Passage

by Connie Willis

  “Dr. Lander,” he said, looking surprised to see her and vexed that she had actually beaten him to a patient. “You were in seeing Ms. Isakson?”

  “Yes, we’ve just finished,” she said and started quickly down the hall.

  “Wait,” he said, cutting off her escape. “I have several things I’ve been wanting to discuss with you.”

  Please don’t let him have found out I’ve been going under, Joanna prayed, looking longingly at the elevators at the end of the hall, but he had her pinned between a supply cart and the open door of Ms. Isakson’s room.

  “I’m curious to know how your and Dr. Wright’s research is progressing,” he said.

  I’ll bet you are, she thought, especially now that you’ve lost all your spies.

  “I must confess, I was disappointed when you told me you were working with Dr. Wright. If I had known you were interested in collaboration, I’d have asked you to assist me, but it had always been my impression you preferred to work alone.”

  The elevator dinged faintly, and Joanna looked down the hall at it, praying, Let someone I know get off. Anyone. Even Mr. Wojakowski.

  “And to have chosen such a dubious project! Attempting to reproduce a metaphysical experience through physical means!”

  The elevator opened and a portly man carrying a large potted mum got out.

  “All any of these so-called experiments has been able to produce is a few lights or a sensation of floating. In not one has anyone seen angels or the spirits of the departed. Have you seen Mrs. Davenport?”

  Is she departed? Joanna thought, startled, and then amused. That’s all I need, she thought, to see Mrs. Davenport standing at the end of the tunnel.

  Mr. Mandrake was waiting for her answer. “Is Mrs. Davenport still in the hospital?” Joanna asked. “I assumed she’d gone home.”

  He shook his head. “She’s developed several symptoms the causes of which the doctors have been unable to find, and has had to stay for additional tests,” he said. “As a result, I’ve been able to interview her several times, and each time she has remembered additional details about her experience.”

  I’ll bet, Joanna thought, leaning her head back against the wall.

  “I know your view that interviews should be conducted as soon as possible after the event,” he said, “but I have found that patients’ memories improve over time. Only yesterday Mrs. Davenport remembered that the Angel of Light had raised his hand and said, ‘Behold,’ and she saw that Death was not Death, but only a passage.”

  “A passage?” Joanna said, and was instantly sorry, but Mr. Mandrake didn’t seem to notice.

  “A passage to the Other Side,” he said, “which was revealed to Mrs. Davenport in all its glory. And as she gazed at the beauties of the next life, the secrets of past and future were revealed to her, and she understood the secrets of the cosmos.”

  “Did she say what those secrets were?”

  “She said mere words were incapable of expressing them,” Mr. Mandrake said, looking irritated. “Can Dr. Wright produce a revelation like that in his laboratory? Of course not. Such a revelation could have come only from God.”

  Or the temporal lobe, Joanna thought. He’s right. These are all temporal-lobe symptoms.

  “ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ ” Mr. Mandrake intoned, and Joanna decided that was as good an exit line as any.

  “I have another patient to see,” she said, “on six-west.” She squeezed past him, and walked down to the elevator. When it came, she pushed eight, and, as soon as it had gone up a floor, five. That should keep Mr. Mandrake busy for a while, she thought, getting off on five. And, she hoped, away from poor Ms. Isakson. She started for the stairs.

  “Hey, Doc,” a voice behind her called.

  It’s my own fault, she thought. Be careful what you ask for. “What are you doing here, Mr. Wojakowski?” she said, trying to smile.

  “Friend of mine fell and broke his hip,” he said cheerfully. “One minute he’s walking to ceramics class, and the next he’s flat on his back. Reminds me of that time at Coral Sea when a depth charge hit us. Me and Bud Roop were down on the hangar deck repairing the magneto on a Wildcat when it hit, and one of the props flew off and took half of Bud’s head with it. Bam!” He made a slashing motion across his forehead. “Went down just like that. One minute he’s alive, chewing gum and talking away to me—he always chewed gum, Blackjack gum, haven’t seen it in years-and the next, half his head’s gone. He never even knew what hit him.” He shook his head. “Not a bad way to go though, I guess. Better than my friend in there.” He jerked a thumb back in the direction of the hall. “Cancer, congestive heart failure, and now this hip thing. I’d take a Jap bomb any day over that, but you don’t get to choose how you go, do you?”

