Passage

by Connie Willis

  I should have listened to her, he thought, looking for a stairway, or a door to the outside. I should have told her where I was going. I shouldn’t have turned off my pager.

  All the doors were shut, locked. “Hey!” he shouted, banging on them, rattling the old-fashioned knobs. “Anybody there?”

  The third door opened under his hand. Inside, a man wearing headphones was sitting bent over a wireless key, listening. Dot-dash-dot-dot, he wrote on a pad. “Hey!” Richard said. “How do I get to C Deck?”

  The man didn’t look up.

  “C Deck,” Richard said, coming to stand over him. “Which deck is this I’m on now?”

  The man went on writing, his face intent on the key, dash-dash-dot-dash-dot-dot-dot—

  SOS, Richard thought. Of course. He’s calling for help. When had they sent the first SOS? Not until after midnight.

  “What time is it?” Richard asked him loudly. “How long have you been sending?”

  A gray-haired woman appeared in the door, in a high-collared blouse and a long black skirt. “You’re not supposed to be here,” she said, her hand on the doorjamb.

  “I’m looking for—”

  “How did you get in here?” she interrupted sternly. “Unauthorized persons are not allowed in this part of—”

  “I’m looking for Joanna Lander,” he said. “I have to find her.”

  “Yes, sir, I know, sir,” she said, leading him out of the wireless room, “but this part of—”

  “You don’t understand. It’s urgent. She’s in danger. She’d be on C Deck. Or on the Boat Deck—”

  “I know, sir,” she said, and her voice had, surprisingly, softened. “If you’ll just come with me, sir.” She led him back down the passage the way they’d come, her hand gently on his arm.

  “Her passage is on C Deck,” he said. “It opens onto the deck.”

  “Yes, sir.” She opened a door and led him down a flight of stairs.

  “She’s about five foot six,” he said. “Brown hair, glasses. She was wearing a cardigan sweater and—” He stopped. He didn’t know what else. A skirt? Pants? He tried to envision the heap of clothes at the end of the table, but he couldn’t tell what they were for the blood, the blood. “I have to find her immediately.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, and continued to walk slowly, sedately down the corridor.

  “You don’t understand!” he said. “It’s urgent! She—”

  “I understand that you’re upset, sir,” she said, but didn’t quicken her pace.

  “She’s in danger!”

  The woman nodded and walked him slowly down the hall and around a corner.

  Bong! He looked up, alarmed. It was a clock, a large wooden wall clock with Roman numerals and a pendulum. A quarter to two. And the Titanic had gone down at 2:20.

  “You don’t understand!” he said, clutching the woman’s arms and shaking her. “There’s no time! I have to find her and get her off. Just tell me how to get to C Deck!”

  Her eyes widened and filled with tears. “If you’ll just come this way, sir,” she said pleadingly. “Please, sir.”

  “There’s no time!” he said. “I’ll find her myself!” and ran down the passage and through the door at the end of it. And into a mass of jostling, gesturing people.

  The Boat Deck, he thought, but this was an inside room, too, with large double doors along one side. Everyone was pushing toward those doors. The Boat Deck must lie beyond them, and they were waiting here for their chance to board. He stretched his neck, trying to see over the top hats of the men, the feathered hats of the women, looking for Joanna’s bare head. He couldn’t see her.

  Joanna had said the passengers out on the deck had had no idea what was happening, but these people obviously did. They looked frightened, the men’s faces strained and worried, the women’s eyes rimmed with red. A young girl clung to an elderly man, sobbing helplessly into a black-edged handkerchief. “There, there,” the old man said. “We must not give up hope.” Did that mean all the boats were already gone? When had they launched the last one? Not until the very end, Joanna had said, but it couldn’t be the very end. The deck wasn’t slanting at all.

  If he could get through the crowd. He pushed forward, looking for Joanna, craning his neck, trying to see over the sea of hats, trying to move forward, but the crowd was packed in tightly, and as he tried to push in, they blocked his way.

