Passage

by Connie Willis

  He should have known better. NDE researchers might collect data and do statistical samplings, might publish papers in The Psychology Quarterly Review, might even make a good impression on children, but it was all a blind. They were really latter-day spiritualists using pseudoscientific trappings to lend credibility to what was really religion. He started down the hall to the elevators.

  “Dr. Wright!” Tish called after him.

  He turned around.

  Tish said, “Here she is,” and turned to hurry after a young woman in a skirt and cardigan sweater walking toward the nurses’ station. “Dr. Lander,” she said as she caught up to her. “Dr. Wright wants to talk to you.”

  Dr. Lander said, “Tell him I’m—”

  “He’s right here,” Tish said, waving him over. “Dr. Wright, I found her for you.”

  Damn you, Tish, he thought, another minute and I would have been out of here. And now what am I supposed to tell Dr. Lander I wanted her for?

  He walked over. She was not, as Tish had said, mousy, although she did wear glasses, wire-rimmed ones that gave her face a piquant look. She had hazel eyes and brown hair that was pulled back with silver barrettes.

  “Dr. Lander,” he said. “I—”

  “Look, Dr. Wright,” she said, putting her hand up to stop him. “I’m sure you’ve had a fascinating near-death experience, but right now’s not the time. I’ve had a very bad day, and I’m not the person you want to talk to anyway. You need to see Maurice Mandrake. I can give you his pager number.”

  “He’s in with Mrs. Davenport,” Tish said helpfully.

  “There, Tish will show you where he is. I’m sure he’ll want to know all the details. Tish, take him in to Mr. Mandrake.” She started past him.

  “Don’t bother, Tish,” he said, angered by her rudeness. “I’m not interested in talking to Dr. Lander’s partner.”

  “Partner?” Dr. Lander wheeled to face him. “Who told you I was his partner? Did he tell you that? First he steals all my subjects and ruins them and now he’s telling people we work together! He has no right!” She stamped her foot. “I do not work with Mr. Mandrake!”

  Richard grabbed her arm. “Wait. Whoa. Time out. I think we need to start over.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I do not work with Maurice Mandrake. I am attempting to do legitimate scientific research on near-death experiences, but he is making it absolutely impossible—”

  “And I’ve been attempting to contact you to talk to you about your research,” he said, extending his hand. “Richard Wright. I’m doing a project on the neurological causes of the near-death experience.”

  “Joanna Lander,” she said, shaking his hand. “Look, I’m really sorry. I—”

  He grinned. “You’ve had a bad day.”

  “Yes,” she said, and he was surprised by the bleakness of the look she gave him.

  “You said this was a bad time to talk,” he said hastily. “We don’t have to do it right now. We could set up a meeting tomorrow, if that would be better.”

  She nodded. “Today just isn’t—one of my subjects—” She recovered herself. “Tomorrow would be good. What time?”

  “Ten o’clock? Or we could meet for lunch. When is the cafeteria open?”

  “Hardly ever,” she said, and smiled. “Ten is fine. Where?”

  “My lab’s up on six-east,” he said. “602.”

  “Tomorrow at ten,” she said, and started down the hall, but before she had gone five steps she had turned and begun walking back toward him.

  “What—” he said.

  “Shh,” she said, passing him. “Maurice Mandrake,” she murmured, and pushed open a white door marked “Staff Only.” He glanced back, saw a pin-striped suit coming around the corner, and ducked in the door after her. It was a stairway, leading down.

  “Sorry,” she said, starting down the gray-painted cement stairs, “but I was afraid if I had to talk to him right then, I’d kill him.”

  “I know the feeling,” Richard said, starting down the stairs after her. “I already had one encounter today.”

  “This’ll take us down to first,” she said, already down to the landing, “and then to the main elevators.” She stopped short, looking dismayed.

  “What is it?” he said, coming down to where she was standing. A strip of yellow “Do Not Cross” tape stretched across the stairway. Below it, the stairs gleamed with shiny, wet, pale blue paint.

  “Oh, shit.”

