

She tried them anyway. They were all locked, too, except for the last one. It was a closet, with piles of blankets. Maybe they have the Titanic’s name on them, she thought, and shook one out, but it was a featureless gray, and when she put it back, she saw, high up on a shelf, the Morse lantern the sailor had propped on the bow.

The name would be on the bow, Joanna thought, and ran out onto the forecastle and over to the railing. She grasped the rail with both hands and leaned far out, trying to see the side of the ship below her, but it was too dark to see it. She looked out at the horizon, searching for the Californian’s light and then down at the blackness below. There’s nothing down there, she thought, nothing out there. Not just no light. Nothing. And if it goes down—

She began to run, past the bridge, past the officers’ quarters, past the lifeboats, thinking, Please let my shoe still be there, please let the door to the passage be open, and was all the way down the stairs past the A La Carte Restaurant before she was able to stop herself, grabbing on to the polished railing as if it were a lifeline, forcing herself to stand still, to think.

“You can’t go back yet,” she said aloud, her hands gripping the stair rail. “You have to find out for sure if it’s the Titanic.” And the deck’s not listing yet, the stairs are still dry. There’s plenty of time. And there has to be an entrance to the Grand Staircase from the Promenade Deck.

She forced herself to walk back up the stairs to the restaurant and along the passage. It ended in a door, and she opened it and went out on the Promenade Deck. It was dark, but there was light coming from windows farther along. Stained-glass windows. They shone in patterns of red and yellow, blue and green, on the wooden deck. She walked down to them and looked in the windows.

It was a bar of some sort. It was dimly lit and smoky, and over against one wall, she could see a mirrored mahogany bar with ranks of liquor bottles and glittering glasses. At one of the tables a man in evening dress with a dark mustache sat, dealing out a hand of cards. He dealt them one at a time, facedown, and then picked them up, stared at them, arranged his hand, stared at them again. After a while he shuffled his hand into the deck, and dealt another hand.

I could go ask him what the name of the ship is, Joanna thought. Unlike Greg Menotti, he looked like he had no illusions about where he was and what he was doing here, but something in his face made her drop her hand from the door and leave him there, dealing, shuffling, dealing again.

There was no one in the next room, which was even more elegant than the bar. The walls and the white pillars were decorated with gold filigree, and the chairs and sofas were upholstered in gold brocade. Yellow-silk-shaded lamps stood next to the chairs and on small tables, casting a golden light over the whole room. Books lay on the tables and stood in glassed-in bookcases lining both end walls.

The ship’s library, Joanna thought, or some sort of writing room. On the far wall, next to the deck windows, was a row of desks. They had lamps, too, and neatly arranged pens and envelopes and cream-colored writing paper. The name of the ship will be on the stationery, Joanna thought.

She pushed open the beveled-glass door and walked in and across to the nearest desk. Too late, she saw the room wasn’t deserted after all. A man sat at the last writing desk, bent earnestly over a letter. She could see his graying hair and the white sleeve of his shirt as he dipped his pen in the ink bottle, wrote, dipped it again.

She hesitated, but he hadn’t looked up as she came across the room. He dipped his pen in the ink again, poised it above the paper again. Joanna tiptoed to the nearest desk. The envelopes and writing paper lay in cubbyholes. She reached to pull out a sheet of the paper.

“Do you have a hall pass, Ms. Lander?” the man said sternly, and Joanna wheeled.

“Mr. Briarley!” she gasped.

“Joanna Lander,” Mr. Briarley said, smiling broadly. “I had no idea you were here!” He stood up and started toward her, knocking against the desk as he did. The ink bottle wobbled, and the pen rolled off onto the gold carpet. He steadied the ink bottle and then clasped her hand in both of his. “How delightful! Sit down, sit down,” he said, pulling a chair over from one of the other desks. “I had no idea you were on board.”

“You remember me?” Joanna said.

“I remember all my students,” he said, “even though there were hordes of them, gleaming in purple and gold. You were in second period. You were fond of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ as I recall. ‘Alone, alone, all, all alone, alone on a wide, wide sea.’ And you never asked, ‘Will this be on the final?’ ”

“That was because I knew what you’d say,” Joanna smiled. “You always said, ‘It will all be on the final.’ ”

“And so it will,” Mr. Briarley said. “Knowing that did not stop Ricky Inman from asking, however. Tell me, does he still rock back in his chair and overbalance?”

“I don’t know,” Joanna said, laughing. “He’s a stockbroker these days.”

“And you?” Mr. Briarley asked. “Let me see, as I recall, you intended to major in psychology.”

“I did,” Joanna said, thinking joyfully, He remembers. This is the old Mr. Briarley, the way he ought to be, funny and acerbic and smart, and this is the conversation we ought to have had that day at the house. “I’m at Mercy General now. I’m working on a research project involving near-death experiences.”

“Which would explain why you were not on the passenger list,” he said. “I was certain I hadn’t seen your name. Near-death experiences. Accounts of those who have returned to tell the tale. ‘The times have been that, when the brains were out, the man would die, and there an end, but now they rise again.’ And what have you learned from these voyages to ‘the country from whose bourn no traveler returns’?”

“I—” Joanna said, and, across the library, the door opened, and the steward came in.

He walked quickly up to them. “I beg your pardon, miss,” he said to Joanna and turned to Mr. Briarley. “If I might speak to you a moment, sir.”

“Of course,” Mr. Briarley said. The two men went over by the bookcases, and the steward began speaking in a low, urgent voice. Joanna caught the words “requested me to ask you” and “know what happened.”

“Tell them…” Mr. Briarley said, and Joanna stepped forward, trying to hear. As she did, her hand brushed against the desk and knocked the ink bottle over. Ink splashed onto the floor, soaking darkly into the carpet. Joanna bent to right the bottle, reaching in her pocket for a Kleenex.

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” the steward said. “I’ll tell them. They will be much relieved.”

The steward went out, and Mr. Briarley came back over to the desk where Joanna knelt, blotting up the spilled ink.

“Never mind,” he said, taking her arm to raise her gently to standing. “It doesn’t matter. Come, sit down, and in a moment we’ll go have tea,” he said, sitting down at the desk again. “I must just finish writing a note first.” He picked up the pen and began to write.

Joanna had forgotten that she’d come in here to look for the Titanic’s name on the stationery. She looked down at the note he was writing, hoping the letter would be faceup so she could see the letterhead, but it wasn’t a letter. It was a postcard.

“I was writing a message to my niece,” Mr. Briarley said. There was no printed letterhead on the postcard, only three lines for the address and the words “Dear Kit.”

“Have you met my niece?” he asked and, before she could answer, said, “You’d like her. She was named after Kit Marlowe. ‘Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?’ Though I doubt he meant this one. And, ‘Honour is purchased by the deeds we do. It is not won until some honourable deed is done.’ Did he manage to win it? I wonder. There is always less time than we imagine. Time that in his case ended abruptly in an inn in Deptford.”

“I know,” Joanna said.

Mr. Briarley looked pleased. “You remember that from class?”

“No, I saw the movie. Shakespeare in Love,” she said. “With Gwyneth Paltrow.” I can’t believe we’re having this conversation, she thought. “Vielle and I rented it.”

“Stabbed to death,” Mr. Briarley said. “A quick way to die, though not as quick perhaps as he imagined. Or as serene, though he may have had some idea. ‘Pray for me!’ Faust says, ‘and what noise soever ye hear, come not unto me, for nothing can rescue me.’ Though that’s not always true. And, at any rate, there is still time for tea, though it is a pity I didn’t know of your being on board sooner. We would have had time to talk of many things, ‘of shoes and ships—’ ” He stood up and took his coat off the back of the chair and put it on. “And time to solve the mysteries of the universe. Well, it can’t be helped, and there should still be time for tea, at least.”

He picked up the postcard and slid it inside his jacket, too quickly for Joanna to get more than a glimpse of a hand-colored photo of a ship and pale blue ocean, pale blue sky, on the other side. “I have an errand to run first,” he said, “and then we’ll go to the A La Carte Restaurant. No, perhaps it had better be the Palm Court. It’s farther aft.” He looked at his watch. “Yes, definitely the Palm Court, but I must take this to the post office first.”

“The post office?” Joanna said, thinking of the mail clerk, dragging the wet canvas bag up the stairs. “No, wait, Mr. Briarley,” but he was already out the door of the library.

She ran after him out onto the deck. “Mr. Briarley!” she called, but he was disappearing through another door. “You can’t go down to the mail room,” she shouted, opening it and running down the curving marble steps to the bronze statue at its foot. “It’s already underwater,” she said, and stopped, staring at the statue.

It was a cherub, with wings and curly hair, holding aloft a golden torch. I knew there was an entrance on the Promenade Deck, Joanna thought. Because there was no mistaking this was the Grand Staircase. And no mistaking what ship she was on.

She turned and looked back up at the head of the stairs, and there was the bronze clock flanked by two angels with long robes and wings. Honour and Glory Crowning Time. Joanna craned her neck to look up at the skylight. The curved glass was the same milky-gold color as in the one above the aft staircase, but this one was much larger, and in the center hung a crystal chandelier, light radiating from it like glittering diamond prisms. “It is the Titanic,” Joanna said, and turned back to Mr. Briarley.

He wasn’t there. While she’d been looking at the skylight, he’d vanished. Which way had he gone? She ran down to the bottom of the stairs to look over the railing at the decks below. “Mr. Briarley!” she shouted, but he wasn’t on the stairs, and as she leaned forward, trying to see into the darkness, she heard a door off to the left slam. She ran in the direction of the sound, down a long, brightly lit corridor carpeted in red toward the door that was just closing.

“Mr. Briarley!” she called, opening the door. Beyond it, the corridor widened and made a turn, and there was another stairway, and on the deck below, the sound of another door closing. Joanna pattered down the stairs. Next to the stairway was a small room with a red-and-white-striped pole. The barber shop, and next to it, on the corner, a teller’s window with a gold-lettered sign above it: “Purser’s Office.” The post office must be somewhere nearby.

Between the barber shop and the purser’s was a door. There was no sign on it, but when Joanna put her hand on it, it opened easily. Inside, red-and-black cloth-covered wires crossed and recrossed on a large wooden board, and coming from somewhere—the headphones, lying in front of the board—was an insistent ringing.

The ship’s switchboard, Joanna thought, hurrying past the purser’s and around the corner. This passage wasn’t lit, and after the bright lights of the stairway, she couldn’t see anything. She took a few tentative steps in. “Why, this is my passage,” she said.

“What did she say?” Richard asked sharply.

“ ‘Passed away,’ ” Tish said. “I think she’s awake.”

“She can’t be,” Richard said, and Joanna felt her sleep mask being removed.

She opened her eyes. “I am,” she said, “but I didn’t say ‘passed away.’ I said ‘passageway.’ I went in by mistake. I didn’t realize it was my passage.” She tried to sit up. “It was the other end of it. I was—”

“Lie still,” Tish said, wrapping a blood pressure cuff around Joanna’s arm. “I haven’t even taken your vitals yet.”

“I wouldn’t have gone in it if I’d realized—”

“Lie still,” Tish said. Joanna obeyed, waiting for Tish to finish monitoring her and begin unhooking the electrodes and the IV.

“Do you think it was because of the lowered dosage?” Tish asked, untaping the IV needle and sliding it out.

“I don’t know,” Richard said. “It was well above the threshold level.”

“What happened?” Joanna asked, twisting her head around to see Richard.

“You kicked out,” Tish said. “Just like Mrs. Troudtheim.”

“Kicked out?” Joanna said, bewildered. “But I couldn’t have. I was all over the—” She looked at Tish. “I was all over. I was there a long time.”

Richard helped her to a sitting position. “How long?”

“I don’t know,” Joanna said, trying to think. She’d gone up to the Boat Deck and talked to Greg Menotti and then had the conversation with Mr. Briarley. How long had that taken? And then they’d walked down to the Grand Staircase—

“Oh, I have something to tell you,” she said. “About what I saw. It’s definitely the… what we discussed before.”

“How long?” he repeated as if he hadn’t heard her.

“An hour at least.”

“An hour?” Tish blurted.

“You have a continuous memory of events?” Richard asked. “Not fragmented flashes?”

“No. It was just like the other times. Everything happened in sequence.”

“What about time dilation?”

She shook her head. “Nothing was speeded up or slowed down. It all happened in real time.” Only obviously it hadn’t. “How long was I under?”

“Eight seconds,” Richard said. “How long was it compared to the other times?”

“Longer,” she said promptly.

“Then that and Mr. Sage’s NDE confirm there’s no correlation between subjective time and elapsed time,” he said, and Joanna thought suddenly of Lavoisier. How long had he really been conscious? And how much time had elapsed for him between each blink?

“Was it a complete NDE or did it cut off in the middle?” Richard was asking.

“Both,” Joanna said, wishing Tish would finish unhooking her so she could explain. “I was trying to find Mr. Briarley. He was going to the post office, and I was trying to catch up with him, and I started down this passage—”

“Post office?” Tish said. “I thought you were supposed to see heaven.”

“—and I didn’t realize till I was already in it that it was the same one, and then it was too late. I was already back in the lab.”

“So the ending was different?” Richard said eagerly.

“Yes and no. I came back through the same passage, but it was more sudden than the other times. There was more of an abrupt cutoff.”

Richard went over to the console and typed rapidly, and then looked up at the screen. “Just what I thought. Your last scan is a dead-on match for Mrs. Troudtheim’s.” He began typing again. “I need you to get your account recorded and transcribed as soon as possible.”

“I will,” Joanna said, “and I want to talk to you about what I saw.”

He nodded absently, staring at the screens. Joanna gave up and went into the dressing room, pulled on her blouse and jacket and put on her shoes, and then came back out. Richard was still typing. Tish was winding up the monitor cords. She was nearly done putting things away. I’ll wait till she’s gone and then tell him about the Grand Staircase, Joanna thought, and pulled a chair over to the far corner of the lab, sat down, and switched the recorder on.

Of course he’ll probably say I confabulated it from the conversation we had, she thought, and began recording. “Joanna Lander, session six, March 2. I heard a noise, and I was in the passage,” she said softly into it. She described her attempts to find the Grand Staircase, her fruitless conversation with Greg Menotti, her going out onto the Promenade Deck. “I walked along the deck to where the light from the bar—” she said, and thought of something.

She had said an hour, and it had definitely seemed that long, but an hour after the collision the ship would have had a definite list. Maybe there had been time dilation, after all, or maybe that was another discrepancy that meant something.

I need to tell Richard that, she thought, and looked over at the console. He was taking papers out of the printer. “Joanna,” he said, “I want to show these readouts to Dr. Jamison and see what she thinks,” and walked out before she could turn off her recorder.

She had half stood up. She sat down again, frustrated, and began recording where she’d left off, describing the man dealing out cards, the library, seeing the man at the writing desk. “And when he looked up, I saw it was Mr. Briarley, my high school English teacher, but it wasn’t the Mr. Briarley I’d seen five days ago. He remembered my name and which class I was in, and he looked well and happy—”

Well and happy. “My mother looked well and happy,” Ms. Isakson had said, “not like the last time I’d seen her. She got so thin there at the end, and so yellow,” and Joanna had thought, That’s how NDEers always describe their dead relatives, with their limbs and their faculties restored.

Mr. Briarley remembered who Kit had been named for, he had been able to quote “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

He’s dead, she thought, and a current of fear ran through her. He died. That’s why I saw him on board. The stories Mr. Mandrake told me about seeing someone in an NDE and then finding out they’d died are true.

No, they aren’t, Joanna thought, glaring at the recorder in her hand. You know perfectly well that none of those cases were documented, that the subjects never even mentioned having seen the person until after they’d had outside confirmation of the death, like those mediums who claimed they’d “seen” W. T. Stead at two-twenty on the night the Titanic went down. Not a single one had come forward with their claim until after they’d seen Stead’s name listed among the lost. Those stories aren’t true. Mr. Briarley’s not dead. You saw him because you were thinking about him, because you were worrying about him. Then why didn’t I see Vielle? Or Maisie? And why did I see Greg Menotti?

Because he’s dead, she thought, the dead are who’s on board, and felt the shiver of fear again. I have to find out. I have to call Kit.

But if she called, and something had happened to Mr. Briarley, she’d be in exactly the same situation as Mr. Mandrake’s NDEers. She’d have no proof she hadn’t had advance knowledge of his death, that she hadn’t talked to Kit first and then confabulated Mr. Briarley’s presence in the library.

I have to tell Richard about my NDE first, before I call Kit, she thought, but there was no telling when he’d be back. She could try to find him, but even if she did, he hadn’t been with her the whole time. For all he knew, she might have received a call from Kit while he was out of the lab.

Tish could attest to the fact that she hadn’t left the lab, or received or made any calls, but Richard didn’t want her to know about the Titanic. He’s right, Joanna thought. If Mr. Mandrake were to find out about this… she could see the Star headlines already: “I See Dead People! Scientist Receives Message from Afterlife.”

But there was no one else who could prove she hadn’t known about Mr. Briarley’s death. And if I don’t hurry, I won’t have Tish either, she thought, looking over at where Tish was setting up for Mr. Sage’s session. In another five minutes, she’d be ready to leave.

Joanna bit her lip, trying to decide what to do, and then switched on the recorder and began speaking quickly, describing everything she could remember about how Mr. Briarley had looked and what he’d said. “There is always less time than we imagine,” he’d said, and “ ‘whatsoever noise ye hear, come not unto me, for nothing can rescue me.’ ”

He was trying to tell you he was dead, she thought, and had to force herself not to stand up and go over to the phone, to finish recording the account. “All this time Mr. Briarley’s being there seemed perfectly normal,” she said into the recorder, “but when—”

“Did you say something?” Tish asked from over by the examining table.

“No, I’m just recording my account,” Joanna said.

“Oh. Is there anything else you need me to do, or can I go to lunch now?”

“No, I need you to do something for me,” Joanna said.

“Oh,” Tish said, disappointed. “What is it? Because it’s already one and the cafeteria—”

Probably closed at twelve forty-five, Joanna thought, and if you leave, there goes my documentation. “I need you to witness something,” she said.

“Witness something? You mean, like a will?”

“No, not a will,” Joanna said. “A statement of fact. But before you do, I need to finish recording my account of my NDE, so it’ll be a few minutes.”

“Can’t I go and come back?”

“No,” Joanna said. “I need you here. I’m going to want you to witness the fact that I didn’t leave the room or make or receive any phone calls.”

She switched the recorder back on and began to talk rapidly into it. “—but when I came out of the NDE-state and began recording my account, I experienced an overpowering feeling that his being there meant that he was dead,” she said, trying not to be distracted by the sight of Tish standing in the middle of the lab, tapping her foot and looking at her watch every few seconds. “As far as I am aware, Mr. Briarley—Tish, you don’t have to watch me.” Tish shrugged, went over to the dressing room door, and began applying lipstick in the mirror on the inside of the door.

“As far as I am aware, Mr. Briarley is alive,” Joanna said. “I saw him five days ago and spoke with him on the phone yesterday, and, so far as I know, he was in good health, with the exception of his Alzheimer’s, and uninjured. I have had no communication with him or regarding him since then. End of Joanna Lander’s account. Completed at 1:08 p.m.”

She popped the tape out of the recorder. “Okay,” she said to Tish, who was applying mascara, and went over to Richard’s desk. She reached to switch on the computer and then thought better of it—there shouldn’t be any possibility of outside input, including e-mail—and grabbed a piece of paper. Tish came over to the desk, her bag already over her arm, obviously in a hurry to leave. Which is good, Joanna thought. She won’t ask a lot of questions.

Joanna wrote, “I was in the presence of J. Lander from the beginning of the procedure to the completion of the recording of her account. At no time did J. Lander leave the laboratory or have any communication with anyone outside it,” and pushed the paper across the desk to Tish. “I need you to sign and date this, and put the time,” she said, handing her a pen.

Tish read the affidavit. “What’s this for?” she said. “I’m not providing you an alibi for a crime, am I?”

“No,” Joanna said. “I just need you to document when and where my NDE account was written.”

“You never asked me to document any of the others,” Tish said suspiciously.

“Dr. Wright usually documents them,” Joanna lied. She looked pointedly at her watch. “It’s one-fifteen.”

“It is?” Tish said anxiously and signed the paper. “Is that all you need?”

“No,” Joanna said, holding up the tape. “This is the tape of my account.” She wrapped it in another sheet of paper and taped the ends closed. “I need you to sign across the tape and date it.”

“All this for an NDE where you see the post office?” Tish said. “If I ever have an NDE, I certainly hope it has something more exciting in it than the post office.”

No, you don’t, Joanna thought. She handed Tish the pen. “It’s one-seventeen.”

Tish looked at her watch and then signed it. “Is that it?”

“No, one more thing,” Joanna said, picking up the phone. “I want you to witness me making this phone call.” She punched in Kit’s number, hoping, for the first time, that Mr. Briarley would answer the phone, and wondering what she’d say if he didn’t. “Hi, we’re performing a little experiment here. Is your Uncle Pat alive?”

Tish was tapping her foot again. And what if no one answered? She obviously wouldn’t be willing to stick around while Joanna attempted to call—

“Hello?” a woman’s voice, not Kit’s, answered. “Hello?”

I dialed the wrong number, Joanna thought. “Is… I’m trying to reach Kit Gardiner,” she stammered. “Is she there?”

“No,” the woman said. “This is Mrs. Gray, the Eldercaregiver.”

“Is Mr. Briarley there?”

“No,” Mrs. Gray said. “They just left for the emergency room.”

32

“Emergency room,” Joanna said numbly. Mr. Briarley’s dead, and I knew it, even though there was no way I could have known. She jammed down the phone and started for the door.

“Where are you going?” Tish said. “I thought you wanted me to witness your phone call.”

Joanna stopped, staring at her blankly.

“So, do you want me to sign something saying who you called and what you said?” Tish asked.

“No,” Joanna managed to say. “You can leave now.”

“Okay,” Tish said doubtfully. “I thought that was why you wanted me to stay, to witness it.”

To witness it. To attest to the fact that she couldn’t have known he was dead beforehand. Dead. And himself again, no longer struggling to remember his niece or the word for “tea.” Well and happy, with his memory restored. On the Other Side.

“Dr. Lander?” Tish asked, looking anxiously at her. “Are you okay?”

No, Joanna thought. They’re real. They’re not a hallucination. “I’m fine. Go on, Tish. I know you wanted to get to lunch.”

Tish nodded. “The cute new obstetrician I told you about hasn’t figured out when the cafeteria’s open,” she said, digging through her tote bag. “I brought a whole bunch of quarters for the vending machines. Where is that coin purse? I’ll admit Doritos and Skittles aren’t very romantic, but since there aren’t any restaurants around here—Oh, good, here it is.” She brought out a red polka-dotted coin purse and stuck it in her pocket. “Somebody really needs to open one across the street,” she said, starting for the door. “They’d make a killing,” and was finally gone.

Joanna forced herself to wait till she heard the ding and whoosh of the elevator, then raced out of the lab and down to the ER. It can’t be true, she thought, tearing down the stairs. The mediums were fakes, and Mrs. Davenport’s a moron. There wasn’t a shred of truth to any of their claims. It couldn’t be true. But there wasn’t any other way she could have known. No one had discussed it while she was under. Richard and Tish didn’t even know Mr. Briarley, and if Kit had called and left her a message, Richard would have mentioned it as soon as she came out.

Joanna burst through the side door to the ER and stood there, panting. She couldn’t see Kit anywhere, or paramedics or the crash team. Over by the ambulance doors a security guard straightened from leaning against the wall and looked at her. You have to act normal, she thought, and tried to slow her breathing, calm her expression, look like she was just down here looking for someone.

She tried to spot the aide—what was her name, Nina?—that Vielle was always yelling at, or the gangly intern, but the flu had apparently taken its toll. She didn’t recognize a soul, and she couldn’t just march into the trauma rooms, particularly not with the security guard eyeing her, although he had apparently seen her lanyard and ID and decided she was on staff and belonged here. He had gone back to leaning against the wall.

She still couldn’t go barging into trauma rooms. She’d have to ask the admissions nurse. She pushed her way across the ER and out to the admissions desk. “I’m looking for Patrick Briarley,” she said urgently to the admissions nurse, whom she didn’t recognize. “His niece, Kit Gardiner, would have brought him in.”

“Briarley?” the nurse said, typing in his name and looking for several moments at the screen. “You’re too late.”

Too late. I knew that, Joanna thought. I saw him on the Other Side. I can document it.

“He just left,” the nurse said.

“Left?” The word made no sense.

The nurse looked defensive. “There was nothing on his record about him staying until you arrived, Dr.—?” she said, trying to read Joanna’s ID badge. “Do you want his home number? I’d call it for you, but I don’t think they’re there yet. They just left, not five minutes ago.”

“For upstairs?” He hadn’t died, after all. The crash team had managed to revive him. “He’s been admitted?”

“For a cut thumb?” the nurse said.

A cut thumb? Not a stroke or a heart attack. A cut thumb. He wasn’t dead. She had frightened herself like a superstitious child, spooked by shadows.

“You say he was cut,” Joanna said. “How badly?”

“You’ll have to talk to the resident on duty,” the nurse said, staring suspiciously at Joanna’s ID badge. “Dr. Carroll. That’s who treated him.”

Joanna turned and walked purposefully into the ER, wishing it were an intern instead of a resident who’d treated him. They talked freely about patients and treatments to anybody who asked them. Vielle was always drilling patient confidentiality into them. “At least by the time they’re residents, they’ve learned that,” she’d told Joanna, “even if they haven’t learned anything else.”

She’d have to ask one of the nurse’s aides. Oh, good, Nina was here after all, over by the instrument sterilizer. She walked over to her. “Nina, I need—”

Nina jumped and dropped a pair of forceps. “Oh, Dr. Lander, what are you doing down here?” she said, looking nervously around. “If you’re looking for Nurse Howard, she’s not here.”

“I know. It’s you I need to talk to. Who assisted Dr. Carroll with the patient who was just in with a cut thumb? Mr. Briarley?”

“Mr. Briarley?” Nina said, sounding relieved for some reason, but, instead of answering, she motioned Joanna into the communications room. It was still unfinished, the radio console trailing wires, and boxes everywhere. Nina pulled the door shut. “So we can talk without all that noise.”

There hadn’t been all that much noise, but maybe Nina had had patient confidentiality drilled into her, too. “Who assisted Dr. Carroll in bandaging Mr. Briarley’s cut thumb?” Joanna asked.

“Nobody,” Nina said. “It wasn’t a bad enough cut for stitches. Dr. Carroll just butterflied it and then put a bandage on it because his niece said otherwise he’d forget what the butterfly was for and pull it off.”

Mr. Briarley cut his thumb. He was here in the ER having it bandaged while I was seeing him on the Titanic, and the feeling that he was dead came from the temporal lobe, not the Other Side. And if the feeling, no, the conviction, that Mr. Briarley was dead was false, what about the conviction that the Titanic was somehow the key to NDEs?

“…funny old guy,” Nina was saying. “He kept saying, ‘Who would have thought the old man would have had so much blood in him?’ and something about the ocean.”

“ ‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?’ ” Joanna said.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Nina said. “Is that from something?”

“Macbeth,” Joanna said. She could remember him acting out scenes for them, with a ruler for a sword. “ ‘Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.’ ”

Horrible imaginings. What an appropriate quotation to remember. That was exactly what she’d been indulging in. “Lady Macbeth suffers from a lack of imagination,” he’d said in class, “and Macbeth from too much, hearing voices and seeing ghosts.”

“Is there a phone in the waiting room?” she asked Nina abruptly.

“Sure,” Nina said, “but I can bring you one.”

She went out. Joanna could hear a woman’s voice saying plaintively, “You don’t understand, the British are com—” before Nina shut the door behind her.

She was back immediately with a cordless phone. “There’ll be phones in here if they ever get this thing done,” she said, handing it to Joanna.

“Thanks,” Joanna said and didn’t wait for Nina to leave to punch in the number. The line was busy. Joanna hit “end” and then “redial.”

“I have to warn them!” the same woman’s voice said, loud even through the door, and rising ominously. “One if by land, two if by sea!”

“Uh-oh,” Nina said, leaning out the door to look. “It sounds like another nutcase just came in. I hope it’s just a schizo and not somebody on rogue. After what happened—” She stopped, looking nervous. “What I mean is, they’re so out of it, they don’t even know what they’re doing. They look at you, and they don’t even see you. It’s like they’re in this whole other place.”

Joanna wasn’t listening. The phone was ringing.

“Nina!” a man’s voice called. “John! I need some assistance here. Stat.”

“I gotta go,” Nina said, looking out the door. Three rings. Four.

“I’m fine!” the woman shrieked. “You don’t understand, I saw the signal! It was real!”

“Nina! Get out here! Guard!”

“Just leave the phone on the station desk when you’re done.” Nina went out, shutting the door behind her. Six rings. Seven.

“Hello,” Mr. Briarley said.

Relief flooded over Joanna. “Mr. Briarley?”

“Yes. Who’s calling?”

“I… it’s Joanna Lander,” she stammered. “I—”

“Oh, yes, Ms. Lander. Did you wish to speak to Kit?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll get her. Kit!” she heard him call, “it’s Joanna Lander,” and Kit came on the line.

“Oh, hi, Joanna. Look, I’m afraid I haven’t had time to look for the book or find out the things you asked about. Uncle Pat cut his thumb, and—”

“I know,” Joanna said. “Is he all right?”

“He’s fine, though I was really scared when I saw all that blood. I didn’t know a cut thumb could bleed like that.”

“ ‘Their hands and faces were all badg’d with blood,’ ” Mr. Briarley’s voice said in the background.

“Luckily, Mrs. Gray was here,” Kit said. “She bandaged it up till I could get him to the ER.”

“How did he do it?”

“A juice glass broke, and he was trying to pick up the pieces,” Kit said, and Joanna wondered if that was the whole story, or if he had been dismantling the kitchen again.

“But he’s okay?”

“He’s fine,” Kit said. “I was worried the emergency room might upset him, but it’s one of his good days.” She laughed. “He kept quoting Macbeth to the staff.”

“ ‘So were their daggers, which unwip’d we found,’ ” Mr. Briarley said, “ ‘unmannerly breech’d with blood.’ ”

He was fine. Not only fine, but having a good day.

“Who’s that on the phone?” Mr. Briarley said. “Is it Kevin?”

“I’d better go,” Kit said.

“If it’s Kevin, tell him the assignment is ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus.’ Pages 169 to 180. Tell him it will be on the final.”

“I’m glad he’s all right,” Joanna said.

“ ‘Oh, father! I see a gleaming light,’ ” Mr. Briarley said. “ ‘Oh, say, what may it be?’ ”

And so much for the good day, Joanna thought.

“I’ll call you as soon as I find the book,” Kit said and hung up.

He wasn’t dead. She had outside confirmation. Then why did she still have the feeling? It persisted, in spite of the relief she’d felt hearing Mr. Briarley’s voice, in spite of the fact that people didn’t die of cut thumbs. Maybe it’s a message of some kind, a premonition.

There was a sudden shriek from outside in the ER, and a clattering crash. “Mrs. Rosen,” Nina said, exasperated, “the British aren’t coming!”

“They are!” the woman said, her voice rising ominously. “I saw the light!”

The feeling’s a message, all right, Joanna thought, a message that you’re starting to sound just as crazy as that woman out there. Richard was right. You are turning into Bridey Murphy.

It wasn’t a premonition, or precognition, or proof that Mr. Briarley was dead. It was a contentless feeling, brought on by temporal-lobe stimulation. And what about the feeling that the Titanic is the key to the NDE? Doesn’t this prove it’s purely chemical, too?

“No,” she said stubbornly to the radio control board and the dangling wires. “It means something, and I’m going to find out what.” Which meant calling Betty Peterson back and going over the NDE accounts line by line, looking for clues.

Nina had asked her to take the phone back to the station desk. She picked it up and opened the door. The British are coming! woman had stopped screaming. Joanna leaned out the door to see if she was still out there.

