Passage

by Connie Willis

  “And is she?”

  “No.”

  Vielle nodded. “Barbara told me they put her on the transplant list. It’s too bad. She’s a great kid.”

  “She is,” Joanna said and took her coat into the bedroom.

  “Did you bring the cream cheese?” Vielle called from the kitchen.

  Joanna brought it in to her. “What are you making?”

  “This luscious dip,” Vielle said, leaning over a cookbook with a knife in her hand. “It’s got deviled ham in it. And chiles.” She glanced at the clock. “Listen, the reason I wanted you to come over early was so we’d have a chance to talk before Dr. Wright gets here. So how are you two getting along?”

  “You invited Richard to Dish Night?” Joanna said. “No wonder he looked at me funny when I told him I’d see him tomorrow.”

  “Richard, huh? So you two are on a first-name basis already?”

  “We’re not—” A thought struck her. “That’s what you called from the ER about, wasn’t it? And why you were acting so peculiar.”

  “I called to tell you I couldn’t find any movies that didn’t have death in them and did you have any suggestions,” Vielle said, opening the refrigerator and getting out a bunch of green onions, “and you weren’t there, so I told him some of us were getting together for munchies and a movie and did he want to drop by.”

  “Some of us!” Joanna said. “And when he gets here, and it’s you and me, you don’t think he’ll realize you’ve been matchmaking? Or were you planning to hand me the deviled ham dip and duck out the back door? I can’t believe you did this.”

  “Don’t you like him?”

  “I hardly know him. We only started working together two days ago.”

  Vielle shook the bunch of onions at her. “And you’ll never get a chance to know him once the nurses of Mercy General get their claws into him. Do you know who asked me if he was single this afternoon? Tish Vanderbeck. You don’t see her waiting around because she ‘hardly knows him.’ If you don’t watch it, you’ll get stuck with somebody like Harvey.”

  “Harvey? Who’s Harvey?”

  “The driver for Fairhill Mortuaries. He asks me out every time he comes to pick up a body.”

  “Is he nice?”

  “He tells me embalming stories. Did you know they really like carbon monoxide poisoning over at Fairhill because it turns the corpses a pretty rose-pink, in contrast to the usual gray? He imparted that little gem Tuesday and then asked me out for sushi.”

  Tuesday. The day Greg Menotti died. She wondered if his was the body Harvey had picked up. “Did you find out if there was a fifty-eight in Greg Menotti’s health insurance number?”

  “Greg Menotti?” Vielle said as if she’d never heard the name before, and then, “Oh, right. Yes, I checked. No fifty-eights. I checked his address, office, home and cell phone numbers, health insurance number—”

  “His Social Security number?” Joanna asked.

  She nodded. “His license number was on the paramedic’s report. I checked that, too. Ditto his girlfriend’s address and phone numbers. Nothing.” She bent over to get a cutting board out of the cupboard. “Like I told you, people in extremis say things that don’t make any sense. I had a guy who kept calling, ‘Lucille,’ and we all thought it was his wife. Turns out it was his dog.”

  “Then it did mean something,” Joanna said.

  “That one did, but a lot of them don’t. A head trauma last week kept saying, ‘camel,’ which obviously wasn’t his wife or his cat.”

  “What was it?”

  “We didn’t get a chance to ask him,” Vielle said tersely, “but my guess is, it didn’t mean anything. People like your infarction aren’t getting enough oxygen, they’re disoriented, and they’re not making any sense.”

  She was right. When he was dying, the author Tom Dooley had told his friend to go ahead to the airport and save him a seat on the plane, and prima ballerina Anna Pavlova had ordered her doctors to get her swan costume ready.

  “Back to Dr. Wright,” Vielle said. “I’m not saying you have to marry the guy. All we’re doing is putting an option on him. They do it in Hollywood all the time.” She laid the onions in a row on the board. “You option the screenplay, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to make a movie out of it, but later on, if you decide you do want to, somebody else hasn’t snapped it up in the meantime.”

  “Dr. Wright is not a screenplay.”

  “It was a simile.”

  Joanna shook her head at her. “Metaphor. A simile is a direct comparison using like or as. A metaphor is indirect. My English teacher spent my whole senior year drilling the difference into me.” She stopped, staring at the cutting board.

