Passage

by Connie Willis

  “Six weeks,” he said.

  “Six weeks?” Tish said. “Then how come we haven’t met before? How come I haven’t seen you at Happy Hour?”

  “I haven’t been able to find it,” he said. “I’m lucky to find my office.”

  Tish laughed a tinkling laugh. “Everybody gets lost in Mercy General. The most anybody knows is how to get from the parking lot to the floor they work on and back,” she said, going ahead of him up the stairs. So I can see her legs, he thought. “What kind of doctor are you?” she asked.

  “A neurologist,” he said. “I’m here conducting a research project.”

  “Really?” she said eagerly. “Do you need an assistant?”

  I need a partner, he thought.

  Tish opened a door marked “5,” and led him out into the hallway. “What kind of project is it?” she asked. “I really want to transfer out of Medicine.”

  He wondered if she’d be as eager to transfer after he told her what the project was about. “I’m investigating near-death experiences.”

  “You’re trying to prove there’s life after death?” Tish asked.

  “No,” he said grimly. “This is scientific research. I’m investigating the physical causes of near-death experiences.”

  “Really?” she said. “What do you think causes them?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” he said. “Temporal-lobe stimulation, for a start, and anoxia.”

  “Oh,” she said, eager again. “When you said near-death experiences, I thought you meant like what Mr. Mandrake does. You know, believing in life after death and stuff.”

  So does everybody, Richard thought bitterly, which is why it’s so hard to get serious NDE research funded. Everyone thinks the field’s full of channelers and cranks, and they’re right. Mr. Mandrake and his book, The Light at the End of the Tunnel, were prime examples. But what about Joanna Lander?

  She had good credentials, an undergraduate degree from Emory and a doctorate in cognitive psychology from Stanford, but a degree, even a medical degree, wasn’t a guarantee of sanity. Look at Dr. Seagal. And Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle had been a doctor. He’d invented Sherlock Holmes, for God’s sake, the ultimate believer in science and the scientific method, and yet he’d believed in communicating with the dead and in fairies.

  But Dr. Lander had had articles in The Psychology Quarterly Review and Nature, and she had just the kind of experience in interviewing NDE subjects he needed.

  “What do you know about Dr. Lander?” he asked Tish.

  “Not very much,” she said. “I’ve only been in Medicine for a month. She and Mr. Mandrake come around sometimes to interview patients.”

  “Together?” he asked sharply.

  “No, not usually. Usually he comes and then she comes later.”

  To follow up? Or was she working independently? “Does Dr. Lander believe in ‘life after death and stuff,’ as you call it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never talked to her except about whether a patient can have visitors. She’s sort of mousy,” she said. “She wears glasses. I think your research sounds really interesting, so if you do need an assistant—”

  “I’ll keep you in mind,” he said. They had reached the end of the hall.

  “I guess I’d better get back,” she said regretfully. “You go down that hall,” she pointed to the left, “and make a right. You’ll see the walkway. Go through it, take a right and then a left, and you’ll come to a bank of elevators. Take one down to fourth, turn right, and you’re there. You can’t get lost.”

  “Thanks,” he said, hoping she was right.

  “Anytime,” she said. She smiled up at him through her lashes. “Very nice meeting you, Dr. Wright. If you want to go to Happy Hour, just call me, and I’ll be glad to show you the way.”

  A right to the walkway, and then a right and a left, he thought, starting down the hall, determined to get to Peds before Dr. Lander left. Because once she did, he’d never find her, not in this rabbit warren. There were so many wings and connecting walkways and corridors that they could be on the same floor and never run into each other. For all he knew, she’d spent the day searching for him, too, or wandering lost in stairwells and tunnels.

  He took the elevator and turned right and yes, there was Peds. He could tell by the charge nurse, who was wearing a smock covered with clowns and bunches of balloons.

  “I’m looking for Dr. Lander,” he said to her.

  The nurse shook her head. “We paged her earlier, but she hasn’t come up yet.”

  Shit. “But she is coming?”

