Passage

by Connie Willis

  Maisie had told her mother? That he could bring people back from the dead? Where would she have gotten an idea like that? The only person she would ever have talked to about the project was Joanna, and Joanna had always been completely honest with her. She would never have given her false hopes.

  And even if she had told Maisie there was a miracle cure (which Richard refused to believe), Maisie wouldn’t have believed it. Not hardheaded Maisie, who wore dog tags around her neck so they would know who she was if she died while she was down having tests. If the Hindenburg and the Hartford circus fire and the Lusitania had taught Maisie anything, it was that there weren’t any last-minute rescues. Her mother might believe in miracle cures, but Maisie didn’t. And even if she did, she wouldn’t have told her mother, of all people.

  Joanna had said Maisie never told her mother anything. She hid her books from her, her interest in disasters, even the fact that he’d told her about Joanna’s death, and her mother only allowed upbeat discussions. She would never even have let Maisie bring up the subject of coding. Something else must have happened. Maisie must have accidentally mentioned his name, and, to cover, so her mother wouldn’t find out he’d been there telling her about Joanna, she’d said something about the project, and her mother had confabulated it, through her powers of positive thinking, into a miracle cure.

  “You’ll need a copy of her medical history,” Mrs. Nellis said, busily planning. “I’ll pick up the project application from Records. Maisie will be so pleased. She was so excited when she was telling me about your project. The possibility of coding again’s really worried her, I know. I told her her doctors won’t let anything happen to her, but she’s been fretting about it.”

  But she had coded twice without a quiver. And she had known about the transplant when he and Kit saw her and hadn’t seemed frightened. Her only thought had been to help them find out where Joanna had gone.

  “Of course I realize a cure for coding will be tremendously in demand, and that there will be many patients competing for it. That’s another reason I want Maisie in on the project at this stage,” Mrs. Nellis said. “I’ll talk to my lawyer about arranging a waiver for participation by a minor. I’m on my way there now, and I’ll ask him about any other possible obstacles.”

  Why would Maisie have told her? She had to know she’d take even a casual mention of a possible treatment and turn it into an accomplished fact. So why had she told her? She had to have known she’d do exactly what she had done, come roaring up to the lab and—

  That’s it, he thought. That’s why Maisie told her. So she’d come up here. So she’d insist on my going to see Maisie. Maisie’s found out where Joanna was, he thought, and this is her way of telling me. But why hadn’t she just called? Or had him paged?

  “I’ll need to talk to Maisie before I make any decisions regarding the project,” he said.

  “Of course. I’ll notify the CICU. Maisie doesn’t have a phone in her room, but I’ll tell the sector nurse to let you speak to her.” Maisie doesn’t have a phone, he thought, and she couldn’t get anyone to carry a message for her. This is her way of paging me.

  “ . . . and if you have any trouble getting through, just have the CICU call me,” she said. “I’ll go straight down there from here and have you put on the approved visitors list, and after I’ve seen my lawyer, I’ll talk to Records about the application process. And I’ll leave you to work on your project. I know your breakthrough’s going to happen soon!” she said, smiled brightly, and was gone.

  He waited till he heard the elevator ding, then grabbed his lab coat and his name tag, picked up an official-looking clipboard for good measure, and took off for the CICU, taking the stairs to seventh and crossing the walkway, thinking, All those hours of mapping paid off. I can get anywhere in this hospital in five minutes flat.

  He ran up the stairs to sixth and down the hall to CICU, where a volunteer at a desk guarded the door. She glanced briefly at his name tag and smiled. He strode through the ward to Maisie’s room. The nurse at the desk outside her door stood up. “Can I help you?” she asked, moving so she was blocking the door.

  “I’m Dr. Wright,” Richard said. “I’m here to see Maisie Nellis.”

  “Oh, yes, Mrs. Nellis said you’d be down,” she said and led the way into the room. Maisie was lying against her pillows, watching TV. “Dr. Wright’s here to see you,” the nurse said, moving around behind the bed to look at her IVs. She pushed a button on the IV stand.

  “Hi,” Maisie said listlessly, and looked back up at the TV. What if I’m wrong, and she wasn’t trying to send a message? Richard thought, watching her. What if I confabulated the whole thing?