She wasn’t, and Joanna couldn’t see Nina anywhere. The security guard was still lounging against the wall, and scrubs-clad nurses were moving routinely between the trauma rooms. Halfway down the row a young man in a lab coat and running shoes—Dr. Carroll?—stood, earnestly reading a chart.

But there was no telling when the next rogue-raver or gun-waving gangbanger might show up. Joanna started for the side door, keeping a sharp eye out for anyone who looked dangerous. At least Vielle isn’t here, she thought, walking between two heart monitors. And maybe a few days away from the ER had given her a new perspective. Joanna went over to the station desk and set the phone down. The door of Trauma Room 2 opened, and an orderly came out, talking to a black nurse in a surgical cap and dark blue—

“Vielle!” Joanna said. She started across the crowded space toward them. “What are you doing here?”

Vielle had turned at the sound of her name. As she caught sight of Joanna, she grabbed compulsively at her right arm and cradled it close to her body as if protecting it.

“I thought you weren’t coming back till next week,” Joanna said. “What made you change—?” and saw what Vielle was protecting. No, hiding. It was a bandage, and it covered half her forearm.

“What happened?” Joanna said blankly.

“Didn’t you hear about Vielle getting shot?” the orderly asked.

“Shot?”

“This guy comes in, waving a gun around,” the orderly said, “and he says, ‘Where the—’ ”

“Don’t you have work to do?” Vielle said sharply. “The bed in Four needs to be stripped. And mop the floor,” but she was looking at Joanna.

Joanna couldn’t take her eyes off Vielle’s bandaged arm. “You didn’t have the flu,” she said numbly. “You got shot.”

“Joanna—”

“You could have gotten killed.”

Vielle shook her capped head. “It’s just a flesh wound. It—”

“They told me you went home with the flu. Where were you? Up in the ICU?”

“No, of course not,” Vielle said. “The bullet barely creased the skin. I didn’t even have to have stitches.”

“That’s why you wouldn’t let me come over. You said you didn’t want me to catch the flu, but it was because you didn’t want me to know you’d been shot.”

“Joanna—”

“You told me you were going to stay home and get over it,” Joanna said. “Did you, or was that a lie, too, and you were back at work the next day because you couldn’t wait to let them take another shot at you?”

“I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d be upset,” Vielle said, “and I didn’t see any point in—”

“Upset? Upset?” Joanna said furiously, and Dr. Carroll and one of the nurses turned around to look at them. The security guard began to lumber to his feet. “Why should I be upset, just because my best friend has been shot?”

“Keep your voice down,” Vielle hissed, looking anxiously toward the security guard. “This is exactly why I didn’t tell you, because I knew you’d overreact—”

“Overreact?”

“Problem, Nurse Howard?” the security guard said, heading toward them, his hand on his gun.

“No,” Vielle said, “no problem.”

“Yes,” Joanna said to him, “where were you when the guy was waving a gun around?” She turned back to Vielle. “When exactly did you plan to tell me? Or did you plan to? If he’d shot you through the heart, would you have told me then?” and flung herself across the ER.

“Joanna—” Vielle called after her.

She pushed through the side door. Behind her, she heard Vielle say, “Cover for me. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Joanna, wait—”

Joanna ignored her and headed down the hallway.

“Joanna, please!” Vielle caught up to her just before she reached the stairs. “Don’t be angry,” she said, clutching at Joanna’s arm with her left hand. “The reason I didn’t tell you was—”

“Because you knew what I’d say,” Joanna said. “You’re right. I would have said it. Did you really expect me to stand idly by and watch my best friend get killed?”

“It was just a scratch,” Vielle protested. “He wasn’t shooting at me. I don’t even think he knew he had a gun. He was on rogue—”

“On rogue,” Joanna said, “which has caused a twenty-five percent increase in emergency room casualties.”

“You don’t understand,” Vielle said. “I was as much to blame as he was. I should have seen he was too far gone to reason with. I thought I could calm him down, and I took hold of his arm. The first thing the hospital memo said was, ‘Do not attempt to engage the patient.’ I had no business—”

“You have no business working in the ER,” Joanna cut in. “How many more warnings do you need? This is about as plain as it gets. You’ve got to get out of there.”

“I can’t. We’re shorthanded as it is. Two of our nurses are out with the flu, and the bad publicity means we can’t get subs. Look, it won’t happen again. They’ve hired an additional security guard. He starts tomorrow, and the hospital is talking about putting in a metal detector.”

“The hospital that responded to the last shooting by putting out a memo? Vielle, listen to me. You’ve got to transfer out now.”

Vielle was looking at her with an odd expression. “All right,” she said.

Joanna blinked. “You’ll ask for a transfer?”

“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll transfer out of the ER, and you tell Richard you can’t be his guinea pig anymore.”

Joanna stared at her. “Quit the project? Why?”

“You said you couldn’t stand idly by and watch your best friend get killed? Well, neither can I. I’m worried about you.”

“Worried about me?” Joanna said. “You’re the one with a bandage on her arm. You’re the one who—”

“You’re the one who’s got shadows under her eyes practically down to her knees,” Vielle said. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

“I’m fine,” Joanna said.

“That’s what the woman in there just said, the one who keeps screaming, ‘The British are coming!’; the one who doesn’t realize she’s crazy. You’re nervous as a cat, you space out when people are talking to you. When you came down to the ER just now, you looked—”

“You saw me?” Joanna said, outraged all over again. “What were you doing, hiding from me? You were,” she said, suddenly remembering Nina looking anxiously around and then hustling her into the communications room. “You waited till you thought I’d gone to come out.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Vielle snapped. “You looked white as a ghost. You still look white as a ghost.”

“And how am I supposed to look? I just found out my best friend was shot by a lunatic.”

Stalemate. They stood there, bristling like a pair of dogs for a long minute, then Vielle said patiently, “You’re overwrought, you’re losing weight—”

“I’ve been busy,” Joanna said defensively. “The cafeteria’s always closed—”

“The cafeteria has nothing to do with your disappearing for hours, jumping if anybody talks to you. You know who you’re acting like?”

“Julia Roberts in Flatliners?” Joanna said sarcastically.

“Julia Roberts in Mary Reilly. She had shadows under her eyes, too, and she nearly got herself killed because she refused to stop working for Dr. Jekyll.”

“Richard’s not Mr. Hyde.”

“Richard wouldn’t notice if you fell over unless it showed up on one of those scans of his. You have to tell him you can’t go under anymore.”

“I can’t,” Joanna said.

“Why not?”

Because it means something, Joanna thought. Because it’s important. “Richard doesn’t have any other subjects,” she said, “except Mr. Sage, and he’s useless. The progress report is due in two weeks, and if we don’t discover how the NDE works soon—” She broke off and started again. “If it’s a survival mechanism, it could be used to revive patients who’ve coded, and the key is the images I’m seeing in my NDEs. I have to figure out what they mean.”

Vielle was regarding her solemnly. “This is about Maisie Nellis,” she said wonderingly. “You think you’re going to make some big discovery about NDEs that’ll bring back patients whose hearts have given out. That’s why you joined the project in the first place, not because you could find out firsthand what NDEs were like or because Dr. Wright was Dr. Right. You did it because you thought you could save Maisie from drowning.”

“I don’t—”

“Nurse Howard,” Nina called, leaning her head out the side door. “Nurse Gilbert wants to talk to you.”

“Tell her I’ll be there in a minute,” Vielle said.

Nina’s head disappeared and then popped out again. “Where’s the fiberoptic gastroenterology scope?”

“Examining Room Two,” Vielle said, “lefthand side of the cabinet above the sink,” and Nina disappeared again.

Vielle turned back to Joanna. “When I first started in the ER,” she said, “I thought if I just worked long and hard enough, I could fix everything, I could save everybody’s life.” She smiled wryly. “You can’t. You’re only human.”

“You still have to try,” Joanna said.

“Even if it means risking your own health? And don’t tell me about wanting to die like Sullivan or Gilbert, whichever one it was, because, trust me, dying isn’t something you want to do. I work with death every day in there. It’s something to avoid at all costs.”

“Then why are you still working in there?”

Nina leaned out again. “It’s locked.”

“The key’s in the station desk. Top drawer, right side.”

“And Stan wants to know if he’s supposed to work a double shift tonight.”

Vielle sighed. “Tell him to ask Mr. Avila in Ops. He’ll know what’s happening.”

He’ll know what’s happening. “Ask Mr. Briarley,” the bearded gentleman had told the steward. “He’ll know what’s happening.” He was right. The Mr. Briarley on board had remembered Ricky Inman and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

He’d remember what he had said in class. I should have asked him there in the writing room, Joanna thought. He would have been able to tell me, and then, with a shock of comprehension, That’s why he was there. Not because he was dead. Because he knew the answer.

“Well, then ask her where Mr. Avila is,” Vielle was saying.

I have to get Richard to send me under again, Joanna thought, so I can ask Mr. Briarley what he said.

“All right,” Vielle was saying resignedly. “I’ll be right there.” She turned to Joanna. “What say we both quit right now and walk out that door?” She pointed to the door that led to the parking lot. “We get in my car and go someplace where it never snows and there aren’t any Ninas.”

“Or rogue-ravers.”

“Or sick people.”

“Or Mrs. Davenports.”

Vielle smiled. “And the cafeteria’s open twenty-four hours a day.”

“You’ve just described Mr. Mandrake’s Other Side.” Joanna grinned.

“Except for the Mrs. Davenport part,” Vielle said. “Can you imagine how awful that would be? You die and go through the tunnel, and there, waiting for you in the light, is Mrs. Davenport. Can you imagine anything worse than that?”

Yes, Joanna thought.

“I’d settle for just no snow,” Vielle said. “How about this? We go to Hollywood and get jobs as film consultants. I tell them why people can’t survive in twenty-eight-degree water, and you tell them what John Belushi’s last words were. We’ve got the credentials. All those Dish Nights.”

Nina leaned her head out the door again. “Dr. Carroll said to tell you we’ve got incoming. A three-car crash on I-70.”

“Coming,” Vielle said and started toward the door. She put her hand on it. “Think about it, okay?”

“About Hollywood?”

“About quitting. I really am worried about you, you know.”

“Ditto,” Joanna said.

“Or, if you won’t quit, about taking a couple of weeks off to catch up on your sleep and get any excess dithetamine out of your system. Promise me you’ll think about it.”

“I promise,” Joanna said, but as soon as Vielle had gone into the ER, she tore up the stairs, across the walkway, and up to the lab to talk Richard into sending her under right away.

33

Richard wasn’t there. Which was just as well, Joanna thought, catching sight of herself in the dressing-room-door mirror. Tish had left it open after her makeup session, and Joanna’s reflection looked wild-eyed and disheveled, like someone escaping from Pompeii.

If Richard saw me like this, he’d never send me under again, she thought. And he had to. She had to ask Mr. Briarley what the connection was.

The affidavit and the sealed tape she’d had Tish sign were both on Richard’s desk where she’d left them. She picked them up. She could tear up the affidavit and unseal the tape, and Richard would never have to know about it. If Tish said anything, she could say she just wanted the fact that she’d recorded her NDE immediately after her session documented.

But then she was as bad as Vielle. Worse, she thought, because this is a scientific experiment, and Richard can’t possibly come up with a theory without all the data. You have to tell him. But she didn’t have to look like a nutcase while she was doing it. She combed her hair and put on some lipstick so she wouldn’t look so pale, and then stood there trying to think of a way to explain it to Richard, but the image of Vielle and a kid brandishing a gun kept intruding. If he’d waved it a little more to the right, if it had ricocheted a little differently—

Richard came in, and walked straight to the console. “I think we may finally have something. Your readouts aren’t identical, but they show at least one of the same neurotransmitters as Mrs. Troudtheim’s, and I need to check the cortisol numbers, but I think they’re the same, too. Have you written up your NDE yet? If you have, I need a copy. I’m meeting with Dr. Jamison at two-thirty, and—” he stopped. “My God, what’s wrong? Are you all right?”

“No,” she said. “Vielle got shot.”

“Shot?” he said. “Good God, is she okay?”

She nodded. “It was only a flesh wound.”

“My God! When did this happen?”

“Three days ago,” Joanna said, and burst into tears.

He was across the lab in two steps, his arms around her. “What happened?”

She told him through her tears. “She didn’t tell me because she knew what I’d say.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “She’s got to transfer out of there. It’s getting ridiculously dangerous.”

“I know, but she won’t,” she said, wiping at her tears with her hand. “She says they’re too shorthanded.”

He reached in his lab coat pocket and pulled out a package of Kleenex, which made her laugh. “I’m sorry to cry all over you,” she said.

“Anytime,” he said. “You doing okay now?”

She nodded and blew her nose. “I just keep thinking about what might have happened—”

“I know. Look, let me call Dr. Jamison and cancel our meeting, and you and I go get something to eat.”

It sounded wonderful, but if she went out with him, she was liable to blurt out what had happened with Mr. Briarley just like she’d blurted out the news about Vielle, and, worse, try to explain her conviction that Mr. Briarley could tell her the reason she was seeing the Titanic, and he’d decide she was too distraught or unstable to go under again.

And she had to go under again, had to ask Mr. Briarley, “What did you say in class that day? What does the Titanic have to do with NDEs?”

“No, I’m okay now, really,” she said. “I don’t want to take you away from what you’re doing, especially if you’re on to something, and I need to go transcribe my account.” She picked up the sealed tape and quickly stuck it in her cardigan pocket. “You said you needed it by two-thirty?”

“Actually, all I need is the very end,” he said. “You said you came back through the same passage, but it was in a different place?”

“No.” She explained about following Mr. Briarley, opening the door to the passage, realizing it was the same one. “The passage is always in the same location. Everything is. It’s a real place. I mean,” she said at his look, “it feels like a real place.”

“And the return was sudden?”

“Yes, like someone slapping a book shut—” she said. “I just thought of something. Mrs. Woollam said one of her returns was like that, and I think it was a time when she revived on her own.”

“I’d like to see her account, too,” Richard said. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Thank you for the Kleenex. And the shoulder.”

He grinned. “As I said, anytime,” and went back over to the console.

She stood there a minute, looking at his blond head bent over the keyboard, wanting to tell him everything, and then said, “When do you think you’ll send me under again?”

“Tomorrow, if possible. I’d like to do another session at this lower dosage and see if it’s a factor. And see how the scans compare.”

“I’ll call Tish,” Joanna said and went to her office, cut the taped and signed paper off the tape, and began typing up the transcript.

Listening to the tape was like experiencing it all over again: leaning over the bow, looking down at the side of the ship, gazing down into nothingness, seeing Mr. Briarley in the library. “Have you met my niece?” Joanna typed, and thought, He didn’t remember that. She looked back over the conversation. He’d greeted her as if he hadn’t seen her since high school. There’d been no mention of having seen her just a few days before.

Because he didn’t remember those things, she thought. It wasn’t a whole and healthy Mr. Briarley she’d seen, but the old Mr. Briarley, whom she’d had in second period, the part of Mr. Briarley that had died. “Dying in pieces,” Vielle had said. And her acetylcholine-enhanced mind had given the idea concrete form. No wonder she had been convinced he was dead. Part of him was, and maybe that, and not his holding the key to the connection, was why she’d seen him on the Titanic. In which case he wouldn’t be able to tell her what the connection was and what the NDE was.

He has to, she thought, and continued going through the account, looking for clues. “ ‘And what noise soever ye hear, come not unto me, for nothing can rescue me,’ ” she typed, and, “I must take this to the post office first.”

She stared at the screen, her chin in her hands. When he’d said that, she’d assumed he meant the mail room. That was why she’d run after him, because the mail room was flooded. But she was almost sure he’d said “post office,” and, now that she thought about it, it was unlikely that passengers would have been allowed all the way down on G Deck. More likely, they would have handed their letters to a steward or dropped them in a mailbox or a mail slot. But Mr. Briarley had said “post office,” and he’d disappeared into one of the passages on C Deck, and the other rooms Joanna had seen—the A La Carte Restaurant and the lounge and the gymnasium—had all existed.

She called Kit. “I need to know if there was a post office on the Titanic, and if so, where it was.”

“You don’t mean the mail room?” Kit said. “I found out about it and the mail, by the way.”

“No, this would have been a post office for the passengers,” Joanna said.

“Post… office… for… passengers,” Kit said, obviously writing it down. “Anything else?”

Yes, but this was the one she needed before she went under again so she could find Mr. Briarley, and if she gave Kit the other rooms to find and a list of quotations to look up, she might not find out about the post office in time.

“No, that’s all,” she said. “Now, what about the mail?”

“The mail clerks did drag the mail up to the Boat Deck,” Kit said. “The mail room was in the bow, so it was one of the first things to flood, and the mail clerks carried the sacks of first-class and registered mail up to try to save it.”

But the mail was already ruined, Joanna thought, remembering the sodden, dripping bag, the dark stain on the stairs. “Did it say which staircase they used?” she asked.

“No, do you want me to try to find that out?”

“The post office is more important,” she said.

She hung up and called Tish, who wasn’t available till Thursday. “They’ve got me subbing in Medicine till then. This flu,” she explained. Thursday. Two days till she could ask Mr. Briarley what the connection was. At least there’d be enough time for Kit to locate the post office.

“…and why didn’t you tell me Vielle Howard had been shot?” Tish was asking. “I just found out.”

I just found out, too, Joanna thought. “I assumed you already knew,” she lied.

“Is she okay?”

“It was just a flesh wound,” Joanna said. She hung up and finished transcribing the account. She considered leaving off the last paragraph, but it was part of the data. She compromised by adding, “Upon checking, I found Mr. Briarley to be alive and in good health except for his Alzheimer’s, thus providing a documented instance which contradicts Mr. Mandrake’s claims of extrasensory perception.”

She printed out the transcript and fished in her pockets for a paper clip to put on it. She came up instead with Maisie’s dog tags. Which I never did deliver, she thought, and decided to run down as soon as she’d taken the account to Richard.

He wasn’t there. Good, she thought, and ran down to four-west. “Oh, good,” Barbara said. “Maisie will be glad to see you. She’s having a rough day.”

“I’m in A-fib again,” Maisie said disgustedly, lying back against the pillows. She was wearing an oxygen mask, which she pulled off as soon as Joanna came into the room. “They’re trying to get me converted. Did Barbara give you the list?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “Put your oxygen mask back on.”

“There might be some more ships. I didn’t look in Catastrophes and Calamities yet.”

“Put your—”

“Okay,” Maisie said and put the mask over her mouth and nose. It immediately fogged up.

“You don’t need to look up any more ships,” Joanna said. “I found out what I needed to know.”

“I’ll look up—” Maisie said, her voice muffled by the mask. She took it off again. “I’ll look up the Carpathia stuff tonight,” she said and popped it back on.

“I don’t want you doing anything till you’re out of A-fib,” Joanna said, and then brightly, “I’ve got a surprise for you,” and could tell from Maisie’s face she sounded just like her mother. “I brought you something.” She fished the necklace out of her pocket and held it up by the chain. “This is—”

“Dog tags,” Maisie said, beaming. “In case the hospital burns down. Will you put them on me?”

“You bet,” Joanna said and took hold of Maisie’s thin shoulders to pull her forward a little. It was like handling a sparrow. She put the necklace on over her head, careful of Maisie’s oxygen tubes and her IV lines, and arranged it on her chest. “A friend of mine, Mr. Wojakowski, made it for you.”

Barbara came in. “Look what Joanna gave me.” Maisie held them out for Barbara to admire. “Dog tags! Aren’t they cool?”

“You always know just what will make her feel better,” Barbara said, walking Joanna out, but it wasn’t true. She hadn’t done anything. Maisie was still as frail as a bird and getting frailer, and she was no closer to knowing anything about NDEs than she had been when she’d sat listening to Mrs. Davenport for hours. She wasn’t even any closer to knowing what Mr. Briarley had said in class, or even the name of the textbook.

That at least she could do something about. She called Betty Peterson again, but the line was busy. Waiting to try again, she started through her messages. Mr. Mandrake, Mr. Mandrake, Mr. Ortiz, wanting to tell her a dream he’d had the night before. Guadalupe. She must not have gotten the note Joanna had left with the sub nurse.

She went up to four-west. As soon as Guadalupe saw her, she handed her a sheet of paper with a single line typed on it: “…(unintelligible)… smoke… (unintelligible).”

“You didn’t get my message?” Joanna asked. “That I wanted you to keep writing down what Coma Carl said?”

“I got it, and that’s everything he said,” Guadalupe said. “He’s pretty much stopped talking.”

“When did this happen?” Joanna asked.

“It’s been a gradual falling off,” Guadalupe said. “He would murmur at wider and wider separated intervals, and it got harder and harder to hear him.”

As if he were getting farther and farther away, Joanna thought.

“By the time I sent you that message he’d pretty much stopped altogether, except for a few unintelligible words,” she said. “That’s really why I called you that day, to ask you if you wanted to call it off.”

Call it off. Joanna thought of the wireless operator in the Marconi shack, hunched over the telegraph key, tirelessly sending.

“He hasn’t said anything for nearly a week.”

“Can I see him?” Joanna asked. “Is his wife in with him?”

Guadalupe shook her head. “She went out to the airport. His brother’s coming in. Sure, go on in.”

There were three more bags hanging from the IV stand and two more monitors. The IV monitor began to beep, and a nurse Joanna didn’t know bustled in to check his IV lines. “You can talk to him,” she said to Joanna.

And say what? “My best friend was shot by a rogue-raver?” “This little girl I know is dying?” “The Titanic’s going down?”

Mrs. Aspinall came in, accompanied by a tall, bluff man. “Oh, hello, Dr. Lander,” she said and went over to the bed and took Carl’s bruised and battered hand. “Carl,” she said, “Martin’s here.”

“Hello, Carl,” Martin said, “I got here as soon as I could,” and Joanna almost expected Carl to stir, in spite of the mask and the feeding tube, and murmur, “Too far for him to come,” but he didn’t. He lay, gray and silent in the bed, and Joanna was suddenly too tired to do anything but go home and go to bed.

On the way there, it occurred to her with a kind of horror that she might be catching the flu. Richard won’t let me go under if I’m sick, she thought, but in the morning she felt much better, and when she got to work, there was a message from Betty Peterson on her answering machine. “I just realized I never told you the name of the book: Mazes and Mirrors.”

Mazes and Mirrors. Joanna could instantly see the title in her mind’s eye, lettered in gold across a blue cover, though oddly, the name didn’t conjure up the rest of the cover. Joanna squinted, trying to envision a ship under the title and then Queen Elizabeth with a mustache and glasses, but neither seemed right. It will probably turn out to be Windsor Castle, Joanna thought. But at least we know the title.

“I told you it began with an M,” Betty’s voice was saying. “And there it was, in the margin, next to Nadine’s picture. Just a minute, let me read it to you. I’ve got it right here.” There was a pause, and her voice continued, “ ‘Betty, just think, no more of Mr. Briarley’s boring stories about the Titanic and no more Mazes and Mirrors! Your pal in second period, Nadine.’ You still need to call me, though. I talked to my little sister and she told me this thing about Mr. Briarley. Oh, and I called Blake Dirkson. He was the year ahead of us. He couldn’t remember the name of the book either, but he said it had one of those quill pens and a bottle of ink on the cover. He smoked a lot of pot in high school, though, so I don’t know. Anyway, call me. ’Bye.”

A quill pen and a bottle of ink? Oddly, that seemed vaguely familiar, too. We’re all confabulating, she thought. She called Betty, but the line was busy again. Which isn’t a surprise, Joanna thought, considering how long she talks when she’s just leaving a message, and called Kit.

“Mazes and Mirrors,” Kit said. “Great. That’ll make it a lot easier.”

“She says she thinks she remembers a picture of Queen Elizabeth in a ruff on the cover, or a quill pen and a bottle of ink. I still think it’s a ship, but it could be one of the others.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Kit said. “I haven’t been able to find out anything on a post office, but I’m still looking.”

And if she couldn’t locate the post office, how else could Joanna find Mr. Briarley? He’d mentioned the Palm Court. She needed to ask Kit where it was and what deck it was on, although the easiest way to find him would probably be just to follow the steward when the bearded man asked him to go find Mr. Briarley.

Richard stuck his head in the door. “I just wondered if you’d finished typing up your account,” he said, “and if you were feeling better.”

“Yes,” she said, handing him the transcript and Mrs. Woollam’s. “Tish can come tomorrow at two. How are things coming with Mrs. Troudtheim?”

“We isolated three neurotransmitters that were present in both of your exit scans and all of Mrs. Troudtheim’s: LHRH, theta-asparcine, and DABA. LHRH was also present in the template scan, so it’s probably not the culprit, but the DABA may be a possibility. It’s an endorphin inhibitor, and Dr. Jamison thinks beta-endorphins, rather than being just a side effect, may be a factor in sustaining the NDE-state, and that the DABA may be inhibiting them.” He waved the transcripts at her. “Thanks. Tomorrow at two.”

The phone rang. Richard said, “I’ll talk to you later,” and Joanna picked it up, thinking, too late, It’s probably Mr. Mandrake.

“I can’t believe it’s really you,” Betty Peterson said. “I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Did you find out whatever it was you needed to find out?”

“Find out?”

“From Mazes and Mirrors.”

“Oh. No, not yet,” Joanna said.

“Wasn’t that the luckiest thing, finding it in my yearbook like that? I guess it’s a good thing Nadine hated Mr. Briarley, isn’t it?”

“You said you had something to tell me about Mr. Briarley,” Joanna said. “Something your sister told you.”

“Oh, yes. I called her right after you called me to see if maybe she knew the name of the book. She was three years behind us, but I thought maybe they might have had the same textbook. I mean, our history books were ancient. They said John F. Kennedy was president.”

It was like talking to one of her NDEers. “Did she know it?” Joanna asked to get her back on track.

“No, but she told me this awful story, and since you said you’d gone to see Mr. Briarley I thought I should tell you. Did you meet his niece? Her name’s Kathy or Katie or something.”

“Kit,” Joanna said.

“Kit,” Betty said. “Well, she was supposed to get married, she was having this big wedding, and Mr. Briarley was supposed to give her away. My little sister said he talked about it constantly in class, even more than he used to talk about the Titanic. I guess she was his favorite niece, and then her fiancé—my sister told me his name, but I don’t remember it—”

“Kevin,” Joanna said, thinking, I was right. He wasn’t willing to take on the responsibility of an Alzheimer’s patient. He left Kit at the altar.

“Kevin, that’s right. Well, anyway, the morning of the wedding, he went to pick up some film, and this kid ran a red light and plowed right into him.”

It was so different from what she had thought Betty was going to say that for a minute Joanna couldn’t take it in.

“Killed him instantly,” Betty said. “It was awful, and I guess Mr. Briarley was the one who had to tell her. My little sister says she thinks that was what caused his Alzheimer’s, that he’s just trying to forget.”

One small part of her mind thought, That’s ridiculous, that isn’t what causes Alzheimer’s, but she didn’t say it, couldn’t say it. Belated understanding pounded at her, memories of words that she hadn’t comprehended, that she’d misinterpreted, thudding like the medicine ball hitting the gymnasium wall.

Kit asking her if people in car accidents had NDEs, if they were pleasant. “They’re not frightening, are they?” she’d said. And “My aunt made me read The Light at the End of the Tunnel after—” and, “Uncle Pat was very kind to me,” saying, “Sometimes he relives past events.”

She should have seen it. Kit’s thinness, her shadowed eyes, the photo of her and the blond young man, smiling, and Mr. Briarley saying, “Kevin should be here by now,” quoting, “ ‘The bride hath paced into the hall.’ ”

Oh, my God, Joanna thought, horrified, I made her watch Runaway Bride!

“My sister knew this girl who was there and she said it was just tragic,” Betty was saying. “I guess she was already in her wedding dress and everything.”

Did it have a train? Joanna wondered, feeling sick. “Which wedding dress do you like the best?” she’d asked Kit. “I want a big wedding, with all the trimmings,” Vielle had said.

“And since you said you’d gone over to see Mr. Briarley, I thought you should know so you wouldn’t put your foot in it.”

Put my foot in it, Joanna thought. She had sat there in the kitchen, casually discussing near-death experiences, blithely telling Kit heaven was a hallucination of the dying brain.

I have to call Kit, she thought, I have to tell her how sorry I am, and hung up unceremoniously on the still-chattering Betty. She punched in Kit’s number and then hung up and went to see her instead.

I was going to rescue her, she thought. I was going to play W. S. Gilbert and save her from drowning, so I invited her over to Vielle’s to discuss weddings and watch a movie with no less than five of them in it. She remembered Kit’s intentness watching it, as if she were afraid there was going to be a test, but the movie itself was the test. No, wrong word. Ordeal. Trial by fire.

I couldn’t have done worse if I’d tried, she thought, getting out of the car and going up the walk. And what do I say to her now? I’m sorry I tortured you, I was too stupid to put two and two together?

She didn’t have to say anything. Kit said, looking like she’d just been arrested for a crime, “How’d you find out?” She opened the door, shivering in a halter top, capri pants, and no shoes, and to Joanna she looked even thinner and more drawn, or was that only because now she knew?

“Why didn’t you tell us that night?” Joanna said. “I mean, Runaway Bride!”

“Rule Number One of Dish Night,” Kit said. “No discussion of work. It was all right. One of the things that was so terrible was the way everybody tiptoed around me. Still tiptoes around me.” She smiled wryly. “My cousin got married last summer, and nobody told me. I found out by accident. Which, I suppose, is how you found out.”

Joanna nodded. “Betty Peterson told me. The one who found out the title of the book. Her little sister told her.”

“And I should have told you,” Kit said. “It was just so nice having somebody treat me like a person instead of a…”

Disaster victim, Joanna thought, and realized why Kit had reminded her so much of Maisie.

“You have no idea the things people do to you trying to comfort you,” Kit said. “They say, ‘You’ll fall in love again,’ and, ‘At least he didn’t suffer.’ How do you know? I wanted to ask them. How do you know he didn’t suffer?”

I told her I saw the Titanic, Joanna thought, feeling sick. I introduced the possibility that Kevin didn’t die instantly, that he experienced something terrible, something terrifying.

“My aunt Julia kept saying, ‘God never sends us more than we can bear,’ ” Kit was saying, “and, ‘You need to be thankful it was quick.’ Well, it was. So quick I didn’t even get to say good-bye.”

And so you get to say good-bye to Mr. Briarley instead, Joanna thought. An endless, agonizing good-bye.

“The only one who didn’t say any of those things was Uncle Pat. He was wonderful. He didn’t try to tell me it was going to be all right or that Kevin was in a better place or that I’d get over it. He didn’t tell me any lies at all. He took me in, talked to me about Coleridge and Kevin and Shakespeare, made me tea, made me finish college. He saved my life,” she said, staring blindly toward the library, “and then when he got sick… My mother thinks I’m in denial, that I believe I can save him, or that I’m punishing myself somehow… He doesn’t say those things on purpose, you know. He… I think he has a fragmented memory of Kevin and something bad happening and a wedding, and he keeps trying to put it together in his mind, even though most of the pieces are missing.”

Like me, Joanna thought, trying to remember what Mr. Briarley said, trying to piece together the connection.

“I know I can’t save him,” Kit said. “I know he’ll have to go into a nursing facility eventually, but—”

“You have to try,” Joanna said, and Kit smiled suddenly at her.

“I have to try. He saved my life. I want to stay with him as long as I can.” And keep the lights on, Joanna thought, so the passengers don’t panic.

“And I want to help you,” Kit said. “I still haven’t been able to find anything about a post office, but—”

“No,” Joanna said. “Absolutely not. I’ve already made you watch Runaway Bride. I’m not going to force you to do research on a disaster.”

“I want to,” Kit said. “I love the idea of actually being able to help someone for a change. And it’s an appropriate disaster.”

“Appropriate?”

She nodded. “There were eight honeymoon couples on the Titanic. Most of them didn’t get a chance to say good-bye either.” She smiled sadly. “They didn’t realize they were never going to see each other again. Some of the men even made jokes as the boats were lowered. They laughed and said, ‘Put the brides and grooms in first,’ and, ‘We won’t let you back on the ship without a pass.’ ”

“And did they? Let the brides and grooms get in the boats first?”

