Passage

by Connie Willis

  “You said you were interested in neurology,” Richard said. Don’t give her an out, Joanna thought, glaring at him.

  “I am interested in neurology,” Amelia said. “It’s what I want to go into, but what I didn’t tell you,” she twisted her hands in her lap, “is that I didn’t volunteer on my own.”

  Here it comes, Joanna thought, Mr. Mandrake told her to. Or worse, the voices in her head.

  “My psych professor is really big on the idea of premeds being patients ourselves, so that when we become doctors we can empathize with our patients,” Amelia said, looking at her hands. “He gives extra credit for participating in a research project, and I really need the points. I’m doing terrible in psych.” She looked apologetically at Richard. “I didn’t tell you because I was afraid you wouldn’t take me.”

  Take you? Joanna thought. I only wish there were a dozen more like you. Students volunteering for extra credit were perfect. They had no agenda and no particular interest in the subject, which made it unlikely they’d read Mandrake’s book or the other NDE books. “Your professor assigned you to the project?” Joanna asked.

  “No,” Amelia said and glanced guiltily at Richard again. “We picked whatever project we were interested in.”

  “And you were interested in NDEs?” Joanna asked, her heart sinking.

  “No, I didn’t know it was about NDEs when I signed up.” She began the hand-twisting again. “I thought it would probably be one of those memory experiments. Not that I wanted it to be,” she said, flushing, “this is a lot more interesting.”

  She glanced over at Richard again, and it hit Joanna. “I’ll need a copy of your class schedule so we can set up a good session time, Amelia,” she said.

  Richard was looking questioningly at her. Joanna ignored him. “Will tomorrow at eleven fit your schedule, Amelia?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Amelia said eagerly. “I can even stay this afternoon and do one, if you want.”

  “Great,” Joanna said. “Why don’t you go get undressed?” She stood up, still avoiding Richard’s eye, and started over to the examining table.

  “I know where everything is,” Amelia said, grabbed the pile of clothing off the table, and disappeared into the dressing room.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Richard said as soon as the door shut behind her. “Did you see her reaction when you asked her why she volunteered for the project? She got really upset. I don’t think she was telling the truth.”

  “She wasn’t,” Joanna said. “Do you need me to help set things up?”

  “If she was lying, how can you be sure she isn’t one of Mandrake’s ringers?”

  “Because it was a peripheral lie,” Joanna said, “lying for a personal reason that has nothing to do with the matter at hand, the kind of lie that always gets people in trouble in murder mysteries.” She smiled at him. “She’s not a True Believer. The personality profile’s wrong, and so was her account of her first NDE. Her references check out, and her interview confirms what I thought when I first met her. She’s exactly what she seems to be: a premed student doing this for extra credit.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Great. Let’s get started. I’ll go get Nurse Hawley.” He left the lab. After a moment, Amelia emerged from the dressing room with a hospital gown on over her jeans and the sleep mask dangling from her neck. She looked around questioningly.

  “Dr. Wright’s gone to get the assisting nurse,” Joanna said.

  “Oh, good,” Amelia said, coming over to her. “I didn’t want to tell you with him around. I didn’t tell you the truth before. About why I picked this project.”

  Don’t lead, Joanna thought, especially not when you think you know the answer. Amelia ducked her head, the way she had before. “The real reason I picked it was because of Dr. Wright. I thought he was cute. That doesn’t disqualify me from being a volunteer, does it?”

  “No,” Joanna said. She’d thought that’s what it was. “He is cute.”

  “I know,” Amelia said. “I couldn’t believe how adorable—” She cut off abruptly, and both of them turned to look at the door.

  “Nurse Hawley wasn’t there,” Richard said, coming in. “I’ll have to page her.” He went over to the phone. “I need to hire a nurse to assist.” He dialed the switchboard.

  “While we’re waiting, Amelia,” Joanna said, “why don’t you tell me what you saw during your first session?”

  “The first time I went under?” Amelia asked, and Joanna wondered if her use of that phrase was significant. “The first time all I saw was a bright light,” she said. “It was so bright I couldn’t really see anything. The second time I went under it wasn’t as bright, and in it I could see people.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “Not really. I mean, I couldn’t really see them, because of the light, but I knew they were there.”