  —LAST WORDS ON MAJORITY OF FLIGHT

  RECORDERS RECOVERED AFTER PLANE CRASHES

  MAYBE THE PAINT’S DRIED,” Dr. Wright said, even though it was obviously still wet.

  Joanna stooped and touched it. “Nope,” she said, holding her finger up to show him the pale blue spot on the tip.

  “And there’s no other way out?”

  “Back the way we came,” she said. “Did Mr. Mandrake happen to tell you where he was going?”

  “Yes,” Richard said. “In to see Mrs. Davenport.”

  “Oh, no, he’ll be in there forever,” she said. “Mrs. Davenport’s life review is longer than most people’s lives. And it’s been three hours since I saw her last. She’s no doubt ‘remembered’ all sorts of details in the meantime. And what she hasn’t, Mr. Mandrake will manufacture.”

  “How did a nutcase like Mandrake get permission to do research in a reputable hospital like Mercy General anyway?” he asked.

  “Money,” she said. “He donated half the royalties of The Light at the End of the Tunnel to them. It’s sold over twenty-five million copies.”

  “Proving the adage that there’s one born every minute.”

  “And that people believe what they want to believe. Especially Esther Brightman.”

  “Who’s Esther Brightman?”

  “The widow of Harold Brightman of Brightman Industries and the oldest member of Mercy General’s board of trustees. And a devout disciple of Mandrake’s, I think because she might cross over to the Other Side at any moment. She’s donated even more money to Mercy General than Mandrake, and the entire Research Institute, and when she dies, they get the whole kit and caboodle. If she doesn’t change her will in the meantime.”

  “Which means allowing Mandrake to pollute the premises.”

  She nodded. “And any other project connected with NDEs. Which is what I’m doing here.”

  He frowned. “Isn’t Mrs. Brightman afraid legitimate scientific research might undermine the idea of life after death?”

  She shook her head. “She’s convinced that the evidence will prove the existence of the afterlife, and that I’ll come to see the light. I should be grateful to them. Most hospitals won’t touch NDE research with a ten-foot pole. I’m not, however. Grateful. Especially right now.” She looked speculatively up at the door. “We might be able to sneak past him while Mrs. Davenport’s telling him the riveting story of her third-grade spelling test.” She tiptoed up the stairs and opened the door a silent crack.

  Mr. Mandrake was standing in the hall, talking to Tish. “Mrs. Davenport and the others have been sent back as emissaries,” he said, “to bring us word of what awaits us on the Other Side.”

  Joanna eased the door shut carefully and went back down to where Dr. Wright was standing. “He’s talking to Tish,” she whispered, “telling her how NDEs are messages from the Other Side. And meanwhile, we’re trapped on This Side.” She walked past him down to the landing. “I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand the thought of having to listen to his theories of life after death. Not today. So I think I’ll just wait here till he leaves.”

  She went around the landing and sat down out of sight of the door above, her feet on the step above the yellow “Do Not Cross” tape. “Don’t feel like you have to stay, Dr. Wright. I’m sure you’ve got more important things—”

  “I’ve already been caught once today by Mandrake,” he said. “And I wanted to talk to you, remember? About working with me on my project. This looks like an ideal place. No noise, no inter
ruptions—but it’s not Dr. Wright, not when we’re stuck in a half-painted stairwell together. I’m Richard.” He extended his hand.

  “Joanna,” she said, shaking it.

  He sat down across the landing facing her. “Tell me about your bad day, Joanna.”

  She leaned her head back against the wall. “A man died.”

  “Somebody you were close to?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t even know him. I was interviewing him in the ER . . . he . . . ” He was there one minute, she thought, and the next he was gone. And that wasn’t just a figure of speech, a euphemism for death like “passed away.” It was how it had felt. Looking at him lying there in the ER, the monitor wailing, the cardiologist and nurses frantically working over him, it hadn’t felt like Greg Menotti had shut down or ceased to exist. It was as if he’d vanished.

  “He’d had an NDE?” Richard asked.