  “Excuse me,” he said, shoving past a young man in a brown coat and hat. He had a newspaper under his arm. At a time like this, Richard thought. “I have to get through. I’m looking for someone.”

  “What was her name?” the young man asked, taking a leather notebook out of his pocket. “Was she traveling first class?”

  “She’s on C Deck.”

  “C Deck,” the young man said, jotting it down. “Traveling alone?”

  “Yes,” Richard said. “Traveling alone.”

  “Name?” he asked, taking more notes.

  “Joanna Lander,” he said. “Please. I have to get through. I have to find her.”

  “She may very well have gotten into one of the boats,” the young man said.

  “No,” Richard said. “She can’t get out that way. She has to go back down to C Deck to the passage,” but the young man wasn’t listening. He had looked up toward the double doors. So had everyone else. The double doors opened, and someone must have come through because everyone looked at the doors expectantly. A hush fell, and the young girl who had been sobbing straightened up and clutched the elderly man’s hand.

  Richard pushed forward, elbowing his way past a middle-aged couple, a young woman with a baby, two teenaged boys, till he could see the man who’d emerged from the doors. He wore spectacles and was wearing a black frock coat and a black vest. He was carrying a sheaf of papers. He stepped up onto something—a dais?—and raised his hands to quiet the already quiet crowd. Who was this? The captain? One of the officers? Then why wasn’t he in uniform?

  “I know you are all anxious for news,” the man said, putting on the pince-nez. “We do not as yet have a full list of survivors.”

  What?

  “We are currently in wireless contact with the Carpathia, and as soon as we have a complete list—”

  “No!” Richard said.

  “Get hold of yourself,” the young man said, grasping his shoulder. “She may have been in one of the boats.”

  “No!” Richard yelled. He wrenched the newspaper out from under the young man’s arm and yanked it open. “Titanic Lost,” it said. “A thousand souls feared drowned.”

  He pushed forward to the spectacled man in the black frock coat. “What day is this?” he asked furiously. The gray-haired woman was headed toward him, a man with a medical bag behind her. Richard grabbed the spectacled man’s black lapels. “What day is this?”

  “April eighteenth,” the man said nervously. “I can assure you the White Star Line deeply regrets—”

  “Sir,” the gray-haired woman said, and the man with the medical bag took his arm. “You’re distraught. I think perhaps you’d better lie down.”

  “No!” he shouted, and it was a roar, a scream. “No!”

  The doctor reached for his arm, and he leaped away through the crowd, shoving at their shoulders, pushing them out of his way. He thrust his way toward the door and through it and took off running down the corridor. Four minutes. And how much time, how much time had he wasted already, he thought as he ran, his heart pounding, too stupid to know where he was, to see that this was the White Star Line offices?

  The clock at the foot of the stairs was striking the hour. Richard ran past it and started up the stairs, and an alarm went off somewhere, like a fire bell or a code alarm, clanging, buzzing, over the clock, still striking the hour.

  He raced up the rest of the stairs, past the room where the wireless operator sat, taking down the incoming taps of the key. From the Carpathia, not the Titanic. He should have seen that, should have known the Titanic would be sending, not
receiving, and that the Marconi room was on the wrong deck. Should have seen instantly that this was a building, not a ship, and gone back, made Tish send him under again.

  He rounded the corner, panting, and raced for the door, grabbed the doorknob, twisted it. It was locked. He rattled the doorknob, kicked at the door, hit at it with his fist.

  It opened, and he burst through it into the dark corridor. And into the lab.

  “Tish!” he called, yanking to get the headphones off, but there weren’t any headphones. And no sleep mask, because he could see the light. It was killingly bright. I should have covered it with thicker black paper, he thought, and tried to sit up. He couldn’t. He was bound with ropes. “Tish!”

  “Oh, Dr. Wright!” Tish said, coming between him and the light. She was haloed in it and rays of dazzling light seemed to come from her. “Thank God you’re all right!”

  “You have to send me under again,” he said. “It was the wrong place, and the wrong time. She wasn’t there.”

  “Just lie still,” Tish said.