“Two of them,” Kit said. She stood up abruptly, got several typed sheets out of a drawer, and handed them to Joanna. “Here’s everything I could find on the engines stopping and what various passengers and crew heard when the iceberg hit.”

Joanna paged through it. “It sounded like a wave striking the ship.”

“…a little jar…”

“It was as if the ship had rolled over a thousand marbles.” That sounded familiar. Had Mr. Briarley mentioned it?

“I thought, We’re landing. How funny!”

“Now, about this post office,” Kit said, all business. “I haven’t been able to find anything except the mail room down on G Deck. Are you sure there was a post office? Any letters the passengers wrote wouldn’t have been delivered till the ship reached New York, anyway, so wouldn’t they just have waited till they docked to mail them? Did you see a post office?”

“No,” Joanna said and started to add, “Mr. Briarley said he was going there,” but stopped herself. She’d inflicted enough pain on Kit without telling her she’d seen her uncle just like he used to be.

“Well, I’ll keep looking. Anything else?” Kit asked, and her expression made it a plea.

“Yes,” Joanna said, and Kit flashed her that sudden smile again. So much like Maisie. “I need…” What? “I need to know if there was anyone on board named Edith.”

“Edith Evans,” Kit said. “I remember Uncle Pat talking about her. She gave up her place in the boat to the mother of two children.”

And died, Joanna said silently, and thought of the young woman saying anxiously, “Shouldn’t we go up to the Boat Deck?” I know why I saw her, Joanna thought. She died just like W. S. Gilbert. But when Kit said she’d see if there were any other Ediths on board, Joanna didn’t stop her. She seemed so eager to, as she said, actually help someone.

She’s right, Joanna thought, going out to her car, it’s terrible standing there watching Mr. Briarley, watching Coma Carl, watching Maisie, unable to help, unable to stop their slow declines. That’s why I have to find Mr. Briarley and ask him what he said in class.

She glanced at her watch. Oh, God, her session was in less than twenty minutes. She dashed back to the hospital and ran up to her office. Tish was waiting at the door. “You’re late,” she said, “and I want to be out of here on time, so try to have another of those eight-second sessions, okay?”

“You’ve got a hot date with the obstetrician?” Joanna asked, walking her up to the lab.

“No, I’m working. Half the hospital’s out with the flu, and I might as well get some overtime. It’s not as if I have anything else to do.”

“The obstetrician didn’t work out?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Richard wasn’t in the lab. “He’s upstairs with Dr. Jamison,” Tish said. “He said for me to go ahead and get you prepped, and he’ll be right down.”

Joanna put on her hospital gown and got up on the table. “What is it with all these guys who are obsessed with their work?” Tish asked, fitting the foam pads under her. “The obstetrician’s just as bad as Dr. Wright. He spends all his time looking at ultrasounds. I don’t think it’s healthy. Someday they’re liable to just snap.”

She started the IV and hooked up the electrodes, chattering on as she did so. Joanna tried to ignore her. She needed to focus on finding Mr. Briarley. Locate the steward as soon as you go through, she told herself, and stick close to him. Don’t let him out of your sight.

Richard came in. “Sorry,” he said, “I was talking to Dr. Jamison. All set?” he asked Tish. She nodded. “How about you?” he asked Joanna.

“All set.” He put her sleep mask on. Don’t look back at the passage, Joanna thought. Look straight ahead. Find the steward.

“Okay, Tish,” Richard said, “start the sedative.” He began fitting the headphones over her ears.

See where the steward goes, Joanna said silently, follow him up the stairs, and thought suddenly of the mail clerk hauling the wet canvas sack up the stairs, of the dark, wet stain on the carpet, the listing deck—

“Wait!” she said, and felt the headphones being lifted off. “Richard—”

“What is it?” she heard Richard say. “You’re shivering. Do you want a blanket? Tish, go get Joanna a blanket.”

She could hear Tish moving away. “Richard,” she said, groping blindly for his hand, “if it starts to sink, promise me you’ll come and get me.”

34

I shouldn’t have said that, Joanna thought before it was even out of her mouth. Now he’ll never send me under. Maybe I just thought it and didn’t say it, she thought, but he’d already pulled her sleep mask down and was asking her if she was okay.

“Sorry,” she said and smiled up at him. She wondered if she could pretend she had been making a joke. No, not the way she’d gripped his arm. “I guess I got a little disoriented there. Did Tish start the sedative?” she asked, knowing full well she hadn’t.

“No,” Richard said, frowning.

“I must have dozed off on my own then. I haven’t gotten much sleep the last couple of nights, what with worrying about Vielle—” No, don’t say that either. “You know that state of near-sleep where you feel like you’re falling and then you jerk awake? That’s what it felt like. Sorry,” she said again and flashed him a smile that rivaled Maisie’s mother’s. “I didn’t mean to make you think I’d turned into a nutcase.”

Tish was back, spreading the blanket over Joanna’s legs, her shoulders. “Thanks, Tish,” Joanna said, looking at Richard. “That’s much better. I’m all set now. Shall we get this show on the road?”

Richard was still frowning. He went over to the console and typed busily for a few minutes, but whatever he saw must have reassured him, because he said, “Okay, Tish, start the sedative.”

Joanna pulled the sleep mask up over her eyes before he could change his mind, thinking, Don’t say anything, don’t do anything stupid, and was in the passage.

The door was open, and beyond it she could see the people milling about on deck. She hurried down the passage and out onto the deck, looking for the steward. She couldn’t see him for the crowd. There were a lot more people than there had been, and several of them were wearing lifejackets.

It’s later than it was, Joanna thought anxiously, and the steward’s already gone. She looked down at the deck to see if it had a list, and it seemed like it did, but only a slight one, and when she looked up again, she saw the young woman. She was still in her nightgown, and the stout man in tweeds was still there, standing on the far side of the crowd and talking to his friend.

Joanna craned her neck to see over their heads and down the deck, looking for a glimpse of the steward’s white coat moving in and out of the deck lights, but the length of the deck was empty. “Go and find Mr. Briarley,” a man’s voice said, and there was the bearded man, talking to the steward. Joanna squeezed through the crowd, toward them.

“He’ll know what’s happening,” the bearded man said.

“Yes, sir,” the steward said and turned to go.

Joanna squeezed between the young woman and the young man in the sweater and started to edge past the stout man. “What’s happened?” he said.

“Iceberg,” his friend said. And there’s your proof that it’s the Titanic, Richard, Joanna thought, sidling past him.

“Icebergs,” the stout man said, nodding. “Well, I don’t suppose it’s anything much,” and Joanna turned and stared at him, thinking, It’s W. T. Stead, the spiritualist.

“Aren’t you going up to the Boat Deck?” his friend asked.

“No. I believe I’ll read a bit,” W. T. Stead said and walked over to one of the deck chairs. He sat down on it and opened his book.

“You ladies should go back inside where it’s warmer,” the bearded man said, and Joanna whirled, but the steward had already disappeared.

He couldn’t have. Only a few seconds had passed. He hadn’t had time to walk the length of the deck, or even to the aft staircase. Where had he gone? She ran down the deck, trying doors. The second one opened on a narrow stairwell with latticed metal steps. One of the crew stairways. She started up it, but the stairs only went up one deck and then stopped, and the door at the top was locked. She ran back down and on to the next door.

It looked just like the door to the crew stairway, but when she opened it, she was in a wide space with a carpeted floor and marble stairs. The Grand Staircase. Which led to the Promenade Deck and the library, and if Mr. Briarley wasn’t there, the Palm Court was on the same deck. But what if he wasn’t either place? He had said he was going to the post office, and she had no idea where that was.

But you do know where the library is, she thought, so check that first and then the Palm Court. She ran up the slightly tilting stairs, past the cherub, past Honour and Glory, up to the Promenade Deck and along the deck to the frosted glass doors of the library.

Mr. Briarley was there, sitting not at the desk under the window, but at a small table near the glassed-in bookcases. He was writing earnestly, the yellow-shaded lamp making a circle of golden light on the white paper of the postcard, the white cuffs of his formal shirt.

“Mr. Briar—” she called, and saw it wasn’t him. It was the mustached man she had seen carefully dealing out cards in the lounge. She threaded her way through the gold tapestry chairs to him.

He didn’t look up as she approached. He continued to write, dipping his pen into the ink bottle, lifting it out, scrawling a word, dipping it again. Joanna looked down at his letter. It wasn’t written on a sheet of Titanic stationery. The paper was a torn sheet from an appointment book, the edge ragged along one side. He had scrawled across the middle of the page: “If saved, inform my sister Mrs. F. J. Adams of Findlay, Ohio. Lost. J. H. Rogers.”

“Mr. Rogers,” Joanna said, “there was a man in here at that desk.” She pointed at the desk. “He was writing a note to his niece. Did you see where he went?”

The man blotted the letter carefully.

“Please. It’s important. He was in here before, writing a postcard to his niece.”

He folded the note neatly in quarters and scrawled something on the outside. “Mr. Rogers,” Joanna said desperately and reached for his arm.

He shook his head. “Not Mr. Rogers,” he said, as though that was who she’d said she was looking for. “Sorry.” He slid the note in his inside coat pocket and stood up. “I’m needed on the Boat Deck,” he said. “You should get into one of the boats, miss,” and strode across the room and through the door to the Grand Staircase.

“Then can you tell me where the Palm Court is?” Joanna asked, pursuing him through the door and up the stairs, but he had already disappeared out onto the Boat Deck, and she couldn’t see which way he had gone in the darkness. The only light was from the open door of the gymnasium. Joanna looked in, but he wasn’t there, and neither was Greg Menotti. The bicycles and the rowing machine and the gullotine-like weight-lifting apparatus stood motionless on the red-and-white tile floor.

She would have to find the Palm Court herself. It would have to have been on the Promenade Deck or the Bridge Deck, and all the way aft, which meant she should take the second-class stairway, and she started toward it, but as she passed the aft stairway, she thought she heard voices. She went inside and leaned over the railing, listening. She couldn’t hear them, but above her, coming down the steps, was a thumping sound. The mail clerk, Joanna thought, and looked up the stairs.

It was Greg Menotti, dressed in swim trunks and backless beach sandals that flapped loudly against his heels at every step. He had a towel draped over his shoulders. “Just heading for the swimming pool,” he said. “Care to join me? The water’s rather cold, but that’s good for the circulation.”

“I’m looking for Mr. Briarley,” Joanna said. “He’s tall, and he’s wearing a gray tweed vest. Have you seen him?”

“No.” He started down the stairs.

Joanna ran down the steps in front of him to block his way. “There’s no time for swimming. You have to help me find Mr. Briarley. It’s important.”

“I want to get down there early,” he said, sidestepping her. “I’m scheduled to play squash at two-fifteen—”

“No,” she said, stepping in front of him again. “You have to help me. It’s important. Mr. Briarley knows why it’s the Titanic.”

“The Titanic!” Greg said, and there was a flicker of fear in his eyes.

“Yes. The Titanic. And it’s going down. You have to help me find him.” A man passed them, heading rapidly down the stairs. Joanna glanced at him, wondering if it was the steward, but it was an older man in a gray tweed vest and—“Mr. Briarley!” Joanna cried.

“It can’t be the Titanic,” Greg said. “I work out three times a week.”

Mr. Briarley was already a flight and a half below her. She ran down after him, counting the decks as she went. B Deck. C. D. “There’s water coming in on D Deck,” the officer on the Boat Deck had said. She looked anxiously down at the carpet for the dark red stain of water.

E Deck. Below her, a door opened. She rounded the landing just in time to see it close. F Deck. She opened the door. Mr. Briarley was already halfway down the passage. “Mr. Briarley!” she called.

She started after him. And ran straight into the steward. “I’m sorry, miss. This area is restricted.”

“But I need to speak to Mr. Briarley,” she said, looking anxiously past him.

The steward turned and looked, but Mr. Briarley was already out of sight. “Mr. Briarley?” he said, frowning, and she saw that it was a different steward from the one the bearded man had sent to find Mr. Briarley.

“He’s my—” she said, and stopped. He’s my—what? My high school English teacher? Did they even have high schools in 1912?

“I’ll escort you back to your cabin, miss,” he said.

“Wait,” she said. “Where does that passage lead?”

“To the boiler rooms, miss, but passengers aren’t allowed in—”

“Captain Smith told me I had permission to go see—” What was in the boiler room? “—the ship’s telegraph,” she said at random. “I’m terribly interested in modern communications.”

“Only crew are allowed in the boiler rooms,” the steward said, and put a firm hand on her arm. “I’ll escort you back up to your stateroom.”

“Please,” Joanna said. “You don’t understand. It’s important—”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” a voice said, and Joanna jerked around. “Mr. Briarley!” she said, relieved.

“Ms. Lander,” he said disapprovingly. “What are you doing down here?”

“I need to talk to you,” she said. “It’s about—” but he was shaking his head.

“I’m afraid we won’t be able to have tea in the Palm Court, after all. Something has come up.” He pulled the steward aside and spoke rapidly to him. Joanna couldn’t hear what either one said, but after a couple of sentences, Mr. Briarley snorted in disgust. “What’s the quickest way there?” he demanded.

“Back up to E Deck and down Scotland Road to the stairs next to the elevators,” he said, and Mr. Briarley immediately started back down the passage toward the stairway.

“Mr. Briarley!” Joanna dashed after him. “I need to talk to you,” she said, catching up.

“What is it?” he said, starting back up the stairs. It reminded her of times she’d caught up to him between classes, on his way to the office, and danced along at his side, asking him how many pages an assignment had to be.

“I need to know what you said in class,” Joanna said.

“You know I never give hints of what’s going to be on the final,” Mr. Briarley said, reaching the top of the flight of stairs.

“I don’t need to know it for the final,” Joanna said. “You said something in class—”

“I said a good many things in class,” Mr. Briarley said, reaching the top of the flight of stairs. “Can you be more specific?” He pushed open a door and started down a passage. They must still be in the crew section. The walls were painted gray, and there were pipes running along the ceiling.

“You were talking about the Titanic,” Joanna said, “and you closed Mazes and Mirrors and dropped it on the desk, and then you said something about the Titanic.”

“Mazes,” Mr. Briarley said thoughtfully, turning another corner. He yanked a metal door open. “After you.” He bowed, and Joanna went ahead of him through the door and into another passage. This one was painted a shiny white and stretched endlessly into the distance. Mr. Briarley set off down it at a rapid pace.

“And whatever it was,” Joanna said, “when I experienced my first NDE, my subconscious saw a connection, and that’s why I’m here.”

“Instead of in a tunnel with a light at the end of it,” Mr. Briarley said. He stopped and looked bleakly down the long passage and then turned and looked at her. “And you want me to tell you the connection?”

“Yes,” Joanna said.

“Connection. Fascinating word. From the Greek, ‘to send.’ But you must know the connection already,” he said to her, “or how could you have made it?”

“I don’t know it,” she said. “My conscious mind’s forgotten it.”

“Forgotten it? You should have paid more attention in class, Ms. Lander,” he said severely and began walking again. “I suppose you’ve forgotten what onomatopoeia is, too,” he said, “and alliteration. And a metaphor.”

“Mr. Briarley, please! This is important.”

“Indeed it is. Well?” he said and looked out over the passage as if it were a classroom, “What is a metaphor? Anyone?”

“A metaphor is a figure of speech that likens two objects.”

“Wrong, and wrong again,” he said. “The likeness is already there. The metaphor only sees it. And it is not a mere figure of speech. It is the very essence of our minds as we seek to make sense of our surroundings, our experiences, ourselves, seeing similarities, parallels, connections. We cannot help it. Even as the mind fails, it goes on trying to make sense of what is happening to it.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do, Mr. Briarley,” Joanna said. “Make sense of what’s happening to me. And what you said in class is the connection. It was about the Titanic—” she prompted.

“There are so many connections,” he said, frowning. “The Titanic symbolizes so many, many things. Promethean arrogance, for instance,” he said, striding tirelessly along the passage, “man challenging Fate and losing.” Joanna trotted beside him, trying to listen and keep up with him. “Or Frankensteinian hubris, man putting his faith in science and technology and getting his comeuppance from Nature for it.”

The passage was endless. Joanna kept her eyes fixed on the door at the far end. “Or the futility of human endeavor. ‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair,’ ” he quoted. “ ‘Ozymandias.’ Percy Bysshe Shelley. Who also ended up at the bottom of the ocean.”

Water, in a harrow, uneven line, was trickling down the middle of the shiny floor from the end of the passage. “Mr. Briarley,” Joanna said, tugging on the sleeve of his shirt, “look. Water.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, not even slackening his pace. “Water is a symbol, too.” The thin line of water was growing wider as they neared the end of the passage, becoming two, then three rivulets. “The crossing of water has been a symbol of death since ancient times,” Mr. Briarley said, stepping easily between the rivulets. “The Egyptians journeyed to the Land of the Dead in a golden boat.”

They were nearly to the end of the passage. He’s going to open the door, Joanna thought, frightened, but at the last minute he turned and went down a dry metal stairway at the side. “Aeneas is rowed across the Styx to the underworld by the boatman Charon,” he said, his voice echoing in the stairwell as Joanna rattled down after him, “and Frodo sets sail for the Blessed Realm.”

He reached the bottom and started off down a passage. Joanna saw with relief that the floor was dry, though how was that possible, when there was water on the deck above? She looked anxiously up at the low ceiling overhead. Mr. Briarley, unconcerned, was discussing “In Memoriam.” “Tennyson’s dead friend sets sail over an unknown sea, to a still more unknown shore.” He opened a door. “And, of course, there’s the River Jordan. After you, Ms. Lander,” he said, bowing, and Joanna stepped across the threshold. And into six inches of water.

The entire floor was awash. Letters, packages, postcards floated in the ankle-deep water, the ink on the addresses blurring, running down the envelopes in streaks like tears. On the far side of the room a mail clerk in a dark blue uniform and cap was bending in front of a wooden rack of pigeonholes, taking letters, already wet, out of the lowest row and moving them up to the top row.

It won’t do any good, Joanna thought. The whole room will be underwater in a few minutes. “Mr. Briarley, we all need to get out of here,” she said, but Mr. Briarley, oblivious, was splashing across the room to the mail clerk, pulling a folded piece of paper from his gray tweed vest pocket, and handing it to him.

The mail clerk shifted the stack of mail to one hand so he could unfold the note. He read it, nodded, and handed Mr. Briarley the sodden mail. Then he reached inside the neck of his uniform and pulled out a ring of iron keys on a chain. He lifted the chain and the keys from over his head and handed them to Mr. Briarley, taking back the mail.

“Which one is it?” Mr. Briarley asked, but the mail clerk had already begun sorting again, putting the unreadable letters into the pigeonholes.

Mr. Briarley waded back across the mail room, out the door, and down the passage, the chain swinging from his hand. He started up the stairs. “Where are we going now?” Joanna asked, clambering after him.

“That is the question,” Mr. Briarley said. “To Hades or heaven? Or to the pharaohs’ Hall of Judgment?” He reached the top of the steps and turned back down Scotland Road, where the water was now a stream flowing down the center of the tiled floor. “And in which boat?” he asked. “Charon’s ferry?” He led her around to the metal stairway and past it, to an elevator with a brass folding grille across it. “Or King Arthur’s funeral barge?”

He pushed the grille open. “After you,” he said, bowing. Joanna stepped in, and he got in after her and pulled the grille across. “Frodo boarded an elven ship at the Grey Havens.” He pushed an ivory button labeled “up.” The elevator rumbled upward. “And the dead in Outward Bound found themselves on an ocean liner much like this one.”

The elevator jerked to a halt, and Mr. Briarley shoved the grille open and strode out ahead of Joanna toward the doors that led out on deck. “And then, of course there’s the Ancient Mariner’s ship. ‘ “There was a ship,” quoth he,’ ” he said, and pushed the doors open. They were on the Boat Deck. She could see the lights from the wireless room and the bridge ahead.

“It’s fitting that that was your favorite poem,” Mr. Briarley said, walking purposefully past the lifeboats toward the wireless room. “It has icebergs in it, you know. ‘And ice, mast-high, came floating by, as green as emerald.’ ”

“Is that the connection?” Joanna asked. “Is that what you were reading that day?”

He didn’t answer. He had stopped outside the wireless room, in front of a padlocked metal locker, and was taking the ring of keys from around his neck. “Is it?” Joanna said, clutching at his sleeve.

He knelt in front of the locker. “No,” he said, trying the long-barreled keys one after the other in the padlock, “though it would be appropriate. Ships figure heavily in it, and water.” He inserted a key. It didn’t fit. He tried another. “And death. ‘Four times fifty living men, they dropped down one by one.’ ” It didn’t fit. He tried another. “The universality of death, is that the symbol you’re looking for?”

The key fit. He opened the locker, pulled out a wooden box, and carried it across to the railing. “Certainly that was the Titanic. Astors and Irish immigrants, stokers and schoolteachers, perishing together in the icy water.”

He opened the box, squatted down, pulled out a cardboard cylinder and stood it against the railing, and then stood up again. “Children and debutantes and professional cardsharps, all equally helpless, equally doomed.”

He patted the pockets of his gray vest as if he were looking for something. “Unless, of course, you were in steerage, where your chances of perishing were somewhat more than equal.” He pulled a book of matches out of his pocket. “In which case—step back.”

“What?”

“Step back,” he said, and put out his hand to push her away. He knelt, striking the match as he did so, holding it to the bottom of the cylinder.

In the last split second before he lit the fuse, she thought, The rockets! He’s setting off the distress rockets! and a stream of flame shot up and burst into a shower of white sparks. Joanna craned her neck, looking up at the falling white stars, and as she did, she had the feeling that it was important, that she was close to the meaning.

“Would you like me to do that for you, sir?” a man’s voice said, and Joanna looked down and saw an officer in a white uniform standing next to Mr. Briarley.

“Thank you.” Mr. Briarley handed over the matches to the officer and walked rapidly down the deck to the staircase.

Joanna ran after him. “Mr. Briarley! Wait!” She caught up with him on the second landing. “In which case, what?”

“In which case,” he said, hurrying down the carpeted stairs, “the meaning of the Titanic becomes a political one. The evils of a class-structured society, or of plutocracy, or the repression of women.”

“It wasn’t political,” Joanna said. “It was something important.”

“Important,” he said, reaching the bottom of the stairs. He strode across the foyer to a door and opened it. “After you,” he said, bowing, and she stepped through.

And saw too late that it was the passage she had come through in. “No, wait, you haven’t—” she said, and was back in the lab.

Not yet, she thought. I almost had it. Something about the rockets, about Mr. Briarley—“Joanna?” Richard was saying above her. “Joanna?”

She opened her eyes. Tish had already taken her IV out and was checking her vitals. “Did I kick out again?”

“No,” Richard said, and he looked as worried as Vielle did in the ER. “Are you all right?”

I said something coming out, she thought. I made him promise he’d come and get me again.

“I’m fine,” she said brightly. “How long was I under?”

“Four minutes and ten seconds,” Tish said, lifting her arm up to remove the foam pads.

“Were you frightened during your NDE?”

Leading, she thought irrelevantly. I asked him to come and get me again. He thinks I think it’s real, and he won’t send me under again, and he has to. I almost had it.

“Frightened?” she said, smiling. “Why? Did I say something?”

“Yes,” Tish volunteered. “ ‘Elevator.’ ”

“Elevator?” Joanna said, relieved and surprised. Why had she said “elevator” when it was the rockets—?

“You have the most boring NDEs,” Tish said, standing over her and looking at her watch as she waited out the monitoring period. “First a post office and now an elevator? Don’t you ever see anything exciting?”

She checked Joanna’s pulse and blood pressure one last time, noting them on the chart, and then said to Richard, “Can I leave now? I need to go see somebody before Mr. Sage comes at three.”

He nodded and, as soon as she was out of the room, asked again, “Were you afraid during your NDE?”

“Why?” Joanna asked. “Did I sound frightened when I said ‘elevator’?”

“No, but your scans showed an extremely high level of cortisol. What happened during your NDE?”

“I saw Mr. Briarley again.” She told him about the trip to the mail room, the rockets, the elevator. “And when he opened the door I stepped through it before I realized it was the passage,” she said. “That’s why I was afraid I’d kicked out, because it felt the same as last time.”

“And you didn’t feel any fear?”

“I did when I saw the water in Scotland Road and when I saw the mail room was awash,” she said, trying to remember. She had been so intent on finding Mr. Briarley and asking him what the NDE meant, she hadn’t felt much fear, certainly not when compared to what she’d felt when she’d looked at the stain from the mailbag, when she’d looked over the side of the ship down into nothingness.

“Was my cortisol higher than the last two times?” she asked.

“I haven’t looked at the neurotransmitter analysis yet, but going by the scans, yes. You were more frightened those times?”

She thought of her panicked flight down the stairs, along the deck, into the passage. “Yes.”

“I was afraid of that,” he said and went over to the console.

Joanna dressed quickly. “I’m going to go record my account,” she said, “I’ll be back at three,” and hurried down to her office before he could ask her anything else. She needed to think about the NDE before she lost the feeling of almost, almost knowing the answer. It was something about the rockets, and Mr. Briarley setting them off.

She went through the scene again, trying to remember Mr. Briarley’s exact words. “Step back,” he had said, and the rocket had shot up and burst into white stars—

She recorded the scene and then went back to the beginning and did the whole NDE, trying to hold on to the feeling. Something about the rockets, though they weren’t a discrepancy, unless the ones she’d seen were different from the ones on the Titanic.

She called Kit and asked her what the emergency rockets had looked like. “White fireworks,” Kit said. “I remember Uncle Pat saying white was the color of the international distress signal, and there was a scene of them being fired in the movie.”

Of course. She remembered it. The officer had leaned the cylinder against the railing. “Anything else?” Kit asked.

“Yes. I want to know if there was something called Scotland Road on the ship. It would have been a long passage down on”—she tried to think which deck it was on—“E or F Deck. And also whether there was a library on board. It would have been on the Promenade Deck, next to a bar. And anything about what the rockets looked like and where they were kept.”

“Scotland Road, library, rockets. Okay,” Kit said. “Oh, and if you have a minute, I’ve got a list of Ediths who were on board. I’ve found four. I’m not sure that’s all. The crew are only listed by an initial and a last name, and some of the passengers are only down as Mrs. Somebody.”

“How many were lost? Of the four?”

“Only Edith Evans.”

Joanna went back to the NDE. Not the rockets, but something in that part of the NDE. The elevator? That was definitely a discrepancy. They hadn’t had elevators in 1912, and even if they had, they wouldn’t have had one on board a ship. And she had murmured, “Elevator,” when she was coming out.

She called Kit again. The phone was busy. She glanced at her watch. A quarter past two. Not enough time to run over there before Mr. Sage’s session. But she needed to know now, before she lost the feeling. It would have to be Maisie.

She ran upstairs, hoping Maisie wasn’t down for tests. She was lying in bed, listlessly watching Winnie the Pooh. As soon as she saw Joanna, she pushed herself up higher against the pillows and said, “I found out about the Carpathia.”

“Good,” Joanna said. “I need to ask you something. Did the Titanic have an elevator?”

“Yeah,” Maisie said. “Don’t you remember, in the movie, they were running away from the bad guy and they got in the elevator and went down?”

“I thought your mother hadn’t let you see Titanic.”

“I didn’t. My friend that I told you about that saw it, she told me about that part,” she said, and it was a very convincing story, even though Joanna didn’t believe it for a minute.

“Did your friend tell you what the elevator looked like?”

“Yeah,” Maisie said. “It had one of those accordion things across it that you pull.” She demonstrated.

The grille. So the Titanic had had an elevator, and it wasn’t a discrepancy. She could imagine what Richard would say when he found out. She’d have to hope when she did her account, there was some other discrepancy in her NDE, and she’d better go do that now, before she forgot what Mr. Briarley said. “I gotta go, kiddo,” she said, patting the covers over Maisie’s knees.

“You can’t,” Maisie said. “I haven’t told you about the Carpathia yet. And I have to ask you a question. How fast do ships go?”

“How fast?” The Titanic had been going much too fast for the ice warnings, she knew that, but how fast was that? “I don’t know.”

“ ’Cause in my book it said the Carpathia came really fast, but this other book said it was fifty-eight miles away—”

“Fifty-eight?” Joanna said. “The Carpathia was fifty-eight miles away?”

“Yeah,” Maisie said. “And it took her three hours to get there. The Titanic had already sunk ages before. So I don’t think it could’ve been very fast ’cause fifty-eight miles isn’t very far to come.”

35

“What’s wrong?” Maisie asked, looking at Joanna alertly. “Are you okay?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Joanna said. “You’re right. Fifty-eight miles doesn’t sound all that far. How far away was the Californian?” Fifty-eight miles. That day in the ER, he was talking about the Carpathia.

“You looked really funny when I told you how far away it was,” Maisie said. “Did one of your near-death people see the Carpathia?”

“No. How far away was the Californian?”

“It was really close,” she said, still looking suspicious. “It saw their rockets and everything, it could have saved them probably, only it turned off its wireless, so it didn’t hear any of their SOSs, and it didn’t even know what happened till the next morning.”

Joanna wasn’t listening. He was trying to tell me the Carpathia was too far away, that it would never get there in time.

“I don’t think they should’ve done that,” Maisie said. “Turned off their wireless. Do you?”

“No,” Joanna said. That’s why Greg’s words haunted me so, why I kept feeling I knew what they meant. They meant he was on the Titanic.

“It was really close,” Maisie said. “I mean, the people on the Titanic saw its lights. They told the lifeboats to try to row to it.”

“I need to go,” Joanna said, and stood up.

“I won’t talk about the Titanic anymore, I promise. I’ll just talk about the Hartford circus fire, okay?” Maisie went on rapidly, “The people tried to get out the main entrance, but the cage for the lions and tigers was in the way and they got all jammed up against it, and the ringmaster kept trying to tell them to go out the performers’ entrance—that’s where all the clowns and acrobats and stuff come in when it’s time for their acts—but they just kept trying to go out the way they came in.”

She’d convinced herself the Titanic wasn’t real, that it was a symbol for something, an image her mind had chosen because of something Mr. Briarley had said. But what if it wasn’t?

“The thing was, they didn’t have to go out the entrances,” Maisie said. “They could have just lifted up the tent and crawled under it.”

The mail room, the aft staircase, Scotland Road, were all in the right place. They all looked exactly the way they really had, even the red-and-blue arrows on the stationary bicycles. Because you were really there. Because it was really the Titanic.

But how can it be? Joanna thought desperately. The NDE isn’t a doorway into an afterlife or another time. It’s a chemical hallucination. It’s an amalgam of images out of long-term memory. But Greg had said, “Fifty-eight,” and it wasn’t an address, it wasn’t a blood pressure reading. It was miles, and he had been talking about the Carpathia.

I have to get out of here, Joanna thought. I have to get somewhere where I can think about this. She started blindly for the door.

“You can’t go yet,” Maisie pleaded. “I haven’t told you about the band yet.”

“I have to,” Joanna said, desperate, and like the answer to a prayer, her pager went off. “See? They’re paging me.”

“You can call them on my phone if you want,” Maisie said. “It might not be your patient. Or it might be them saying they have to go down to Radiology so you don’t need to come right now.”

Joanna shook her head. “I have to go, and you need to—”

“Rest,” Maisie said mockingly. “I hate resting. Can’t I do some research? Please? It doesn’t make me tired at all, and I promise I won’t—”

“All right,” Joanna said, and Maisie immediately leaned over and got her tablet and pencil out. “I need you to”—she cast about for something harmless—“make a list of all the wireless messages the Titanic sent.”

“You said you just wanted the names of the ships.”

“I did,” Joanna said, trying not to sound as desperate as she felt, “but now I want to know what the messages were.”

“Okay. What else?”

What else? “And where the swimming pool was.”

“Swimming pool? On a ship?”

“Yes. I want to know what deck it was on.” While Maisie was writing it down, she made it to the door.

