Passage

by Connie Willis

  “And the return was sudden?”

  “Yes, like someone slapping a book shut—” she said. “I just thought of something. Mrs. Woollam said one of her returns was like that, and I think it was a time when she revived on her own.”

  “I’d like to see her account, too,” Richard said. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Thank you for the Kleenex. And the shoulder.”

  He grinned. “As I said, anytime,” and went back over to the console.

  She stood there a minute, looking at his blond head bent over the keyboard, wanting to tell him everything, and then said, “When do you think you’ll send me under again?”

  “Tomorrow, if possible. I’d like to do another session at this lower dosage and see if it’s a factor. And see how the scans compare.”

  “I’ll call Tish,” Joanna said and went to her office, cut the taped and signed paper off the tape, and began typing up the transcript.

  Listening to the tape was like experiencing it all over again: leaning over the bow, looking down at the side of the ship, gazing down into nothingness, seeing Mr. Briarley in the library. “Have you met my niece?” Joanna typed, and thought, He didn’t remember that. She looked back over the conversation. He’d greeted her as if he hadn’t seen her since high school. There’d been no mention of having seen her just a few days before.

  Because he didn’t remember those things, she thought. It wasn’t a whole and healthy Mr. Briarley she’d seen, but the old Mr. Briarley, whom she’d had in second period, the part of Mr. Briarley that had died. “Dying in pieces,” Vielle had said. And her acetylcholine-enhanced mind had given the idea concrete form. No wonder she had been convinced he was dead. Part of him was, and maybe that, and not his holding the key to the connection, was why she’d seen him on the Titanic. In which case he wouldn’t be able to tell her what the connection was and what the NDE was.

  He has to, she thought, and continued going through the account, looking for clues. “ ‘And what noise soever ye hear, come not unto me, for nothing can rescue me,’ ” she typed, and, “I must take this to the post office first.”

  She stared at the screen, her chin in her hands. When he’d said that, she’d assumed he meant the mail room. That was why she’d run after him, because the mail room was flooded. But she was almost sure he’d said “post office,” and, now that she thought about it, it was unlikely that passengers would have been allowed all the way down on G Deck. More likely, they would have handed their letters to a steward or dropped them in a mailbox or a mail slot. But Mr. Briarley had said “post office,” and he’d disappeared into one of the passages on C Deck, and the other rooms Joanna had seen-the A La Carte Restaurant and the lounge and the gymnasium—had all existed.

  She called Kit. “I need to know if there was a post office on the Titanic, and if so, where it was.”

  “You don’t mean the mail room?” Kit said. “I found out about it and the mail, by the way.”

  “No, this would have been a post office for the passengers,” Joanna said.

  “Post . . . office . . . for . . . passengers,” Kit said, obviously writing it down. “Anything else?”

  Yes, but this was the one she needed before she went under again so she could find Mr. Briarley, and if she gave Kit the other rooms to find and a list of quotations to look up, she might not find out about the post office in time.

  “No, that’s all,” she said. “Now, what about the mail?”

  “The mail clerks did drag the mail up to the Boat Deck,” Kit said. “The mail room was in the bow, so it was one of the first things to flood, and the mail clerks carried the sacks of first-class and registered mail up to try to save it.”

  But the mail was already ruined, Joanna thought, remembering the sodden, dripping bag, the dark stain on the stairs. “Did it say which staircase they used?” she asked.

  “No, do you want me to try to find that out?”

  “The post office is more important,” she said.

  She hung up and called Tish, who wasn’t available till Thursday. “They’ve got me subbing in Medicine till then. This flu,” she explained. Thursday. Two days till she could ask Mr. Briarley what the connection was. At least there’d be enough time for Kit to locate the post office.

  “ . . . and why didn’t you tell me Vielle Howard had been shot?” Tish was asking. “I just found out.”

  I just found out, too, Joanna thought. “I assumed you already knew,” she lied.

  “Is she okay?”

  “It was just a flesh wound,” Joanna said. She hung up and finished transcribing the account. She considered leaving off the last paragraph, but it was part of the data. She compromised by adding, “Upon checking, I found Mr. Briarley to be alive and in good health except for his Alzheimer’s, thus providing a documented instance which contradicts Mr. Mandrake’s claims of extrasensory perception.”

