Passage

by Connie Willis

  “I’ll have to look that up,” the operator said, and, after a maddening minute, “841.”

  “Thanks,” Joanna said and started to hang up, then thought better of it. “I want you to page her for me,” she said.

  “Do you want her to call the lab?”

  “No. My pager. And I want you to page Dr. Wright, too,” she said, reaching in her pocket to switch her pager on, thinking with a sudden sinking feeling, He won’t have his turned on either.

  She hung up. Room 841 was in the west wing. The shortest way would be to go down to fifth and take the walkway across.No, they were painting the walkway on fifth. Down to the walkway on third. She scribbled a note: “Went to find you. Page me,” dropped it on his desk, and ran out, slamming the door behind her, not even taking the time to lock it, hitting the elevator button again and again, willing it to open, willing it not to stop on fifth, or fourth.

  When the elevator opened on third, she ran down the hall, across the walkway, and through Medicine to the other walkway. Don’t let Mrs. Davenport be out taking a constitutional, she thought, glancing nervously at the door to her room. I don’t have time to listen to her latest confabulations.

  Joanna pressed close to the other wall and hurried past the half-open door, past the sunroom, past the nurses’ station.

  “Hey, Doc!” a voice called behind her. “Doc!” Mr. Wojakowski. She kept going, acting as if she hadn’t heard him. Down to the end of the hall. Around the corner. Into the walkway.

  The walkway door opened behind her. “Doc!” Mr. Wojakowski called, panting. “Doc Lander! Wait up!” and there was nothing to do but turn around.

  “I thought that was you, Doc,” he said, beaming. “I saw you back there and tried to catch you as you went past, but you were going like you’d just heard ’em sound ‘Battle Stations.’ Where you headin’ in such a hurry?”

  “I’m looking for Dr. Wright. I have to find him right away,” she said.

  “I haven’t seen him,” he said cheerfully. “I came to visit a friend of mine.” He nodded his head back in the direction of Medicine. “Had a stroke. Bad one, too. One whole side paralyzed, can’t talk. Happened while he was square dancing. Fell over right in the middle of a dosey-doh—”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Joanna said, glancing toward the end of the walkway. “I wish I could stay and talk. I—”

  “You know who you remind me of? Ace Willey. He was a midshipman on the Yorktown, and he was always in a hurry. ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going in such a hurry?’ I used to say to him. ‘You’re on a damned ship.’ Well, one day, he’s hurrying across the hangar deck, and he steps into an open hatch and—” “Mr. Wojakowski, I’d love to hear the rest of your story, but I’ve got to go. I have to find Dr. Wright.” She took off across the walkway, looking determinedly ahead.

  “Wait up, Doc.” He caught up to her as she reached the door. “I had something I wanted to ask you.”

  She pushed open the door. “Mr. Wojakowski, I—”

  “Ed.”

  “Ed,” she said, not stopping. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t have time to talk.”

  “I just wanted to know if you’d ever got that schedule of yours figured out,” he said, panting to keep up with her.

  “No,” Joanna said, rounding the corner and coming, finally, to the elevators. She pushed the button, praying, Please don’t take forever. “We’ll let you know as soon as we do.”

  “Good. Just give me a call,” he said. “I can do it just about anytime.”

  The elevator finally, blessedly opened and Joanna stepped in. For one awful moment she thought he intended to follow her, but he had just stepped up to the elevator’s edge. “So anyway, Ace wasn’t looking where he was going, and he stepped in an open hatch and fell two full decks. Broke both legs. Spent the next year and a half in a hospital on Oahu.”

  Joanna pushed “eight” and the door started slowly, slowly to close. “ ‘So where did all your hurrying get you?’ I asked him,” he said as the door slid shut. “You shoulda seen him, all hung up in traction and two plaster casts that went all the way up to his—”

  He was still talking when the elevator door snicked shut. And probably still talking, Joanna thought, stepping out of the elevator on eight and looking for the room signs.

  “830–850,” one of them said, pointing to the hall on the left. She started down it, looking for 841. Two Hispanic men in white coveralls stood down by the end, leaning over a cluster of buckets, mixing paint.