  “How many people?” Joanna asked.

  “Three,” Amelia said, squinting as if she were envisioning the scene. “No, four.”

  “And what were they doing?”

  “Nothing,” Amelia said. “Just standing there waiting.”

  “Waiting?”

  “Yes. Waiting for me, I think. Watching.”

  Watching and waiting were not the same thing. “Were there any feelings associated with what you saw?” Joanna asked.

  “Yes, I felt warm and . . . ” she hesitated, “ . . . peaceful.”

  Warm and peaceful were words frequently used by NDEers to describe the feeling they’d experienced, also safe and surrounded by love, feelings also associated with the release of en-dorphins.

  “Can you think of any other words to describe the feeling?”

  “Yes,” Amelia said, but then was silent for several seconds. “Serene,” she said finally, but her inflection at the end of the word rose, as if it were a question. “Cozy,” she said with more certainty, “like being in front of a fire. Or wrapped up in a blanket.” She smiled as if remembering the feeling.

  “What happened after you saw the figures in the light?” Joanna asked.

  “Nothing. That’s all I remember, just the light and them standing there waiting.”

  Richard came over, looking irritated. “Nurse Hawley isn’t answering her page,” he said. “We’ll have to do it without her. Amelia, you can go ahead and get up on the table.”

  Amelia hopped onto the examining table and lay down on her back. “Oh, good,” she said, “you covered up that light. It kept blinding me.”

  Richard shot Joanna an approving glance and then picked up an oxygen indicator and clipped it onto Amelia’s finger. “We continuously monitor pulse and BP.”

  He stepped back to the console and typed in something. The monitors above the terminal lit up. Changing readouts appeared on the lower right screen. Oxygen levels 98 percent, pulse 67. He went back over to the table. “Amelia, I’m going to put the electrodes on now.”

  “Okay,” Amelia said.

  Richard pulled the neck of the hospital gown down and attached electrodes to her chest. “These monitor heart rate and rhythm,” he said to Joanna. He attached a blood pressure cuff to Amelia’s arm. “Okay,” he said to her. “It’s time for you to put on your sleep mask.”

  “Okay,” she said, raising her head slightly as she positioned the mask over her eyes, and then lying back down. Richard began attaching electrodes to her temples and her scalp. “Wait!” She tried to sit up.

  “What is it?” Joanna said. “Is something wrong?”

  “Yes,” Amelia said. She felt blindly for her hair clip with her left hand, took it out, and shook out her long hair. “Sorry, it was digging into the back of my head,” she said, lying back down. “I didn’t unhook anything, did I?”

  “You’re fine,” Richard said, reattaching the electrodes to her temples. He began attaching smaller ones along her scalp.

  Joanna looked at her, lying there with her black hair fanned out around her pale face. She looks like Sleeping Beauty, she thought, and wonde
red if Sleeping Beauty had had visions during her hundred years of being in a coma. And if she had, of what? Tunnels and lights, or a boat on a lake? A middle-aged nurse came bustling in. “I’m sorry I’m late. I was with a patient.”

  “You can start a saline IV,” Richard said, lifting the sides of Amelia’s sleep mask to stick electrodes at the corners of her eyes. “These electrodes record eye movements during the period when the subject’s in REM sleep.”

  The nurse had tied a piece of rubber tubing around Amelia’s arm and was expertly probing for a vein. Richard raised Amelia’s other arm and placed a two-inch-thick piece of foam under it. To reduce external stimuli, Joanna thought, watching him place them under her knees, her legs.

  “Is the IV in?” Richard asked the nurse. “Okay, start the tracers.” He leaned over Amelia. “Do you hurt anywhere? Anything pinch? Pull? Ache?”

  “Nope,” Amelia said, smiling blindly up at him. “I’m fine.”

  “Good,” he said. He picked up a pair of headphones, plugged them into a jack, and put them on. He listened for a moment and then took them off and brought them over to Amelia. “We’re ready to start,” he said. “I’m going to put the headphones on you now. You ready?”