  “Your English teacher should have spent time on more important things,” Vielle said, “like teaching you that when Mr. Right, or Dr. Wright, comes along, you have to—”

  The doorbell rang. “He’s here,” Vielle said, but Joanna didn’t hear her. For an instant, standing there watching Vielle chop green onions, she had had the feeling, out of nowhere, that she knew what Greg Menotti had been talking about, that she knew what “fifty-eight” meant.

  It must have been what she or Vielle had said. They had been talking about Dr. Wright, and—

  “Come on in,” Vielle said from the living room. “Joanna’s in the kitchen. Sorry about the knife. I’m in the middle of making dip.”

  Something about optioning a screenplay. No. It stayed tantalizingly there at the edge of her memory, just out of reach.

  “Look who’s here,” Vielle said, leading Richard into the kitchen. “I believe you two know each other.”

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” Richard said, handing Vielle a six-pack of Coke. “I got caught by Mandrake on my way out. Oh, and Joanna, I think I’ve got a nurse lined up to assist. Tish Vanderbeck. She works on third.”

  Behind him, Vielle mouthed, “What did I tell you? Tell him no.” Joanna ignored her.

  “She says she knows you,” Richard said.

  “I do know her,” Joanna said. “She’ll be great. What did Mandrake want?”

  “He wanted to know if—”

  “Stop!” Vielle said, brandishing the knife. “This is Dish Night. No talking about work or the hospital allowed.”

  “Oh,” Richard said. “Sorry. I didn’t know there were rules. This isn’t like Fight Club, is it?”

  “No,” Joanna laughed.

  Behind him, Vielle made an “okay” sign and mouthed, “Mr. Right.”

  “It isn’t a club at all. Vielle and I got to talking one day and discovered we both liked discussing movies.”

  “As opposed to bitching about the patients and the doctors and the cafeteria’s never being open,” Vielle said.

  “It isn’t, is it?” Richard said. “It’s closed every time I go down there.”

  Vielle held up a warning finger. “Rule Number One.”

  “So we decided to get together once a week and watch a double feature,” Joanna said.

  “And eat,” Vielle said, taking a package of hot dogs out of the refrigerator. “Rule Number Two, only concession-stand foods allowed—popcorn, Jujubees—”

  “Deviled ham dip,” Joanna said.

  Vielle glared at her. “Rule Number Three, you have to stay for the entire double feature—”

  “But you don’t have to pay any attention to it,” Joanna said. “You’re allowed to talk during the movie and make rude comments about the movie or about movies in general.”

  Vielle nodded. “Dances with Wolves was good for all of the above.”

  “Rule Number Four, no movies with Sylvester Stallone in them, no Woody Allen movies, and no Titanic. This is a Titanic-free zone.”

  “And why is it called Dish Night?” Richard asked. “I thought Rule Number One was no gossiping.”

  “It is,” Vielle said. “The reason it’s called Dish Night is—”

  “Because my grandmother used to tell me about going to the movies in the thirties,”
Joanna said quickly, “when they used to have Dish Night and raffle off a set of dishes, and this is an old-fashioned night at the movies. Vielle, where are the movies?”

  “Right here.” She handed them to Joanna. “And because we’re a couple of dishes. Or at least Joanna is. Why don’t you two go start the movie? I’ve got to finish my dip.” She pushed them into the living room.

  And could you be more obvious? Joanna thought. “I want to apologize for my idiot friend,” Joanna said. “And for the mix-up this afternoon. She forgot to tell me you were coming.”

  He grinned at her. “I figured that out.”

  Joanna glanced toward the kitchen. “What did Mr. Mandrake want?”

  “He said he’d heard I had a new partner,” Richard said.

  “Good old Gossip General,” Joanna said, shaking her head. “Did he know it was me?”

  “I don’t think so. He—”

  “Rule Number One,” Vielle shouted from the kitchen.

  Joanna called back, “Which movie do you want to watch first? A Will to Win or” —she looked at the second box—“Lady and the Tramp?”

  “You said something with no deaths in it,” Vielle shouted.

  “Is that a rule, too?” Richard asked.