  She printed out the transcript and fished in her pockets for a paper clip to put on it. She came up instead with Maisie’s dog tags. Which I never did deliver, she thought, and decided to run down as soon as she’d taken the account to Richard.

  He wasn’t there. Good, she thought, and ran down to four-west. “Oh, good,” Barbara said. “Maisie will be glad to see you. She’s having a rough day.”

  “I’m in A-fib again,” Maisie said disgustedly, lying back against the pillows. She was wearing an oxygen mask, which she pulled off as soon as Joanna came into the room. “They’re trying to get me converted. Did Barbara give you the list?”

  “Yes,” Joanna said. “Put your oxygen mask back on.”

  “There might be some more ships. I didn’t look in Catastrophes and Calamities yet.”

  “Put your—”

  “Okay,” Maisie said and put the mask over her mouth and nose. It immediately fogged up.

  “You don’t need to look up any more ships,” Joanna said. “I found out what I needed to know.”

  “I’ll look up—” Maisie said, her voice muffled by the mask.She took it off again. “I’ll look up the Carpathia stuff tonight,” she said and popped it back on.

  “I don’t want you doing anything till you’re out of A-fib,” Joanna said, and then brightly, “I’ve got a surprise for you,” and could tell from Maisie’s face she sounded just like her mother. “I brought you something.” She fished the necklace out of her pocket and held it up by the chain. “This is—”

  “Dog tags,” Maisie said, beaming. “In case the hospital burns down. Will you put them on me?”

  “You bet,” Joanna said and took hold of Maisie’s thin shoulders to pull her forward a little. It was like handling a sparrow. She put the necklace on over her head, careful of Maisie’s oxygen tubes and her IV lines, and arranged it on her chest. “A friend of mine, Mr. Wojakowski, made it for you.”

  Barbara came in. “Look what Joanna gave me.” Maisie held them out for Barbara to admire. “Dog tags! Aren’t they cool?”

  “You always know just what will make her feel better,” Barbara said, walking Joanna out, but it wasn’t true. She hadn’t done anything. Maisie was still as frail as a bird and getting frailer, and she was no closer to knowing anything about NDEs than she had been when she’d sat listening to Mrs. Davenport for hours. She wasn’t even any closer to knowing what Mr. Briarley had said in class, or even the name of the textbook.

  That at least she could do something about. She called Betty Peterson again, but the line was busy. Waiting to try again, she started through her messages. Mr. Mandrake, Mr. Mandrake, Mr. Ortiz, wanting to tell her a dream he’d had the night before. Guadalupe. She must not have gotten the note Joanna had left with the sub nurse.

  She went up to four-west. As soon as Guadalupe saw her, she handed her a sheet of paper with a single line typed on it: “ . . . (unintelligible) . . . smoke . . . (unintelligible).”

  “You didn’t get my message?” Joanna asked. “That I wanted you to keep writing down what Coma Carl said?”


  “I got it, and that’s everything he said,” Guadalupe said. “He’s pretty much stopped talking.”

  “When did this happen?” Joanna asked.

  “It’s been a gradual falling off,” Guadalupe said. “He would murmur at wider and wider separated intervals, and it got harder and harder to hear him.”

  As if he were getting farther and farther away, Joanna thought.

  “By the time I sent you that message he’d pretty much stopped altogether, except for a few unintelligible words,” she said. “That’s really why I called you that day, to ask you if you wanted to call it off.”

  Call it off. Joanna thought of the wireless operator in the Marconi shack, hunched over the telegraph key, tirelessly sending.

  “He hasn’t said anything for nearly a week.”

  “Can I see him?” Joanna asked. “Is his wife in with him?”

  Guadalupe shook her head. “She went out to the airport. His brother’s coming in. Sure, go on in.”

  There were three more bags hanging from the IV stand and two more monitors. The IV monitor began to beep, and a nurse Joanna didn’t know bustled in to check his IV lines. “You can talk to him,” she said to Joanna.