  “Uh-huh,” a voice from down the hall piped, and a kid in a red plaid robe and bare feet appeared in the door of one of the rooms. The—boy? girl? he couldn’t tell-looked about nine. He? she? had cropped dark blond hair, and there was a hospital gown under the plaid robe. Boy. Girls wore pink Barbie nightgowns, didn’t they?

  He decided not to risk guessing. “Hi,” he said, walking over to the kid. “What’s your name?”

  “Maisie,” she said. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Dr. Wright,” he said. “You know Dr. Lander?”

  Maisie nodded. “She’s coming to see me today.”

  Good, Richard thought. I’ll stay right here till she does.

  “She comes to see me every time I’m in,” Maisie said. “We’re both interested in disasters.”

  “Disasters?”

  “Like the Hindenburg,” she said. “Did you know there was a dog? It didn’t die. It jumped out.”

  “Really?” he said.

  “It’s in my book,” she said. “Its name was Ulla.”

  “Maisie,” a nurse—not the one who’d been at the desk-said. She came over to the door. “You’re not supposed to be out of bed.”

  “He asked me where Joanna was,” Maisie said, pointing at Richard.

  “Joanna Lander?” the nurse said. “She hasn’t been here today. And where are your slippers?” she said to Maisie. “You. Into bed,” she said, not unkindly. “Now.”

  “I can still talk to him, right, though, Nurse Barbara?”

  “For a little while,” Barbara said, walking Maisie into the room and helping her into the bed. She put the side up. “I want you resting,” she said.

  “Maybe I should—” Richard began.

  “What’s an Alsatian?” Maisie asked.

  “An Alsatian?” Barbara said blankly.

  “That’s what Ulla was,” Maisie said, but to Richard. “The dog on the Hindenburg.”

  The nurse smiled at him, patted Maisie’s foot under the covers, and said, “Don’t get out of bed,” and went out.

  “I think an Alsatian’s a German shepherd,” Richard said.

  “I’ll bet it is,” Maisie said, “because the Hindenburg was from Germany. It blew up while it was landing at Lakehurst. That’s in New Jersey. I have a picture,” Maisie said, putting the side of the bed down and scrambling out and over to the closet. “It’s in my book.” She reached in a pink duffel bag—there was Barbie, on the side of the duffel bag—and hauled out a book with a picture of Mount St. Helens on the cover and the title Disasters of the Twentieth Century. “Can you carry it over to the bed? I’m not supposed to carry heavy stuff.”

  “You bet,” Richard said. He carried it over and laid it on the bed. Maisie opened it up, standing beside the bed. “A girl and two little boys got burned. The girl died,” she said, short of breath. “Ulla didn’t die, though. See, here’s a picture.”

  He leaned over the book, expecting to see a picture of the dog, but it was a photo of the Hindenburg, sinking in flames. “Joanna gave me this book,” Maisie said, turning pages. “It’s got all kinds of disasters. See, this is the Johnstown flood.”

  He obediently looked at a photo of houses smashed against a bridge. A tree stuck out of the upstairs window of one of them. “So, you and Dr. Lander are good friends?”

  She nodded, continuing to turn pages. “She came to talk to me when I coded,” she sa
id matter-of-factly, “and that’s when we found out we both liked disasters. She studies near-death experiences, you know.”

  He nodded.

  “I went into V-fib. I have cardiomyopathy,” she said casually. “Do you know what that is?”

  Yes, he thought. A badly damaged heart, unable to pump properly, likely to go into ventricular fibrillation. That accounted for the breathlessness.

  “When I coded I heard this funny sound, and then I was in this tunnel,” Maisie said. “Some people remember all kinds of stuff, like they saw Jesus and heaven, but I didn’t. I couldn’t see hardly anything because it was dark and all foggy in the tunnel. Mr. Mandrake said there was a light at the end of the tunnel, but I didn’t see any light. Joanna says you should only say what you saw, not what anybody else says you should see.”

  “She’s right,” Richard said. “Mr. Mandrake interviewed you, too?”