“All the wireless messages or just the ones calling for help?” Maisie asked.

“Just the ones calling for help. Now I have to answer my page,” she said and went out. And since it was impossible to get anything past Maisie, she walked down to the nurses’ station and called the switchboard to see who’d paged her.

“You have four messages,” the operator said. “Mr. Mandrake wants you to call him, it’s very important. Dr. Wright wants you to call him about Mr. Sage’s session. Vielle Howard wants you to call her when you have time, she’s in the ER, and Kit Gardiner wants you to call her right away. She says it’s urgent. Do you want me to connect you with Mr. Mandrake’s office?”

“No,” Joanna said and pressed down the button to break the connection. She didn’t want to be connected with anyone, least of all Mr. Mandrake. But not Vielle either, or Richard—oh, God, Richard! What would he say if she told him Greg Menotti had been on the Titanic?

I have to get somewhere where I can think about all this, she thought, and started to put down the receiver, and then thought, Kit said it was urgent. What if Mr. Briarley had hurt himself again? She dialed Kit’s number. “Hi, Kit?”

“I am so glad you called,” Kit said. “I’ve got it!”

“Got it?”

“The book! Mazes and Mirrors. I’m sure it’s the right one,” she said excitedly. “It has a homework assignment in it dated October 14, 1987. You’ll never guess where I found it. Inside the pressure cooker. I think that was why Uncle Pat kept taking everything out of the cupboards. I can’t wait for you to see it. Can you come over this afternoon?”

No, Joanna thought. Not until I’ve figured this out. “I’m pretty busy,” she said.

“Oh,” Kit said, sounding disappointed. “I’d bring it over to the hospital, but Uncle Pat’s having a bad day—”

“No, I don’t want you to have to do that. I’ll come by tonight,” she said and hung up quickly. She’d call Kit later and make some excuse for why she couldn’t come.

I can’t come because I’ve been traveling back in time to a sinking ship, she thought wildly. Or how about, I can’t come because I’ve turned into an NDE nutcase?

“Oh, Dr. Lander, you are here,” a nurse’s aide she vaguely recognized said. “Mr. Mandrake’s looking for you. Barbara said you weren’t on the floor, and that’s what I told him.”

Bless Barbara, Joanna thought, looking anxiously in the direction of the elevator. “When was he here?” she asked.

“About ten minutes ago. He said if I saw you, to tell you to call him immediately, that he’d found proof that near-death experiences are real.”

So have I, Joanna thought bleakly. “Did he say where he was going?” she asked the aide.

“Hunh-unh. I can page him,” she said, reaching for the phone.

“No! That’s okay,” Joanna said. “It’ll be faster just to go up to his office,” she said, and started toward the door to the stairs.

“Those stairs don’t go up to seventh,” the aide called after her…

“Shortcut,” Joanna said, pushing open the door.

“Oh,” the aide nodded, and Joanna made her escape. But to where? she thought, clattering down the steps. She couldn’t go back to her office or the lab, and with him roaming the halls, nowhere was safe. And I cannot, cannot stand to see him right now, she thought, and listen to him prattling on about heaven and happily ever after.

She ran down the steps to third and then stopped, her hand on the door. To get to the parking lot from here, she’d have to take the walkway and go through Medicine and past Mrs. Davenport, and Mr. Wojakowski was on second.

She let go of the door and ran all the way down to first and outside. A taxi, she thought, there are always taxis out front. If I’ve got money, she thought, fumbling in her pocket. She came up with two dollars, a quarter, and three pennies. She ran down to the basement, past the morgue, and outside.

It was freezing and the leaden sky looked like it might snow any minute. She pulled her cardigan close and hurried past the generating plant and around to the front. There was a single battered-looking Yellow Cab directly in front of the glass lobby doors. Joanna ducked into the backseat. “Where to?” the cabbie asked.

Joanna leaned forward. “The hospital parking lot,” she said.

“Is this some kind of joke?” he said, peering at her in the rearview mirror.

“No. I need you to take me to my car. It’s parked there.”

He squinted at her as if she were a nutcase. Well, and wasn’t she? Fleeing Mr. Mandrake as if he were a monster instead of a nuisance? Believing the unbelievable? “I intended to walk over to my car,” she said, “but it’s too cold.”

The explanation made no sense, and she waited for him to say, “Why don’t you go back inside and walk across?” but he grunted, “Two-buck minimum,” put the car in gear, and pulled out of the driveway. And why shouldn’t he believe her explanation? She believed she and Greg Menotti had been transported back to the Titanic. The cabbie tapped the meter. “Two-ten,” he said.

Joanna handed him all her money, said, “Thank you. You saved my life,” and walked out to her car, half-expecting Mr. Mandrake to be standing next to it, waiting for her.

He wasn’t. Or at the parking lot gate. She turned south on Colorado Boulevard, west on Sixth Avenue, south again on University, as if she were a character in a Sylvester Stallone movie, trying to throw the bad guy off the track. A fire truck roared toward her, sirens wailing and honking, and she pulled off to the side of the street, and then just sat there, gripping the steering wheel with both hands and staring into space.

Greg Menotti had been on the Titanic. She had seen him there, she had assumed that he was there, that Mr. Briarley was there, because she had constructed them out of memory and wishful thinking. But what if the Titanic was real, and they were really there, Mr. Briarley caught in some hideous limbo between two worlds, part of him already dead, and the place you went after you died wasn’t heaven but back in time to the decks of the Titanic?

You can’t believe this, she thought, and realized she didn’t. It made no sense, not even if the NDE was a spiritual experience. Heaven, the Elysian Fields, Hades, Valhalla, even Mr. Mandrake’s Hallmark Card Other Side, were more logical than this. Why, even if the dead were sent back in time in a bizarre sort of reverse reincarnation, would they be sent to the Titanic? Was it some kind of punishment? Or were the dead supposed to be sunk in the depths of the Atlantic, and the Titanic just happened to be in the way?

And it isn’t the Titanic, she thought. She had never once, even in that first rush of recognition, thought it was the actual ocean liner. It was something else, for which the Titanic was only the metaphor, not just for her, but, hard as it was to believe, for Greg Menotti, too. And how could it be?

Maybe he went to Dry Creek High School and heard Mr. Briarley give the same lecture. No, she remembered him saying he had just moved out here from New York.

All right, then, maybe he was a Titanic buff, just like Mr. Briarley. Are you kidding? she thought. He worked out at a health club three times a week. But, as Richard had said, movies and books and TV specials about the Titanic were everywhere, any one of them could have mentioned the Carpathia’s being fifty-eight miles away—

If it was fifty-eight miles away. You only have Maisie’s word for it, and you heard her, she said the Titanic had sunk hours before the Carpathia got there. She could have been exaggerating, or gotten the number wrong, it could have been fifty-seven miles away, or sixty, and you’re getting yourself into a state for nothing, like that night you kept seeing fifty-eight on license plates and McDonald’s signs.

No, she thought, staring blindly through the windshield at the snow that was beginning to fall, it was fifty-eight. She had known the minute she heard Maisie say it. Like you knew Mr. Briarley was dead, and went tearing down to the ER? she asked herself. Outside confirmation. You need to at least double-check your facts, make Maisie show you the book, or ask Kit.

Kit. She had asked her to come over and look at the textbook. She could ask her to look it up, to verify it. It would only take a few minutes.

She started the car and pulled out from the curb, and realized that she was nearly there. In her panicked flight she had driven almost all the way to DU. She drove the rest of the way to Mr. Briarley’s, thinking, I won’t even have to explain. I’ll tell her I came over to look at the book. I’ll pretend this is just another piece of information I need.

Only after she was on the porch, had rung the bell and was standing there shivering in her cardigan, did she remember that Kit had said Mr. Briarley was having a bad day. I shouldn’t have come, she thought, but Kit had already opened the door.

She was wearing jeans and a lace midriff top and a pair of ballet slippers. It must really be cold, Joanna thought irrelevantly. She’s actually wearing shoes.

“Hi!” Kit said, her face lighting up. “I thought you said you couldn’t come today.”

“I was able to get away after all,” Joanna said. “I hope this isn’t a bad time.”

“No, it’s great!” Kit said. “I can’t wait to show you the book. I knew it was the right one the minute I saw it. You know how sometimes you just know? And you know how you said different people thought it had different things on the cover. Well, they were all right. Geez, it’s cold out here,” she said and shivered in her midriff top. She opened the door wide. “How come you’re not wearing a coat?”

Joanna had no idea how to answer that, but Kit didn’t seem to require an answer. “Let me go get the book,” she said, and went into the library. She was back out in less than a minute, quietly closing the door behind her. “Uncle Pat’s dozing,” she whispered, motioning Joanna to follow her down the hall to the kitchen. “He’ll wake up again in a few minutes. I want to let him sleep if he can. He had a bad night last night.”

A bad night. He had dismantled the kitchen again, more completely than before. Dishes and silverware were everywhere, and the entire contents of the refrigerator sat on the floor. A full roll of paper towels was draped over, under, among the canisters and cookie sheets and china. A smashed bottle of ketchup lay on the counter, leaking red into the sink. A dustpan of broken glass sat on the table, and the wastebasket was nearly full of it.

“Uncle Pat was looking for the book,” Kit said, taking two teacups off a tottering stack. “I think he must have had a vague memory of having put it somewhere in the kitchen, and that’s why he kept doing this.”

She stepped over a head of lettuce to the sink to fill the two cups. “I’m so glad you were able to come over. I’m positive this time it’s the right book. It’s blue, just like you said, and it’s got all the things you said it had on it.” She put the cups in the microwave and punched buttons. “They’re inside these gray panels that I think are supposed to be mirrors—”

Mazes and Mirrors, Joanna thought, and could see the mirrors, set at an angle, with different pictures in each one—a bottle of ink and a quill pen, and Queen Elizabeth, whom Ricky Inman had drawn a mustache and glasses on, and the carved prow of the caravel, plowing through the blue water.

Kit said, looking under a pile of potholders, “One of them has a ship, just like you said, and a—”

“—castle and a crown on a red velvet pillow,” Joanna said. “It’s definitely the right one.”

“Oh, good!” Kit clapped her hands. “Now, if I can do as good a job finding the teabags…” She looked under an unsteady tower of cereal boxes and spices.

“How far away was the Carpathia from the Titanic?” Joanna said.

“The ship that came to the Titanic’s aid?” Kit asked. “I don’t know. I’ll look it up.” She set a tin of cinnamon down and started for the door, stepping over a broiler pan, a jar of olives, and a carton of eggs. “Be right back.”

She pattered down the hall and up the stairs and back down almost immediately, carrying a stack of books. “I checked on Uncle Pat. He’s still asleep,” she said, clearing a space on the table to set the books down. “Let’s see,” she said, opening the top book to the index. “Carpathia, Carpathia. Here it is, fifty-eight miles.”

“Are you sure?” Joanna said. And of course she was sure. You knew it the minute Maisie said it. You were kidding yourself that you needed outside confirmation.

“It’s right here,” Kit said. “ ‘Fifty-eight miles southwest of the Titanic when she received its first SOS,’ ” she read, “ ‘the Carpathia came at full steam, but arrived too late to take passengers off the ship.’ ” She closed the book to look at the cover. “That’s The Titanic: Symbol for Our Time. Do you want me to double-check it in something else?”

“No,” Joanna said. “No.”

“What is it? Are you all right, Joanna?”

“No.”

“This has something to do with your NDE,” Kit said anxiously, “doesn’t it?”

“No,” Joanna said. “With somebody else’s.”

She told her about Greg Menotti’s last words, and the nagging feeling that she should know what they meant, about Maisie telling her. “He was talking about the Carpathia,” she said.

“And so you think that means he was seeing the Titanic in his NDE, too?”

“Yes. But why would he see the same imagery I saw?” Joanna asked. “The RIPT scans show that the NDEs get their imagery from long-term memory. Those memory patterns are different for every subject. So why would the two of us have identical NDEs? Why would he see the Titanic?”

“Are you sure he did?” Kit said. “I mean, fifty-eight could mean lots of different things. Addresses, PIN numbers—how old was he?”

“Thirty-four,” Joanna said. “It wasn’t his blood pressure or his cell phone number or his locker combination. It was miles. He said, ‘Too far for her to come.’ He was talking about the Carpathia. I’m sure of it. He was on board the Titanic, just like I was.”

“Or—there’s another possibility, you know,” Kit said thoughtfully. “You said he had the same NDE as you. Maybe that’s not right. Maybe it’s the other way around.”

“The other way around?” Joanna said. “What do you mean?”

“Remember how you told me everybody sees tunnels and lights and relatives because that’s what they’ve been programmed to expect? And how Mr. Mandrake influences all of his subjects to see the Angel of Light?”

Joanna nodded, unable to see where this was going.

“Well, what if, when you heard this patient say, ‘Fifty-eight,’ your subconscious connected it to the Titanic, because of all the stories Uncle Pat told you, and that was why when you went under, you saw the Titanic? Because he’d influenced you. He could have been talking about anything, but you connected it to the Carpathia.”

It made perfect sense. She had been steeled against seeing the relatives and angels and life reviews everyone else reported. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t had expectations. She’d spent the last two years watching her subjects’ expressions, and their body language, trying to find out what their near-death experiences were like. “Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no,” Amelia had said, and Mrs. Woollam had held her Bible to her frail chest and said, “How can it not be frightening?”

And during the period right before she’d gone under, she had been thinking about Greg Menotti, worrying over what he’d said, trying to make sense of it. She had thought “fifty-eight” sounded familiar. Her subconscious mind must have remembered that was how far away the Carpathia had been and triggered the other memories, triggered the NDE and the reference to Mr. Briarley, and it wasn’t the engines stopping that was the connection she’d been trying to remember, it was Mr. Briarley saying, “The Carpathia was fifty-eight miles away, too far for her to come in time.”

“That has to be it,” Joanna said. “It makes perfect sense.”

“But how does the book fit into it?” Kit asked. “I’ll bet it has a poem or something in it about the Carpathia and if it does, that will prove it,” she said excitedly. “This is just like a detective story.” She put down the book and began threading her way through the pans and groceries. “I’ll go get it.”

“I don’t want you to disturb Mr. Bri—”

“I’ll be quiet. Be right back,” she said and went down the hall.

Joanna picked up The Titanic: Symbol for Our Time and looked at the picture of the half-sinking ship with a rocket bursting above it. If Greg Menotti had been the influence for her NDE, then that would explain why he was in it. And Mr. Briarley—

“Oh, no!” Kit said from the study, and Joanna stood up quickly, knocking her knee against the table leg as she did. A stack of plates slid toward the edge, and a half-dozen dinner knives went onto the floor with a clatter.

Joanna dived for the plates and moved them back from the edge. “What’s wrong?” she called to Kit, maneuvering the maze of pans and salad-dressing bottles between her and the door.

There was no answer. “Kit! Are you okay?” Joanna called, pelting down the hall, thinking, Mr. Briarley’s dead. “What happened?”

Kit was standing arms akimbo over Mr. Briarley, and he wasn’t dead. He was awake and staring dully ahead, slumped in the dark red leather chair, his hands loosely folded in his lap. Joanna saw with a pang that his gray tweed vest was buttoned wrong. Looking at him, Joanna realized that this, and not the disaster in the kitchen, was what Kit had meant when she said he was having a bad day.

“It’s not there,” Kit said disgustedly.

“What isn’t?” Joanna said.

“Mazes and Mirrors,” Kit said. She knelt down in front of Mr. Briarley. “Uncle Pat, did you take the book?”

He didn’t answer, or even give any indication he’d heard her, or knew she was there. He stared dully at the opposite side of the room.

“Where did you put it, Uncle Pat?” Kit asked, and when there was no answer, she straightened. “He’s hidden it again. He can’t have been awake more than five minutes. He was still asleep when I brought the books about the Titanic down.”

“Where did you leave it?” Joanna asked.

“Right here,” Kit said, pointing to an empty space at the end of a bookshelf. “I thought he wouldn’t notice it in the bookcase. I should never have left it in here. I should have put it upstairs with the Titanic books.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Joanna said, worried that Kit seemed so upset. “The book was an excuse. I really came to ask you about the Carpathia, to find out why Greg Menotti saw the Titanic when he was dying—”

“It does matter,” Kit said, nearly in tears. “I should have known not to leave it in here. Yesterday, I found him hiding my boots in the clothes hamper—wait a minute! I just had an idea!” She ran up the stairs.

“Can I help?” Joanna called after her.

“No, you’d better stay there with him,” she said. “There’s no telling what he’ll hide next!”

Joanna went back in the library, though Mr. Briarley didn’t look like he would move from his chair, let alone sneak out of the room to hide things. He looked as still, as senseless, as Coma Carl, and Joanna felt suddenly embarrassed to be looking at him, as if she had broken into a house when no one was home. She turned and stared at the bookcases.

If he had taken the book out of one bookcase, he might have put it in another. She scanned the books lying along the tops of the shelves first and then along the ranks of shelved volumes, looking for something thick, with a textbook binding. And here it was, sandwiched in between Bleak House and Spoon River Anthology. She called up to Kit, “I’ve foun—” then stopped, looking at it.

“You found it?” Kit said from the top of the stairs.

“No,” Joanna shouted up to her. “Sorry, it’s the other one, the one that wasn’t right.”

The one that wasn’t right, she thought, looking down at the clipper ship and the blue background and the orange lettering. It wasn’t right, even though it fit all the criteria.

And neither was Kit’s theory. It was logical, it fit all the circumstances, but even if they found Mazes and Mirrors and it had a poem about the Carpathia, a poem with an introduction that explained in italics, “On the night the Titanic sank, the steamer Carpathia was fifty-eight miles away, too far away for her to come to the liner’s rescue…” it still wouldn’t make it the right one.

I didn’t see the Titanic because of Greg’s dying words, she thought. It was because of something Mr. Briarley said in class. And she would know it when she heard it, the way Kit had known when she found the right book, the way she had known that the sound she’d heard was the stopping of the engines.

Joanna went over to Mr. Briarley’s chair. “Mr. Briarley,” she said, kneeling next to the arm of the chair. “You said something in class about the Titanic, about what it meant. What was it? Can you remember?”

Mr. Briarley continued to stare dully at the opposite wall.

“I know it’s hard for you to remember,” Joanna said gently, “but this is really important. It was something about the Titanic. You shut the book, and you said,” she hit the leather arm of the chair, trying to make the memory come, “something. About the Titanic. It was foggy out, and you were holding a book…”

Joanna shut her eyes, trying to remember if he had been holding Mazes and Mirrors or the tattered paperback of A Night to Remember. “Please try to remember what you said, Mr. Briarley,” she whispered. “Please. It’s important.”

There was no response at all.

He’s too far away to hear me, Joanna thought. Where are you, Mr. Briarley? Standing in the mail room, ankle-deep in water, asking the clerk for the key? Or in the library, trying to scrawl Kit a message?

Or nowhere, the brain cells that held awareness and comprehension and identity destroyed by the plaque of Alzheimer’s, the synapses that held the memory of that foggy afternoon sunk without a trace? “You don’t remember,” she said hopelessly and stood up. “It’s all right. Don’t worry about it.”

She put Voyages and Voices back on the shelf and searched carefully along the rest of the shelves, even though it was useless. Because Mazes and Mirrors didn’t have anything about the Titanic in it. She had remembered it not because of a poem or an essay, but because Mr. Briarley had been holding it when he made the speech that was the trigger. And that was why, when Betty had told her the title, she had felt that shock of recognition. Because it was the cover she remembered, the cover she was looking at when he said the critical words.

She finished the bookshelves and started through the books piled in the window seat. She wondered if the window seat lifted up, if Mr. Briarley could have put the textbook inside.

“What else would he see?” Mr. Briarley said from his chair.

“What?” Joanna said, startled into answering. He had sat up and was looking at the side of the chair where she had knelt.

“Who can tell me what a metaphor is?” he asked, scanning the room. His class, she thought. He’s seeing his English class.

“Ms. Lander?” he said, his gaze coming back to the space next to his chair. “Can you define a metaphor?”

Joanna glanced toward the stairs, wondering if she should call Kit.

“A metaphor is an implied or direct comparison of two things that are alike in some way,” he said. “Death is a journey, a voyage, a passage. And yes, I know, Mr. Inman, you never saw fog with feet. That is because most things are only alike in one or two ways. Like a cat, the fog is silent, mysterious. On the other hand, it does not eat fish or, as you have pointed out, Mr. Inman, have feet.” Mr. Briarley stood up and walked over to the library table, sat down on the edge of it.

Joanna held her breath.

“Usually there are only a few points of comparison, but sometimes, sometimes, the two things are mirror images. Have you never wondered why I would spend valuable class time on a shipwreck?” Mr. Briarley said. “Have you never wondered why, after all these years, all those books and movies and plays, people are still fascinated?”

He’s talking about the Titanic, Joanna thought. He remembers. She sank down on the window seat, waiting.

“They know it when they see it,” he said. “They recognize it instantly, though they have never seen it before. And cannot take their eyes off it.”

He was talking in riddles, in tangles of memory and metaphor, and it might mean no more than his asking her why she didn’t have a hall pass, but she sat silently on the window seat, afraid to move, afraid even to breathe.

“They tell themselves that isn’t what it is, that it’s a morality play or a comedy of errors,” Mr. Briarley said. “They say it looks like class warfare or technological arrogance or the vengeance of a wrathful God, but they’re lying to themselves. They know, they know what it looks like. And so did he.

“That’s why he saw it,” Mr. Briarley said, and Joanna realized what he was talking about. He hadn’t heard her when she knelt next to his chair and asked him to remember. He had heard her before, talking to Kit, asking her why Greg Menotti had seen the Titanic, and he had spent the past fifteen minutes searching patiently through the passages of his blocked and damaged brain, trying to find the answer.

“ ‘I shall never forget it,’ ” he murmured. “Edith said that,” and, as if she had asked, “Edith Haisman. She said, ‘I shall never forget it, the darkness and the cold,’ but she wasn’t talking about the Titanic. And the forward lookout, who saw it first—who gave the warning—hanged himself from a lamppost. Because he knew what it really was. He knew it as soon as he saw it, knew—”

“I can’t find it anywhere,” Kit said, and Joanna could hear her pattering down the stairs.

No, Joanna thought, pressing herself against the back of the window seat as she had against the stairwell wall that day she and Richard had hidden from Mr. Mandrake.

“It wasn’t in the clothes hamper or under the mattress or behind the radiator,” Kit said, halfway down, two-thirds.

Don’t, Joanna prayed. Not now—

“Wait!” Kit said, only a few steps from the bottom. “I just thought of something. I know someplace else,” and ran back up.

Mr. Briarley looked after her, his head cocked as if listening for her voice, and then slumped back into his chair again. Joanna waited, but Kit’s voice, all unintending, had broken the spell, and he had sunk back into unawareness.

What does it look like, Mr. Briarley? Joanna nearly asked, but she was afraid of breaking the connection that might still be there in his mind. Wait, she thought, listening anxiously for Kit. Don’t lead. Wait.

“I kept losing my grade book,” Mr. Briarley said, and his voice had changed. It was introspective, even gentle. “And I couldn’t remember the names of Lear’s daughters. Ice warnings. But I didn’t listen to them. ‘Getting old,’ I told myself. ‘Typical absentminded professor.’ Very few of the passengers even heard the collision, you know. It was the engines stopping that woke them up.”

Joanna’s heart beat painfully. Wait.

“I told myself there was nothing to worry about,” he said. “Modern medicine had made the ship unsinkable, and the lights were still on, the decks were still comparatively level. But inside…”

He stared ahead blindly for a moment and then went on. “The perfect metaphor,” he said, “looming up suddenly out of nowhere in the middle of your maiden voyage, unseen until it is nearly upon you, unavoidable even when you try to swerve, unexpected even though there have been warnings all along. Literature, literature is a warning,” he said, and then waveringly, “ ‘No, no, my dream was lengthened after life.’ Shakespeare wrote that, trying to warn us of what’s coming. ‘I passed, methought, the melancholy flood, With that sour ferryman which poets write of, Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.’ ” He looked out over the library as if it were a classroom. “Can anyone tell me what that means?”

Above them, Kit slammed a drawer shut, and Mr. Briarley said, as if the sound had been a question, “Nothing can save you, not youth or beauty or wealth, not intelligence or power or courage. You are all alone, in the middle of an ocean, with the lights going out.”

Above, Kit shut a door, pattered into the hall. She would be down any minute. There was no time to wait.

“Why did he see the Titanic when he was dying?” Joanna asked, and Mr. Briarley turned and looked at her in surprise.

“He didn’t,” he said. “He saw death.”

Death. “And it looked like the Titanic,” Joanna said.

“And it looked like the Titanic.”

Kit appeared in the door. “I heard you talking,” she said. “Did you find it?”

36

Joanna wasn’t even sure of how she got back to the hospital. She had wanted only to get away, to escape what Mr. Briarley had told her, and what she might tell Kit.

“What’s wrong?” Kit had said after one look at her face. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” Joanna had said, trying to keep the knowledge out of her face. “I didn’t find the textbook.” Kit had come into the library and was standing in front of the banked pictures, so that the photo of Kevin smiled over her shoulder. I can’t tell her, Joanna had thought. I can’t let her find out. “I have to go,” she’d said and gone out into the hall.

“Uncle Pat didn’t say something, did he?” Kit had said anxiously, following her to the door. “He sometimes says terrible things, but he doesn’t mean them. They’re part of his illness. He doesn’t even know he says them.”

“No,” she’d said, trying to smile reassuringly. “He didn’t say anything terrible.” Only the truth. The terrible, terrible truth.

There was no question of its being true, even though, listening to him, she had felt no sudden “Eureka!,” no epiphany, only a feeling of dread. A sinking feeling, she thought, and her lips twisted. How appropriate. What had Mr. Briarley called it? The very mirror image of death.

Which was why it had resonated down through the years. All disasters—Maisie’s Hindenburg and Pompeii and the Hartford circus fire—had some of the attributes of death, its suddenness or its panic or its horror, but the Titanic had them all: courage and destruction and casualness and a dreadful confluence of coincidence and culpability, terror and gallantry and despair.

The tragedy of the Titanic was both sudden and slow—the impact with the iceberg as unexpected as a car accident, as a stroke. But it was also endless, the passengers sitting quietly on deck chairs after all the boats were gone or playing bridge in the smoking room, like patients in nursing homes, in the oncology ward, waiting forever to die.

All the attributes. The injury that seemed minor at first—a lump, a shadow on the X rays, a cough—nothing to worry about. Modern medicine has made the ship nearly unsinkable, and the captain surely knows what to do.

She thought of Greg Menotti, protesting that he went to the health club every day even as the killing pain clamped his chest. Of Maisie’s mother, insisting the new drug was stabilizing Maisie’s arrhythmia. Of the men on the Titanic leaning over the railing and laughing down to the women in the boats: “We’ll see you at breakfast,” and, “You’ll need a pass to get back on, ladies.”

Denial, and then worry. The doctor’s scheduled an exploratory, the CAT scan shows progressive degeneration of cortical nerve cells, the deck is starting to list. But there’s still no indication that it’s really serious. There’s certainly no need for your brother to come, no need to put on a lifejacket or draw up a will, not with the decks still lit and the band still playing.

More denial, and then a frantic rush for the lifeboats, for chemotherapy, for a clinic in Mexico, and then, with the boats all gone, good-byes and a desperate clinging to deck chairs, religion, positive thinking, Mr. Mandrake’s books, a light at the end of the tunnel. But nothing works, nothing holds, because the whole ship is coming apart, breaking up, crashing—that’s why they call it a crash cart, Joanna thought suddenly—the body’s crashing, going under, going down, and the Titanic isn’t just a mirror image of dying, but of what happened to the body, because it didn’t die all at once any more than the person did, but by stages, the breathing coming to a stop, and then the heart and the blood in the veins, one watertight compartment after another flooding and spilling over into the next: cerebral cortex, medulla, brain stem, all faltering and flickering out, and in their final moments seeing their own end. The ship going down by the head.

But taking forever to sink, the eyes’ pupils dilating even as they dulled in a doomed effort to keep the lights on. Some cells surviving for hours, the liver still metabolizing, the bones still manufacturing marrow like stokers down below in the engine room still working to fire the boilers, to keep the dynamos going, unaware that the ship has already foundered. Sinking slowly at first and then faster, the body growing darker by degrees, and colder.

“I shall never forget it, the darkness and the cold,” Joanna thought, shivering. She was sitting in her car in the hospital parking lot, her hands numb on the steering wheel. She wondered how long she had sat there, staring unseeing at the hospital, at the gray sky.

A long time. It was getting dark out, the gray of the sky deepening, closing in, and lights had come on in nearly all the hospital windows. At some point she must have turned off the engine because the car was icy. She couldn’t feel her feet. You’ll catch your death, she thought, and got out of the car and went into the hospital. It was bright inside, the fluorescents making her squint as she opened the door. At the far end of the hall, framed in the blinding light, she could see a woman in a white coat and a white knitted cap and a man in a dark suit.

Mr. Mandrake, Joanna thought. She had forgotten all about him.

“But he’s going to be all right, isn’t he?” the woman asked, a quaver in her voice.

“We’re doing everything we can,” the man said.

A doctor, not Mr. Mandrake, but Joanna ducked into the nearest stairway anyway and started up to the lab.

“We’re doing everything we can,” the doctor had said, but there wasn’t anything anybody could do. Only now that all hope of it was gone, did Joanna realize how badly she had wanted the NDE to be a physical phenomenon, a survival mechanism, how badly she had wanted to present Richard triumphantly with the solution to the puzzle. How badly she had wanted to tell Maisie, “We’ve got a new treatment.”

But that had always been wildly unlikely. Medical discoveries and actual treatments were years, sometimes decades, apart, and the person who had inspired the research hardly ever benefited from it. She, of all people, should know that. After the Titanic, legislation had been passed shifting the shipping lanes farther south, mandating twenty-four-hour wireless operation, requiring lifeboats for everyone on board. All too late, too late for the fifteen hundred lost souls.

And even if the NDE had been a survival mechanism, there had been no guarantee that a treatment could have been developed from it. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t any kind of evolutionary defense mechanism at all, and her persistent feeling that it was, that she was on the verge of some significant medical discovery, had been wishful thinking, confabulation, chemically induced.

It wasn’t a defense of the body against death. It was the reverse. It was coming face to face with death with no defenses at all, recognizing it in all its horror. And no wonder Mr. Mandrake and Mrs. Davenport and all the rest had opted for lights and relatives and angels. The real thing was too terrible to contemplate.

She had arrived at the sixth floor. She put her hand out to open the stairway door and then let it drop. I can’t do this, she thought. There was no way she could stand by and watch Richard intentionally send Mr. Sage under. Into the mirror image of death.

But if she told him that, he’d ask her what was wrong. And she couldn’t tell him. He’d be convinced she’d turned into a nutcase, like Seagal and Foxx. He’d accuse her of having been converted by Mr. Mandrake.

I’ll make some excuse, she thought. I’ll tell him… but she couldn’t let him see her. Like Kit, he would take one look at her face and ask, “What’s wrong? What’s happened?” She would have to call him from her office. I’ll tell him I have a headache and am going home, she thought, heading back down the stairs. I’ll tell him we have to reschedule.

There was a scrawled note taped to her office door. “Mr. Sage had to cancel,” Joanna read and felt a rush of relief. “He has the flu. Went to see Dr. [unintelligible] over at St. Anthony’s…”

The rest of the note was illegible. She couldn’t make out what Richard had gone over to St. Anthony’s about, or whether he was the one who had gone. Mr. Sage might have been the one who’d gone to see Dr. [unintelligible] about his flu. The only word she could make out was “Richard,” scrawled at the bottom of it. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she’d had a reprieve.

Down the hall behind her, the elevator dinged. Richard, she thought, or Mr. Mandrake. She fumbled for her keys, got them out. She could hear the elevator doors swoosh open. She got her key in the lock, turned it, put her hand on the knob.