  And say what? “My best friend was shot by a rogue-raver?” “This little girl I know is dying?” “The Titanic’s going down?”

  Mrs. Aspinall came in, accompanied by a tall, bluff man. “Oh, hello, Dr. Lander,” she said and went over to the bed and took Carl’s bruised and battered hand. “Carl,” she said, “Martin’s here.”

  “Hello, Carl,” Martin said, “I got here as soon as I could,” and Joanna almost expected Carl to stir, in spite of the mask and the feeding tube, and murmur, “Too far for him to come,” but he didn’t. He lay, gray and silent in the bed, and Joanna was suddenly too tired to do anything but go home and go to bed.

  On the way there, it occurred to her with a kind of horror that she might be catching the flu. Richard won’t let me go under if I’m sick, she thought, but in the morning she felt much better, and when she got to work, there was a message from Betty Peterson on her answering machine. “I just realized I never told you the name of the book: Mazes and Mirrors.”

  Mazes and Mirrors. Joanna could instantly see the title in her mind’s eye, lettered in gold across a blue cover, though oddly, the name didn’t conjure up the rest of the cover. Joanna squinted, trying to envision a ship under the title and then Queen Elizabeth with a mustache and glasses, but neither seemed right. It will probably turn out to be Windsor Castle, Joanna thought. But at least we know the title.

  “I told you it began with an M,” Betty’s voice was saying. “And there it was, in the margin, next to Nadine’s picture. Just a minute, let me read it to you. I’ve got it right here.” There was a pause, and her voice continued, “ ‘Betty, just think, no more of Mr. Briarley’s boring stories about the Titanic and no more Mazes and Mirrors! Your pal in second period, Nadine.’ You still need to call me, though. I talked to my little sister and she told me this thing about Mr. Briarley. Oh, and I called Blake Dirkson. He was the year ahead of us. He couldn’t remember the name of the book either, but he said it had one of those quill pens and a bottle of ink on the cover. He smoked a lot of pot in high school, though, so I don’t know. Anyway, call me. ’Bye.”

  A quill pen and a bottle of ink? Oddly, that seemed vaguely familiar, too. We’re all confabulating, she thought. She called Betty, but the line was busy again. Which isn’t a surprise, Joanna thought, considering how long she talks when she’s just leaving a message, and called Kit.

  “Mazes and Mirrors,” Kit said. “Great. That’ll make it a lot easier.”

  “She says she thinks she remembers a picture of Queen Elizabeth in a ruff on the cover, or a quill pen and a bottle of ink. I still think it’s a ship, but it could be one of the others.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” Kit said. “I haven’t been able to find out anything on a post office, but I’m still looking.”

  And if she couldn’t locate the post office, how else could Joanna find Mr. Briarley? He’d mentioned the Palm Court. She needed to ask Kit where it was and what deck it was on, although the easiest way to find him would probably be just to follow the steward when the bearded man asked him to go find Mr. Briarley.

  Richard stuck his head in the door. “I just wondered if you’d finished typing up your account,” he said, “and if you were feeling better.”

  “Yes,” she said, handing him the transcript and Mrs. Woollam’s. “Tish can come tomorrow at two. How are things coming with Mrs. Troudtheim?”

  “We isolated three neurotransmitters that were present in both of your exit scans and all of Mrs. Troudtheim’s: LHRH, theta-asparcine, and DABA. LHRH was also present in the template scan, so it’s probably not the culprit, but the DABA may be a possibility. It’s an endorphin inhibitor, and Dr. Jamison thinks beta-endorphins, rather than being just a side effect, may be a factor in sustaining the NDE-state, and that the DABA may be inhibiting them.” He waved the transcripts at her. “Thanks. Tomorrow at two.”

  The phone rang. Richard said, “I’ll talk to you later,” and Joanna picked it up, thinking, too late, It’s probably Mr. Mandrake.

  “I can’t believe it’s really you,” Betty Peterson said. “I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Did you find out whatever it was you needed to find out?”

  “Find out?”

  “From Mazes and Mirrors.”

  “Oh. No, not yet,” Joanna said.