  “Uh—huh,” Maisie said, and rolled her eyes. “He asked me if I saw people waiting for me, and I said, ‘No,’ because I couldn’t, and he said, ‘Try to remember.’ Joanna says you shouldn’t do that because sometimes you make up things that didn’t really happen. But Mr. Mandrake says, ‘Try to remember. There’s a light, isn’t there, dear?’ I hate it when people call me ‘dear.’ ”

  “Dr. Lander doesn’t do that?”

  “No,” she said, her emphaticness making her breathe harder. “She’s nice.”

  Well, there was a reference for you. Dr. Lander clearly wasn’t a researcher with a preset agenda. And she was obviously aware of the possibilities of post-NDE confabulation. And she had brought a book to a little girl, albeit a peculiar book for a child.

  “Look,” Maisie said. “This is the Great Molasses Flood. It happened in 1919.” She pointed to a grainy black-and-white photo of what looked like an oil slick. “These huge tanks full of molasses—that’s a kind of syrup,” she confided.

  Richard nodded.

  “These huge tanks broke and all the molasses poured out and drowned everybody. Twenty-one people. I don’t know if any of them were little kids. It would be kind of funny to drown in syrup, don’t you think?” she asked, beginning to wheeze.

  “Didn’t the nurse say you were supposed to stay in bed?” he said.

  “I will in just a minute. What’s your favorite disaster? Mine’s the Hindenburg,” Maisie said, turning back to the photo of it, falling tail first, engulfed in flames. “This one crew guy was up on the balloon part when it blew up and everybody else fell, but he hung on to the metal things.” She pointed to the metal framework visible among the flames.

  “Struts,” Richard said.

  “His hands all burned off, but he didn’t let go. I need to tell Joanna about him when she comes.”

  “Did she say when she was coming?” Richard asked.

  She shrugged, bending over the picture, her nose practically touching it, as if she was looking for the hapless crewman amid the flames. Or the dog. “I don’t know if she knows I’m here yet. I told Nurse Barbara to page her. Sometimes she turns her pager off though, but she always comes to see me as soon as she finds out I’m here,” Maisie said, “and I have lots more Hindenburg pictures to show you. See, here’s the captain. He died. Did you know—”

  He interrupted her. “Maisie, I’ve got to go.”

  “Wait, you can’t go yet. I know she’ll be here pretty soon. She always comes just as soon as—”

  Barbara poked her head in the door. “Dr. Wright? There’s a message for you.”

  “See,” Maisie said as if that proved something.

  “I thought I told you to get back in bed,” Barbara said, and Maisie hastily climbed up into it. “Dr. Wright, Tish Vanderbeck said to tell you that she’d gotten in touch with Dr. Lander and asked her to come up to Medicine.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Maisie, I’ve got to go meet Dr. Lander. It was nice talking to you.”

  “Wait, you can’t go yet,” Maisie said. “I haven’t told you about the girl and the little boys.”

  She looked genuinely distressed, but he didn’t want to miss Dr. Lander again. “All right,” he said. “One quick story and then I have to go.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Well, the people had to jump out because everything was on fire. The girl jumped, but the little boys were too scared to, and one of them, his hair caught on fire, so his mother threw him out. The crew guy was on fire, too, his hands, but he didn’t let go.” She looked up innocently. “What do you think that would be like? Being on fire?”

  “I don’t know,” Richard said, wondering if talking about such grisly things with such a sick little girl was a good idea. “Terrible, I’d think.”

  Maisie nodded. “I think I’d let go. There was this other guy—”

  Talk about letting go. “Maisie, I have to go find Dr. Lander. I don’t want to miss her.”

  “Wait! When you see Dr. Lander, tell her I have something to tell her. About near-death experiences. Tell her I’m in Room 456.”

  “I will,” he said and started out.

  “It’s about the crew guy who was up inside the balloon part of the Hindenburg when it exploded. He—”

  At this rate, he would be here all day. “I’ve got to go, Maisie,” he said and didn’t wait for her to protest. He hurried back down the hall, turned left, and immediately got lost. He had to stop and ask an orderly how to get to the walkway.