  “No,” Joanna said.

  “Well, anyway, I’m glad I ran into you,” Mr. Wojakowski said, brightening. “I been trying to get ahold of you and ask you about that schedule.”

  “I know, Mr. Wojakowski. The thing is—”

  “’cause I’ve got a problem. I told this friend of mine over to Aspen Gardens I’d sign up for this hearing study with him. It was before I signed up for yours, and I forgot I’d told him, so here I am signed up for two things at the same time. Yours is a heck of a lot more interesting, and I ain’t really hard of hearing, except for a little ringing in one ear. I’ve had it ever since Coral Sea, when this bomb hit just forward of the Number Two elevator and—”

  “But you did sign up for it first,” Joanna said, deciding she couldn’t wait for an opening. “The hearing study has to take precedence.”

  “I don’t wanta let you down.”

  “You’re not.”

  “Helluva thing, letting a friend down. Did I ever tell you about the time Ratsy Fogle told Art Blazaukas he’d take mess duty for him so Art could go see this native gal over on Maui?”

  “Yes,” Joanna told him, but to no avail. She had to listen to the whole story, and the one about Jo-Jo Powers, before he finally let her go.

  She went straight to her office and stayed there, looking up examples of ineffable revelations and all-encompassing wisdom until it was time for her session, and then took the list to the lab.

  Richard was at the console, looking at scans. “Where have you been?” he asked without taking his eyes from the screen.

  “Discussing philosophy with Mr. Mandrake,” she said. She handed him the transcripts and went in to get her hospital gown on. The sight of herself in the mirror reminded her that she hadn’t told Richard about the Greg Menotti incident, and as soon as she came out, she said, “Richard, you asked me if I had had any other incidents besides the—”

  “Hello, all,” Tish said, coming in, waving a piece of paper. “Word from on high.” She handed the paper to Richard.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “It was on your door,” she said.

  “ ‘Attention, all hospital personnel,’ ” Richard read aloud. “ ‘Because of a recent series of drug-related events in the ER—’ ” He looked up. “What events?”

  “Two shootings and a stabbing,” Joanna said.

  “And an attack with an IV pole,” Tish added, attaching electrode cords to the monitor.

  “ ‘—of drug-related events in the ER,’ ” Richard continued, “ ‘all personnel are advised to take the following precautions: One. Be alert to your surroundings.’ ”

  “Oh, that’ll help a lot when a hopped-up gangbanger is brandishing a semiautomatic,” Tish said.

  “ ‘Two. Do not make sudden movements. Three. Note all available exits.’ ”

  “Four. Do not work in the ER,” Joanna said.

  “No kidding,” Tish said, setting out the IV equipment. “The board decided to hire one more security guard. I think they should have hired about ten. I’m ready for you, Joanna.” Joanna got on the table and lay down. Tish began placing the pads under her lower back and legs. “ ‘Four,’
” Richard said, still reading. “ ‘Do not attempt to engage or disarm the patient. Five,’ ” he wadded the memo into a ball and lobbed it into the trash.

  “Jenni Lyons told me she’s put in a transfer to Aurora Memorial,” Tish said, knotting the rubber tubing around Joanna’s arm. “She says at least they’ve got a metal detector.” She poked the inside of Joanna’s elbow with her finger, trying to find a vein.

  I have to get Vielle out of there, Joanna thought while Tish attached the electrodes, put on the headphones.

  I have to convince her to transfer before something happens, she thought, and was in the tunnel, but much farther away from the door than she had been before, and this time the door was open. It spilled golden light half the length of the passage.

  She couldn’t see shadows or movements in it, as she had before, or hear any voices. She stood still, listening for their murmur, and then thought, You did it again. You forgot to listen for the sound.

