“Dr. Lander told me about this clown who pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, and it was hooked to another one and another one and another one,” Maisie said. “Maybe she got busy and forgot. Maybe you need to call her.”
“If she’s busy, we shouldn’t bother her. Look, I brought you some new videos. The Best Summer and The Parent Trap. Which one would you like to watch?”
“She always comes when she says she will,” Maisie said. “Even if she’s really busy. Maybe she’s sick. Nurse Amy was out with the flu.”
“You’re supposed to be thinking positive thoughts, not worrying,” her mother said, putting The Best Summer in the VCR. “Remember what Dr. Murrow said. You’ve got to work on getting ready for your new heart.” She switched on the TV, picked up Maisie’s water pitcher, and took it over to the sink. “Which means no worrying.” She dumped the water and ice rattlingly into the sink and started for the door, holding the pitcher. “I’ll be right back. I’m going to ask them for some ice.”
“Ask them if they paged her,” Maisie called after her. “Tell them I found out the stuff she asked me to.”
Her mother stopped halfway out the door. “What stuff?”
“Just some stuff we were talking about when she came to see me.”
“It’s very nice of the hospital staff to come visit you, but you have to remember they have jobs, and those have to come first.”
“But this was about her job,” Maisie started to say, but if she did, her mother would want to know what Joanna had asked her, so she didn’t. She just said, “Ask them if they paged her,” and when her mother came back in, carrying the pitcher and a can of juice, she said, “Did you ask them?”
“Look, pineapple juice,” her mother said, popping the tab on the can of juice and holding it out to her. “Your favorite.”
“Did you?” Maisie asked.
“Yes,” her mother said, setting the juice down on Maisie’s bedtable. “The nurses said she got a new job, and she moved. Do you want a straw?”
“Where did she move?”
“I don’t know,” her mother said, unwrapping the straw.
“She wouldn’t move without telling me,” Maisie said.
“She probably didn’t have time. The nurses said she had to start her job right away.” She handed Maisie her juice. “They told me she said to tell you good-bye, and that she wanted you to think happy thoughts and do what Dr. Murrow tells you.” She turned up the TV. “Now rest and watch your movie. It’s about a little girl who’s getting well. Just like you.” She handed Maisie the remote. “I’ll be back when you have your dinner,” she said, kissed her good-bye, and left.
After a minute, Maisie got out of bed, tiptoed to the door, and peeked down the hall. Her mother was at the nurses’ station, talking to Barbara and the other nurse. She got back in bed, sitting on the edge where she could scramble under the covers if she heard anybody coming, and watched the first part of The Best Summer.
The little girl in the movie was in a wheelchair. She had a big bow in her hair and a shawl over her knees and looked very sad. “You’ll never get well looking like that,” the little girl’s doctor said. “It takes smiles to get well.”
“I haven’t any smiles,” the little girl said.
“You must take one of my happy pills,” the doctor said, and pulled a puppy out from behind his back.
“Oh, a puppy!” the little girl cried. “The darling! What is his name?”
“Ulla,” Maisie said, and got out of bed to check to see if her mother was still there.
She was gone. Maisie clicked off the TV and set the remote on the floor half under the bed. Then she got into bed and arranged the covers neatly. She waited awhile till she wasn’t breathing so hard and then hit the nurse’s call button.
It took a long time for the nurse to come. When she did, it was Barbara. She was glad. Nurse Amy was always in a hurry. “What do you need, honey?” Barbara asked.
“I dropped my remote,” Maisie said, pointing at the floor, and then, as Barbara stooped to pick up the remote, “My mother said Dr. Lander moved away.”
Barbara stayed bent down, looking for the remote. Maisie wondered if she had put it too far under the bed, it took her so long to answer.
“Yes, that’s right,” she said finally.
“Is she already gone?” Maisie asked.
“Yes,” Barbara said, and her voice sounded funny from being under the bed. “She’s gone.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Barbara said. She stood up and switched on the TV. “Which channel were you watching?” she asked without turning around.
“A video,” Maisie said. “Maybe she isn’t gone yet. I mean, don’t people have to pack all their clothes and rent their apartments and stuff before they move?”
Barbara hit “play.” The puppy was licking the face of the little girl in the wheelchair. The little girl was giggling. Barbara handed the remote to Maisie. “All right now?” she asked, patting the covers over Maisie’s knees.
“Maybe she isn’t gone yet,” Maisie said. “She’s still getting ready to go, and then she’ll come back and tell everybody good-bye.”