  The nurse straightened the IV line, pushed the button again, and went out, pulling the door nearly shut behind her. “Well, it’s about time,” Maisie said, pushing herself up to sit. “What took you so long?”

  “Nearer, my God, to thee.”

  —LAST WORDS OF U.S. PRESIDENT WILLIAM MCKINLEY, AFTER BEING SHOT BY AN ASSASSIN

  JOANNA STARED at the wireless operator’s blond hair, at his young, open face. The face that had laughed happily at her from the photo in Mr. Briarley’s library. “You’re Kit’s fiancé,” she said.

  “You know Kit?” Kevin said, yanking the earphones off. “She’s not here, is she?” He leaped up, gripped Joanna’s shoulders. “Tell me she’s not here.”

  “No,” Joanna said hastily. “She’s fine. She’s—” but he had already sat back down, was already sending again.

  “I have to get a message to her,” he said, tapping out the code. “I have to tell her I’m sorry. It was my fault, I didn’t watch where I was going.”

  “Neither did I,” Joanna said.

  “I have to get the message to her that I love her,” Kevin said, his forefinger relentlessly tapping out the code. “I didn’t tell her. I didn’t even say good-bye.” He picked up the headphones and held the earpiece to his ear. “There isn’t any answer,” he said. “It’s too far.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Joanna said, kneeling beside him, her hand on his arm. “The message got through. She knows you loved her. She understands you couldn’t say good-bye.”

  “And she’ll be all right?” he asked anxiously. “I left her all alone.”

  “She’s not alone. She’s got Vielle, and Richard.”

  “Richard?” he said. An expression of pain crossed his face and was replaced by something sadder. “I was afraid she’d be alone. I was afraid it was too far for the message to get through,” and laid the headphones down on the table.

  “It wasn’t,” Joanna said, still kneeling by him. “It isn’t. And I have to get a message through. It’s important. Please.”

  He nodded, put his finger on the key. “What do you want to say?”

  Good-bye, Joanna thought. I’m sorry. I love you. She glanced at the spark. It wavered, dimmed. “Tell Richard the NDE’s a distress signal from the brain to all the body’s systems. Tell him it—” she said, and was yanked brutally to her feet.

  “The collapsibles weren’t there,” Greg growled, his hands gripping her shoulders. “Where are they?” He shook her. “Where are they?”

  “You don’t understand,” Joanna said, looking frantically back at Kevin. “I have to send a—”

  But Greg had let go of her, had grabbed Kevin’s arm. “That’s a wireless!” he said. “You’re sending out SOSs! There are ships coming to save us, aren’t there? Aren’t there?”

  Kevin shook his head. “The Carpathia’s coming. But she’s fifty-eight miles from here. She won’t make it in time. It’s too far for her to come.”

  Joanna sucked in her breath.

  “What do you mean, too far for her to come?” Greg said, and Joanna understood finally what it was she had heard in his voice in the ER. She had thought it was despair, but it wasn’t. It was disbelief and fury. “Fifty-eight?” Greg said, jerking Kevin around to face him. “There has to be something closer than that. Who else are you sending to?”
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  “The Virginian, the Olympic, the Mount Temple,” Kevin said, “but none of them are close enough to help. The Olympic’s over five hundred miles away.”

  “Then send the SOS to somebody else,” Greg said and pushed Kevin down into the chair. “Send it to somebody closer. What about that ship whose light everybody saw?”

  “She doesn’t answer.”

  “She has to answer,” Greg said, and jammed Kevin’s hand down onto the key. “Send it. SOS. SOS.”

  Kevin glanced at Joanna and then bent forward and began to tap out the message. Dot-dot-dot. Dash-dash-dash. Above his head, the blue spark arced, flickered, disappeared, arced again.

  It’s fading, Joanna thought, and pushed forward between them. “No! It’s too late for SOSs. Tell Richard it’s an SOS, tell him Mrs. Troudtheim’s NDEs are the key.”

  “Keep sending SOS!” Greg said, his hand snaking out to fasten on Joanna’s wrist. “You, show me where they keep the lifejackets.”