  “No,” Joanna said, turning on the TV. An ad for Carnival Cruise Lines was on. A couple stood on deck, leaning over the railing. “What did Mandrake say?”

  Richard grinned. “He came in when I was working on the scans, which, by the way, did show that Amelia Tanaka had a lower level of activity at the endorphin receptor sites, and said he’d heard I had a new partner, and he hoped I hadn’t made a final decision yet because he had several excellent people he could recommend.”

  “I’ll bet,” Joanna said, sticking A Will to Win in the VCR and fast-forwarding through the previews to the opening credits. She hit “pause.”

  “He also said he hoped the partner I chose wouldn’t be ‘narrow-minded’ and ‘biased toward traditional, so-called scientific interpretations of the NDE,’ ” Richard said, “but would be ‘open to nonrationalist possibilities.’ ”

  Joanna laughed.

  “Well, you obviously can’t be talking about work,” Vielle said, appearing with two cans of Coke. She handed them to them. “What’s wrong with the movie?”

  “Nothing,” Joanna said. “We were waiting for you.”

  “Go ahead and start it,” Vielle said. “I’ll be right in. Sit down.”

  They sat down on the couch. Joanna picked up the remote and unpaused the video, and they watched as a family gathered around the bedside of an old man. A nurse stood next to the bed, taking his pulse. “I’ve gathered you all here because I’m dying,” the old man said.

  “Hey, Vielle,” Joanna called, “I thought this was supposed to be a death-free movie.”

  “It is,” Vielle said, appearing in the door with the knife and a can of chiles. “Isn’t it?”

  Joanna pointed to the screen, where the old man was clutching his chest and gasping, “My pills!”

  “Oh, my God,” Vielle said, coming around the couch for a closer look. “The Blockbuster clerk told me this was a comedy.”

  “It is,” Richard said. “I’ve seen a preview. The old man dies without telling them where he’s hidden his will, and all the heirs race around trying to find it.”

  The old man began to gasp and wheeze. “Have to . . . tell you . . . ” he choked out, and everyone, including the nurse, leaned forward. “ . . . my will . . . ”

  “This would never happen,” Vielle said. “They’d have called 911 by now, and the whole bunch of them would be enacting this little scene in the middle of my ER.”

  “Oh, that’s right, you work in the ER,” Richard said to Vielle. “I heard about the incident this afternoon.”

  “What incident?” Joanna asked sharply.

  “You’re breaking Dish Night Rule Number One,” Vielle said. “No discussing work.”

  Joanna turned to Richard. “What did you hear?”

  “Just that a woman high on this new drug rogue came in and was waving a razor around,” Richard said.

  “A razor,” Joanna said. “Vielle, you have got to—”

  “Finish making my dip.” She waved the knife at them. “Go on. Watch the movie. I’ll be right back.” She disappeared.

  “Excuse me for a minute,” Joanna said and followed her into the kitchen. “Why didn’t you tell me about it?” she demanded.

  “It’s Dish Night,” Vielle said, stirring chiles into the dip. “Besides, it was nothing. Nobody got hurt.”

  “Vielle—”

  “I know, I know, I’ve got to get out of there. Do you think we need a knife, or should we just dip?”

  “We don’t need a knife,” Joanna said, giving up. Vielle handed her the plate of crackers and picked up the dip, and they went back into the living room.

  “What’d we miss?” Vielle asked, setting the dip on the coffee table.

  “Nothing,” Richard said. “I paused it.” He picked up the remote and pointed it at the screen.

  “I’ve gathered . . . you here . . . ,” the old man, lying against his multiple pillows, gasped. “ . . . Don’t have long to live . . . ” The family leaned forward like a pack of vultures. “Made a new will . . . hid it in . . . the . . . ” He flung his arms out and fell back peacefully against the pillows, his eyes closed. The family exchanged glances.

  “Is he gone?” one of the women said, sniffing phonily and dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief.

  “Movie dying,” Vielle sniffed, dipping a cracker in the deviled ham dip. It broke off.

  “Movie dying?” Richard asked, scooping up dip with a cracker. It broke off, too.

  “Meaning totally unrealistic,” Joanna said. “Like movie parking, where the hero is always able to find a parking place right in front of the store or the police station.”