  All of the doors in the hall were open except 841. Joanna knocked on it, banging progressively harder when no one answered. She tried the door. It was locked. “Do you know where Dr. Jamison is?” she called down to the painters.

  They both shook their heads and went back to pouring paint from one bucket to another. Joanna frowned at the door, frustrated. Where were they? Had they gone someplace else to talk? To the cafeteria, maybe?

  She walked down to the painters, who both straightened up, as if expecting to be lectured by her. “Did either of you see Dr. Jamison leave?” Joanna asked. They shook their heads again, with a timidity that made her wonder if either of them spoke English.

  “Señor—” she began, and a young man stuck his head out of the door next to Dr. Jamison’s office and said, “You’re looking for Dr. Jamison? She had to go see somebody in the ER.”

  “Thank you,” Joanna said. “Do you know if Dr. Wright was with her?”

  He shook his head. “I just got back from lunch and saw her note.”

  “Her note?”

  “On the door,” he said, leaning around his door to point at Dr. Jamison’s. “Oh,” he said when he saw it wasn’t there. “Somebody must have taken it down.”

  Richard. He’d seen the note, pocketed it, gone down to the ER after her. Or the painters had taken it down. She considered asking them, then discarded the idea. “Can I use your phone for a second?” she asked the young man.

  “Sure,” he said, opening the door farther to let her in.

  She dialed the lab, listened to the ring till the answering machine clicked on, and hung up. “Thanks,” she said, and started back for the elevators, trying to think what the fastest way down to the ER was. Back down to third, take the walkway to main, and the elevators down to first, she thought, pushing the button for the elevator. I should have punched the button when I got off. It might be here by now.

  She pushed the button again, thinking of Mr. Briarley pressing the ivory-and-gold button over and over and over, of him smacking A Night to Remember against his desk the same way, over and over and over—“Literature is a message!” he’d shouted, whacking the paperback for emphasis.

  And that was the lecture she’d been trying to remember, the lecture that came welling up out of her long-term memory now when she no longer needed it, when she’d already figured out what the NDE was. “It’s a message!” he’d thundered, and she could see Ricky Inman cowering in his seat. She could see it all, the snow—not fog but snow—falling outside the windows and the words “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” on the board and Mr. Briarley in his gray tweed vest, hitting the red-and-white paperback against his desk, shouting, “What do you think these poems and novels and plays are? Boring, dusty artifacts? They’re not!” Smack. “They’re messages, just like the Titanic sent!” Smack. “Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Milton, William Shakespeare, they’re tapping out messages to you!”

  He shook A Night to Remember at them. “They say the dead can’t speak, but they can! The people in this book died over sixty years ago, in the middle of the ocean, with no one around them for miles, but they still speak to you. They still send us messages—about love and courage and death! That’s what history is, and science, and art. That’s what literature is. It’s the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them!”

  She had listened. And remembered. And over ten years later, while she was e
xperiencing an NDE, Mr. Briarley had spoken to her out of the past, trying to tell her the NDE was a message.

  The elevator opened, and she stepped in. On second thought, she’d better not risk third. Mr. Wojakowski might still be standing outside the door of the elevator, waiting to finish his story about Ace Willey. She’d better go down to second, cut through Radiology, and take the service elevator. She punched the button for “two.”

  I’m doing what the brain does during an NDE, she thought, watching the floor numbers descend. Racing around, taking roundabout routes when there’s no direct way through, trying one thing, and then, when that doesn’t work, trying another. Asking Mr. Briarley for the answer, and then when he couldn’t help her, trying to find the textbook, looking through transcripts, asking Kit, asking Maisie.

  Just like in Carl’s coma—heading first for the railroad tracks, then, when the wires were cut, trying to get to the mesas. Images of searching and not finding, of lines down and doors locked and passages blocked. Images of the dying brain.

  And images of hurrying because there’s not any time. Brain death occurs in four to six minutes, and the mail room’s already flooded, the elevator’s not working, it’s already getting dark.