  “Can I have a blanket?” Amelia asked. “I always get cold.”

  Cold? Joanna wondered. She had said she felt warm and cozy. Joanna thought back to Lisa Andrews, shivering as she said she felt warm and safe.

  “When do you get cold, Amelia?” she asked.

  “Afterward. When I wake up, I’m freezing.”

  “Body temperature drops when you’re lying down,” Nurse Hawley said, and Joanna could have throttled her.

  “Do you wake up and then get cold, or are you already cold when you wake up?” Joanna asked.

  “I don’t know. After, I think,” but there was that same questioning inflection in her voice.

  Richard spread a white cotton blanket over Amelia’s body, leaving the arm with the IV uncovered. “How’s that?” he asked her.

  “Good.”

  “Okay, I’m putting your headphones on,” he said to her. He placed them over her ears upside down, the headband under her chin. So they don’t obstruct the scan, Joanna thought.

  “White noise is being fed through the headphones,” Richard said to Joanna. “It masks any stray inner-ear noises along with any outside sound. Amelia?” he said loudly. No answer. “Okay,” he said, stepping around Joanna to take down the cardboard screen in front of the scan. “You ready?”

  “Yes,” Joanna said, but looking down at Amelia, lying still and silent under the white blanket, her black hair splayed out around her head, she felt a shiver of anxiety. “You’re sure this procedure is safe?”

  “I’m sure,” Richard said. “And you don’t have to whisper. Amelia can’t hear you. It’s perfectly safe.”

  That’s what the passengers on the Hindenburg thought, Joanna thought. And Mr. O’Reirdon had coded in the middle of a scan. “But what if something did go wrong while Amelia’s under?”

  “There’s a program that continuously monitors the vitals readouts and the RIPT scan images,” Richard said. “Any abnormality in brain function or heart activity triggers a computer alarm that automatically stops the dithetamine and administers norepinephrine. If it’s a serious problem, the computer’s hooked up to the code alarm for a crash cart team.”

  “On this floor?” Joanna asked, thinking of a crash cart trying to find its way up from five-west.

  “On this floor,” Richard reassured her. “In this wing. But we won’t need it. The procedure’s perfectly safe, and the subjects are continuously monitored during and after the session.”

  “I think I should tell you nothing’s happening,” Amelia said, her voice with the too-loud emphasis of nonhearing.

  Richard raised one headphone an inch, said, “Coming right up,” and replaced it carefully over her ear. “You think there’s some other precaution we should be taking?” he asked Joanna.

  Yes, Joanna thought. “No.”

  “Okay, then, let’s do it,” he said. “Nurse, start the zalepam. I put the subjects into non-REM sleep first,” he explained to Joanna, “though it’s possible for them to achieve an NDE-state without.”

  Nurse Hawley began the feed. Richard positioned himself in front of the console. After a minute, Amelia’s hands relaxed, the fingers splaying out a little from the position they had consciously held. Her face, half-hidden by the sleep mask, the electrodes, seemed to relax, too, the lips parting slightly, her breathing becoming lighter. Joanna glanced at the readouts. Amelia’s pulse had risen slightly and her brainwaves were shallower.

  “See how the activity shifts from the motor and sensory cortexes to the inner brain,” he said, pointing to the screens. “She’s in non-REM sleep. Okay, now I’m starting the dithetamine. Watch.” He pointed to the scan image again, where the color in the anterior temporal lobe was deepening from yellow to red and changing shape. “The temporal lobe’s taking on the characteristic pattern of the NDE,” he said, and, as the temporal lobe flared to red, “And we have liftoff.”

  “She’s experiencing an NDE?” Joanna looked up at the image and then back down at Amelia. “Right now?”

  He nodded. “She should be looking at the light,” he said, “and feeling warm and peaceful.”

  Joanna looked at Amelia. There was no indication that she was experiencing a tunnel or a bright light, and no sense, as Joanna had felt with Coma Carl or Greg Menotti, of Amelia’s being somewhere far away, out of reach. She simply looked asleep, her lips still slightly parted, her face relaxed, giving no clue of what she was experiencing.