“Joanna,” Vielle called, and there was nothing for it but to turn around, smile, hope all Vielle wanted was to discuss Dish Night.

No such luck. “Are you all right?” Vielle asked. She was wearing the worried expression she always had in the ER. “Did something happen? I saw you leaving the hospital in a taxi. I called to you, but you didn’t hear me, I guess. Where were you going?”

Joanna looked anxiously down the hall. They shouldn’t stay out here talking. “I went over to Kit’s,” she said, opening the door and going into her office.

“In a taxi?” Vielle said, right behind her. “Did your car break down? You could have borrowed mine.”

“Mr. Mandrake was after me,” Joanna said and tried to smile lightly. “He had the parking lot staked out.”

Vielle appeared to accept that. “How come you went over to Kit’s?”

“I had to pick up a book,” Joanna said. Which she clearly didn’t have with her.

“I got worried about you when I saw you weren’t wearing a coat,” Vielle said.

“I told you, Mr. Mandrake was after me. I couldn’t even go back to my office to get my bag. It’s getting so he stalks me constantly. We’re going to have to start holding Dish Night underground,” she said, trying to change the subject. “Speaking of which, what night do you want to have it?”

It didn’t work. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Vielle said. “The last couple of weeks you’ve seemed so distracted.”

“I have been,” Joanna said. “My best friend’s still working in the ER, even though a drug-crazed maniac nearly shot her arm off.” She looked pointedly at Vielle’s bandaged arm. “How’d it go today? Any attempted murders?”

“Okay, okay,” Vielle said, raising her hands in a gesture of surrender. “How about tomorrow night? For Dish Night? You tell Richard, and I’ll call Kit.”

And Kit and Vielle will compare notes, will ask me why I left in such a hurry and what Mr. Briarley said. “I can’t,” Joanna said. “I’m swamped with interviews I’ve got to transcribe.” She sat down at her desk and switched on her computer to make the point. “There’s no way I’m going to get home before ten any night this week. How about Saturday?”

“Perfect. That way I can tell Harvey the Ghoul I’m busy. Did you know morticians inject mastic compounds in the corpse’s cheeks to make him look healthier?”

“Saturday then?” Joanna asked, picking up a tape and sticking it in her minirecorder.

“Well, I’ll let you get busy,” Vielle said, looking worried again. “I just wanted to make sure nothing was wrong.” At the door she turned. “I know this dithetamine is supposed to be harmless, but everything has side effects, even aspirin. Have you told Richard about—whatever it is that’s been worrying you?”

I can’t tell Richard, Joanna thought. I can’t tell anybody, not even you. Especially not you. You deal with people dying every day. How could you bear it if you knew what happened to them afterward? She looked brightly up at Vielle. “There’s nothing worrying me,” she said, “except how I’m going to get all these tapes transcribed.”

“I’d better let you get started on them then,” Vielle said, and smiled at her. “I just worry, you know.”

“I know,” Joanna said, and as she went out the door, “Vielle—”

But Vielle had already turned and was pulling the door sharply to behind her. “Mr. Mandrake just got off the elevator,” she whispered. “Lock the door and shut off your lights,” and ducked out, shutting the door behind her.

Joanna dived for the light switch and then the lock. “She’s not here,” she could hear Vielle say. “I was just leaving her a note.”

“Do you know when she’ll be back?” Mr. Mandrake’s voice said.

“I sure don’t.”

“I have something very important to tell her, and she does not answer her pages,” Mr. Mandrake said disapprovingly. “Did you say you left her a note? I think I’d better leave her one, too.”

There were shuffling sounds, as if Vielle were trying to block his getting to the door, and then the knob rattled.

“I must’ve accidentally locked it when I shut it,” Vielle said. “Sorry,” and then, from farther down the hall, “I’ll tell her you want to see her,” and the faint ding of the elevator.

Joanna stood by the door, listening for the sound of Mr. Mandrake’s breathing, afraid to turn on the light for fear he was still waiting out there, ready to pounce, and then, after a while felt her way over to her desk and sat down, trying to think what to do.

I’ll have to quit the project, she thought, make up some excuse, tell Richard I’m too busy, the project’s interfering with my own work. Quit and go back to—what? Interviewing people who had coded, knowing what she knew? Talking to Maisie, who was going to die before she got a new heart? To Kit, whose fiancé had gone down on the Titanic, whose uncle was trapped on it, sending up rockets no one could see? I can’t, she thought. She would have to leave the hospital altogether, go someplace else, get away. Like Ismay, she thought, sneaking off in a lifeboat. Leaving the women and children to drown. “He was such a big coward,” Maisie had said contemptuously, and Maisie certainly knew something about courage. She had been looking death squarely in the face for a long time and had never tried to run away.

Only because she can’t, Joanna thought, but that was a lie. Look at Mr. Mandrake and Mrs. Davenport. And Maisie’s own mother. And Amelia.

That’s why Amelia quit, Joanna thought, and it was like another revelation. She had thought at the time Amelia’s story of being worried about her grades wasn’t the whole truth, but she had assumed her quitting had had something to do with her crush on Richard. But it hadn’t. Amelia had recognized death, had murmured, “Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no,” and resigned from the project.

But Amelia was only twenty-two. She was only a volunteer, not a partner. She hadn’t signed on to try and find out what NDEs were, and then, when she found out, panicked, lost her nerve, bolted for the nearest lifeboat. “ ‘Where I come from, we’d string you up on the nearest pine tree,’ ” Joanna murmured.

But even if she stayed, even if she told Richard, what would that accomplish? Richard wouldn’t believe her. He’d think she’d turned into Bridey Murphy. He’d tell her she was having temporal-lobe delusions.

All right then, make him believe you, she thought, and went over to the door, cracking her knee on the file cabinet, and switched on the light. Prove your theory. Collect evidence. Get outside confirmation. Starting with Amelia Tanaka.

Joanna called Amelia that night and again the next morning, and asked her to come in. “I’m not in the project anymore,” she said, and Joanna thought she was going to hang up on her.

“I know you’re not,” Joanna said quickly. “I just have a few questions I need to ask you about your sessions for our records. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

“I’m really busy right now. I have three tests this week, and my biochem project’s due. I won’t have any time till after the end of the semester,” Amelia said, and this time did hang up.

And did Joanna really need any more proof than that? Fear and reluctance had been in every word. Joanna went and got Amelia’s file out of the cabinet. On the questionnaire, Joanna had made her list not only her address but her class schedule, complete with buildings and room numbers. She had biochem tomorrow afternoon from one to two-forty.

One o’clock tomorrow. And until then… Joanna stuck Amelia’s disk in the computer and started through her transcript, looking for clues. There weren’t any. Warmth, peace, a bright light, nothing at all about water or an up-curving floor or people standing out on the deck.

No, wait. She had said, when Joanna asked her if the light had been there all the time, “…not till after they opened the door.” Later, she had amended it to, “I just assumed somebody had opened a door because of the way the light spilled in,” but Joanna wondered if the first version was the true one.

She read the rest of it. When she had asked Amelia her feelings, she had said, “Calm, quiet,” which might be a reference to the engines stopping, and she had complained after each session of being cold. All of which proved exactly nothing, except that you could find anything you tried to look for in an NDE, just like Mr. Mandrake.

She took out Amelia’s disk, put in one of last year’s interviews, printed out half a dozen files, and started through them with a yellow marker, highlighting words and phrases. “I was lying in the ambulance, and all of a sudden I was out of my body. It was like there was a porthole in my body, and my soul just shot out of it.” Joanna highlighted the word porthole in yellow.

“I felt like I was going on a long voyage.”

“…light all around,” Kathie Holbeck had said, looking up at the ceiling, and spread her hands out like a flower opening. Or a rocket going off. Ms. Isakson had done that, too. Joanna looked up her file. “All spangled,” she’d said. Like the starburst of a rocket.

“My father was there, and I was so glad to see him. He was killed in the Solomons. On a PT boat.”

Joanna tapped her marker thoughtfully on that one, thinking about Mr. Wojakowski and all his Yorktown stories. Could he have been reminded of them because he’d been on a ship?

Mr. Wojakowski wasn’t reminded of anything, she thought. He made it all up. And even if he had been, it was hardly the sort of proof she could offer to Richard. She continued through the transcripts:

“I heard a sound, but it was funny, like not really a sound at all, you know what I mean?”

“It sounded exactly like something rolling over a whole bunch of marbles.” Marbles. She found Kit’s notes of the engines stopping. And there it was. “It was as if the ship had rolled over a thousand marbles,” passenger Ella White had said when asked what the iceberg sounded like.

Joanna started through the transcripts again. “I was traveling through the tunnel, very fast, but smooth, like being in an elevator.”

“I knew I was crossing the River Jordan.”

She hadn’t lied to Vielle when she’d said she wouldn’t get home before ten. At half-past nine she was still only halfway through the set of interviews. She shut the computer off, pulled on her coat, and then sat down, still in her coat, and switched it on again.

She saved all of her interviews from the past two years onto a single file and then typed in “water” and hit “global search” and “display,” and watched them come up.

“I felt like I was floating in the water.”

“The light was warm and glimmery, like being underwater.”

“…being at the lake” (this from Pauline Underbill’s description of her life review), “where we used to go when I was little. I was in our old rowboat, and it was leaking, the water was coming in the side…”

Rowing on the lake, Joanna thought, and called up Coma Carl’s file, with its long list of isolated words and (unintelligible)’s.

“Water,” and “placket” or “blanked out” or “black.” Or “blanket,” Joanna thought. She read through the rest of his file. “Dark” and “patches” and “cut the rope.” Cut the rope. The men up on top of the officers’ quarters, trying to cut the collapsibles loose as the water came up over the bow. She read on. “Water… cold? code?… oh, grand.” The Grand Staircase.

She quit at one o’clock, went home, and read The Light at the End of the Tunnel till she fell asleep, dog-earing pages that had NDEs that mentioned “water” and “voyage” and “darkness.”

In the morning, she went to see Coma Carl, hoping he might have begun talking again, but he had a feeding tube in and an oxygen mask. “He’s not having a very good day,” Mrs. Aspinall whispered, which was putting it mildly. He was a corpselike gray, and his thin chest, his skeletal arms and legs, seemed to be sinking into the bed, into death itself.

“They can’t seem to keep his temperature down,” Mrs. Aspinall said, sounding near tears. She looked terrible, too. Dark gray shadows under her eyes and a general look of exhaustion. A pillow and a hospital blanket were stacked neatly on the windowsill, which meant that she was sleeping in the room. And getting no sleep at all.

“You look tired,” Joanna said. “Would you like to go get a cup of coffee, or lie down in the waiting room? I’ll sit with him.”

“No, he might… no,” Mrs. Aspinall said. “I’m fine. Thank you, though. It’s very kind of you.” She looked at Carl. “He’s stopped talking. Of course, he can’t talk with the feeding tube in, but he doesn’t even try to make sounds anymore. He just lies there,” her voice broke, “so still in the bed.”

But he’s not in the bed, Joanna thought, and remembered standing beside his bed the day she’d met Richard, thinking he was somewhere far away. She wondered where. At the foot of the Grand Staircase, waiting for his boat to be called? Or in one of the lifeboats, rowing against the darkness and the cold?

She moved around to the side of the bed. “Carl,” she said, and covered his poor, battered hand with hers. “I came to see how you were doing,” she said, and then stopped, unable to think of anything at all to say. “Get well”? He obviously wasn’t going to. “The doctor says you’re doing fine”?

Maisie had said, “I think people should tell you the truth even when it’s bad.” Or even when they’re too far away to hear you. “Your wife’s here,” Joanna said. “The nurses are taking really good care of you. We all want you to come back to us.”

Behind her, Mrs. Aspinall was fumbling in her purse for a Kleenex. Joanna leaned over and kissed him on his papery cheek. “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered, and went back up to her office and started through the transcripts again.

“I don’t think it was the same tunnel,” Mrs. Woollam had said. “It was narrow, and the floor was uneven, so I had trouble walking.” And she had seen a stairway, and a dark open space with nothing around for miles…

But she had also seen a garden, “green and white, with vines all around.” And there was Maisie, who hadn’t seen lights or people dressed in white, but fog.

At half-past one, Joanna left for the university to see Amelia, leaving plenty of time to find the building and the room, remembering what a nightmare parking usually was, but the bad weather must have kept a lot of the students home. She found a parking place in the very first row.

Movie parking, she thought, I’ll have to tell Vielle. But Vielle would ask, “What were you doing at the university?” And if I told her, Joanna thought, she’d accuse me of stalking Amelia. Which is what I’m doing, she thought, standing outside the door of the classroom, waiting for her to come out. Amelia quit the project, and she made it plain she didn’t want to talk to me. I have no right to be here.

But when Amelia came out, toting her backpack, pulling on her mittens, Joanna went up to her and said, “Amelia? Is there somewhere we can talk for a few minutes?” before she could bolt. Which, after a terrified glance at Joanna, she had looked like she was going to do, taking a caged glance around as if trying to find a stairway to duck into. That’s what I look like whenever I see Mr. Mandrake, Joanna thought, and wondered if Amelia put her in the same category. Was that a possibility, that Amelia had quit not because she had seen something that frightened her, but because she thought of the project as pseudoscience?

That might be it, because, when they got to the cafeteria, which was, astonishingly, open in the middle of the afternoon, and Joanna asked Amelia if she could get her a Coke or coffee, Amelia said, “I have a class in a few minutes,” which Joanna knew was a blatant lie.

“This will only take a few minutes,” Joanna said, opening a notebook. “I just need to complete your exit interview,” which sounded, she hoped, official and required. “You were with the project how long?”

“Four weeks,” Amelia said.

Joanna wrote that down. “Reason for quitting?”

“I told you, my classes are really hard this semester. I just didn’t have time.”

“Okay,” Joanna said, as if consulting a list of questions. “The first session you had that I was there, that would be your third session, you said that you felt a sense of warmth and peace.”

“Yes,” she said, but this time there was no half-smile as she remembered. Her hands clenched.

“And your last session you said you could see more clearly, that you saw people standing in the light, but you couldn’t make them out.”

“No, the light was too bright.”

“Could you see anything of your surroundings?”

“No,” she said, and her hands clenched again. She seemed to become aware of it and laid them in her lap.

“How did you feel during that fourth session?”

“I told you, I had a feeling of peace. Look, are there any more questions? I have a class I have to get to.”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “Were your classes the only reason you quit?”

“I told you—”

“I got the idea that you might have seen something in that last session that frightened you. Did you?”

“No,” Amelia said, and stood up. “I told you, I’ve got really hard classes this semester. Is that all?”

“I need you to sign this,” Joanna said, and pushed the paper and a pen at her. Amelia bent over the form, her long black hair swinging forward over her face. “If you did see something frightening, I need you to tell me. It’s important.”

Amelia straightened. “All I saw was a light,” she said. She handed Joanna back the pen with an air of finality and picked up her backpack. “I felt warm and peaceful.” She slung the heavy backpack onto her shoulders and looked challengingly at Joanna. “There wasn’t anything frightening about it at all.”

Which proved exactly nothing, Joanna thought, watching her make her way out of the crowded cafeteria, except that she didn’t want to talk to me. It certainly didn’t prove that she had seen the Titanic. But she had. And she was terrified at the prospect of being sent under again, which was why she had quit.

But it was scarcely proof, and neither was a scattering of words and phrases in her interviews. “The word silver appears in the interviews, too,” she could hear Richard saying. “That doesn’t mean they saw the Hindenburg.” He was right. Even the Devil could quote Scripture, and sifting through interviews and taking only the parts that fit your theory was Mr. Mandrake’s modus operandi, not a reputable scientist’s, especially when there were things that didn’t fit at all, like Mrs. Woollam’s garden and Maisie’s fog.

I need evidence, she thought. The testimony of witnesses, but there weren’t any—except herself—and Richard had already rejected that. Amelia refused to testify, Mrs. Troudtheim refused even to go under, and Carl Aspinall was in a coma. There was Mr. Briarley, but why on earth would Richard believe the ramblings of an Alzheimer’s patient, even if she could get Mr. Briarley to repeat them? There must be some outside confirmation she could get, like the facts about Midway and the Coral Sea that she had used to prove Mr. Wojakowski was lying.

As if she had conjured him up, or, worse, was hallucinating, she saw Mr. Wojakowski coming toward her across the cafeteria, carrying his baseball cap in his hand and smiling broadly. “Hiya, Doc, what are you doing here?” he said. “Ain’t you supposed to be at the hospital?”

“What am I doing here?” Joanna said. “What are you doing here?”

“Art show,” he said and grimaced. “Damn modern stuff made out of wires and toilet seats. Aspen Gardens brought a bunch of us over in a van to see it.” He waved his cap in the direction of the serving line, where Joanna saw several blue-haired ladies getting coffee. “Did you get that schedule worked out yet?”

“No,” Joanna said. “Not yet.”

“I figured that. I been calling you and the doc all week. I was starting to feel like Norm Pichette. Thought I was going to have to get me a machine gun.”

Joanna looked at him, startled, but he was grinning amiably at her.

“I guess I never told you about how he got accidentally left behind when we abandoned the Yorktown. He was down in sick bay, and when he wakes up, there’s nobody on board but him and George Weise, who’s got a skull fracture and who’s out cold. Well, everybody’s already been transferred to the Hammann and the Hughes.”

He can’t be making it up, Joanna thought all over again. Not with all these details. Part of it has to be true.

“He calls over to us, but we can’t hear him, we’re too far away. Well, he tries everything—he hollers and waves his arms.” Mr. Wojakowski demonstrated, waving his arms over his head like a semaphore. “He even gets a stew pot out of the galley and bangs on it, but we’re too far away and there’s too much going on. So there he is, on a ship that’s going down and no way to get a message to anybody.”

“Mr. Wojakowski—” she said, but he was off again.

“So what does he do? He takes a machine gun and fires it into the water. We’re too far away to hear it, but Meatball Fratelli sees the splashes in the water and shouts, ‘Sub!’ and everybody looks, but we can’t figure out what it is. It’s not a sub, and it doesn’t act like a depth charge, and then I look up, and there he is, standing on the port catwalk. Pretty smart of him, huh, figuring out a way to get a message to us like that?”

“Mr. Wojakowski, I have a question I need to ask you.”

“Ed.”

Why am I asking this? she thought. It will just remind him of another Yorktown story, and even if he did answer it, Richard would hardly believe someone who was a compulsive liar.

“Go ahead, Doc, shoot,” Mr. Wojakowski said.

“Mr. Wo—Ed,” she said, “during your interviews, you talked a lot about World War II. Was there something in your NDEs that made you think of your war experiences?”

“On the Yorktown, you mean?” He took off his baseball cap and scratched his freckled head. “Not that I can think of.”

The one time I want him to come up with a story, she thought, and he lets me down.

“Nothing in particular, Doc,” he said. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” she said and gathered up her belongings. “I just wondered.”

He put his baseball cap back on. “You mean besides that I was on a ship, right?”

37

“You were on a ship?” Joanna said carefully. “What ship?”

“I don’t know,” Mr. Wojakowski said. “Not the Yorktown. I knew every inch of her, and this was an alleyway I’d never seen before. And the door wasn’t like the ones we had. It was more like the door you’d see on the captain’s cabin. Which reminds me of the time I went to ask the captain somethin’, and who do I see coming out of his cabin but Stinkpot Malone. Now, Stinky can’t be up to anything but no good, he’s the biggest stool pigeon in the whole U.S. Navy, and that’s going some. So, anyway, Stinky sees me and he says—”

“What makes you think it was a ship?” Joanna cut in.

“You ever been on board?” he said. “Once you have, you can’t mistake that feeling for anything else. You’d know it even if you was blindfolded and had earplugs on. Which, come to think of it, I guess I was.”

“But you couldn’t tell what ship?”

“Nope,” he said. “It was a navy ship, that’s all I know, ’cause I could see sailors outside the door.”

“You could see sailors?”

“People, anyway. I thought they were sailors. The light was too bright to make out much, but I could see they had their dress whites on, so I figured they must be sailors.”

A ship, and people outside the door, dressed all in white.

“You said it felt like you were at sea. Were the engines going?”

“The engines?” he said, surprised. “No,” and the blue-haired ladies came up, looking determined.

“The van is waiting, Edward,” one of them said, glaring at Joanna.

“Be right with you,” Mr. Wojakowski said. “You gals go on. I gotta say good-bye to my girlfriend here.” He winked at Joanna. The ladies moved off a few steps and then stood there, waiting impatiently. “What other questions you got, Doc?”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Well, I’ll tell ya, I didn’t want to just yammer on like Edgewise Eggleton. Did I ever tell you about him? We called him that ’cause when you were around him you couldn’t ever get a word in edgewise, and—”

“You’d better go,” Joanna said, indicating the ladies, who looked like they were about to have a stroke. “You don’t want the van to go without you.”

“I’d never hear the end of it,” he said and sighed. “You call me as soon as you get that schedule set, Doc. I can come in anytime.” He sauntered over to the women and then came back. “I just got to thinking. It might’ve been the Franklin. I don’t know how she went down, though.”

“Went down?”

“No, come to think of it, it couldn’ta been the Hammann, because her back got broken. And not the Wasp because she went belly up, and the Lexington was clear over on her side, and this ship, whatever she was, was going down by the head.”

And there it was, her outside confirmation. It wouldn’t convince Richard. It wouldn’t convince anyone, not with Mr. Wojakowski’s record, but it was still evidence that she was on the right track. And where there was some evidence, there was more. She just had to find it.

She drove back to the hospital and spent the rest of the day and all of the next barricaded in her office, going through the transcripts. She switched her pager off, but kept the phone on and let the answering machine pick up, mostly so she could keep track of Mr. Mandrake.

He called at two-hour intervals, becoming more and more irritated that he couldn’t corner her. “If you can’t make time to return my calls,” he huffed and puffed, “you should at least go hear what Mrs. Davenport has to say about the visions she’s been having. They prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that messages can be sent from beyond the grave.”

Joanna erased the message, taped black paper along the bottom of the door so light couldn’t be seen from the outside, and went back to reading transcripts:

“I was traveling down through a long, sloping tunnel.”

“The feeling was warm, like being wrapped in a blanket.”

“A woman and a little girl were standing in the doorway, and I knew it must be my mother and my little sister who died when she was six, even though it didn’t really look like them. The little girl took my hand and led me into a beautiful garden.”

The garden again. Joanna did a global search. “I was in a sort of garden.” “Elijah was standing in the Garden of Eden.” “Beyond the doorway I could see a garden.”

Gladys Meers had been the most specific. “There were trees all around, and white trellises with vines growing up them. ‘Pray be seated,’ the angel said, and I sat down in a white wicker chair, the kind they have on patios.”

There couldn’t possibly have been a garden on the Titanic, Joanna thought, and wished she could believe that, but it had had a swimming pool, it had had a Turkish bath. Maybe it had had a garden, too.

She called Kit, but the line was busy. She printed out the list of garden references and then went to see Maisie. She was lying in bed, watching TV, but her shallow breathing and flaring nostrils gave her away. She just jumped into bed, Joanna thought, wondering what book she’d just hidden, and then saw that there were wires leading under her Barbie pajama top to the heart monitor.

“I didn’t find out the wireless messages yet,” Maisie said when she saw Joanna. She pointed her remote at the TV and turned it off. “I’m in A-fib again. I’m not supposed to read even. I found out two.” She took a couple of panting breaths before she went on. “They’re in the drawer,” turning her head to indicate the nightstand. “I’ll look up the others as soon as I feel better.”

Joanna opened the drawer and took out Maisie’s tablet. On the first page was written, “Sinking. Cannot hear for noise of steam.” And under it, “Come quick. Our engine-room flooded up to the boilers.”

Like you, Joanna thought, and tried not to think of Maisie on the listing decks of the Titanic, on the slanting steps of the Grand Staircase. But she saw fog, Joanna thought, and the night the Titanic sank, it was clear. And if there wasn’t a garden on the Titanic, then Mr. Briarley’s wrong.

“Maisie,” she said. “Did the Titanic have a garden?”

“A garden?” Maisie said, incredulous. “On a ship?”

“Or something that looked like a garden, with flowers and trees,” but Maisie was shaking her head. And if there were one, Joanna thought, she would have known about it.

“I never heard of a garden,” Maisie said. “I bet if there was, though, there’d be a picture of it in my Titanic Picture Book.” She pushed the covers off and sat up.

“No,” Joanna said. “No looking things up till you’re out of A-fib.”

“But—”

“Promise me, or I’ll fire you as my research assistant.”

“Okay,” Maisie said grudgingly. “I promise,” and, at Joanna’s skeptical look, “Cross my heart.”

Which isn’t worth a damn, Joanna thought. “You get some rest, kiddo,” she said, picking up the remote and switching it on, “and I’ll come see you soon.”

“You can’t go yet,” Maisie said. “I haven’t told you this neat thing I found out about the Mackay-Bennett.”

“Okay,” she said. “Two minutes, and then you have to rest. What’s the Mackay-Bennett?”

“It was this ship they sent out to pick up the bodies.”

“I thought the bodies all sank,” Joanna said.

“I did, too, but some of them were wearing lifejackets, so they floated.” She laid her head back against the pillows, arms outstretched, mouth open in a grotesque imitation of a floating corpse. “And they were afraid people on other ships would see them, so they sent the Mackay-Bennett out to get them. It had all these coffins and a minister. What’s an embalmer?”

“It’s a person who prepares bodies for burial. To keep them from spoiling.”

“Oh,” Maisie said. “Well, they had an embalmer, and all this ice. That was to keep them from spoiling, too, right?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “Okay, your two minutes are up.” She stood up.

“No,” Maisie said. “I haven’t told you the thing yet. One of the bodies was this little boy who nobody knew who he was, and nobody came to claim him, so the captain and the guys on the Mackay-Bennett had a funeral for him and a little white coffin and they put up a headstone to ‘The Unknown Child Whose Remains were Recovered after the Disaster to the Titanic.’ ”

“Just like Little Miss 1565,” Joanna said.

“No,” Maisie said, “ ’cause this one they found out who he was.” She wrapped her hand around her dog tags, as if it were a rosary. “Gosta Paulsson,” she said. “That was his name. Gosta Paulsson.” Joanna ended up sitting with Maisie till her mother came in, bubbling with cheer.

“The nurses say you’re doing much better,” Joanna heard her say as she scooted out of the room. “I brought you a brand-new video. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”

Joanna went back to her office, feeling relieved. There wasn’t a garden on the Titanic, and no fog, and Maisie wasn’t the only NDEer to have seen fog. It was listed as a separate NDE category in one of the books, Entranced by the Light. She read the section. “A number of patients describe being in an open, undefined, foggy space. Some say it is dark, like fog at night, others that it is light. Nearly all describe it as being a cold and frightening place. This is clearly Purgatory, and those who see it can be described as nonreligious or unsaved.”

Joanna closed the book with a slap and did a global search of “fog,” and scrolled down through the references. “It was cold,” Paul Smetzer had said, “and there was so much fog I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.”

Paul Smetzer. That name rang a bell. She called up his file and read the full account. Oh, yes, Paul. “…I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Of course, if I was dead, I guess I wouldn’t have had a hand, would I? Or a face, for that matter.”

Paul Smetzer, the Ricky Inman of NDEers. He had also told her he’d seen an angel, “almost as cute as you,” and asked her if it was true there wasn’t any sex in heaven, “because if it is, I told her, I want to go to the other place.”

His remarks could be discounted, but he wasn’t the only one who had mentioned fog: “There were people standing there, but I couldn’t see who they were because of the fog.” “No, it was dark” (this in response to Joanna’s asking Ray Gomez to describe the tunnel), “and all blurry, like fog or something.” “I was floating in a kind of fog.”

And there definitely hadn’t been any fog that night. Just to make sure, Joanna called Kit, but her number was still busy. She printed out the list of fog references to take home and began gathering up her things.

The phone rang. “Hi, it’s Richard,” he said to the answering machine. “I just wanted to tell you Mrs. Troudtheim’s coming in at four tomorrow if that will—”

She picked up the phone. “Hi, I’m here.”

“Oh, I thought you’d gone home,” he said. “I came by earlier and didn’t see any light under your door.”

“Nope, I’m still here. I’ve been working on the backlog of transcripts,” she said, which was at least partly true. “I thought you weren’t going to send Mrs. Troudtheim under again until you’d figured out why she keeps kicking out.”

“I wasn’t, but when I told Dr. Jamison about the DABA, she suggested I go talk to Dr. Friedman over at St. Anthony’s. He’s worked extensively with DABA and artificial DABA surrogates. He said DABA alone couldn’t inhibit endorphins, but combined with cortisol, it definitely could.”

“And inhibiting the endorphins would kick her out?”

“I don’t know yet. I asked him about theta-asparcine, too, but it’s not an inhibitor. His specialty’s inhibitors, so he didn’t know much about it. He said he thought it had a regulatory function and that an artificial surrogate’s been produced. I need to do some more research, but not till I’ve checked Mrs. Troudtheim’s NDEs to see if cortisol’s been present in all of them. If it has, there are a number of ways to counteract the cortisol and keep her under. So I’ll see you tomorrow at four o’clock.”

Four o’clock. And by that time, she should know one way or the other. Or maybe sooner, if she could reach Kit. She called her again, and as soon as she got home, slightly worried, and at fifteen-minute intervals till she finally got through.

“Oh, I’m so glad you called,” Kit said. “I wanted to apologize for leaving the book where Uncle Pat could find it. I don’t blame you for walking out like that.”

“That wasn’t the reason—” Joanna said, but Kit wasn’t listening.

“It was an unbelievably stupid thing to do,” she said. “I mean, he’d hidden it once. He’d obviously try to hide it again. I don’t blame you for being mad.”

“I’m not mad—” Joanna said.

“Well, you should be,” Kit said. “I still haven’t found it, and I’ve looked absolutely everywhere. Down behind the radiators, inside—”

“Actually, I didn’t call about the textbook,” Joanna said.

“Oh, of course, you want to know about the questions you asked. There was no library as such, but there was a Reading and Writing Room on the Promenade Deck that had bookshelves and writing tables, and it was right next to the First-Class Lounge, which did have a bar. And, yes, Scotland Road was a crew passage on E Deck that ran nearly the whole length of the ship. It—”

“I need to know something else. Do you know if it was foggy that night?”

“No,” Kit said promptly. “It was perfectly clear. And very still. One of the survivors described the water as being like a lake. That’s why they didn’t see the waves hitting the iceberg.”

“And there couldn’t have been fog later on? After they hit?”

“I don’t think so,” she said just as promptly. “All the survivors said it was the clearest night they’d ever seen. It was so clear the stars came right down to the horizon. Do you want me to find out?”

“No, that’s okay. Thanks,” Joanna said. “You told me what I wanted to know.” What I already knew, she thought after she hung up, and that, combined with the frequent image of the garden, meant that Mr. Briarley was wrong.

No, not wrong about why she’d seen the Titanic. He was right, it was the mirror image of death. Wrong only in that everyone, thank God, was not doomed to see it, and maybe Kit was right, and Greg Menotti had been talking about something completely different from the Carpathia.

I hope so, she thought, going up to her office the next morning. I hope so.

Her answering machine was blinking hysterically. She took off her coat and hit “play.” Richard, saying, “Tish had a conflict at four. I’ve moved Mrs. Troudtheim up to two. Call me if that won’t work.”

Leonard Fanshawe. Mr. Mandrake. “I’ve just heard from a very reliable source that you are now a subject in Dr. Wright’s project.”

Oh, no, Joanna thought. That’s all I need.

“I am eager to discuss your experience with you to determine whether in fact it is an authentic NDE. I doubt whether it is.”

I hope you’re right, Joanna thought, deleting the rest of his message. The phone rang. And if you think I’m going to pick it up, Mr. Mandrake, you’re crazy, she thought.

The answering machine clicked on. “You need to come right away,” Maisie’s breathless voice said. “I need you to see something.”

Joanna picked up the phone. “I’m here, Maisie. What do you need me to come see?”

“I looked in the… Titanic Picture Book,” she said and paused to take another breath, “and—”

“Are you still in A-fib?” Joanna demanded.