  “Wasn’t that the luckiest thing, finding it in my yearbook like that? I guess it’s a good thing Nadine hated Mr. Briarley, isn’t it?”

  “You said you had something to tell me about Mr. Briarley,” Joanna said. “Something your sister told you.”

  “Oh, yes. I called her right after you called me to see if maybe she knew the name of the book. She was three years behind us, but I thought maybe they might have had the same textbook. I mean, our history books were ancient. They said John F. Kennedy was president.”

  It was like talking to one of her NDEers. “Did she know it?” Joanna asked to get her back on track.

  “No, but she told me this awful story, and since you said you’d gone to see Mr. Briarley I thought I should tell you. Did you meet his niece? Her name’s Kathy or Katie or something.”

  “Kit,” Joanna said.

  “Kit,” Betty said. “Well, she was supposed to get married, she was having this big wedding, and Mr. Briarley was supposed to give her away. My little sister said he talked about it constantly in class, even more than he used to talk about the Titanic. I guess she was his favorite niece, and then her fiancé-my sister told me his name, but I don’t remember it—”

  “Kevin,” Joanna said, thinking, I was right. He wasn’t willing to take on the responsibility of an Alzheimer’s patient. He left Kit at the altar.

  “Kevin, that’s right. Well, anyway, the morning of the wedding, he went to pick up some film, and this kid ran a red light and plowed right into him.”

  It was so different from what she had thought Betty was going to say that for a minute Joanna couldn’t take it in.

  “Killed him instantly,” Betty said. “It was awful, and I guess Mr. Briarley was the one who had to tell her. My little sister says she thinks that was what caused his Alzheimer’s, that he’s just trying to forget.”

  One small part of her mind thought, That’s ridiculous, that isn’t what causes Alzheimer’s, but she didn’t say it, couldn’t say it. Belated understanding pounded at her, memories of words that she hadn’t comprehended, that she’d misinterpreted, thudding like the medicine ball hitting the gymnasium wall.

  Kit asking her if people in car accidents had NDEs, if they were pleasant. “They’re not frightening, are they?” she’d said. And “My aunt made me read The Light at the End of the Tunnel after—” and, “Uncle Pat was very kind to me,” saying, “Sometimes he relives past events.”

  She should have seen it. Kit’s thinness, her shadowed eyes, the
photo of her and the blond young man, smiling, and Mr. Briarley saying, “Kevin should be here by now,” quoting, “ ‘The bride hath paced into the hall.’ ”

  Oh, my God, Joanna thought, horrified, I made her watch Runaway Bride!

  “My sister knew this girl who was there and she said it was just tragic,” Betty was saying. “I guess she was already in her wedding dress and everything.”

  Did it have a train? Joanna wondered, feeling sick. “Which wedding dress do you like the best?” she’d asked Kit. “I want a big wedding, with all the trimmings,” Vielle had said.

  “And since you said you’d gone over to see Mr. Briarley, I thought you should know so you wouldn’t put your foot in it.”

  Put my foot in it, Joanna thought. She had sat there in the kitchen, casually discussing near-death experiences, blithely telling Kit heaven was a hallucination of the dying brain.

  I have to call Kit, she thought, I have to tell her how sorry I am, and hung up unceremoniously on the still-chattering Betty. She punched in Kit’s number and then hung up and went to see her instead.

  I was going to rescue her, she thought. I was going to play W. S. Gilbert and save her from drowning, so I invited her over to Vielle’s to discuss weddings and watch a movie with no less than five of them in it. She remembered Kit’s intentness watching it, as if she were afraid there was going to be a test, but the movie itself was the test. No, wrong word. Ordeal. Trial by fire.

  I couldn’t have done worse if I’d tried, she thought, getting out of the car and going up the walk. And what do I say to her now? I’m sorry I tortured you, I was too stupid to put two and two together?

  She didn’t have to say anything. Kit said, looking like she’d just been arrested for a crime, “How’d you find out?” She opened the door, shivering in a halter top, capri pants, and no shoes, and to Joanna she looked even thinner and more drawn, or was that only because now she knew?