  Joanna looked up at the screen, but its bright blotches of blue and red and yellow told her no more than Amelia’s expression.

  Richard had said her brain activity and vital signs were being monitored and an alarm would go off at any change in her blood pressure or brain function, but what if it didn’t show up on the monitors? Fourteen percent of NDEers reported having frightening experiences, devils and monsters and suffocating darkness. What if something terrifying was happening to Amelia right now and she had no way to tell them?

  But she didn’t look terrified. In fact, she was smiling slightly, as if she were seeing something pleasant. Angels? Heavenly choirs? “How long does the NDE last?” Joanna asked.

  “It depends,” Richard said, busy at the console. “Mr. O’Reirdon’s NDE lasted three minutes, but there’s no physical reason they can’t go ten to fifteen minutes.”

  But four to six minutes causes brain death, Joanna thought, still unable to shake the feeling that this was an actual NDE and not a simulation.

  “Theoretically, it could last as long as dithetamine’s being fed in,” he said, “but half the time, the—damn!”

  “What? Is something wrong?” Joanna asked, glancing anxiously at the monitors and then at Amelia.

  “She came out of the NDE spontaneously,” Richard said. “I don’t know if it’s a problem with the dosage or if it’s related to the NDE. It’s one of the things we need to find out, what’s kicking them out of the NDE-state and back into consciousness.”

  “She’s awake?”

  “No,” Richard said, taking another look at the monitors. “She’s back in non-REM sleep.”

  Joanna looked down at Amelia. Her hands still lay limply on the foam. The pleased half-smile remained. “If the NDE is causing it,” Richard said, “it may be the same mechanism that causes patients experiencing an NDE to revive, and if that’s the case—”

  There was a sound. “Shh,” Joanna said, and bent over Amelia.

  “Is she awake?” Richard said, looking at the screens. “She shouldn’t be. The pattern shows her in non-REM sleep.”

  “Shh,” Joanna said and bent close to Amelia’s mouth.

  “Oh, no,” Amelia murmured, and her voice was hoarse and despairing. “Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no.”

  “To die would be an awfully big adventure.”

  —LAST WORDS OF
BROADWAY PRODUCER CHARLES FROHMAN, QUOTING FROM HIS CLOSE FRIEND JAMES BARRIE’S PETER PAN JUST BEFORE HE WENT DOWN ON THE LUSITANIA

  AMELIA TANAKA HAD NO MEMORY of anything negative in her NDE. “It was just like the last time,” she told Joanna. “There was a light, and this wonderful feeling.”

  “Can you describe it?”

  “The feeling?” Amelia said dreamily. “Calm . . . safe. I felt enveloped in love.”

  You didn’t sound enveloped in love, Joanna thought. You sounded terrified. “Did you have that feeling the entire time?”

  “Yes.”

  Joanna gave up on that for the moment. “Can you describe the light?”

  “It was beautiful,” Amelia said. “It was bright, but it didn’t hurt my eyes.”

  “What color was it?”

  “White. Like a lamp, only really bright,” she said, and this time she squinted, as if it had hurt to look at it, in spite of what she had said.

  “Was the light there all the time?”

  “No, not at first, not till after they opened the door.”

  Richard looked sharply at Joanna. I’m going to have to tell him he can’t be present at these interviews, she thought. “Where was the door?” she asked impassively.

  “At the end of . . . I don’t know,” Amelia said, frowning. “I was in a hall, or a tunnel, or . . . ” She shook her head.

  Joanna waited, giving her time to say something else. When she didn’t, Joanna said, “You said, ‘They opened the door.’ Can you be more specific?”

  “Um, I didn’t actually see anybody open the door,” Amelia said. “It was dark, and then all of a sudden, there was a light, like when somebody opens a door at night and the light spills in. I thought . . . ” She squinted again and then shook her head. “There was a light.”

  “Did you hear anything?”

  She shook her head, and then said, “There was a sound at the very beginning.”

  “Can you describe it?”

  “It was a . . . ” A ringing or a buzzing, Joanna thought resignedly. “I can’t really describe it,” Amelia said. “I heard a sound, and then I was in this hall and the door opened and I saw the light. It was very real.”