  “You go back down this hall, turn right, and go clear to the end of the hall,” the orderly said. “Where are you trying to get?”

  “Medicine,” Richard said.

  “That’s in the main building. The fastest way is to go down this hall and turn left till you come to a door marked ‘Staff.’ Through there there’s a stairway. It’ll take you down to second. You take the walkway and then cut through Radiology to the service elevator, and take it back up to third.”

  Richard did, practically running down the last hallway, afraid Dr. Lander would have come and gone. She wasn’t there yet. “Or at least I haven’t seen her,” the charge nurse said. “She might be in with Mrs. Davenport.”

  He went down to Mrs. Davenport’s room, but she wasn’t there. “I wish she’d get here,” Mrs. Davenport said. “I have so much to tell her and Mr. Mandrake. While I was floating above my body, I heard the doctor say—”

  “Mr. Mandrake?” Richard said.

  “Maurice Mandrake,” she said. “He wrote The Light at the End of the Tunnel. He’s going to be so excited that I’ve remembered—”

  “I thought Dr. Lander was interviewing you.”

  “They both are. They work together, you know.”

  “They work together?”

  “Yes, I think so. They’ve both come in and interviewed me.”

  That doesn’t mean they work together, Richard thought.

  “—although I have to say, she’s not nearly as nice as Mr. Mandrake. He’s so interested in what you have to say.”

  “Did she tell you they worked together?”

  “Not exactly,” she said, looking confused. “I assumed . . . Mr. Mandrake’s writing a new book about messages from the Other Side.”

  She didn’t know for certain that they worked together, but if that was even a possibility . . . Messages from the dead, for God’s sake.

  “Excuse me,” he said abruptly and walked out of the room, straight into a tall, gray-haired man in a pin-striped suit. “Sorry,” Richard said, and started past, but the man held his arm.

  “You’re Dr. Wright, aren’t you?” he said, gripping Richard’s hand in a confident handshake. “I was just on my way up to see you. I want to discuss your research.”

  Richard wondered who this was. A fellow researcher? No, the suit was too expensive, the hair too slick. A hospital board member.

  “I intended to come see you after I saw Mrs. Davenport, and here you are,” he said. “I assume you’ve been in listening to her account of her NDE, or, as I prefer to call them, her NAE, near-afterlife experience, because that’s what they are.
A glimpse of the afterlife that awaits us, a message from beyond the grave.”

  Maurice Mandrake, Richard thought. Shit. He should have recognized him from his book jacket photos. And paid more attention to where he was going.

  “I’m delighted you’ve joined us here at Mercy General,” Mandrake said, “and that science is finally acknowledging the existence of the afterlife. The science and medical establishments so often have closed minds when it comes to immortality. I’m delighted that you don’t. Now, what exactly does your research entail?”

  “I really can’t talk now. I have an appointment,” Richard said, but Mandrake had no intention of letting him go.

  “The fact that people who have had near-death experiences consistently report seeing the same things proves that they are not mere hallucinations.”

  “Dr. Wright?” the charge nurse called from her desk. “Are you still looking for Dr. Lander? We’ve located her.”

  “Jo?” Mandrake said delightedly. “Is that who your appointment’s with? Lovely girl. She and I work together.”

  Richard’s heart sank. “You work together?”

  “Oh, yes. We’ve worked closely on a number of cases.”

  I should have known, Richard thought.

  “Of course, our emphasis is different,” Mandrake said. “I am currently interested in the message aspect of the NAEs. And we have different interview methods,” he added, frowning slightly. “Were you supposed to meet Dr. Lander here? She is often rather difficult to locate.”

  “Dr. Lander’s not the person I have the appointment with,” Richard said. He turned to the charge nurse. “No. I don’t need to see her.”

  Mandrake grabbed his hand again. “Delighted to have met you, Dr. Wright, and I’m looking forward to our working together.”

  Over my dead body, Richard thought. And I won’t be sending you any messages from beyond the grave.

  “I must go see Mrs. Davenport now,” Mandrake said, as if Richard were the one who had detained him, and left him standing there.