  She called to Kevin, “You have to get the message through to Richard. Tell him it’s a code, that the neurotransmitters—” but Greg had already pushed her out of the wireless room, onto the deck.

  “Where are the lifejackets?” he demanded. “We have to stay afloat till the ship gets here! Where did they keep them?”

  “I don’t know,” Joanna said helplessly, looking back at the door of the wireless room. Light radiated from it, golden, peaceful, and in the light Kevin sat, his golden head bent over the wireless key, the spark above his head like a halo. Please, Joanna prayed. Let it get through.

  “Where did they keep them?” Greg’s fingers cut into her wrists.

  “In a chest next to the officers’ quarters,” Joanna said, “but they won’t help. There aren’t any ships coming—” but he was already pushing her down the slanting deck toward the bow. Ahead, Joanna could hear a gentle, slopping sound, like water, like blood.

  “Show me where the chest is—so I can see what I’m doing!” the resident saying, and Joanna flinching away from the scissors, afraid he had a knife, a knife! Vielle saying, “Hang on, honey. Close your eyes,” and the lights going off, the room suddenly dark, and then a door opening somewhere on light, on singing, “Happy birthday to you!,” the candles on the cake flaring into brightness, and her father saying, “Blow them out!,” and her, leaning far forward, her cheeks puffed with air, blowing, and the candles flickering red and going out, the deck lights dimming, glowing red, and then coming on again, but not as bright, not as bright.

  Joanna was sprawled over a white metal chest. “What was that?” Greg said, on his hands and knees by the railing. “What’s happening?” His voice was afraid.

  Joanna stood up. “The unifying image is breaking up,” she said. “The synapses are firing haphazardly.”

  “We have to get our lifejackets on!” Greg said, scrambling wildly to his feet. He wrenched the chest open, hauled out a lifejacket and thrust it at her. “We have to get off the ship!”

  Joanna looked steadily at him. “We can’t.”

  He tossed the lifejacket at her feet, snatched up another one, began putting it on. “Why not?” he said, fumbling with the ties.

  She looked at him with infinite pity. “Because we’re the ship.”

  He stopped, his hands still clutching the trailing ties, and looked fearfully at her. “You died, Greg, and so did I, in the ER. You had a massive heart attack.”

  “I work out at the health club every day,” he said.

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. We hit an iceberg and we sank, and all this” —she waved her hand at the deck, the empty davits, the darkness—“is a metaphor for what’s really happening, the sensory neurons shutting down, the synapses failing to arc.” The poor, mortally wounded mind reflexively connecting sensations and images in spite of itself, trying to make sense of death even as it died.

  He stared at her, his face slack with hopelessness. “But if that’s true, if that’s true,” he said, and his voice was an angry sob, “what are we supposed to do?”

  Why is everyone always asking me? Joanna thought. I don’t know. Trust in Jesus. Behave well. Play the hand you’re dealt. Try to remember what’s important. Try not to be afraid. “I don’t know,” she said, infinitely sorry for him, for herself, for everyone. “Look, it’s too late to save ourselves, but there’s still a chance we can save Maisie. If we could get a message through—”

  “Maisie?” he shouted, his voice filled with fury and contempt. “We have to save ourselves. It’s every man for himself.” He yanked the ties into a knot. “There aren’t enough lifeboats for everyone, are there?” he said. “That’s why you don’t want to tell me where they are, because you’re afraid I’ll steal your place. They’re down belowdecks, aren’t they?”

  “No!” Joanna said. “There’s nothing down there except water!” And darkness. And a boy with a knife.

  “Don’t go down there!” Joanna said, reaching out for him, but he was already past her, already to the door. “Greg!” She raced after him.

  He yanked the door open on darkness, on destruction. “Wait!” Joanna called. “Kevin! Mr. Briarley! Help! SOS!”

  There was a sound of footsteps, of people running from the stern. “Hurry!” she said, and turned toward the sound. “You have to help me. Greg’s—”

  It was a squat, white dog with batlike ears, padding down the deck toward her, trailing a leather leash. It’s the French bulldog, Joanna thought, the one Maisie felt so bad about. “Here, boy!” she called, squatting down, but the dog ignored her, trotting past with the frantic, single-minded look of a lost dog trying to get to its master.