  “You don’t understand,” he said, and tried to sit up again. “She’s on the Titanic! I have to go get her before it goes down!”

  “There, there,” Tish said, pushing him back down. “You’re still under the influence of the drug. You need to lie still until it wears off.”

  “There’s no time,” he said. “Irreversible brain death occurs in four to six minutes. You have to send me back right now. And up the dosage of dithetamine.”

  Tish just stood there, haloed in light.

  “Now! Before it’s too late!” he shouted, and saw that she was clutching a black-edged handkerchief, too, and her eyes were red-rimmed.

  I’m not really back in the lab, he thought. This is still part of the NDE, and twisted around to see where the passage was.

  “Don’t, Dr. Wright, you’ll pull out your IV,” Tish said. “You’re still on a saline drip. When you didn’t come out, I stopped the dithetamine—” She reached for the site.

  He clapped a hand over the IV. “Restart it now!” he shouted, and managed, finally, to heave himself to a sitting position. They had not been ropes, they were electrodes, hooked up to the EEG and EKG monitors, and this was the lab. The handkerchief Tish was holding was a sodden Kleenex.

  “Now, Tish!” he shouted, “or I’ll do it myself!” but he had sat up too fast, he felt dizzy and cold. “Tish, please! You don’t understand. We’re nearly out of time! You have to send me back under before it’s too late!”

  But she just stood there, haloed in light, turning the lump of tissue over and over in her hands. “But you still didn’t come out, even after I stopped the dithetamine, and I didn’t know whether to administer norepinephrine or not. Your vitals were normal, and that one time Mr. Sage was under for—”

  He turned sharply and looked at the clock, but Joanna had moved it so it couldn’t be seen from the far wall. “Tish,” he said, “how long was I under?” and waited with dread for the answer.

  “I am so sorry, Dr. Wright. Mrs. Troudtheim told me when she came . . . ” She twisted the sodden Kleenex in her hands. “She was so upset. We all loved Dr. Lander—”

  “How long was I under?” he repeated dully.

  “I don’t know. I can’t read the scans, so I didn’t know if you were in the NDE-state or if you’d come out and were in non-REM sleep—”

  “How long was I under, Tish?” he said, but he already knew the answer. He had heard the clock striking in the corridor of the White Star Line offices, chiming the hours. “Tell me.”

  “Two hours,” Tish said, and started to cry.

  “There’s another act coming after this. I reckon you can guess what that’s about.”

  THORNTON WILDER, OUR TOWN

  “Nobody has heard the Titanic for about two hours.”

  —WIRELESS MESSAGE FROM THE LA PROVENCE TO THE CELTIC

  THAT NIGHT Richard had gone back to his lab—even though work was impossible, unthinkable—because the police had said they might want him to make a statement and because he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. The ER had been cordoned off into a crime scene, with all the emergency patients shunted off to swedish and st. Luke’s, and the doctors’ lounge and the hallways and the cafeteria were full of people asking him, “How are you holding up?” and, “Where the hell were the security guards? I’ve been saying for the last three years that ER was an accident waiting to happen. Why didn’t they have a metal detector?” and, “Have they determined the cause of death?” All questions he had no idea how to answer.

  she died of drowning, he wanted to tell them. She went down on the Titanic.

  At one point—the first night? the next day?—he had gone down to the morgue. “Oh, man, I’m sorry,” the attendant had said, shamefaced. “They took her over to University.”

  For the autopsy, Richard thought. When a crime was involved, they didn’t do it at Mercy General. They sent the body over to the forensic pathologist at University Hospital.

  “Maybe you could . . . ” the attendant began. Go over there, Richard thought, but the attendant didn’t finish, and Richard knew he was sorry he’d spoken, that he was thinking of the Y-shaped incision in the chest, the ribs and breastbone removed, the heart pulled out, weighed, dissected. Joanna’s heart.

  “It’s all right,” Richard said. “I just wanted—”

  Wanted—what? To convince himself that she was safely there, swathed in a plastic sheet in a metal drawer, safely dead. Instead of still on the Titanic, clinging to the railing on the slanting deck, waiting to drown.