  Images generated by endorphins and electrical impulses, frantically sending out SOSs, desperately reaching out for something to latch on to, like Coma Carl grabbing for her wrist. And the rest of it, the tunnels and relatives and Angels of Light, the gardens and slanting decks and sandstone deserts are nothing more than side effects, she thought, taking the hall that led to Surgery, passing a nurse she didn’t recognize, the desperate efforts of the conscious mind to keep up with what it’s experiencing, to make sense of sensations it can’t understand, searching through its long-term memories for its own connections, its own metaphors.

  How could I not have recognized the metaphor? she thought. And ran straight into Mr. Mandrake.

  “Dr. Lander. Just the person I wanted to see,” he said sternly. “I have been searching all over for you. You never answer your pages.”

  “This really isn’t a good time, Mr. Mandrake,” she said, sidestepping to go around him. “I’m—” but he’d taken a firm grip on her arm.

  “This will only take a few minutes,” he said smoothly, steering her over to the side of the hallway. “Now that you’ve become one of Dr. Wright’s subjects, I’m sure you’ve realized that his lab-produced hallucinations bear no resemblance to authentic NAEs. Or, if you, through some fluke, have experienced a true NAE, then you know that it is real, that what you are seeing is the afterlife that awaits—”

  “I don’t have time to discuss this with you right now,” Joanna said and started to walk rapidly away.

  He darted in front of her. “That’s exactly the issue. You don’t have time to discuss your findings with me. All of your time is taken up with Dr. Wright’s project, which can’t possibly lead to anything useful.”

  That’s what you think, Joanna thought.

  “Because the physical aspects are completely insignificant,” Mr. Mandrake was saying. “It is the supernatural aspects that matter. The NDE is a spiritual experience through which the Angel of Light is trying to tell us about the world that awaits us after death. It is a message—”

  Joanna laughed, a spurt of delight that escaped in spite of her.

  “I see nothing funny—” Mr. Mandrake said, drawing himself up.

  “I’m sorry,” Joanna said, trying to suppress it. “It’s just that you’re right. It is a message.”

  He stared at her, speechless. “Well, I’m glad you’ve finally realized—” he said after a moment.

  “I should have listened to you in the first place, Mr. Mandrake,” she said giddily. “It was all right there in your book. Telegrams, rockets, lights—did you know that white is the international color for a distress signal?”

  “Distress—?” he said, frowning uncertainly.

  “It just never occurred to me that you, of all people . . . But you were right.” She grasped his sleeves. “The NDE is a message. It’s an SOS. It’s a call for help.”

  She squeezed his arms. “And you’re wrong about Richard’s research not leading anywhere. It’s going to save Maisie. It’s going to work miracles!” she said, and left him standing there, gaping after her, not even attempting to follow.

  But she didn’t take any chances. Instead of the service elevator, she ducked down the nearest stairway to second and out into the chilly parking lot, so she wouldn’t run into anyone else. It was snowing again, and she hugged her arms to her chest as she ran across the parking lot to the side door of Main.

  And her luck was against her. Maisie’s nurse Barbara was scraping ice off her back window. “Joanna!” she called, “Maisie wants to see you!” and started over to her, scraper in hand.

  “I know. I’ll be up this afternoon,” she called back, and hurried on.

  And who will I run into in here? she wondered, pushing open the side door and starting down the stairs. Kit? Mrs.Davenport? Everyone I’ve ever known? But there was no one in the stairwell, and no yellow tape stretched across the landing. She took the last few stairs and the hall leading down to the ER at a run.

  She pushed the side door open and stood there for a moment, looking for Richard. She couldn’t see him, or Dr. Jamison, but there was Vielle, standing with one of the interns outside one of the trauma rooms with a young man, no, a boy. He wasn’t as tall as Vielle, and the maroon jacket he was wearing was two sizes too big for him. An Avalanche jacket. Joanna could see the swooping blue-and-white logo on the back of it.