  “Wait!” Joanna said and ran after it, grabbing for the end of the leash. She caught the little dog up in her arms. “There, there,” she said. “It’s all right.” It looked up at her with its bulging brown eyes, panting hard. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I’ve got—”

  There was a sound. Joanna looked up. Greg stood on the top step of the crew stairway, looking down into the darkness. He took a step down. “Don’t go down there!” Joanna cried. She thrust the little dog under her arm and ran toward the door. “Wait!” she cried, but the door had already shut behind him. “Wait!”

  She grabbed the doorknob with her free hand. It wouldn’t turn. She hastily set the dog down, looping the end of the leash over her wrist, and tried the doorknob again. It was locked. “Greg!” she shouted through it. “Open the door!”

  She put her whole weight against the door and pushed. “Open the door!” Pounding on the glass of the door, shouting, “What kind of hospital cafeteria is this?” Beating so hard the glass rattled, the cardboard sign that said “11 A.M. to 1 P.M.” shook, trying to make the woman inside look up from setting out the dishes of red Jell-O, shouting, “It’s not even one yet!” pointing to her watch in proof, but when she looked at it, it didn’t say ten to one, it said twenty past two.

  She was on her knees, holding on to one of the empty lifeboat davits. The little bulldog huddled at her feet, looking up at her, shivering. His leash trailed behind him on the slanting deck. I let go of it, she thought in horror. I can’t let go of it.

  She wrapped the leash tightly around her wrist twice, and clutched it in her fist. She scooped the little dog up in her arms, staggering against the rail as she straightened. The deck was slanting steeply now. “I’ve got to get a lifejacket on you,” she said and set off with the dog in her arms, climbing the hill of the deck, trying to avoid the deck chairs that were sliding down, the birdcages, the crash carts.

  I’m in the wrong wing, she thought, I have to get to the Boat Deck, and heard the band. “The band was on the Boat Deck,” Joanna said, and climbed toward the sound.

  The musicians had wedged the piano into the angle of the Grand Staircase and the funnel. They stood in front of it, their violins held to their chests like shields. As Joanna reached them, the bandleader raised his baton, and the musicians tucked their violins under their chins, raised their bows, bega
n to play. Joanna waited, the bulldog pressed against her, but it was a ragtime tune, sprightly, jagged.

  “It’s not the end yet,” Joanna said to the dog, climbing past them, past the first-class lounge. “We still have time, it isn’t over till they play ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee.’ ”

  And here was the chest. Joanna rolled an IV pole out of the way, and a gurney, trailing a white sheet, and grabbed a life-jacket. She stood the little dog on the white chest to put the lifejacket on him, wrapping it around his squat body and pulling his front legs through the armholes. She reached for the dangling ties, clutched—“ ‘Come, let me clutch thee!’ ” Mr. Briarley intoned from Macbeth. “ ‘I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou a dagger of the mind . . . ?’ ” Ricky Inman tilted back and forth in his chair, Joanna watching him, fascinated, waiting for him to overbalance. “ ‘ . . . a false creation, proceeding from the oppressed brain?’ ” and Ricky toppled over backward, grabbing at the wall, at the light switch, as he went over, Mr. Briarley saying, as the light went out, “Exactly, Mr. Inman, ‘put out the light and then put out the light,’ ” and the whole class laughing, but it wasn’t funny, it was dark. “It was dark,” Mrs. Davenport said, pausing between every word, Joanna, bored, uncaring, asking, “Can you describe it?” and Mr. Briarley answering, “ ‘The sun did not shine and the stars gave no light.’ ”

  She was clinging to the deck railing, her body half over the side. She had let go of the bulldog again, and it scrabbled at her legs, whimpering, sliding away from her down the steep deck.

  She caught it up against her chest and groped her way toward the support in the middle of the deck, hanging on to the railing as long as she could and then letting go and half-sliding, half-falling toward the safety of the wooden pillar. The deck lights dimmed down to nothing and came on again, dull red.