  “Or movie lighting,” Vielle said, digging cracker pieces out of the dip.

  “Let me guess,” Richard said. “Being able to see in the middle of a cave in the middle of the night.”

  “We should add a new category for this kind of thing,” Joanna said, gesturing at the screen, where the relatives were bickering across the old man’s body. “I mean, why do people in movies always say things like, ‘The secret is—arggghh!’ Or ‘The murderer is—’ Bang! You’d think, if they had something that important to communicate, they’d say that first, that they wouldn’t say, ‘The will is in the oak tree,’ they’d say, ‘Oak tree! Will! It’s in there!’ If I were dying, I’d say the important part first, so I wouldn’t run the risk of going ‘ . . . argghh!’ before I managed to get it out.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Vielle said, “because you wouldn’t be saying something like that in the first place. They only talk about secrets and clues in the movies. In the six years I’ve been in the ER, I’ve never had a patient whose last words were about a will or who the murderer is. And that includes murder victims.”

  “What are their last words?” Richard asked curiously.

  “Obscenities, a lot of them, unfortunately,” Vielle said. “Also, ‘My side hurts,’ ‘I can’t breathe,’ ‘Turn me over.’ ”

  Joanna nodded. “That’s what Walt Whitman said to his nurse. And Robert Kennedy said, ‘Don’t lift me.’ ”

  Vielle explained, “As if talking to patients about their NDEs isn’t bad enough, in her spare time Joanna researches famous people’s last words.”

  “I wanted to know if there are similarities between what they say and what people report in their NDEs,” Joanna explained.

  “And are there?” Richard asked.

  “Sometimes. Thomas Edison’s last words were ‘It’s beautiful over there,’ but he was sitting by a window. He may just have been looking at the view. Or maybe not. John Wayne said, ‘Did you see that flash of light?’ But Vielle’s right. Mostly they say things like ‘My head hurts.’ ”

  “Or, ‘I don’t feel good,’ ” Vielle said, “or, ‘I can�
��t sleep,’ or, ‘I’m cold.’ ”

  Joanna thought of Amelia Tanaka asking for a blanket. “Do they ever say, ‘Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no’?” she asked.

  Vielle nodded. “A lot of them, and a lot of them ask for ice,” she said, taking a swig of Coke, “or water.”

  Joanna nodded. “General Grant asked for water, and so did Marie Curie. And Lenin.”

  “That’s funny,” Richard said. “You’d expect Lenin’s last words to be ‘Workers, arise!’ or something.”

  Vielle shook her head. “The eternal verities aren’t what’s on people’s minds when they’re dying. They’re much more concerned with the matter at hand.”

  “ ‘Put your hands on my shoulders and don’t struggle,’ ” Joanna murmured.

  “Who said that?” Richard asked.

  “W. S. Gilbert. You know, of Gilbert and Sullivan. Pirates of Penzance. He died saving a young girl from drowning. I’ve always thought that if I could choose, that’s how I’d like to die.”

  “By drowning?” Vielle said. “No, you don’t want to drown. That’s a terrible way to die, trust me.”

  “Gilbert didn’t drown,” Joanna said. “He had a heart attack. I meant, I’d like to die saving somebody else’s life.”

  “I want to die in my sleep,” Vielle said. “Massive aneurysm. At home. How about you, Dr. Wright?”

  “I don’t want to die at all,” Richard said, and they all laughed.

  “Unfortunately, that’s not an option,” Vielle sighed, breaking off another cracker in the stiff dip. “We all die sooner or later, and we don’t get to choose the method. We have to take what we get. We had an old man in the ER this afternoon, final stages of diabetes, both feet amputated, blind, kidney failure, his whole body coming apart. His last words were, as you might expect, ‘Leave me alone.’ ”

  “Those were Princess Di’s last words, too,” Joanna said.

  “I thought she asked someone to take care of her sons,” Richard said.

  “I think I’d believe the first one,” Vielle said. “ ‘Tell Laura I love her’ is for romantic movies like Titanic. The patients we get in the ER hardly ever have messages for anybody. They’re too busy concentrating on what’s happening to them, although I suppose Joanna knows of some famous people who sent last messages to their loved ones. Right, Joanna?”