“Yes, but… I’m feeling lots better,” she said.

“I told you you weren’t supposed to look anything up till you were out of A-fib.”

“I only looked in one book,” she protested, “but I don’t know if it’s really… a garden, so you need to come.”

“If what isn’t a garden?”

“The Verandah Café,” Maisie said. “It’s got flowers and trees and vines on… these things I don’t know the name of, they’re white and they crisscross—”

Trellises, Joanna thought. “Tell me what the chairs look like,” she said, calling up Gladys Meers’s file.

“They’re white and made of little tiny… I don’t know,” Maisie said, frustrated. “You need to come look.”

“I can’t come right now,” Joanna said. “Little tiny what?”

“Long, round things. Like a basket.”

Wicker. The word was right there on the screen. “There were trees all around, and white trellises with vines growing up on them. I sat down in a white wicker chair, the kind they have on patios.”

“Are there trees?” Joanna asked, calling up Mrs. Woollam’s file.

“Yes,” Maisie said, and Joanna already knew what she was going to say. “Palm trees, but you need to come see it.”

Not a heavenly garden. The Verandah Café. On the Titanic.

“Can you come this morning?” Maisie was asking.

No, Mrs. Troudtheim’s coming at two. I have to find out for sure there wasn’t any fog. “I’m too busy to come this morning,” she said.

“You have to come right after lunch then. I found out all the wireless messages. You said to tell you when I had the whole list done, and you’d come.”

“I’ll come this afternoon.”

“Right after lunch?”

“Right after lunch.”

“You promise? Cross your heart?”

“Cross my heart,” Joanna said and hung up. She called up the list of fog references again, looking for clues. “I was up on the ceiling, looking down at the operating table, and I saw the doctor put these flat things on my chest, like Ping-Pong paddles, and then I couldn’t see more, because it got foggy,” Mr. James had reported, and Mrs. Katzenbaum had said, “The tunnel was dark, but at the end of it was this golden light, all fuzzy like there was smoke or fog or something in the way.”

Smoke. Coma Carl had said something about smoke, too. What if it wasn’t fog, but smoke? Or steam? The Titanic had been a steamship. “Sinking. Cannot hear for noise of steam,” the telegram Maisie had written down said.

But that steam would have gone up out of the funnels. It wouldn’t have been on the decks. What about smoke? Could fires have broken out on board as the ship tilted? Burning coal from the boilers sliding out onto the floor of the boiler room, or a candle toppling over onto a tablecloth in the First-Class Dining Saloon?

She called Kit, but the line was still busy. Maisie would know if there’d been a fire, especially in light of her interest in the Hartford circus fire, and it wasn’t as if she were asking about fog. Who are you kidding? Joanna thought. She’ll see the connection instantly.

She tried Kit again. Mr. Briarley answered. “Mr. Briarley, I need to speak to Kit,” Joanna told him.

“She’s not here,” he said. “She’s at the church. They’re all over at the church. Except for Kevin. I don’t know where he is.”

This is what Kit meant when she said he said terrible things, Joanna thought. I thought she was talking about obscenities.

“ ‘All alone, so Heav’n has willed, we die,’ ” he said. “Kevin went to pick up film. Kit sent him. I don’t know why she didn’t think of it earlier.”

They are obscenities, Joanna thought, and then, Kit can’t hear this. “Tell her I called. Good-bye,” she said and started to hang up, but it was too late. Kit was already on the line.

“Hi. Who is this?” she said in her cheerful voice. “Oh, hi, Joanna, did you forget something?”

Maybe she didn’t hear him, Joanna thought, maybe she just came down the stairs and saw him holding the phone, and knew it wasn’t true, that she had heard every word. And how many times? Dozens? Hundreds?

“Joanna?” Kit said. “Was there something else you wanted to know about the Titanic?”

“Yes,” Joanna said, trying to sound as calm as Kit. “Do you know if there were fires on board?”

“You mean accidental fires or regular fires?” Kit said.

“Regular fires?”

“I mean, like the fires in the boilers and the fireplaces.”

“There were fireplaces on the Titanic?” Joanna said and then remembered the woman with the piled-up hair saying, “We’ll ask the steward to light a fire.”

“Yeah,” Kit said, “in the smoking room, I think, and some of the first-class cabins.” Started because the passengers had gotten cold out on deck, Joanna thought, and then left burning when they went up to the Boat Deck, and, when the deck began to list, the wood and ashes sliding out onto the carpet, catching the curtains, filling the cabin with smoke.

“Is that the kind of fire you meant?” Kit was asking.

“I don’t know what I mean,” Joanna said. “I’m looking for any kind of fire that might have produced a lot of smoke. Or steam.”

“I remember Uncle Pat talking about a fire in one of the boiler rooms,” Kit said, “in the coal bin. It had been smoldering since they left port, but I don’t think there was any smoke. Or steam, you said?”

“Yes.”

“I was just thinking of that scene in the movie where there’s that deafening blast, and steam swirls around everybody on the Boat Deck. I’ll see what I can find. Did you call before and get a busy signal?”

“Yes,” Joanna admitted.

“I was afraid of that. Uncle Pat’s started taking the phone off the hook. I keep checking it, but—”

“ ‘ “Oh, father, I hear the sound of guns,” ’ ” she heard Mr. Briarley say.

“I’ll call you as soon as I find anything,” Kit said.

“I need the information as soon as—”

“ ‘ “Oh, say, what may it be?” ’ ” Mr. Briarley said.

“—as soon as possible,” Joanna finished, and Kit said okay, but Joanna wasn’t sure she’d really heard her because of Mr. Briarley, declaiming in the background, “ ‘ “Some ship in distress that cannot live.” ’ They speak to us!”

Joanna hung up the phone and then stared at it, thinking about the possibility of the fog being steam. But none of the NDEers had said anything about the fog swirling, or moving at all, and Maisie had said she’d been inside, not out on the Boat Deck.

Or had she? She called up the first interview she’d had with Maisie. “I was inside this place, I think it was a tunnel, only I couldn’t see ’cause it was dark and all foggy,” she’d said, and she’d talked about walls that went up on either side of her. “They were really tall. The top was so high I couldn’t see it.”

No room had high ceilings on a ship, even a luxurious one like the Titanic. She must have been out on the Boat Deck, and the noise she’d heard was the funnels letting off steam. She had said a roar. But there was nothing on the Boat Deck that was narrow with high walls on either side. On the other hand, smoke had a distinctive smell. Steam didn’t.

Joanna typed in “steam” and “mist” and “swirling” and ran global searches on each of them, wishing Kit would call back. At eleven, she did. “Hi,” she said excitedly, “I’ve got it.”

Joanna gripped the phone. “There was a fire on the Titanic?”

“A fire?” Kit said blankly. “Oh, no, I haven’t found anything yet. The only reference in any of the indexes was to the fires in the boilers and the stokers working to put them out before the water reached them and caused an explosion. Nothing about smoke either, but I’m still looking. That isn’t why I called. I found the book!”

Now it was Joanna’s turn to answer blankly. “The book?”

“Mirrors and Mazes! Finally. I’ve been turning the house upside down. The kitchen looks as bad as it did when Uncle Pat dismantled it. You’ll never guess where it was. In the refrigerator. The crisper drawer, so it’s sort of damp and chilly, but at least I’ve got it, and I put it in a safe place, so Uncle Pat can’t hide it again. Can you come over? I can fix you lunch.”

“No, I’m busy. I…” I already know what the Titanic is. I don’t need the book anymore. I need proof.

“I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get over. Things are crazy around here.”

“I can bring it to the hospital,” Kit said. “Eldercare is supposed to come over this evening, but I could call and see if they can change to this afternoon.”

“No,” Joanna said, and tried to put more enthusiasm in her voice. “I’ll come get it.”

“Great,” Kit said. “I can’t wait for you to see if the connection’s in it. I’ll bake cookies.”

“Oh, don’t go to any trouble. I don’t know exactly when—”

“It’s no trouble. I’ve already got all the ingredients out anyway,” Kit said. “And the heat from the oven will help dry out the book. I’ll see you this afternoon,” she said, and hung up before Joanna could remind her to call her if she found any fires.

She won’t, Joanna thought, because there weren’t any. If there had been a fire, it would definitely have been in the movie with Hollywood’s penchant for special effects, and the one she had envisioned, the burning logs sliding out of the fireplace as the ship tilted, catching the carpet on fire, would have been put out almost immediately by the encroaching water. It has to have been steam, she thought, but Mrs. Katzenbaum had said smoke, and so had Coma Carl.

The phone rang. It’s Kit calling back, Joanna thought. She reached for it and then pulled her hand back and let the answering machine click on. And a good thing, too. It was Mr. Mandrake.

“I cannot understand why I haven’t heard from you. I have paged you and been by your office numerous times,” he said, his voice vibrating with irritation. “I have evidence…”

Evidence, Joanna thought contemptuously. What? Something else Mrs. Davenport’s remembered to order for you? Leading questions? Data twisted to fit your theory, with the facts that don’t fit left out?

And what do you call what you have? How is your evidence any different from Mr. Mandrake’s? So you’ve got dozens of references to the Titanic. It doesn’t prove anything except that you can find proof of anything you want if you look hard enough. Because it’s still all subjective, no matter what percent of the accounts are consistent. There isn’t any outside verification. I need a red tennis shoe, she thought, or a map of the South Pacific.

And how am I supposed to get that? Mr. Wojakowski’s a compulsive liar, Mr. Briarley can’t remember, Amelia Tanaka refuses to talk, Coma Carl—“Coma Carl,” she said out loud. She wasn’t the only one who had heard him. Guadalupe had, too, and his wife. If there was something in his ramblings that pointed clearly to the Titanic—

She called up his file again. He had said, “smoke” and “ohhh… grand,” but neither were definitive. She scrolled down the screen. “Water… have to…” Guadalupe had written, “…gone…” The boats are gone?

Someone knocked on the door. Mr. Mandrake, Joanna thought, and froze. “Joanna?” Richard called. “Are you in there?”

“Just a minute,” she said. She cleared the screen, laid Mr. Wojakowski’s file on top of the transcripts, and opened the door.

“Hi,” Richard said, “I just wanted to tell you I’m going to be out of the lab for a while. I’ll be up in Dr. Jamison’s office on eighth if you need me for anything. I’m hoping she’ll be able to look at Mrs. Troudtheim’s scans and see something I can’t.”

“Cortisol wasn’t present in Mrs. Troudtheim’s other NDEs?” Joanna said, leaning against the door so he wouldn’t come in.

“No, it was there in spades.” He raked his hand through his hair. “Unfortunately, it and DABA were also present in one of Amelia Tanaka’s, two of yours, and three of Mr. Sage’s, including his record-breaking twenty-eight-minute one.”

“So you’re not going to send Mrs. Troudtheim under?” Joanna asked hopefully.

“No, I’ve still got a couple of other ideas. One’s the theta-asparcine.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t an inhibitor?”

“It’s not, but it might abort the NDE some other way. And you kicked out when I lowered the dosage. That may mean Mrs. Troudtheim’s NDE threshold is higher than normal, so I’m going to raise the dosage and see if that keeps her in. That’s why I came down. I wanted to make sure two o’clock would work for you. I’m meeting with Dr. Jamison at one, but I’ll be back in plenty of time, and I told Tish to be here at one-thirty in case Mrs. Troudtheim shows up early. So,” he said, slapping the doorjamb with the flat of his hand. “See you at two o’clock.”

“Yes,” she said, “I should be finished by then,” and some of the regret in her voice must have come through because he leaned back in and said, “You know what? We’ve both been working way too hard. What do you say, when this is all over, we go out to dinner. Not Taco Pierre’s. A real restaurant.”

When this is all over. “I’d like that,” Joanna said.

“So would I,” he said, and smiled at her. “I’ve missed you these last few days.”

“Me, too,” Joanna said.

“Oh, and I’d keep your door shut if I were you. Mandrake was just up in the lab looking for you. I told him you were in the cafeteria.”

“Thank you,” Joanna said.

“ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ ” he intoned, grinning, and disappeared into the elevator.

Joanna shut and locked the door and went back to searching through Guadalupe’s reports. “…have to… can’t… patches…” Patches?

I need to look at Guadalupe’s actual notes, Joanna thought, and got out the sheaf of prescription-pad forms and scraps of paper that Guadalupe had jotted them down on. The first one, written on the back of a patient menu form, said, “Vietcong POW again. No intelligible words. Pulled IV out.” “…smoke…” The next one, on a sheet from a prescription pad, said, “…can’t… two…” Or “too,” as in “too far for her to come”? Or was he trying to say “have to…” again? Have to what?

Most of them were short. “Boating on the lake” or “mumbled a lot. Nothing intelligible,” or the ominous “very quiet all day.” Here was a long one, on the back of a pharmaceutical-company ad. “Nothing I could make out on my shift yesterday. Sub on the three-to-eleven and Paula forgot to tell her, so no record of that shift. I asked her today if he said anything, and she said no, just humming. She couldn’t make out the tune either, but said it sounded like a hymn.”

A hymn. Coma Carl droning, long, long, short, short, long. She flipped back to the computer and typed in “humming,” looking for her own notes. “Long, long, short, short,” she had written. “Descending scale.”

“Hmmm, hmmm, hm, hm, hm, hmm,” she hummed, trying it out. “Half note, half note, quarter note…”

“Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

On tape. Outside confirmation. She leaped up and grabbed the box of tapes. It was on the day she’d met Richard, when was that? January the ninth. She clattered through the pile of tapes, looking for the date. Here it was. She jammed it in the recorder and hit “play.”

“It was dark…” Mrs. Davenport droned. She fast-forwarded. “And then I saw myself at my eighth birthday party. I was playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey, and…” Fast-forward. “…my wedding…” Fast-forward. “And the angel handed me a telegram.”

She fast-forwarded again, too far, there was only silence. She rewound, and here it was. Coma Carl humming, agonizingly slowly. She played it through, making notations on a memo pad, lines for the length of the note, arrows for pitch—long, long, the pitch dropping with each note, short, long—wishing she could read music. Did the tune of “Nearer, My God, to Thee” go up or down?

She hummed the opening bars, trying to stretch the notes out to match Coma Carl’s glacial humming, but it was no good. The tune could have been anything. I need to speed it up, she thought. She rewound to the beginning and then fast-forwarded, but it was just a whir, and there was no way on her little recorder to control the speed.

I need a fancy stereo, she thought, and tried to think who might have one. Kit? If she had one, Joanna could go listen to the tape and pick up the book at the same time, but she couldn’t remember any stereo equipment in Mr. Briarley’s library, not even a record player. Kit might have one up in her room, though. She called Kit, but the line was busy.

All right, who here in the hospital? Maisie’s tape player was a pink plastic affair, probably worse than her minirecorder. Vielle? No, all they had in the lounge in the ER was an eight-track player, “because nobody’s been in here long enough to listen to any music since 1974,” Vielle had complained one hectic night.

She squinted at the minirecorder, trying to remember where she’d seen a tape recorder. In one of the offices, where they listened to music while they were working. Billing or Personnel. Records, she decided. She snapped the tape out of the minirecorder, jammed it in her pocket, and ran down to Records.

And her memory had been accurate. On the far wall, above the cubicles, was a bank of sophisticated-looking stereo equipment. But first she would have to get past the woman at the front desk, who looked solid and dedicated to following the rules. Almost before Joanna had gotten her name out, the woman had swiveled so she was facing a rack of printed papers and was holding her arm up in preparation for grabbing the appropriate form.

“I don’t think there’s a form for what I need… Zaneta,” Joanna said, reading the name off the sign on the woman’s desk. “I need a tape recorder that can play a tape at different speeds,” but Zaneta had already swiveled back to face her.

“This is Records,” Zaneta said. “You want Equipment next door.”

“No, I don’t want to requisition a tape recorder. I just want to borrow yours for a couple of minutes to listen to a tape,” she said, pulling the tape out of her pocket to illustrate. “My recorder doesn’t have a fast-forward that lets me control the speed, and I need—”

“Do you work here?” Zaneta said.

“Yes, my name’s Joanna Lander,” she said. “I work with Dr. Wright up in research,” and Zaneta swiveled to face her computer terminal. “All I want—”

“Lander?” Zaneta asked, typing. “L-a-n-d-e-r?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “I need to transcribe this tape, but a section of it needs to be listened to at a faster speed, and I wondered if I could—”

Joanna’s beeper went off. No, she thought, and reached in her pocket to turn it off, but Zaneta was already pushing the phone toward her. “You’re being paged,” she said severely.

Joanna gave up. Please don’t let it be Mr. Mandrake, she prayed, and called the operator.

“Call the fourth floor nurses’ station, stat,” the operator said. “Extension 428.”

Fourth floor. Coma Carl, she thought, and realized she had known this call was coming.

Zaneta was pushing a memo pad and pencil toward her. Joanna ignored it and punched in the extension. Guadalupe answered. “What is it, Guadalupe?” Joanna said. “Is it Coma Carl?”

“Yes, I’ve been trying to reach you. You haven’t seen Mrs. Aspinall, have you? We can’t find her anywhere,” and her stunned and shaken voice told Joanna all she needed to know.

“When did he die?” she said, thinking of him, all alone out there in a lifeboat, humming.

“Die?” Guadalupe said in that same stunned voice. “He didn’t. He’s awake.”

38

Guadalupe was at the nurses’ station, talking on the phone, when Joanna arrived. “Is he really awake?” Joanna asked, leaning over the counter.

Guadalupe put a hand up, signaling her to wait. “Yes. I’m trying to reach Dr. Cherikov,” she said into the receiver. “Well, can I speak to his nurse? It’s important.” She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece. “Yes, he’s really awake,” she said to Joanna, “and wouldn’t you know it, we can’t find his doctor. Or his wife. You didn’t happen to see Mrs. Aspinall on your way up here, did you?”

“No,” Joanna said. “Have you tried the cafeteria?”

“I’ve got an aide checking,” Guadalupe said. “Mrs. Aspinall’s been here day and night for two weeks, and she always tells us when she’s leaving. Except today. How long does it take to call his nurse to the phone?” she said impatiently.

“Has Carl said anything?” Joanna asked.

“He asked to see his wife,” Guadalupe said. “And he said he was hungry, but we can’t give him anything to eat because we don’t have any orders, and we can’t find his doctor. He isn’t answering his page.”

“Has he said anything about the coma?”

She shook her head. “Most coma patients—yes,” she said into the phone. “This is Guadalupe Santos over at Mercy General. I need to talk to Dr. Cherikov. It’s urgent. It’s about his patient Carl Aspinall.” There was a pause. “No,” Guadalupe said, and her tone made Joanna think the nurse had asked if he’d died, like she had. “He’s conscious.”

She cupped her hand over the receiver again and said to Joanna, “Paula went in to check his vitals about half an hour ago. She opened the curtains, and he said, ‘It isn’t dark.’ Scared her half to death—I’ve been trying his pager,” she said into the phone. “Do you know where he went?”

She turned back to Joanna. “Most patients have very fuzzy memories of the time they spent in a semicomatose state, if that.”

And those memories will only get fuzzier with every moment that passes, Joanna thought, glancing in the direction of his room. I need to get in there now. “Can he have visitors?” she asked.

Guadalupe frowned. “I don’t know who’s in with—yes,” she said into the phone. “Harvest?” She grabbed a pen and jotted something down on a prescription pad. “Please have him call me as soon as he gets back.”

She hung up. “Dr. Cherikov is at lunch,” she said disgustedly, reaching for a phone book. “At the Harvest or Sfuzzi’s. He has them both written down on his calendar.” She began searching through the phone book. “Carl’s wife probably went to lunch, too. Harvest, Harvest.”

Joanna glanced toward his room again. She had to get in there and talk to him before his wife and Dr. Cherikov descended, but if they had somebody in there with him, and surely they did, a patient who’d just regained consciousness would hardly be left alone—

The elevator dinged, and Guadalupe and Joanna both looked down at where a nurse’s aide was emerging from the open doors. “Did you find her?” Guadalupe asked.

The aide walked toward them, shaking her head. “She wasn’t in the cafeteria. What about paging her?”

Guadalupe shook her head. “We don’t want to scare her half to death. We just want to get her up here.” She picked up the phone.

“What about the chapel?” Joanna asked.

“Corinne’s checking it,” Guadalupe said. She punched in a phone number, looking back and forth from it to the phone book. “Did you check the gift shop?” she asked the aide.

The aide nodded. “And the vending machines.”

“Did you check—This is Nurse Santos at Mercy General. I’m trying to locate Dr. Anton Cherikov. He’s having lunch there.” Pause. “No, I can’t page him.” Pause. “Well, would you please look? It’s an emergency.” She cupped her hand over the receiver again. “Did you check the solarium?” she said to the aide.

Neither of them was paying any attention to Joanna. She stepped away from the nurses’ station and, when Guadalupe glanced up, pointed to her watch and waved slightly. “I’ve checked everywhere,” the aide said. “I’ll bet she went home.”

“We’ve already called,” Guadalupe said. “She’s not there. I left a message.”

“Won’t that scare her, too?” the aide asked.

Joanna walked rapidly down the hall, on past Carl’s room, till she was out of sight of the nurses’ station. She stopped, waited. “You’re sure he’s not there?” Guadalupe said, and there was the sound of a phone being hung up, and a brief silence. “How do you spell Sfuzzi’s?”

“Sfuzzi’s? I don’t know. What is it?”

“A restaurant.”

More silence. Joanna came quietly back up the hall till she could see the nurses’ station. Guadalupe and the aide were both bent over the counter, looking at the open phone book. Joanna ducked quickly, silently across the hall to Carl’s room.

All I need is a minute, she thought, looking in the door. There wasn’t a nurse in the room. She slipped in. All I need is to ask him whether he was on the Titanic, she thought, pulling the door nearly shut. Before he forgets, before—

“Hello,” a voice said from the bed. She turned and looked at the gray-haired man sitting up in the bed, wearing blue pajamas. “Who are you?” he asked.

For a long, heart-pounding minute, she thought, I’ve sneaked in the wrong room, and how am I going to explain this to Guadalupe? How am I going to explain this to Richard?

“Did they find my wife?” the man asked, and she saw, like one of those trick pictures shifting suddenly into focus, that it was Coma Carl.

It was not that he looked like a different person. It was that he looked like a person where before he had been an empty shell. His concave chest, his thin arms looked filled out, as if he had gained weight, even though that was impossible, and his face, covered with the same gray stubble, looked occupied, like a house where the owners have suddenly come home. His gray-brown hair, which the aides had kept neatly combed back off his forehead, was parted on the side and fell almost boyishly over his forehead, and his eyes, which she had always thought were gray through the half-open slits, were dark brown.

She was gaping at him like an idiot. “I…” she said, trying to remember what he had asked her.

“Are you one of my doctors?” he asked, looking at her lab coat.

“No,” she said. “I’m Joanna Lander. Do you remember me, Mr. Aspinall?”

He shook his head. “I don’t remember very much,” he said. His voice was different, too, still hoarse, but much stronger, deeper than his murmurings. “I was in a coma, you know.”

“I know,” she said, nodding. “That’s what I’d like to talk to you about. What you remember. I’d just like to ask you a few questions, if that’s all right.”

It isn’t all right, she told herself. You need a waiver. The one his wife signed was only good when he was unconscious. You need to have him sign a release form. This is completely against protocol. But there wasn’t time to write one out, to explain it to him. The doctor or his wife could arrive any minute.

Joanna pulled a chair over to the bed, glancing anxiously at the door as it banged against the IV pole, and sat down. “Can you tell me what you remember, Mr. Aspinall?”

“I remember coming to the hospital,” he said. “Alicia drove me.”

Joanna reached carefully into her cardigan pocket for her minirecorder. It wasn’t there. I left it in my office, she thought, when I took the tape down to Records.

“I had a terrible headache,” he said. “I couldn’t see to drive.”

Joanna fished in her pocket for something to write with, but she didn’t even have one of those release forms she hadn’t had him sign. At least she had a pen. She glanced surreptitiously around the room, looking for something to write on, a menu, an envelope, anything. Guadalupe had taken the chart out with her, and there was nothing on the bedstand.

“She was going to take me to the doctor, but my headache kept getting worse—”

Joanna reached in the wastebasket and pulled out a discarded get-well card with a picture of a bluebird on the front. The bluebird had a letter in its mouth. “This get-well message is winging its way straight to you,” the card said on the inside. Joanna turned it over. There was nothing on the back.

“—so she brought me to the emergency room instead, and then…” Carl’s voice trailed away and he stared straight ahead of him. “It was dark.”

Dark, Joanna thought, and her hand shook as she wrote the word.

“Alicia hates driving at night,” he said, “but she had to. It was so cold.” He reached back and touched his neck, tenderly, as if it still hurt. “I remember the doctor saying I had spinal meningitis, and then I remember them putting me in a wheelchair, and then I remember the nurse opening the curtains, and I was surprised it wasn’t dark.” He smiled across at Joanna. “And that’s pretty much it.”

It was Greg Menotti all over again. “Do you remember anything between the wheelchair and the curtains?” Joanna asked.

“No,” he said. “Not between.”

“What about dreams?” Joanna asked. “Coma patients sometimes dream.”

“Dreams,” he said thoughtfully, “no,” and there was no defensiveness in his voice, no avoiding of her eyes. He said it quite matter-of-factly.

And that was that. He didn’t remember. And she should thank him, tell him to get some rest, get out of here before she was caught redhanded and waiverless by Guadalupe. But she didn’t get up. “What about sounds?”

He shook his head.

“Or voices, Carl?” she said, reverting to his first name without thinking. “Do you remember hearing any voices?”

He had started to shake his head again, but he stopped and stared at her. “I remember your voice,” he said. “You said you were sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” she had said, apologizing for her beeper going off, for having to leave.

“There were voices calling my name,” he said, “saying I was in a coma, saying my fever was up.”

That was us, Joanna thought, whispering about his condition, calling him Coma Carl. Guadalupe was right, he could hear us, and felt ashamed of herself.

“Were you here?” he said, looking slowly around the hospital room.

“Yes,” she said. “I used to come and sit with you.”

“I could hear your voice,” he said, as if there were something about that that he couldn’t understand. “So it must have been a dream. I was really here, the whole time.” He looked up at her. “It didn’t feel like a dream.”

“What didn’t?”

He didn’t answer. “Could you hear me?” he asked.

“Sometimes,” she said carefully. “Sometimes you hummed, and once you said, ‘Oh, grand.’ ”

He nodded. “If you heard me, it must have just been a dream.”

It took all her willpower not to blurt out, “Was ‘grand’ the Grand Staircase? What were you humming?” Not to say, “You were on the Titanic, weren’t you? Weren’t you?”

“If you heard me, I couldn’t really have been there,” he said eagerly.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because it was too far—” He stopped and looked at the door.

Too far for her to come. She said urgently, “Too far for what?” and the door opened.

“Hi,” a lab technician said, coming in with a metal basket of tubes and needles. “No, don’t get up,” he said to Joanna, who’d jerked guiltily to her feet. “I can do it from this side.” He set the basket on the table over the bed. “Don’t let me interrupt you two,” he said, putting on gloves. “I just need to take some blood.” He tied a strip of rubber around Carl’s arm.

Joanna knew she should say, “Oh, that’s okay,” and chat with him while he drew the blood, but she was afraid if she did, Carl would lose the tenuous thread of memory.

“Too far for what?” she asked, but Carl wasn’t listening. He was looking fearfully at the needle the technician had pulled out.

“This will just be a little sting,” the technician said reassuringly, but Carl’s face had already lost its frightened look.

“It’s a needle,” he said, in the same wondering tone as when he’d asked her if she’d been here in the room, and extended his arm so the technician could insert the needle, attach it to the glass tube. Carl’s dark blood flowed into the tube.

The technician deftly filled the tube, pulled the needle out, pressed cotton to it. “There,” he said, putting a strip of tape over it. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“No.” Carl turned to look at the IV in his other arm.

“Okay, you’re all set. See you later,” the technician said, the glass basket clanking as he went out.

He hadn’t shut the door all the way. Joanna got up and started over to close it. “It was just the IV,” Carl said, looking curiously at the clear narrow tubing dangling from the IV bag. “I thought it was a rattler.”

Joanna stopped. “Rattler?”

“In the canyon,” Carl said, and Joanna sat down again, greeting card and pen in hand.

“I was hiding from them,” Carl said. “I knew they were out there, waiting to ambush me. I’d caught a glimpse of one of them at the end of the canyon.” He squinted as he said it, bringing his hand up as if to shade his eyes. “I tried climbing up the rocks, but they were crawling with rattlers. They were all around,” his voice rose in fear, “rattling. I wonder what that was,” he said in a totally different tone of voice. “The rattling.” He looked around the hospital room. “The heater, maybe? When you were in here, did it make a rattling sound?”

“You were in a canyon?” she said, trying to take in what he was telling her.

“In Arizona,” he said. “In a long, narrow canyon.”

Joanna listened, still trying to take it in, taking notes almost automatically. In Arizona. In a canyon.

“It had had a stream in it,” Carl said, “but it was all dried up. Because of the fever. It was dark, because the walls were so high and steep, and I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were out there, waiting.”

The rattlers? “Who was up there waiting?”

“They were,” he said fearfully. “A whole band of them, arrows and knives and tomahawks! I tried to outride them, but they shot me in the arm,” he said, grabbing at his arm as if he were trying to pull an arrow out. “They—” His shoulders jerked, and his face contorted. The arm connected to the IV came up, as if fending off an attack. “They killed Cody. I found his body in the desert. They’d scalped him. His head was all red,” Carl said. “Like the canyon. Like the mesas.” His fists clenched and unclenched compulsively. “All red.”

“Who did that?” Joanna asked. “Who killed Cody?” and he looked at her as if the answer were obvious.

“The Apaches.”

Apaches. Not patches. Apaches. He hadn’t been on the Titanic. He’d been in Arizona. She’d been wrong about the Titanic being universal. But he had said, “Oh, grand.” He had made rowing motions with his hands. And just now he had said, “It was too far—”

“You were in Arizona,” she began, intending to ask, “Do you remember being anywhere else?”

“No!” he shouted, shaking his head vehemently. “It wasn’t Arizona. I thought it was, because of the red sandstone. But it wasn’t.”

“Where was it?” Joanna asked.

“Someplace else. I was really here, though, the whole time,” he said as if to reassure himself. “It was just a dream.”

“Did you have other dreams?” she asked. “Were you other places besides Arizona?”

“There wasn’t any other place,” he said simply.

“You said, ‘Oh, grand.’ ”

He nodded. “I could see telegraph poles off in the distance. I thought they must be next to a railroad line. I thought if I could reach it before the train came through—” he said, as if that were an explanation.

“I don’t understand.”

“I thought I could catch the Rio Grande. But there weren’t any tracks. Just the telegraph wires. But I could still send a message. I could climb one of the poles and send a message.”

She was only half-listening. Rio Grande. Not Grand Staircase. Rio Grande.

“…and it was too far to ride on horseback,” Carl was saying, staring straight ahead, “but I had to get it through.” As he spoke, he jogged gently up and down, his arms bent as if he were holding on to reins.

This is what Guadalupe thought was rowing, Joanna thought, even though it didn’t look like rowing. It looked like what it was, Carl riding a horse. He wasn’t humming, “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” she thought. It was probably “Home on the Range.”

And Mrs. Woollam had been in a garden. Mrs. Davenport had seen an angel. But she had wanted it to be a woman in a nightdress. She had wanted it to be the Verandah Café and the Grand Staircase. To fit her theory. So she had twisted the evidence to fit, ignored the discrepancies, led the witnesses, and believed what she wanted to. Just like Mr. Mandrake.

She had been so set on her idea she’d refused to accept the truth—that Carl had gotten his desert, his Apaches, from the Westerns his wife read to him, incorporating them into the red expanse of his coma the way she’d incorporated Mr. Briarley’s Titanic stories into hers. Because they happened to be there in long-term memory.