  “Why don’t you go home and try to get some sleep, Dr. Wright?” the attendant had said gently, and Richard had nodded and turned, and then just stood there stupidly, staring at the wall.

  “How do I get out of here?” he had said finally.

  “You go down this hall and take a right,” the attendant had said, pointing, and it was like a knife going in. You take that hallway down. There’s a stairway. You take the stairs up to seventh and go across the walkway to Surgery. Joanna, pointing. There’s a hall on the right. You take that to the elevators and that’ll take you down to Personnel. Him, disbelieving. Isn’t there a shortcut I could take? Joanna, laughing, That is the shortcut.

  The attendant had taken his arm. “Here, I’ll walk you up,” he said. He had led him back up to the first floor, supporting Richard’s arm as if Richard were an old woman, down a hall and up a stairway and into the lobby.

  And it must have been during the day because Mr. Wojakowski was there, waiting for the elevator, his freckled face beaming. “Mornin’, Doc,” he’d said, bustling over to them. “Say, did Joanna Lander ever find you?”

  Beside him, the attendant gasped, his grip tightening on Richard’s arm, but Mr. Wojakowski, oblivious, swept on. “I saw her up in Medicine,” he said, “and she was-Say,” he said, looking at the attendant and then back at Richard, “say, Doc, are you okay?”

  The attendant pulled him off to one side, whispering, and Richard watched his face go white and abruptly old, the freckles standing out starkly against his skin. “Hell, if I’d known, I wouldn’t of—How’d it happen?”

  The attendant whispered some more, and the elevator opened on emptiness. Richard stared into it.

  “I want to tell him I didn’t have any idea—” Mr. Wojakowski said, looking anxiously in Richard’s direction.

  “Not now,” the attendant said and led Mr. Wojakowski by the arm into the elevator, and then stood there like a bouncer, arms folded, till it closed.

  He came back over to Richard. “Are you okay, Dr. Wright?” he said, taking possession of Richard’s arm again. “Do you want me to call somebody?”

  Yes, Richard thought. The Carpathia. The Californian. But their wireless is turned off. The captain’s gone to bed.

  “You’re sure there’s nobody I can call? Girlfriend? Somebody you work with?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be dri
ving right now, man,” he’d said. “Is there someplace here you could lie down?”

  “Yes,” Richard had said, and gone back up to the lab. He’d slept on the floor, wrapped in the blanket he’d covered Amelia Tanaka, covered Joanna with, his pager next to him, turned on, as if it were not too late, as if what had happened were somehow reversible.

  He wondered if the wireless operator on the Californian had done that, leaning endlessly over the key, headphones on, listening for other messages, hoping for a second chance. Or if, after two days, the operator had switched it off again, the way he did, unable to stand the questions, the condolences.

  The resident who’d tried to save Joanna had called, and three reporters, and Tish. “I’ve decided to go back to Medicine,” she said. “In light of everything that’s happened . . . I’ve put in a formal transfer request. I’ll need your signature.”

  In light of everything that’s happened.

  “I’ll be glad to show my replacement the lab procedures, of course.” She hesitated. “I haven’t told anybody about . . . I don’t want to get you in trouble with the hospital for going under like that. I wouldn’t want you to lose your funding, and I know you reacted out of panic and weren’t responsible for what you were doing—”

  Responsible. I left Joanna on the Titanic, he thought, I left Joanna to drown.

  “Dr. Wright?” Tish was saying. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think it might be a good idea for you to talk to somebody,” she said. “There’s a really good doctor on staff here. Dr. Ainsworth. She’s a psychiatrist who specializes in cases like this.”

  Like what? he wondered. Cases of abandonment? Of betrayal? He thought of Tish, standing over him, tears running down her mascara-stained cheeks. “I’m sorry I frightened you,” he said into the phone.

  “I know,” Tish said, and her voice quavered. “I couldn’t bring you out of it . . . ” Her voice broke. “I thought you were dead.”