  He didn’t look like an emergency. He stood there talking to Vielle and the intern with no sign of injury Joanna could see, at least from the back, and whatever his problem was, even if somebody’d shot him with a nail gun, it could wait a minute because she had to find out where Richard was. She plunged across the ER, calling, “Vielle!”

  None of them looked up. A resident, still with his stethoscope on, turned and looked irritably at her over the chart he was reading, but the intern and Vielle continued to watch the boy, who was still talking earnestly to them. Joanna wondered what about. Vielle was frowning, and the intern’s face was stiff with disapproval. Good, Joanna thought, sidling past a supply cart. They won’t care if I interrupt them.

  “Vielle, have you seen Dr. Wright?” she said, nearly up to them now, but they still didn’t look up.

  “I have to get out of here,” the boy was saying with quiet intensity. “They’re going to close the lid.”

  “No, they aren’t,” Vielle said soothingly. “I think you should—”

  Joanna ran up behind the boy. “You say that because you’re the embalmer,” he said angrily. “I know what you’re trying to do.”

  “Vielle, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m looking for—” The boy whirled to face her, his arm coming up to strike her as he turned, and she knew, watching his panicked, desperate face, that he had moved suddenly. But it didn’t seem sudden.

  It happened slowly, slowly, the intern rearing backward, his mouth opening in alarm, the boy’s maroon sleeve coming around and up, the satin catching the light from the fluorescents overhead, Vielle’s arm, still in its white bandage, reaching forward to grab at his sleeve. They all moved slowly, stickily, as if they were mired in molasses.

  The Great Molasses Flood, Joanna thought. But time dilation was caused by the surge of adrenaline that accompanied trauma. And this wasn’t a trauma situation.

  But time dilation was what it had to be, because she had plenty of time to see it all: the intern’s face, nearly as frantic as the teenager’s, turning to call the security guard, who was already lumbering to his feet. Vielle’s hand, not reaching for his maroon sleeve, reaching for his hand.

  To hear it all: Vielle’s voice, coated with syrup, too, shouting, “Joanna! Don’t-!” The chart the resident was holding clattering to the floor. An alarm going off.

  She had time to wonder if the time dilation might be some kind of
side effect of the dithetamine. Time to think, I have to tell Richard. But if it wasn’t a trauma situation, why was the guard, still lumbering to his feet, reaching for his gun?

  Time to think, The boy must have a knife. He was holding a knife on them when I came in. That’s why they didn’t look up when I called, that’s why they didn’t see me till it was too late. That’s what Vielle grabbed for.

  Time to think, I told her the ER was an accident waiting to happen.

  Time, finally, for the fact to penetrate: He has a knife, though she still didn’t feel any fear. That’s the endorphins, she thought, cushioning the mind against pain, against panic, so she could think clearly.

  He has a knife, she thought calmly, and looked down at her blouse, down at his striking hand, but even though time was moving even more slowly than the security guard, she was too late. She couldn’t see the knife.

  Because it had already gone in.

  “This is terrible! This is the worst of the worst

  catastrophes in the world . . . the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast . . . oh, the humanity!”

  —RADIO REPORTER HERB MORRISON, BROADCASTING THE CRASH OF THE HINDENBURG

  THERE WAS BLOOD everywhere, which didn’t make any sense because where the knife had gone in, there was hardly any, just a little ooze of dark red. “We’ve got an emergency here!” the intern shouted, reaching out to keep Joanna from falling, but she had already fallen. She was lying on the tile floor, and Vielle was kneeling next to her, and there was blood all over her cardigan, all over the hand Vielle was holding.

  Vielle grabbed for the knife, Joanna thought. He must have stabbed her hand. “Are you hurt?” she asked Vielle.

  “No,” Vielle said, but Joanna thought she must be, because there was a kind of sob in her throat.

  “We’ve got a stab wound here,” the intern said to the resident. Good, they’ll take care of it, Joanna thought, but the resident didn’t even glance at Vielle. He looked at the little line of oozing blood in Joanna’s chest and then turned and started putting on a pair of latex gloves. “Get her on the table,” he said, pulling the glove down over his palm, “and get me a cross match. What’s her BP?”