And the imagery meant nothing. It wasn’t universal. It was as random, as pointless, as Mr. Bendix’s seeing Elvis. And the feeling of something significant, something important, came from an overstimulated temporal lobe. And meanwhile, she had bullied Amelia Tanaka, she had harassed a man just out of a coma and possibly endangered his health, breaking rules right and left. Acting like a nutcase.

“…before it got dark,” Carl was saying, “but when I got closer, I saw the Apaches were already there.”

Joanna put the bluebird greeting card and the pen in her pocket and stood up. “I should go,” she said. Before Guadalupe catches me in here. Before the review board finds out you didn’t sign a waiver. Before anyone finds out how I’ve acted. She patted the covers. “You need to get some sleep.”

“Are you leaving?” he said, and his hand lunged for her wrist like a striking snake. “Don’t leave.” He gripped it tightly. “I’m afraid I’ll go back there, and it’s getting dark back there. It’s getting redder.”

“It’s all right, Carl,” Joanna said soothingly. “It was just a dream.”

“No. It was a real place. Arizona. I knew it was, because of the mesas. But it wasn’t. And it was. I can’t explain it.”

“You knew Arizona was a symbol for something else.”

“Yes,” he said, and she thought, It does mean something. The NDE isn’t just random synapses firing, random associations. “What was it a symbol for, Carl?” she asked, and waited, breath held, for his answer.

“They scalped Cody. Took the top of his skull right off, and I could see his brain. It was all red,” he said. “I had to get out, before it got dark. I had to get the mail through.”

The mail. The letters floating in the ankle-deep water of the mail room, the names on their envelopes blurred and unreadable, and the mail clerk putting them onto higher and higher racks, dragging them up the carpeted stairs.

“The mail?” Joanna asked, her chest tight.

“For the Pony Express,” he said. “Cody was the regular rider, but they killed him, and I didn’t have any way to get the mail through. It was too far to ride on a horse, and the Apaches had cut the wires.”

And the Carpathia was too far away, Joanna thought. The Californian wasn’t answering. She thought of Mr. Briarley writing a postcard to Kit, sending up rockets, trying to send out messages. And none of them getting through.

“The mesa was a long way,” Carl was saying, “and I was afraid there wouldn’t be anything up there to make a fire with.”

“A fire?” Joanna said, thinking of Maisie.

“For the smoke signal. I got the idea from the Apaches. You hold the blanket down over the fire and then yank it back, and the smoke goes up.” He pulled back on an imaginary blanket, his hands holding its imaginary sides, a sharp backward motion with both hands. Like rowing. Like rowing.

“I didn’t know any Apache,” he said. “All I knew was Morse code.”

The sailor working the Morse lamp, and Jack Phillips, bent tirelessly over the wireless key, tapping out CQD, SOS—“SOS,” she said. “You sent an SOS.”

“And as soon as I did, the nurse was opening the curtains and I was back here.”

“You were back here,” Joanna said, remembering Mr. Edwards saying, “The light started to flash, and I knew I had to go back, and all of a sudden I was in the operating room.” Remembering Mrs. Woollam saying, “I was in the tunnel, and then all of a sudden I was back on the floor by the phone.” Remembering Richard saying, “Something just kicks them out.”

Out in the hall, a voice said excitedly, “We found her!”

Joanna glanced at the door, the half-open door she had forgotten to shut. “Finally,” Guadalupe’s voice said, and then, “Where were you? We’ve been looking all over for you.”

Looking all over. The steward, heading up the aft staircase to the Promenade Deck, checking the smoking room, the gymnasium, looking for Mr. Briarley. And Mr. Briarley, running down to G Deck, along Scotland Road, into the mail room, looking for the key. The key.

“Oh, my God!” Joanna breathed. “I know what it is!” She put her hand up to her mouth. “I remember what Mr. Briarley said!”

39

“What?” Carl said, alarmed. “What do you mean, you know what it is?” but Joanna didn’t hear him.

I have to tell Richard, she thought. I have to tell him I’ve figured it out.

She stood up. “You’re not leaving, are you?” Carl said, reaching for her wrist again. “You know what what is? What Arizona is?”

“He’s sitting up talking,” Guadalupe’s voice said out in the hall.

They’re coming this way, Joanna thought. She stood up and jammed the scribbled-on greeting card in her pocket. “Your wife’s here,” she said, and hurried toward the door before Carl could protest.

And how was she going to explain her being here? she wondered, peering out the door. Mrs. Aspinall was standing next to the nurses’ station, Guadalupe and the aide bent comfortingly over her. “You shouldn’t cry now,” the aide was saying, “it’s all over.”

“I don’t want him to see me like this,” Mrs. Aspinall said tearfully, dabbing at her eyes.

“I’ll get you a Kleenex,” Guadalupe said, disappearing around the corner of the nurses’ station.

Joanna didn’t hesitate. She bolted out the door, across the hall, and into the waiting room, and just in time. Guadalupe reappeared with the Kleenex, Mrs. Aspinall blew her nose, and all three of them started toward Carl’s room.

There was no one in the waiting room. Joanna leaned against the door, waiting for them to go into the room. It’s an SOS, Joanna thought, belated understanding pouring in like seawater through the gash in the Titanic’s side. That’s what the NDE is. It’s the dying brain sending out a call for help, a distress signal, tapping out Morse-code messages to the nervous system: “Come at once. We have struck a berg.”

Transmitting signals to the brain’s neurotransmitters, trying to find one that could kick lungs that were no longer breathing into action, trying to find one that could jump-start a heart that was no longer beating. Trying to find the right one.

And sometimes it succeeded, reviving patients who were clinically dead, bringing them back abruptly, miraculously. Like Mr. O’Reirdon. Like Mrs. Woollam. Because the message got through.

“Carl, oh, Carl!” Mrs. Aspinall said tearfully. “You’re all right!”

Joanna looked down the hall. Mrs. Aspinall and Guadalupe had gone into the room, and the aide was headed back toward the elevators, carrying a piece of equipment.

Joanna waited till she’d gone into the elevator, and then ran down to the nurses’ station. She grabbed up the phone receiver from behind the counter, leaning over it to punch in the lab’s number. If Guadalupe caught her out here, she’d just think she’d gone and then come back.

If Carl hasn’t blabbed, she thought, listening to the phone ring. “Answer, Richard,” she murmured. “Answer.”

Answer. That was what the NDE was doing, too, punching in numbers and listening to the phone ring, trying to get through, hoping someone would answer on the other end. And if Richard knows it’s an SOS, she thought, he’ll be able to figure out what the other end is.

And no wonder her mind, trying to make sense of it, had fastened on to the Titanic. It was the perfect metaphor. The SOS sent five minutes after the Californian’s wireless operator had gone to bed, the Morse lamp, the rockets, the screams for help from the water. And above all, Phillips sitting in the wireless room, faithfully tapping out, “SOS, CQD,” tapping out, “We are flooded up to the boilers,” sending out calls for help to the very end.

Richard wasn’t answering. He’s sitting at the console, she thought, staring at Mrs. Troudtheim’s scan, trying to figure out the problem. “It’s not a problem, Richard,” she murmured. “It’s the answer.” And it made evolutionary sense, just like he had predicted it would. The NDE wasn’t cushioning the body from trauma, wasn’t setting a death program in motion. It was trying to stop it.

The answering machine clicked on. “This is Dr. Wright’s office. If you wish to leave—” his voice said, but Joanna had already jammed the phone down and was pelting up the stairs to the lab.

Richard wasn’t there. The door was locked, so he intended to be gone for longer than a few minutes. She unlocked it and went in, and then stood there, staring around the deserted lab, trying to think where he might have gone. Down to the cafeteria for lunch? she thought, and glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to one. The cafeteria might actually be open this time of day.

He said he had an appointment, she thought, and tried to remember his words when he was in her office. He’d said, “I’m going to be out of the lab for a while.” Where?

Dr. Jamison, she thought, what Richard had said clicking in suddenly. She walked rapidly over to the phone and called the switchboard. “Get me Dr. Jamison’s office,” and listened to another droning ring.

Doesn’t anybody answer their phones? Joanna thought. No, and the brain kept calling and calling, trying first one number and then, when there was no answer, another. Dialing and redialing, punching in code after code, trying to connect.

She depressed the receiver button and called the switchboard again. “Where’s Dr. Jamison’s office? What floor?”

“I’ll have to look that up,” the operator said, and, after a maddening minute, “841.”

“Thanks,” Joanna said and started to hang up, then thought better of it. “I want you to page her for me,” she said.

“Do you want her to call the lab?”

“No. My pager. And I want you to page Dr. Wright, too,” she said, reaching in her pocket to switch her pager on, thinking with a sudden sinking feeling, He won’t have his turned on either.

She hung up. Room 841 was in the west wing. The shortest way would be to go down to fifth and take the walkway across. No, they were painting the walkway on fifth. Down to the walkway on third. She scribbled a note: “Went to find you. Page me,” dropped it on his desk, and ran out, slamming the door behind her, not even taking the time to lock it, hitting the elevator button again and again, willing it to open, willing it not to stop on fifth, or fourth.

When the elevator opened on third, she ran down the hall, across the walkway, and through Medicine to the other walkway. Don’t let Mrs. Davenport be out taking a constitutional, she thought, glancing nervously at the door to her room. I don’t have time to listen to her latest confabulations.

Joanna pressed close to the other wall and hurried past the half-open door, past the sunroom, past the nurses’ station.

“Hey, Doc!” a voice called behind her. “Doc!” Mr. Wojakowski. She kept going, acting as if she hadn’t heard him. Down to the end of the hall. Around the corner. Into the walkway.

The walkway door opened behind her. “Doc!” Mr. Wojakowski called, panting. “Doc Lander! Wait up!” and there was nothing to do but turn around.

“I thought that was you, Doc,” he said, beaming. “I saw you back there and tried to catch you as you went past, but you were going like you’d just heard ’em sound ‘Battle Stations.’ Where you headin’ in such a hurry?”

“I’m looking for Dr. Wright. I have to find him right away,” she said.

“I haven’t seen him,” he said cheerfully. “I came to visit a friend of mine.” He nodded his head back in the direction of Medicine. “Had a stroke. Bad one, too. One whole side paralyzed, can’t talk. Happened while he was square dancing. Fell over right in the middle of a dosey-doh—”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Joanna said, glancing toward the end of the walkway. “I wish I could stay and talk. I—”

“You know who you remind me of? Ace Willey. He was a midshipman on the Yorktown, and he was always in a hurry. ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going in such a hurry?’ I used to say to him. ‘You’re on a damned ship.’ Well, one day, he’s hurrying across the hangar deck, and he steps into an open hatch and—”

“Mr. Wojakowski, I’d love to hear the rest of your story, but I’ve got to go. I have to find Dr. Wright.” She took off across the walkway, looking determinedly ahead.

“Wait up, Doc.” He caught up to her as she reached the door. “I had something I wanted to ask you.”

She pushed open the door. “Mr. Wojakowski, I—”

“Ed.”

“Ed,” she said, not stopping. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t have time to talk.”

“I just wanted to know if you’d ever got that schedule of yours figured out,” he said, panting to keep up with her.

“No,” Joanna said, rounding the corner and coming, finally, to the elevators. She pushed the button, praying, Please don’t take forever. “We’ll let you know as soon as we do.”

“Good. Just give me a call,” he said. “I can do it just about anytime.”

The elevator finally, blessedly opened and Joanna stepped in. For one awful moment she thought he intended to follow her, but he had just stepped up to the elevator’s edge. “So anyway, Ace wasn’t looking where he was going, and he stepped in an open hatch and fell two full decks. Broke both legs. Spent the next year and a half in a hospital on Oahu.”

Joanna pushed “eight” and the door started slowly, slowly to close. “ ‘So where did all your hurrying get you?’ I asked him,” he said as the door slid shut. “You shoulda seen him, all hung up in traction and two plaster casts that went all the way up to his—”

He was still talking when the elevator door snicked shut. And probably still talking, Joanna thought, stepping out of the elevator on eight and looking for the room signs.

“830-850,” one of them said, pointing to the hall on the left. She started down it, looking for 841. Two Hispanic men in white coveralls stood down by the end, leaning over a cluster of buckets, mixing paint.

All of the doors in the hall were open except 841. Joanna knocked on it, banging progressively harder when no one answered. She tried the door. It was locked. “Do you know where Dr. Jamison is?” she called down to the painters.

They both shook their heads and went back to pouring paint from one bucket to another. Joanna frowned at the door, frustrated. Where were they? Had they gone someplace else to talk? To the cafeteria, maybe?

She walked down to the painters, who both straightened up, as if expecting to be lectured by her. “Did either of you see Dr. Jamison leave?” Joanna asked. They shook their heads again, with a timidity that made her wonder if either of them spoke English.

“Señor—” she began, and a young man stuck his head out of the door next to Dr. Jamison’s office and said, “You’re looking for Dr. Jamison? She had to go see somebody in the ER.”

“Thank you,” Joanna said. “Do you know if Dr. Wright was with her?”

He shook his head. “I just got back from lunch and saw her note.”

“Her note?”

“On the door,” he said, leaning around his door to point at Dr. Jamison’s. “Oh,” he said when he saw it wasn’t there. “Somebody must have taken it down.”

Richard. He’d seen the note, pocketed it, gone down to the ER after her. Or the painters had taken it down. She considered asking them, then discarded the idea. “Can I use your phone for a second?” she asked the young man.

“Sure,” he said, opening the door farther to let her in.

She dialed the lab, listened to the ring till the answering machine clicked on, and hung up. “Thanks,” she said, and started back for the elevators, trying to think what the fastest way down to the ER was. Back down to third, take the walkway to main, and the elevators down to first, she thought, pushing the button for the elevator. I should have punched the button when I got off. It might be here by now.

She pushed the button again, thinking of Mr. Briarley pressing the ivory-and-gold button over and over and over, of him smacking A Night to Remember against his desk the same way, over and over and over—“Literature is a message!” he’d shouted, whacking the paperback for emphasis.

And that was the lecture she’d been trying to remember, the lecture that came welling up out of her long-term memory now when she no longer needed it, when she’d already figured out what the NDE was. “It’s a message!” he’d thundered, and she could see Ricky Inman cowering in his seat. She could see it all, the snow—not fog but snow—falling outside the windows and the words “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” on the board and Mr. Briarley in his gray tweed vest, hitting the red-and-white paperback against his desk, shouting, “What do you think these poems and novels and plays are? Boring, dusty artifacts? They’re not!” Smack. “They’re messages, just like the Titanic sent!” Smack. “Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Milton, William Shakespeare, they’re tapping out messages to you!”

He shook A Night to Remember at them. “They say the dead can’t speak, but they can! The people in this book died over sixty years ago, in the middle of the ocean, with no one around them for miles, but they still speak to you. They still send us messages—about love and courage and death! That’s what history is, and science, and art. That’s what literature is. It’s the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them!”

She had listened. And remembered. And over ten years later, while she was experiencing an NDE, Mr. Briarley had spoken to her out of the past, trying to tell her the NDE was a message.

The elevator opened, and she stepped in. On second thought, she’d better not risk third. Mr. Wojakowski might still be standing outside the door of the elevator, waiting to finish his story about Ace Willey. She’d better go down to second, cut through Radiology, and take the service elevator. She punched the button for “two.”

I’m doing what the brain does during an NDE, she thought, watching the floor numbers descend. Racing around, taking roundabout routes when there’s no direct way through, trying one thing, and then, when that doesn’t work, trying another. Asking Mr. Briarley for the answer, and then when he couldn’t help her, trying to find the textbook, looking through transcripts, asking Kit, asking Maisie.

Just like in Carl’s coma—heading first for the railroad tracks, then, when the wires were cut, trying to get to the mesas. Images of searching and not finding, of lines down and doors locked and passages blocked. Images of the dying brain.

And images of hurrying because there’s not any time. Brain death occurs in four to six minutes, and the mail room’s already flooded, the elevator’s not working, it’s already getting dark.

Images generated by endorphins and electrical impulses, frantically sending out SOSs, desperately reaching out for something to latch on to, like Coma Carl grabbing for her wrist. And the rest of it, the tunnels and relatives and Angels of Light, the gardens and slanting decks and sandstone deserts are nothing more than side effects, she thought, taking the hall that led to Surgery, passing a nurse she didn’t recognize, the desperate efforts of the conscious mind to keep up with what it’s experiencing, to make sense of sensations it can’t understand, searching through its long-term memories for its own connections, its own metaphors.

How could I not have recognized the metaphor? she thought. And ran straight into Mr. Mandrake.

“Dr. Lander. Just the person I wanted to see,” he said sternly. “I have been searching all over for you. You never answer your pages.”

“This really isn’t a good time, Mr. Mandrake,” she said, sidestepping to go around him. “I’m—” but he’d taken a firm grip on her arm.

“This will only take a few minutes,” he said smoothly, steering her over to the side of the hallway. “Now that you’ve become one of Dr. Wright’s subjects, I’m sure you’ve realized that his lab-produced hallucinations bear no resemblance to authentic NAEs. Or, if you, through some fluke, have experienced a true NAE, then you know that it is real, that what you are seeing is the afterlife that awaits—”

“I don’t have time to discuss this with you right now,” Joanna said and started to walk rapidly away.

He darted in front of her. “That’s exactly the issue. You don’t have time to discuss your findings with me. All of your time is taken up with Dr. Wright’s project, which can’t possibly lead to anything useful.”

That’s what you think, Joanna thought.

“Because the physical aspects are completely insignificant,” Mr. Mandrake was saying. “It is the supernatural aspects that matter. The NDE is a spiritual experience through which the Angel of Light is trying to tell us about the world that awaits us after death. It is a message—”

Joanna laughed, a spurt of delight that escaped in spite of her.

“I see nothing funny—” Mr. Mandrake said, drawing himself up.

“I’m sorry,” Joanna said, trying to suppress it. “It’s just that you’re right. It is a message.”

He stared at her, speechless. “Well, I’m glad you’ve finally realized—” he said after a moment.

“I should have listened to you in the first place, Mr. Mandrake,” she said giddily. “It was all right there in your book. Telegrams, rockets, lights—did you know that white is the international color for a distress signal?”

“Distress—?” he said, frowning uncertainly.

“It just never occurred to me that you, of all people… But you were right.” She grasped his sleeves. “The NDE is a message. It’s an SOS. It’s a call for help.”

She squeezed his arms. “And you’re wrong about Richard’s research not leading anywhere. It’s going to save Maisie. It’s going to work miracles!” she said, and left him standing there, gaping after her, not even attempting to follow.

But she didn’t take any chances. Instead of the service elevator, she ducked down the nearest stairway to second and out into the chilly parking lot, so she wouldn’t run into anyone else. It was snowing again, and she hugged her arms to her chest as she ran across the parking lot to the side door of Main.

And her luck was against her. Maisie’s nurse Barbara was scraping ice off her back window. “Joanna!” she called, “Maisie wants to see you!” and started over to her, scraper in hand.

“I know. I’ll be up this afternoon,” she called back, and hurried on.

And who will I run into in here? she wondered, pushing open the side door and starting down the stairs. Kit? Mrs. Davenport? Everyone I’ve ever known? But there was no one in the stairwell, and no yellow tape stretched across the landing. She took the last few stairs and the hall leading down to the ER at a run.

She pushed the side door open and stood there for a moment, looking for Richard. She couldn’t see him, or Dr. Jamison, but there was Vielle, standing with one of the interns outside one of the trauma rooms with a young man, no, a boy. He wasn’t as tall as Vielle, and the maroon jacket he was wearing was two sizes too big for him. An Avalanche jacket. Joanna could see the swooping blue-and-white logo on the back of it.

He didn’t look like an emergency. He stood there talking to Vielle and the intern with no sign of injury Joanna could see, at least from the back, and whatever his problem was, even if somebody’d shot him with a nail gun, it could wait a minute because she had to find out where Richard was. She plunged across the ER, calling, “Vielle!”

None of them looked up. A resident, still with his stethoscope on, turned and looked irritably at her over the chart he was reading, but the intern and Vielle continued to watch the boy, who was still talking earnestly to them. Joanna wondered what about. Vielle was frowning, and the intern’s face was stiff with disapproval. Good, Joanna thought, sidling past a supply cart. They won’t care if I interrupt them.

“Vielle, have you seen Dr. Wright?” she said, nearly up to them now, but they still didn’t look up.

“I have to get out of here,” the boy was saying with quiet intensity. “They’re going to close the lid.”

“No, they aren’t,” Vielle said soothingly. “I think you should—”

Joanna ran up behind the boy. “You say that because you’re the embalmer,” he said angrily. “I know what you’re trying to do.”

“Vielle, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m looking for—”

The boy whirled to face her, his arm coming up to strike her as he turned, and she knew, watching his panicked, desperate face, that he had moved suddenly. But it didn’t seem sudden.

It happened slowly, slowly, the intern rearing backward, his mouth opening in alarm, the boy’s maroon sleeve coming around and up, the satin catching the light from the fluorescents overhead, Vielle’s arm, still in its white bandage, reaching forward to grab at his sleeve. They all moved slowly, stickily, as if they were mired in molasses.

The Great Molasses Flood, Joanna thought. But time dilation was caused by the surge of adrenaline that accompanied trauma. And this wasn’t a trauma situation.

But time dilation was what it had to be, because she had plenty of time to see it all: the intern’s face, nearly as frantic as the teenager’s, turning to call the security guard, who was already lumbering to his feet. Vielle’s hand, not reaching for his maroon sleeve, reaching for his hand.

To hear it all: Vielle’s voice, coated with syrup, too, shouting, “Joanna! Don’t—!” The chart the resident was holding clattering to the floor. An alarm going off.

She had time to wonder if the time dilation might be some kind of side effect of the dithetamine. Time to think, I have to tell Richard. But if it wasn’t a trauma situation, why was the guard, still lumbering to his feet, reaching for his gun?

Time to think, The boy must have a knife. He was holding a knife on them when I came in. That’s why they didn’t look up when I called, that’s why they didn’t see me till it was too late. That’s what Vielle grabbed for.

Time to think, I told her the ER was an accident waiting to happen.

Time, finally, for the fact to penetrate: He has a knife, though she still didn’t feel any fear. That’s the endorphins, she thought, cushioning the mind against pain, against panic, so she could think clearly.

He has a knife, she thought calmly, and looked down at her blouse, down at his striking hand, but even though time was moving even more slowly than the security guard, she was too late. She couldn’t see the knife.

Because it had already gone in.

40

There was blood everywhere, which didn’t make any sense because where the knife had gone in, there was hardly any, just a little ooze of dark red. “We’ve got an emergency here!” the intern shouted, reaching out to keep Joanna from falling, but she had already fallen. She was lying on the tile floor, and Vielle was kneeling next to her, and there was blood all over her cardigan, all over the hand Vielle was holding.

Vielle grabbed for the knife, Joanna thought. He must have stabbed her hand. “Are you hurt?” she asked Vielle.

“No,” Vielle said, but Joanna thought she must be, because there was a kind of sob in her throat.

“We’ve got a stab wound here,” the intern said to the resident. Good, they’ll take care of it, Joanna thought, but the resident didn’t even glance at Vielle. He looked at the little line of oozing blood in Joanna’s chest and then turned and started putting on a pair of latex gloves. “Get her on the table,” he said, pulling the glove down over his palm, “and get me a cross match. What’s her BP?”

“Ninety over sixty,” someone said, she couldn’t see who. There were all kinds of people around her, hooking things up and drawing blood. How funny, Joanna thought. Why do they need more blood? There’s already more than enough.

“Get a cardiac surgeon down here,” the resident snapped, “and get me two more units of blood. Vielle, go get some direct pressure on that hand of yours,” and Joanna was afraid Vielle would leave and let go of her hand, but she continued to kneel next to Joanna.

“Don’t try to move, honey,” she said, looking worried. “Just lie still.” Joanna had always wondered whether Vielle’s worried expression frightened her patients, but it didn’t. It was comforting.

I wonder why, she thought, and tried to see what it was in her face that was reassuring, but she couldn’t see it. She could only see the top of Vielle’s head and the resident’s, both in their green scrub caps, and the top of the security guard’s head, standing over the boy in the Avalanche jacket. The boy lay sprawled on his face on the tile floor, and she could see the blue-and-white logo on the back of the maroon jacket, and maroon under the boy’s face, too, where the guard had shot him.

The top of the guard’s head was bald and shiny, reflecting the overhead fluorescent light as Joanna looked down on it. “Just hang on, Joanna!” Vielle said, holding her hand, which was funny, because Joanna was up here, and Vielle was down there.

But she was down there, too. They all were, the intern and the resident and she couldn’t tell who else because all she could see was the tops of their heads, as they worked over her, taking her blood pressure and hooking up IVs. “Seventy-five over fifty,” one of them said.

“She’s bleeding out. It must have hit the aorta,” someone else said, she couldn’t see who, he was too far below her.

I’m up near the ceiling, Joanna thought. She would be able to look down and see the ledge outside. She wondered if there was a red tennis shoe on it, and then thought, I’m having an out-of-body experience. Finally. I have to tell Richard.

Richard, she thought with a kind of panic. I have to tell Richard the NDE’s an SOS.

“Clear,” the resident said, and then, “Where the hell is that surgeon? Did you page him?”

Not Carson, Richard, Joanna thought, looking at the resident, and now she could see his face, not at all worried, calm and impassive, and that was comforting, too.

“Page Richard. It’s important,” she said, but nothing came out, her lips had not moved, and a nurse was trying to put something in her mouth, trying to force it down her throat.

“No,” she said, twisting her head to get away from her, looking for Vielle.

“I’m right here, honey,” Vielle said, holding Joanna’s hand, and somebody must have bandaged her hand, it was white, and so bright she could hardly look at it.

“Page Richard,” Joanna said, but she couldn’t tell if Vielle had heard her. There was a funny beeping sound. One of the nurses must have hit the code alarm. “Page Richard and tell him I found out what the NDE is. It’s an SOS,” she said, louder, but the beeping was drowning out her voice.

“What the hell is that?” the resident said, doing something to her chest.

“Her pager,” Vielle said.

“Well, shut the damn thing off.”

It’s Richard, Joanna thought. I told him to page me. Tell him the NDE’s a distress signal. Tell him he has to figure out the code. For Maisie, she tried to say, but now there was another sound drowning her out. A ringing. A buzzing. “He’s in the lab.”

“Sixty over forty,” the nurse said.

“She’s bleeding out,” the resident said.

“Hang on, Joanna,” Vielle said, holding tight to her hand. “Stay with me,” but she wasn’t there. She was on the Titanic.

But not in the passageway. On the Grand Staircase. And a crush of passengers was all around her, jammed onto the stairs, dressed in dinner jackets and dressing gowns and lifejackets. They were pushing up the marble stairs, carrying her along with them. To the Boat Deck, Joanna thought. They’re all trying to get up to the Boat Deck.

“I have to get back down to C Deck,” Joanna said, trying to turn around, but people were jammed next to her, around her, behind her, wedging her so she couldn’t move. “I have to tell Richard I found out the secret,” she said to them. “I have to get back to the passage.”

No one heard her, they continued to push her up the white marble stairs. She looked over at the gilt-and-wrought-iron banisters, thinking, If I could reach the railing and hold on to it, I could work my way back down, against the crowd.

With a great effort, she turned sideways, struggling to move her arm, her torso, and set out across the flow of passengers toward the railing like someone wading through deep water. She reached it, grabbing for it as if it were a life preserver. But this was worse. People were using the railing to push themselves along as they climbed, they refused to let go to let Joanna pass. They shoved upward as if she weren’t even there, carrying suitcases and steamer rugs, pushing Joanna back against the step she was on, nearly knocking her down.

“Just let me—” she said to a woman carrying a Pekingese and a furled umbrella, and stepped toward the middle of the step, trying to get out of the woman’s way. She raised her arm, trying to reach around—

The umbrella caught her sharply in the ribs, and she gasped and grabbed for her side. She let go of the railing, and the crowd swept her up past the cherub, past the angels of Honour and Glory Crowning Time, through the etched-glass doors, and out onto the Boat Deck.

Joanna stood there a moment, holding her side, as they poured past her, and then started back through the crowd to the doors. “Excuse me,” she said, squeezing past the uniformed man in the door, and saw it was the clerk from the mail room. He had a canvas mail sack over his shoulder, and it was dripping on the flowered carpet of the foyer. She stepped back, looking down at the carpet, at the dark drops.

“You’d better get into a boat, miss,” the clerk said kindly.

“I can’t. I have to go back the way I came,” she said, trying to get past him without stepping in the damp spot, without touching the dripping sack. “I have to tell Richard what I found out.”

He nodded solemnly. “The mail must go through. But you can’t go down that way. It’s blocked.”

“Blocked?”

“Yes, miss. There are people coming up. You’ll need to take the aft staircase, miss.” He pointed up the Boat Deck. “Do you know where it is?”

“Yes,” Joanna said, and ran toward the stern, past the band getting out its instruments, setting up its music stands. The violinist set his black case on top of the upright piano and snapped the latches open.

“ ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band,’ ” the conductor said, and the bass viol player sorted through a sheaf of sheet music, looking for it.

Past Lifeboat Number 9, where a young man was saying good-bye to a young woman in a white dress and a veil. “It’s all right, little girl,” he said. “You go, and I’ll stay awhile.” Past Number 11, where the mustached man she had seen in the writing room and in the lounge, dealing out hand after hand of cards, was lifting two children into the boat. Past Number 13, where an officer was calling, “Anyone else to go in this boat? Any more women and children?”

Joanna shook her head and hurried past. And into a man in a denim shirt and suspenders. “No need to panic, folks,” he said, herding people toward the bow. “Just walk slowly. Don’t run. Plenty of time.”

Joanna backed away from him. And into the officer. He took her arm. “You need to get into a boat, miss,” he said, leading her back toward Number 13. “There isn’t much time.”

“No,” she said, but he was gripping her arm tightly, he was propelling her over to the davits.

“Wait for this young lady,” he called to the crewman in the boat.

“No,” Joanna said, “you don’t understand. I have to—”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said, and his grip on her arm was like iron, it was cutting off her circulation. “It’s perfectly safe.”

“No!” She wrenched free of him and ran down the deck, past the officer, as if he were still chasing her, past the band and into the foyer of the Grand Staircase, thinking, The elevator. The elevator will be faster.

She pushed the gold-and-ivory button. “Come on, come on,” she said, and pushed it again, but the arrow above the door didn’t move. She abandoned it and ran over to the head of the staircase, down the stairs to B Deck, C Deck, thinking, What if it’s blocked like he said?

It wasn’t. It was clear. “Again. Clear,” the resident said, and Joanna was in the emergency room and Vielle was holding her hand.

“I’ve got a pulse.”

“Vielle,” Joanna said, but Vielle wasn’t looking at her, she was looking at the aide who had come out in the hall that day they had the fight, she was telling her, “If he doesn’t answer his page, go get him. He’s in 602.”

“Vielle, tell Richard the NDE’s a distress call the dying brain sends out,” Joanna tried to say, but there was something in her mouth, choking her.

“He’s coming, Joanna,” Vielle said, holding tight to her hand. “Just hang on.”

“If Richard doesn’t get here in time, tell him the NDE’s a distress signal. It’s important,” Joanna tried to say around the choking thing in her throat. They’ve intubated me, she thought, panicked, and tried to pull it out, but it wasn’t an airway, it was blood. She was coughing it up and out of her, gallons and gallons of blood. “Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” It was pouring out of her, and all over Vielle and the resident and the nurse, choking her, drowning her.

“Help,” she cried, “I have to tell Richard. It’s an SOS,” but it wasn’t Vielle, it was the man with the mustache and she was back on the Boat Deck. The band was playing “Goodnight, Irene,” and the officer was loading Number 4.

“I want you to do something for me when you reach New York,” the mustached man was saying to Joanna, putting something in her hand.

She looked down at it. It was a note, written in a childish round cursive. “If saved,” it read, “please inform my sister Mrs. F. J. Adams of Findlay, Ohio. Lost. J. H. Rogers.”