  But it wasn’t a sound, or, rather, a cessation of sound. It was a feeling of having heard a sound brought on by the temporal lobe. There was no actual sound.

  But standing there in the tunnel, she was sure there had been. A sound like—what? A roar. Or something falling. She felt a strong impulse to turn around and look back down the dark passage as if that would help her identify it, to go back down the passage toward it.

  No, she thought, holding carefully still, not even turning her head, it’ll send you back to the lab. Don’t do that. Not until you’ve seen what lies beyond the door, and began walking toward it.

  The light seemed to grow brighter as she approached it, illuminating the walls and the wooden floor, which still gave a look of impossible length to the corridor. The walls were white, and so were the doors, and as she neared the end of the corridor, she could see they had numbers on them.

  What if one of them’s fifty-eight? she thought, clenched her fists at her sides, and went on. “C8,” the doors read, the letters and numbers in gold, “C10, C12.” The light continued to grow brighter.

  She had expected it to become unbearably bright as she got closer, but it didn’t, and as she came nearer the open door, she could make out shapes in it. Figures in white robes, radiating golden light.

  Angels.

  “I dread the journey greatly.”

  —MARY TODD LINCOLN, IN A LETTER WRITTEN SHORTLY BEFORE HER DEATH

  JOANNA’S FIRST THOUGHT was: Angels! Mr. Mandrake will be furious.

  Her second thought was, No, not angels. People. The light came from behind them, around them, outlining them in golden light so that it seemed to radiate from them, from their white robes. And they weren’t robes. They were white dresses with skirts that trailed the floor. Old-fashioned dresses.

  The dead relatives, Joanna thought, but they weren’t gathered around the door, waiting to welcome her to the Other Side. They milled about, or stood in little groups of two or three, murmuring quietly to each other. Joanna moved closer to the door, trying to make out what they were saying.

  “What’s happened?” a young woman in a long, high-necked dress asked. Her hair hung down her back nearly to her waist.

  A long-dead relative, Joanna thought, trying to see past her to the man she was speaking to. He spoke, and his voice was too low for Joanna to hear. She squinted at the light surrounding him, as if it would make his voice clearer, and saw that he was wearing a white jacket and had a pleasant face. An unfamiliar face. And so was the woman’s. Joanna had never seen either of them before.

  The young woman said something else to the man, who bowed from the waist, and walked over to two people standing together, a man and a woman. The other woman was in white, too, but her hair was piled on top of her head. Her hands were white, too, and when she placed her hand on the gentleman’s arm, it flashed, sparkling. The man had a trimmed white beard that looked like something from an old photo album, and so did the woman’s hair, but their faces were unfamiliar. If they’re dead relatives, Joanna thought, they must be someone else’s.

  The woman with her hair down her back spoke to the bearded man. Joanna took another step forward, nearly up to the door, trying to hear. The bearded man said, “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  Joanna shot an anxious glance back down the passageway. That was what he’d said the last time, and then the woman had said, “It’s so cold,” and the NDE had ended. If she was going to test her theory that the passageway was the way back, that going back down the tunnel would end the NDE, she needed to do it now, before the NDE ended on its own, but she wanted to stay and hear what they were talking about.

  It’s a clue to where this is, she thought, hesitating, poised on one foot, ready to run, trying to decide. Like Cinderella at the ball, with the clock striking midnight, she thought, and then, looking at the women again in their long white dresses, that’s what this must be, a ball. That’s why the woman’s hand on the bearded man’s arm was white, because she was wearing white gloves, and the sparkling flash when she moved her hand was jewels in a bracelet. And the young man was dressed in a white dinner jacket. She shaded her eyes against the light, trying to see what the man with the white beard was wearing.

  “It’s so cold,” the young woman said, and Joanna gave her one last, frustrated glance, then turned and ran down the passageway.

  And into the lab. “I want to hear about your return,” Richard said as soon as Tish had finished monitoring her and removed the electrodes and the IV.