  “No. I don’t know. He’d had a heart attack and coded in the ambulance, and he said he didn’t remember anything, but while the doctor was examining him, he coded again, and he said, ‘Too far for her to come.’ ” She looked up at Richard. “The nurses thought he was talking about his girlfriend, but he wasn’t, she was already there.” And he was somewhere else, Joanna thought. Like Coma Carl. Somewhere too far for her to come.

  “How old was he?” Richard asked.

  “Thirty-four.”

  “And probably no prior damage,” he said angrily. “If he’d survived another five minutes, they could have gotten him up to surgery, done a bypass, and given him ten, twenty, even fifty more years.” He leaned forward eagerly. “That’s why this research is so important. If we can figure out what happens in the brain when it’s dying, then we can devise strategies for preventing unnecessary deaths like the one that happened this afternoon. And I believe the NDE’s the key, that it’s a survival mechanism—”

  “Then you don’t agree with Noyes and Linden that the NDE’s a result of the human mind’s inability to comprehend its own death?”

  “No, and I don’t agree with Dr. Roth’s theory that it’s psychological detachment from fear. There’s no evolutionary advantage to making dying easier or more pleasant. When the body’s injured, the brain initiates a series of survival strategies. It shuts down blood to every part of the body that can do without it, it increases respiration rate to produce more oxygen, it concentrates blood where it’s most needed—”

  “And you think the NDE is one of those strategies?” Joanna asked.

  He nodded. “Most patients who’ve had NDEs were revived by paddles or norepinephrine, but some began breathing again on their own.”

  “And you think the NDE was what revived them?”

  “I think the neurochemical events causing the NDE revived them, and the NDE is a side effect of those events. And a clue to what they are and how they work. And if I can find that out, that knowledge could eventually be used to revive patients who’ve coded. Are you familiar with the new RIPT scan?”

  Joanna shook her head. “Is it similar to a PET scan?”

  He nodded. “They both measure brain activity, but the RIPT scan is exponentially faster and more detailed. Plus, it uses chemical tracers, not radioactive ones, so the number of scans per subject doesn’t have to be limited. It simultaneously photographs the electrochemical activity in different subsections of the brain for a 3-D picture of neural activity in the working brain. Or the dying brain.”

  “You mean you could theoretically take a picture of an NDE?”

  “Not theoretically,” Richard said. “I’ve—”

  The door above them opened.

  They both froze.

  Above them a man’s voice said, “—very productive session. Mrs. Davenport has remembered experiencing the Command to Return and the Life Review while she was dead.”

  “Oh, God,” Joanna whispered, “It’s Mr. Mandrake.”

  Richard craned his neck carefully around the corner.

  “You’re right,” he whispered back. “He’s holding the door partway open.”

  “Can he see us from there?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then it’s true?” a young woman’s voice said from the door.

  “That’s Tish,” Joanna whispered.

  Richard nodded, and they both sat there perfectly still, their heads turned toward the stairs and the door, listening alertly.

  “Your whole life really does flash before you when you die?” Tish asked.

  “Yes, the events of your life are shown to you in a panorama of images called the Life Review,” Mr. Mandrake said. “The Angel of Light leads the soul in its examination of its life and of the meaning of those events. I’ve just been with Mrs. Davenport. The Angel showed her the events of her life and said, ‘See and understand.’ ” Mandrake must have leaned against the door and opened it wider because his voice was suddenly louder. “See and understand we shall,” he said. “Not only shall we understand our own lives but life itself, the vast ocean of understanding and love that shall be ours when we reach eternity.”

  Richard looked at Joanna. “How long is he likely to go on like that?” he whispered.

  “Eternally,” she whispered back.

  “So you really believe there’s an afterlife?” Tish asked.

  Doesn’t she have any patients to attend to? Joanna thought, exasperated. But this was Tish, to whom flirting was as natural as breathing. She couldn’t help sending out spinnerets over any male, even Mr. Mandrake. And Richard had obviously met her. Joanna wondered how he’d managed to get away.