“Please see that my sister gets this,” he said, closing her fingers over the note. “Tell her it’s from me.”

“But I’m not going to—” Joanna said, but he had already melted into the crowd, and the officer was headed toward her, calling, “Miss! Miss!” She jammed the note into her pocket and ran down the deck toward the aft staircase, darting between couples, past a pair of cheerleaders in purple-and-gold pleated skirts, between families saying good-bye.

“But he’s going to be all right, isn’t he?” a woman in a white coat and white knitted cap said to an officer.

The officer looked pityingly at her. “We’re doing everything we can.”

Joanna pushed past the woman, but the way to the aft staircase was mobbed with people in kerchiefs and cloth caps, fighting to get into the boats, and sailors trying to free the boats, trying to lower them. “You can’t get through this way!” the sailor who had worked the Morse lamp called to her. He jerked his thumb back toward the stern. “Try the second-class stairway,” and she turned and ran past the empty davits of the boats that had already been lowered, to the second-class stairway.

The door to the second-class stairway was standing open, her red tennis shoe lying on its side on the threshold. Joanna leaped over it and pelted down the stairs, past the A La Carte Restaurant, down the next flight, around the landing. And stopped.

Two steps below the landing, tied to the railings on either side, stretched a strip of yellow tape. “Crime Scene,” it said. “Do Not Cross.” And below it, submerging the stairs, pale blue, shiny as paint, the water.

“It’s underwater,” Joanna said, and sat down, holding on to the railing for support. “The passage is underwater.”

Maybe it’s just the stairway, she thought, maybe it hasn’t reached the passage, but of course it had. The second-class stairway was all the way in the stern, and the ship was going down by the head. And below the tape water was pouring in everywhere, drowning the mail room and Scotland Road and the swimming pool, the squash court and the staterooms and the glass-enclosed deck. And the way out, the way back.

There has to be another way out, Joanna thought, staring blindly at the pale blue water. The Apaches cut the wires, but Carl was still able to get the mail through. There has to be another way out. The lifeboats! she thought, and scrambled to her feet, tore up the stairs and back along the Boat Deck.

The boats were gone, the deck deserted except for the band, which had finished “Goodnight, Irene.” They were searching through their music for the next piece, arranging the sheet music on their stands.

Joanna ran to the railing and leaned far over it, trying to see the lifeboat the sailor had been loading. It was miles below her, almost to the water. She couldn’t make out anything in the darkness but the pale gleam of the sailor’s white uniform. It was too far for her to jump, but maybe not too far for them to hear her. “Hello!” she called down, cupping her hand around her mouth. “Ahoy! Can you hear me?”

There was no movement of the white uniform, no sound. “I need you to deliver a message for me,” she shouted, but the band had struck up a waltz, and her voice was lost in the sound of the violin, of the piano.

They can’t hear me, she thought. She needed to drop a message down to them. She fumbled in her pockets for a pen and paper. She came up with the mustached man’s note, but no pen, not even a stub of pencil. “Just a minute!” she called down to the boat. “Hang on!” and ran down the deck to the aft staircase and down to the writing room on the Promenade Deck, praying, “Don’t let it be flooded, don’t let it be flooded.”

It wasn’t. The Reading and Writing Room sat empty, the yellow-shaded lamps still burning on the writing desks. Joanna grabbed a sheet of stationery out of the rack, dipped a pen in the inkwell, and scribbled, “Richard, the NDE is a distress signal the brain sends as it’s dying—”

“What’s going on?” a voice said. Joanna looked up. It was Greg Menotti. He was wearing jogging shorts and a Nike T-shirt. “Somebody told me the ship’s sinking,” he said, laughing.

“It is,” Joanna said, writing, “—and you have to find out what neurotransmitter it’s trying to activate.” She scrawled her name at the bottom, snatched up the sheet of paper, and ran out onto the deck.

“What do you mean?” Greg said, jogging up beside her. “It’s unsinkable.”

She leaned over the railing into the darkness. “Ahoy!” she called, waving the sheet of paper. “Lifeboat!”

No answer. No gleam of white. Only the fathomless blackness.

She flung herself away from the railing and along the deck to the first-class lounge.

“But it can’t be sinking,” Greg said, sprinting after her.

She yanked open the stained-glass door of the lounge. “If it’s sinking,” Greg said, “we’d better get in one of the boats.”

She ran over to the mirrored mahogany bar. “The boats are all gone.”

“They can’t all be gone,” he said, panting, holding his arm. “There has to be a way off this ship.”

“There isn’t,” she said, grabbing a bottle of wine off the bar.

He snatched at the wrist of her hand holding the bottle. “I work out at the health club three times a week!”

“It doesn’t matter. The Titanic had sixteen watertight compartments, she had the latest safety features, and it didn’t matter. An iceberg gashed her side and—” she said, and remembered her blouse and the little ooze of blood.

“It doesn’t look like a very bad cut,” Maisie had said, scrutinizing the diagram of the Titanic. And it wasn’t, but belowdecks, inside, water was pouring into the watertight compartments, spilling over into the engine room and the chest cavity and the lungs. “How bad is it?” Captain Smith asked, and the architect shook his head. “It’s nicked the aorta.”

“What is it?” Greg asked, letting go of her wrist. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” she said, thinking, You have to get the message to Richard. “I need something to open the wine bottle with.”

“There isn’t time. We have to get up to the Boat Deck,” he said, and his face was furious, frantic, like the face of the boy in the Avalanche jacket, whirling toward her…

“I have to do this first,” Joanna said, and began opening drawers, digging through silverware.

“I found this,” Greg said, and held out a knife to her. A knife. He had had a knife. But when she looked down, she hadn’t been able to see it. Because it had already gone in. “We’ve got a stab wound here,” the resident had said. “Get a cross match.” But it was too late. Belowdecks it was roaring out, into the staterooms and staircases, putting out the boiler fires, flooding the passages. Flooding everything.

“Give it to me,” Greg said and wrenched the wine bottle out of her hand. He pried the cork out with the point of the knife, clumsily. The wine spilled on the flowered carpet, dark red, soaking into the carpet and her cardigan and Vielle’s scrubs.

“We’ve got a stab wound here,” the resident had said to Vielle, but it wasn’t Vielle’s blood, it was hers. She sank against the bar, holding her side.

Greg was bending over her, holding the open bottle out. “Now can we go up to the Boat Deck?” he said.

The boats are all gone, she thought, staring dully at the bottle. There’s no way off the ship. “I’m going,” Greg said, and put the bottle in her helpless hand. “There have to be boats on the other side. They can’t all be gone.”

But they are, Joanna thought, watching him run out. Because I’m the ship that’s going down. I’m dying, she thought wonderingly, he killed me before I could tell Richard, and remembered why she had wanted the bottle.

She had wanted to send a message, but it was impossible. The dead couldn’t send messages from the Other Side, in spite of what Mr. Mandrake said, in spite of Mrs. Davenport’s psychic telegrams. It was too far. But Joanna stood up and poured the wine out onto the carpet, looking steadily at the dark, spreading stain. She folded the sheet of White Star stationery into narrow pleats and put it in the bottle, tamping the cork down and then prying it out again and putting in the note to Mr. Rogers’s sister, too.

She climbed back up the aft staircase to the Boat Deck, holding on to the railing with her free hand because the stairs had begun to slant, and walked over to the railing and threw the bottle in, flinging it far out so it wouldn’t catch on one of the lower decks, straining to hear the splash. But none came, and though she stood on tiptoe and leaned far out over the rail, peering into the black void, she could not see the water below, or the light from the Californian, only darkness. “SOS,” Joanna murmured. “SOS.”

41

Richard called up the neurotransmitter analysis for Joanna’s first session and scanned through the list. No theta-asparcine, and there hadn’t been any in any of Mr. Sage’s NDEs either.

He called up her second session. None there either. Theta-asparcine wasn’t an endorphin inhibitor, but it might affect the L+R or the temporal-lobe stimulation. Dr. Jamison had said she had a paper on recent theta-asparcine research findings. He wondered if she was back from her errand, whatever it was.

He glanced at his watch. Nearly two. Unless Dr. Jamison called in the next fifteen minutes, he wouldn’t be able to meet with her until after Mrs. Troudtheim’s session, and he’d wanted to find out if there was a possibility that it was the theta-asparcine and not the dithetamine dosage that was interrupting Mrs. Troudtheim’s NDEs.

He called up the third session and stared at the screen, frustrated. There it was, big as life, theta-asparcine, and Joanna had been in the NDE-state for—he checked the exact time—three minutes and eleven seconds.

Which puts me right back at square one, he thought, and there was no point in going through Joanna’s other sessions. He called up her and Mrs. Troudtheim’s analyses again, looking for some other difference he might have missed, but every other neurotransmitter was present in other scans, including the cortisol.

Could the cortisol alone be aborting the NDE-state? It was present in other sessions, but only Amelia Tanaka’s had shown similar high levels, and if Mrs. Troudtheim’s NDE-state threshold was lower, less cortisol might be needed to interfere with the endorphins. He’d ask Dr. Jamison.

And where was she? And where was Joanna? Tish would be here any minute to set up, and he had hoped Joanna would come before Tish did, so he could ask her about her most recent account. She’d said she’d experienced a feeling that Mr. Briarley was dead, which was obviously another manifestation of the sense of significance, but there had only been midlevel temporal-lobe activation in the area of the Sylvian fissures.

He looked at his watch again. Maybe he should call Dr. Jamison. She had said she’d page him when she got back to her office.

He thought, You turned your pager off so Mandrake couldn’t page you, and no wonder you haven’t heard from Dr. Jamison. He pulled the pager out of his lab coat pocket and switched it on. It immediately began to beep. He went over to the phone to call the switchboard.

“Dr. Wright!” a voice said from the door, and a young Hispanic woman in pink scrubs burst into the room. “Are you Dr. Wright?” she said, breathing hard and holding her side. There was blood on her scrubs.

“Yes,” he said, slamming down the phone and hurrying over to her. “What is it? Are you hurt?”

She shook her head. “I ran—” she said, panting. “I’m Nina. Nurse Howard—there’s an emergency. You’ve got to come down to the ER.”

Vielle’s been hurt, he thought. “Did Dr. Lander send you?”

She shook her head, still trying to catch her breath. “Dr. Lander, she—Nurse Howard sent me. You need to come right away!”

Maisie, he thought. She’s coded again. “Is this about Maisie Nellis?”

“No!” she said, frustrated. “It’s Dr. Lander! Nurse Howard said to tell you it’s an emergency.”

He gripped her shoulders. “What about Dr. Lander? Is she hurt?” Nina gave a kind of whimper. “You said the ER?” Richard said and was out the door and over to the elevator, punching and repunching the “down” button.

“This guy came into the ER,” Nina said, following him, “and he must have been on rogue because all of a sudden, he pulled a knife—”

Richard punched the elevator button again, again. He glanced up at the floor lights above the door. It was on first. He took off running for the stairs with Nina on his heels, clutching her side. “—and I don’t know what happened then,” she said, “it was all so fast.”

“Is Dr. Lander badly hurt?” Richard demanded, plunging down the stairs.

“I don’t know. There was all this blood. The security guard shot the guy.”

Down the stairs, through the walkway, across Medicine.

“Nurse Howard said to page you, and I did, but you didn’t answer, so then she said go get you. I came as fast as I could, but I went to the wrong wing—”

A metal ladder straddled the hallway, yellow tape barring the way in front of it.

“We can’t go this way,” Nina said. Richard burst through the tape and ran under the ladder and down the hall, sidestepping paint buckets and trampling the plastic drops.

“You’re not supposed to walk under a ladder,” Nina yammered right behind him. “It’s bad luck.” Into the service stairs, down to first, along the hall. And what if they’d already taken Joanna upstairs to ICU?

He burst through the side door, into the ER. Police everywhere, and the sounds of sirens in the distance, coming closer. Two black officers by the door, another officer talking to a man in pink scrubs, two more kneeling on the floor over by the desk, next to a body.

Not Joanna’s, Richard prayed. Not Joanna’s. She’s in one of the trauma rooms, he thought, and started across the ER. A security guard raised his gun, and a police officer stepped in front of Richard. “No one’s allowed in here.”

“He’s Dr. Wright. Nurse Howard sent for him,” Nina said. The officer nodded and stepped back, and Nina led the way quickly across the floor and into a trauma room. She pushed open the door.

He didn’t know what he’d expected to see. Joanna, sitting on an examining table, having her arm stitched up, turning her head to smile sheepishly at him as he came in. Or noise, activity, nurses hanging bags of blood, inserting tubes, doctors barking orders. And Vielle, stepping away from the examining table to explain Joanna’s condition, saying, “She’s going to be fine.”

Not this. Not a dozen people in blood-spattered scrubs, blood-covered gloves, standing back from the table, stunned and silent, none of them saying anything, no sound at all except the flatline whine of the heart monitor.

Not the resident, handing the paddles back to a nurse and shaking his head, and Vielle, clinging to Joanna’s limp white hand, saying, her voice rising sobbingly, “No, she can’t be! Hit her again!” Calm, professional Vielle sobbing, “Do something! Do something!”

The resident pulled his mask down. “It’s no use. We couldn’t save her.”

Couldn’t save her, Richard thought, and finally, finally looked at Joanna. She lay with her hair fanned out around her head, like Amelia Tanaka’s, but her brown hair was matted with blood, and there was blood on her mouth, on her neck, on her chest, blood everywhere. It stood out black-red against her white skin.

An airway had been inserted in her mouth, and there was blood on that, too. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing.

“I brought Dr. Wright,” Nina said inanely into the silence, and the resident turned to look at him, his face solemn.

“I am so sorry, Dr. Wright,” he said. “I’m afraid she’s gone.”

“Gone,” Richard repeated stupidly. The resident was right. She was gone. The body lying there, with its white, white skin and its unseeing eyes, was empty, abandoned. Joanna had gone.

Gone. Through a tunnel and into the passage, where a golden light shone from under a door. And passengers milled around out on deck in their nightclothes, wondering what had happened. And the mail room was already inches deep in water, the boiler rooms already full, and water was coming in on D Deck, the decks beginning to list, beginning to slant. “If the boat sinks,” Joanna had said, unseeing behind her sleep mask, reaching blindly for his hand, “promise you’ll come and get me.”

“It’s real,” she’d said. “You don’t understand. It’s a real place.” A real place, with staircases and writing rooms and gymnasiums. And terror. And a way back, if it wasn’t blocked, if he could get to her in time.

“Start CPR,” Richard said, and Vielle let go of Joanna’s hand and moved forward as if to comfort him. “Vielle, don’t let them unhook anything!” he said, and, to the others, “Start CPR. Keep shocking her,” and took off running.

“Richard!” Vielle called after him, but he was already through the door, down the hall, up the stairs. Four minutes. He had four minutes, six at the outside, and why the hell couldn’t Mercy General have stairways that went more than two flights, why the hell didn’t it have walkways at every floor?

He sprinted across the third-floor walkway, thinking, What’s the fastest way up to the lab? Joanna would know. Joanna! He shoved open the doors like a runner breasting a tape and raced through Medicine. Not the elevator. There’s no time to wait for an elevator. I have four minutes. Four minutes.

He clattered up the service stairs, rounding the landing. Fourth. It would take at least two minutes for the dithetamine to take effect, even using an IV push. There isn’t time, he thought. But once he was under, time wasn’t a factor. Joanna had explored the entire ship in eight seconds. Joanna—Fifth. Thirty seconds for Tish to find a vein, another thirty for her to start the IV and inject the dithetamine. What if Tish wasn’t there? There was no time to find her, no time to—

He burst through the door to sixth, raced down the hall. Tish had to be there. Mrs. Troudtheim’s session was scheduled for two. She had to be there. “Tish!” he shouted and flung open the door to the lab. “Tish!”

Tish looked up from where she was hanging the bag of saline. “You need to call the ER. They’ve been calling every two minutes,” she said. “And there’s a message for you from Dr. Lander. You turned your pager off again, didn’t—” She stopped when she saw his face. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Start an IV,” he said, striding over to the medicine cupboard. “Saline and dithetamine.”

“But Joanna isn’t here,” Tish said. “I checked her office, and she’s not there.”

“She coded,” he said, grabbing a vial of dithetamine and a syringe.

“Joanna coded?” Tish said blankly, coming over to the cupboard. “What do you mean? Was she in a car accident?”

“She was stabbed,” he said, filling the syringe.

“Stabbed? Is she okay?”

“I told you, she coded,” he said. He walked rapidly back to the examining table. “We’re going to have to use an IV push!”

Tish looked at him blankly. “An IV push? But—how can she go under if she—” she stopped, horrified. “She didn’t die, did she, and you’re going to record her NDE?”

“She didn’t die, and she’s not going to,” he said. He wrenched off his lab coat and flung it over a chair. “Because I’m going after her.”

“I don’t understand,” Tish said bewilderedly. “What do you mean, you’re going after her?”

“I mean, I’m going to go get her. I’m going to bring her back.” He rolled up his sleeve.

“But you said the NDEs weren’t real,” she said, looking frightened. “You said they were hallucinations. You said they were caused by the temporal lobe.”

“I said a lot of things,” he said, laying his arm flat on the examining table with the hand palm-up. “Start an IV.”

“But—”

“Start the IV,” he said fiercely, and Tish picked up the length of tubing and wrapped it around his upper arm. He made a fist, and she began probing for a vein.

“Hurry!” he said. “We’ve only got four minutes.” Tish pushed the needle in, clipped it to the IV line, adjusted the feed. She began taping down the needle. “You can do that later,” he snapped. “Start the dithetamine. IV push.”

“Dr. Wright, I don’t think it’s a good idea to do this while you’re so upset,” Tish said. “Why don’t I call Dr. Everett or somebody, and—”

“Because there’s no time,” Richard said. “Never mind. I’ll do it myself.” He grabbed the syringe with his free hand and injected it into the line. “Start the white noise,” he said and reached for the headphones.

“Dr. Wright—” Tish said uncertainly and then went over to the amplifier.

Richard picked up the headphones and looked around for the sleep mask. He couldn’t see it anywhere, and there was no time to look for it. He put on the headphones and lay down. “Put the cushions under my arms and legs,” he said, unable to tell if Tish could hear him. He couldn’t hear anything through the headphones. “Put the—” he began, but she must have heard him. She was lifting his left arm and sliding the cushion under it and then under the other.

She placed the cushions under his legs and then wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm. “Don’t bother with that,” Richard said, but Tish wasn’t listening to him. She was putting electrodes to his scalp.

“I don’t need an EEG,” he said, but she didn’t look up, he was trying to talk to the top of her head. “Tish!” he shouted, and realized he was too far away for her to hear him. He was above her, above the examining table on which he lay, his arm hooked to an IV. He was drifting slowly up to the ceiling. He looked across to the top of the medicine cupboard. It was polished and bare, except for a glint of silver at the very back. He drifted closer, trying to see.

The silver object was tucked all the way back in the corner, where Joanna had put it, behind the raised edge of the cupboard. Out of sight except for someone having an out-of-body experience. He drifted still closer. It was a toy tin zeppelin.

Of course, he thought. The Hindenburg. I’ll have to tell Joanna I saw it. But she wouldn’t believe him. She would think he had climbed up on a chair to see what it was. Joanna would—

“Joanna!” he said, abruptly remembering. This was an out-of-body experience. But there wasn’t any time for it. “Send me through!” he shouted down to Tish. “Send me into the tunnel!”

He continued to float slowly upward, wafting slowly back and forth, like the Hindenburg drifting in its moorings. “Hurry!” he shouted, and looked down at Tish. She had found the sleep mask and was placing it over his eyes. He lay stiffly under the RIPT scan, his hands clenched tightly at his sides.

“Let go!” he shouted. The noise echoed loudly, reverberating as if he were in an enclosed space, and then stopped, and everything went dark.

I’m in the passage, he thought. He put out his hand in the pitch blackness and felt hardness, paint. The wall of the passage. There should be a light at the end of it, he thought, straining to see. Nothing. No light at all. It must be very late, after the lights had gone out. When had they gone out? Only a few minutes before the end.

It’s because she’s going down, he thought. Because there are only four minutes left. “Joanna!” he called. “Where are you?”

There was no answer. He fumbled for a book of matches in his lab coat pockets, but they were empty. He reached in his pants pocket. The pager. He drew it out. It was turned off. He fumbled for the switch in the darkness and turned it on. The face lit up—Joanna’s number—but the LED numbers gave no light.

He began to grope his way along the corridor, feeling his way with a hand on each wall, trying to hurry. Because there’s no time. But if it were that late, then the ship should be at a sharp angle, so tilted that he’d be having trouble standing, and he wasn’t. The floor felt perfectly level.

“Joanna!” he called again, and saw a light ahead of him. It was a thin line of white, from under a door, and that must be what he had heard—the sound of the door slamming shut. He groped his way toward the door and felt for the doorknob, thinking, Don’t let it be locked, don’t let it be locked. He found the rectangular metal plate, found the knob, turned it. And opened the door onto another corridor. A brightly lit corridor, so bright it was almost blinding, and he shielded his eyes and stood there, blinking.

This wasn’t the passage Joanna had come through. Hers had opened onto the outside, onto a window-lined deck. This was an inside passage, with a series of shut doors and light sconces on the walls between them. The lights had not gone out. They shone strongly all along the corridor, and the wooden floor was dry and perfectly level. It must be much earlier, before anyone realized it was sinking, and maybe the sound he’d heard was the same one Joanna had heard—the iceberg scraping along the side—and it had sounded different because he was in a different part of the ship.

Which part? Second class? The brass light sconces were elaborate enough for it to be first class, but the walls were unadorned, and there were no windows, no portholes. It must be an interior corridor, or belowdecks. Steerage?

Where was it? On C Deck, she had said. But where was C Deck? Above this? Below it? Did they count the decks down from the top or up from the bottom?

He remembered Joanna talking about climbing up to the Boat Deck. How many decks had she said she’d climbed? He couldn’t remember. I should have paid more attention, he thought, starting down the passage at a run. I should have listened to her when she said it was real.

Because it was real. She had tried to tell him. She had said she saw colors, heard sounds, felt staircase railings under her hand, had tried to describe the reality of the ship, but he had been convinced it was a hallucination, that it was something happening in long-term memory and the temporal lobe, even when she’d tried to tell him, even when she’d said, “It’s a real place.”

I should have listened to her, he thought, looking for a stairway, or a door to the outside. I should have told her where I was going. I shouldn’t have turned off my pager.

All the doors were shut, locked. “Hey!” he shouted, banging on them, rattling the old-fashioned knobs. “Anybody there?”

The third door opened under his hand. Inside, a man wearing headphones was sitting bent over a wireless key, listening. Dot-dash-dot-dot, he wrote on a pad. “Hey!” Richard said. “How do I get to C Deck?”

The man didn’t look up.

“C Deck,” Richard said, coming to stand over him. “Which deck is this I’m on now?”

The man went on writing, his face intent on the key, dash-dash-dot-dash-dot-dot-dot—

SOS, Richard thought. Of course. He’s calling for help. When had they sent the first SOS? Not until after midnight.

“What time is it?” Richard asked him loudly. “How long have you been sending?”

A gray-haired woman appeared in the door, in a high-collared blouse and a long black skirt. “You’re not supposed to be here,” she said, her hand on the doorjamb.

“I’m looking for—”

“How did you get in here?” she interrupted sternly. “Unauthorized persons are not allowed in this part of—”

“I’m looking for Joanna Lander,” he said. “I have to find her.”

“Yes, sir, I know, sir,” she said, leading him out of the wireless room, “but this part of—”

“You don’t understand. It’s urgent. She’s in danger. She’d be on C Deck. Or on the Boat Deck—”

“I know, sir,” she said, and her voice had, surprisingly, softened. “If you’ll just come with me, sir.” She led him back down the passage the way they’d come, her hand gently on his arm.

“Her passage is on C Deck,” he said. “It opens onto the deck.”

“Yes, sir.” She opened a door and led him down a flight of stairs.

“She’s about five foot six,” he said. “Brown hair, glasses. She was wearing a cardigan sweater and—” He stopped. He didn’t know what else. A skirt? Pants? He tried to envision the heap of clothes at the end of the table, but he couldn’t tell what they were for the blood, the blood. “I have to find her immediately.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, and continued to walk slowly, sedately down the corridor.

“You don’t understand!” he said. “It’s urgent! She—”

“I understand that you’re upset, sir,” she said, but didn’t quicken her pace.

“She’s in danger!”

The woman nodded and walked him slowly down the hall and around a corner.

Bong! He looked up, alarmed. It was a clock, a large wooden wall clock with Roman numerals and a pendulum. A quarter to two. And the Titanic had gone down at 2:20.

“You don’t understand!” he said, clutching the woman’s arms and shaking her. “There’s no time! I have to find her and get her off. Just tell me how to get to C Deck!”

Her eyes widened and filled with tears. “If you’ll just come this way, sir,” she said pleadingly. “Please, sir.”

“There’s no time!” he said. “I’ll find her myself!” and ran down the passage and through the door at the end of it. And into a mass of jostling, gesturing people.

The Boat Deck, he thought, but this was an inside room, too, with large double doors along one side. Everyone was pushing toward those doors. The Boat Deck must lie beyond them, and they were waiting here for their chance to board. He stretched his neck, trying to see over the top hats of the men, the feathered hats of the women, looking for Joanna’s bare head. He couldn’t see her.

Joanna had said the passengers out on the deck had had no idea what was happening, but these people obviously did. They looked frightened, the men’s faces strained and worried, the women’s eyes rimmed with red. A young girl clung to an elderly man, sobbing helplessly into a black-edged handkerchief. “There, there,” the old man said. “We must not give up hope.” Did that mean all the boats were already gone? When had they launched the last one? Not until the very end, Joanna had said, but it couldn’t be the very end. The deck wasn’t slanting at all.

If he could get through the crowd. He pushed forward, looking for Joanna, craning his neck, trying to see over the sea of hats, trying to move forward, but the crowd was packed in tightly, and as he tried to push in, they blocked his way.

“Excuse me,” he said, shoving past a young man in a brown coat and hat. He had a newspaper under his arm. At a time like this, Richard thought. “I have to get through. I’m looking for someone.”

“What was her name?” the young man asked, taking a leather notebook out of his pocket. “Was she traveling first class?”

“She’s on C Deck.”

“C Deck,” the young man said, jotting it down. “Traveling alone?”

“Yes,” Richard said. “Traveling alone.”

“Name?” he asked, taking more notes.

“Joanna Lander,” he said. “Please. I have to get through. I have to find her.”

“She may very well have gotten into one of the boats,” the young man said.

“No,” Richard said. “She can’t get out that way. She has to go back down to C Deck to the passage,” but the young man wasn’t listening. He had looked up toward the double doors. So had everyone else. The double doors opened, and someone must have come through because everyone looked at the doors expectantly. A hush fell, and the young girl who had been sobbing straightened up and clutched the elderly man’s hand.

Richard pushed forward, elbowing his way past a middle-aged couple, a young woman with a baby, two teenaged boys, till he could see the man who’d emerged from the doors. He wore spectacles and was wearing a black frock coat and a black vest. He was carrying a sheaf of papers. He stepped up onto something—a dais?—and raised his hands to quiet the already quiet crowd. Who was this? The captain? One of the officers? Then why wasn’t he in uniform?

“I know you are all anxious for news,” the man said, putting on the pince-nez. “We do not as yet have a full list of survivors.”

What?

“We are currently in wireless contact with the Carpathia, and as soon as we have a complete list—”

“No!” Richard said.

“Get hold of yourself,” the young man said, grasping his shoulder. “She may have been in one of the boats.”

“No!” Richard yelled. He wrenched the newspaper out from under the young man’s arm and yanked it open. “Titanic Lost,” it said. “A thousand souls feared drowned.”

He pushed forward to the spectacled man in the black frock coat. “What day is this?” he asked furiously. The gray-haired woman was headed toward him, a man with a medical bag behind her. Richard grabbed the spectacled man’s black lapels. “What day is this?”

“April eighteenth,” the man said nervously. “I can assure you the White Star Line deeply regrets—”

“Sir,” the gray-haired woman said, and the man with the medical bag took his arm. “You’re distraught. I think perhaps you’d better lie down.”

“No!” he shouted, and it was a roar, a scream. “No!”

The doctor reached for his arm, and he leaped away through the crowd, shoving at their shoulders, pushing them out of his way. He thrust his way toward the door and through it and took off running down the corridor. Four minutes. And how much time, how much time had he wasted already, he thought as he ran, his heart pounding, too stupid to know where he was, to see that this was the White Star Line offices?

The clock at the foot of the stairs was striking the hour. Richard ran past it and started up the stairs, and an alarm went off somewhere, like a fire bell or a code alarm, clanging, buzzing, over the clock, still striking the hour.

He raced up the rest of the stairs, past the room where the wireless operator sat, taking down the incoming taps of the key. From the Carpathia, not the Titanic. He should have seen that, should have known the Titanic would be sending, not receiving, and that the Marconi room was on the wrong deck. Should have seen instantly that this was a building, not a ship, and gone back, made Tish send him under again.

He rounded the corner, panting, and raced for the door, grabbed the doorknob, twisted it. It was locked. He rattled the doorknob, kicked at the door, hit at it with his fist.

It opened, and he burst through it into the dark corridor. And into the lab.

“Tish!” he called, yanking to get the headphones off, but there weren’t any headphones. And no sleep mask, because he could see the light. It was killingly bright. I should have covered it with thicker black paper, he thought, and tried to sit up. He couldn’t. He was bound with ropes. “Tish!”

“Oh, Dr. Wright!” Tish said, coming between him and the light. She was haloed in it and rays of dazzling light seemed to come from her. “Thank God you’re all right!”

“You have to send me under again,” he said. “It was the wrong place, and the wrong time. She wasn’t there.”

“Just lie still,” Tish said.

“You don’t understand,” he said, and tried to sit up again. “She’s on the Titanic! I have to go get her before it goes down!”

“There, there,” Tish said, pushing him back down. “You’re still under the influence of the drug. You need to lie still until it wears off.”

“There’s no time,” he said. “Irreversible brain death occurs in four to six minutes. You have to send me back right now. And up the dosage of dithetamine.”

Tish just stood there, haloed in light.

“Now! Before it’s too late!” he shouted, and saw that she was clutching a black-edged handkerchief, too, and her eyes were red-rimmed.

I’m not really back in the lab, he thought. This is still part of the NDE, and twisted around to see where the passage was.

“Don’t, Dr. Wright, you’ll pull out your IV,” Tish said. “You’re still on a saline drip. When you didn’t come out, I stopped the dithetamine—” She reached for the site.

He clapped a hand over the IV. “Restart it now!” he shouted, and managed, finally, to heave himself to a sitting position. They had not been ropes, they were electrodes, hooked up to the EEG and EKG monitors, and this was the lab. The handkerchief Tish was holding was a sodden Kleenex.

“Now, Tish!” he shouted, “or I’ll do it myself!” but he had sat up too fast, he felt dizzy and cold. “Tish, please! You don’t understand. We’re nearly out of time! You have to send me back under before it’s too late!”

But she just stood there, haloed in light, turning the lump of tissue over and over in her hands. “But you still didn’t come out, even after I stopped the dithetamine, and I didn’t know whether to administer norepinephrine or not. Your vitals were normal, and that one time Mr. Sage was under for—”

He turned sharply and looked at the clock, but Joanna had moved it so it couldn’t be seen from the far wall. “Tish,” he said, “how long was I under?” and waited with dread for the answer.

“I am so sorry, Dr. Wright. Mrs. Troudtheim told me when she came…” She twisted the sodden Kleenex in her hands. “She was so upset. We all loved Dr. Lander—”

“How long was I under?” he repeated dully.

“I don’t know. I can’t read the scans, so I didn’t know if you were in the NDE-state or if you’d come out and were in non-REM sleep—”

“How long was I under, Tish?” he said, but he already knew the answer. He had heard the clock striking in the corridor of the White Star Line offices, chiming the hours. “Tell me.”

“Two hours,” Tish said, and started to cry.