  “Was it—?” he said and then clamped his lips shut. “Tell me about your return.”

  She told him what she’d done. “Why? Did it look different on the scans?”

  “Radically,” he said, pleased, and started over to the console, as if he were finished.

  “Wait, you have to hear about the rest of the NDE,” Joanna said. “I saw another one of the core elements this time. Angels.”

  “Angels?” Tish said. “Really?”

  “No,” Joanna said, “but figures dressed all in white, or ‘snowy raiment,’ as Mr. Mandrake would say.”

  “Did they have wings?” Tish asked.

  “No,” Joanna said. “They weren’t angels. They were people. They were dressed in long white robes, and there was light all around them,” Joanna said. “I’d always assumed that people saw what they thought were angels and then gave them the traditional white robes and haloes because that was what they’d learned angels looked like in Sunday school. But now I wonder if it isn’t the other way around, that they see the white robes and the light surrounding them, and that’s what makes them think they’re angels.”

  “Did they speak to you?” Tish asked.

  “No, they didn’t seem to know I was there,” Joanna said. She told Richard what the woman had said.

  “You could hear them talking,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, “and it wasn’t the telepathic communication some NDEers report. They were speaking, and I could hear some of what they said, and some I couldn’t, because they were too far away.”

  “Or because it lacked content,” Richard said, “like the noise or the feeling of recognition.”

  No, Joanna thought, typing her account into the computer that afternoon, because I don’t know what they said, and I know where the tunnel is. I’m sure of it.

  Someplace with numbers on the doors and a door at the end, where people stood, milling around in white dresses. A party? A wedding? That would explain the preponderance of white. But why would they keep asking, “What’s happened?” Had the groom jilted the bride? And why would the men be in white, too? When was the last time you saw a bunch of men and women dressed in white, standing around complaining about the cold?

  During a hospital fire drill, she thought. Hospitals are full of people wearing white, and that was where nearly all patients experienced their NDEs. The vast majority of them had their NDEs in an ER, surrounded by doctors and nurses and a buzzing code alarm and a resident, leaning over the unconscious patient, shining a light in their eyes, asking, �
��What happened to him?” It made perfect sense.

  Except that the ER staff didn’t wear white, they wore green or blue or pink scrubs, and the trauma rooms weren’t numbered C8, C10, C12. C. What did C stand for?

  Confabulation, she thought. Stop thinking about it. Get busy, which turned out to be easier than she thought. The torrent of NDEs continued for several days, and Joanna dutifully interviewed every one, though they didn’t prove all that useful. They were uniformly unable to describe what they’d experienced, as if ineffability had infected every aspect of their NDE: the length of time they’d been there, the manner of their return, the things they’d seen, including angels.

  “They looked like angels,” Mr. Torres said irritably when Joanna asked him to describe the figures he’d seen standing in the light, and when she asked him if he could be more specific, “Haven’t you ever seen an angel?”

  I need to talk to someone intelligent, Joanna thought, and went down to the ER, but they were swamped. “Head-on between a church bus and a semi,” Vielle said briefly and ran off to meet a gurney being brought in by the paramedics. “I’ll call you.”

  “Forget about this one,” the resident said. “She’s DOA.”

  Dead on arrival. Arrival where? Joanna wondered, and went up to see Mrs. Woollam. She’d promised her she’d visit again, and she wanted to ask her if she’d ever seen people in the garden or on the staircase.

  Mrs. Woollam wasn’t there, and it was obvious she hadn’t been taken somewhere for tests. The bed was crisply made up, with a blanket folded across the foot and a folded hospital gown lying on top of it. Her insurance must have run out, Joanna thought, disappointed, and walked down to the nurses’ station. “Did you move Mrs. Woollam to another room, or did she go home?” she asked a nurse she didn’t know.

  The nurse looked up, startled, and then reassured at the sight of Joanna’s hospital ID, and Joanna knew instantly what she was going to say. “Mrs. Woollam died early this morning.”