  “I don’t think there’s an afterlife,” Mr. Mandrake said. “I know it. I have scientific evidence it exists.”

  “Really?” Tish said.

  “I have eyewitnesses,” he said. “My subjects report that the Other Side is a beautiful place, filled with golden light and the faces of loved ones.”

  There was a pause. Maybe he’s leaving, Joanna thought hopefully.

  The door opened still farther, and someone started down the stairs. Richard shot to his feet and was across the landing in an instant, pulling Joanna to her feet, pressing them both flat against the wall, his arm across her, holding her against the wall. They waited, not breathing.

  The door clicked shut, and footsteps clattered down the cement stairs toward them. He’d be down to the landing in another minute, and how were they going to explain their huddling here like a couple of children playing hide-and-seek? Joanna looked questioningly at Richard. He put his finger to his lips. The footsteps came closer.

  “Mr. Mandrake!” Tish’s distant voice called, and they could hear the door open again. “Mr. Mandrake! You can’t go down that way. It’s wet.”

  “Wet?” Mr. Mandrake said.

  “They’ve been painting all the stairwells.”

  There was a pause. Richard’s arm tightened against Joanna, and then there was a sound of footsteps going back up.

  “Where were you going, Mr. Mandrake?” Tish asked.

  “Down to the ER.”

  “Oh, then, you need to go over to Orthopedics and take the elevator. Here, let me show you the way.”

  Another long pause, and the door clicked shut.

  Richard leaned past Joanna to look up the stairs. “He’s gone.”

  He took his arm away and turned to face Joanna. “I was afraid he was going to insist on seeing for himself if the stairs were wet.”

  “Are you kidding?” Joanna said. “He’s based his entire career on taking things on faith.”

  Richard laughed and started up the stairs toward the door. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said. “He’s still out there.”

  Richard stopped and looked down at her questioningly. “He said he was going down to the ER.”

  She shook her head. “Not while he’s got an audience.”

  Richard opened the door cautiously and eased it shut again. “You’re right. He’s telling Tish how the Angel of Light explained the mysteries of the universe to Mrs. Davenport.”<
br />
  “That’ll take a month,” Joanna said. She slumped down resignedly on the step. “You’re a doctor. How long does it take for someone to starve to death?”

  He looked surprised. “You’re hungry?”

  She leaned her head back against the wall. “I had a Pop-Tart for breakfast. About a million years ago.”

  “You’re kidding,” he said, rummaging in the pockets of his lab coat. “Would you like an energy bar?”

  “You have food?” she said wonderingly.

  “The cafeteria’s always closed when I try to eat there. Is it ever open?”

  “No,” Joanna said.

  “There don’t seem to be any restaurants around here either.”

  “There aren’t,” Joanna said. “Taco Pierre’s is the closest, and it’s ten blocks away.”

  “Taco Pierre’s?”

  She nodded. “Fast-food burritos and E. coli.”

  “Umm,” he said. He pulled out an apple, polished it against his lapel, and held it out to her. “Apple?”

  She took it gratefully. “First you save me from Mr. Mandrake and then from starvation,” she said, taking a bite out of the apple. “Whatever it is you want me to do, I’ll do it.”

  “Good,” he said, reaching in his other pocket. “I want you to define the near-death experience for me.”

  “Define?” she said around a mouthful of apple.

  “The sensations. What people experience when they have an NDE.” He pulled out a foil-wrapped Nutri-Grain bar and handed it to her. “Do they all experience the same thing, or is it different for each individual?”

  “No,” she said, trying to tear the energy-bar wrapper open. “There definitely seems to be a core experience, as Mr. Mandrake calls it.” She bit the paper, still trying to tear it. “Defining it’s another matter.”

  Richard took the energy bar away from her, tore it open, and handed it back to her.

  “Thanks,” she said. “The problem is Mr. Mandrake’s book and all the near-death-experience stuff out there. They’ve told people what they should see, and sure enough, they all see it.”

  He frowned. “Then you don’t think people actually see a tunnel and a light and a divine figure?”