“No,” Barbara said, “she left,” and went out before Maisie could ask her anything else.
Maisie lay there watching The Best Summer. The little girl got out of her wheelchair and walked with old-fashioned-looking crutches. “You were right. You told me all it took to get well was smiles,” she told the doctor.
I’ll bet the nurses forgot to page Joanna, Maisie thought, and she was so busy packing she didn’t even think about the wireless messages the Titanic sent. I’ll bet when she gets to wherever she moved to, she’ll remember. She pushed the call button again, and when Barbara came in, she said, “Where did Joanna move to?”
Barbara looked angry, like she was going to tell Maisie not to ring the call button so much, but she didn’t. She reached over Maisie’s head and flicked it off. “Back east.”
“Back east where?”
“I don’t know, New Jersey,” Barbara said and went out.
New Jersey was where the Hindenburg crashed. Maisie wondered if Joanna had gone there to interview the crewman who had had the near-death experience.
But he lived in Germany. Maybe she had found out about somebody else on the Hindenburg who’d had a near-death experience, and that was why she’d left in such a hurry. She’ll call me as soon as she gets there, Maisie thought.
She wondered how long it took to get to New Jersey. She didn’t think she’d better use the nurse’s call button again. She waited till Eugene brought in her supper tray and asked him, “How long does it take to get to New Jersey, Eugene?”
Eugene grinned at her. “You plannin’ to fly the coop?”
“No,” she said. “To drive there, how many days would it take?”
“Oh, you’re drivin’,” he said. “Ain’t you a little young to be drivin’?”
“I’m serious, Eugene,” Maisie said. “How many days would it take?”
“I dunno,” he said, “three, maybe four. Depends on how fast you drive. You strike me as one a’ them speedy drivers! You better watch out the police don’t stop you and ask to see your license!”
Maisie figured it would probably take Joanna four days if she was moving all her stuff, but she had already left. When? Yesterday or Thursday? If she had left on Thursday, she might call the day after tomorrow.
When her mom came back right before supper, she asked her, “Do you know when Joanna left?”
“No,” her mom said. “Did you watch The Best Summer? I brought you another video, The Secret Garden.”
Maisie decided she had probably left yesterday. So she’ll probably call Saturday, she thought, and I’d better find out as much as I can about the wireless messages so I’ll have lots to tell her. She looked through her Titanic books again and wrote down the ones they sent before the iceberg, just in case Joanna decided she wanted them, too, and waited for her to call.
But she didn’t call on Saturday, or on Sunday. She’s probably busy interviewing the Hindenburg person, Maisie thought, watching the video of The Secret Garden. There was a little boy in a wheelchair in this one, and a little girl who was very crabby. Maisie liked her.
The little girl kept hearing funny noises, like somebody crying. When she asked the people in the house about it, they told her they didn’t hear anything and tried to change the subject, so she went upstairs and looked for herself. She found the little boy in the wheelchair and started taking him outside without telling anybody.
I’ll bet he gets well, too, Maisie thought disgustedly, and fell asleep. When she woke up, the little girl was writing her uncle a letter. “Where shall I send it?” she asked the maid, and the maid told her the address.
When Barbara came in to take her blood pressure, Maisie waited until she’d taken the stethoscope off and then asked, “Do you know Dr. Lander’s address?”
“Her address?” Barbara asked, putting the stethoscope back around her neck.
“The address of where she moved to.”
Barbara peeled the blood pressure cuff off Maisie’s arm and put it in the basket on the wall. “Maisie—” she said and then just stood there.
“What?” Maisie said.
“I forgot the thermometer,” she said, feeling in her pockets. “I’ll be right back.”
“But did she? Leave an address?”
“No,” Barbara said, and just stood there, like she had before. “I don’t know where she is.”
But I’ll bet Dr. Wright does, Maisie thought. They were working on a project. Joanna had to tell him the address of where she was going. She thought about asking Barbara to page him, but she remembered Joanna saying he sometimes turned his pager off, so she called the hospital switchboard herself.
“Can you give me Dr. Wright’s number?” she asked the operator, trying to sound like her mother.
“Dr. Richard Wright?”
“Uh-huh,” Maisie said. “I mean, yes.”
“I’ll connect you,” the operator said.
“No, I want—” Maisie said, but the operator had already connected her. The phone was busy.
Maisie waited till nighttime, when the evening operator would be on, and tried again. This time she said, “Dr. Wright’s number, please.”
“Dr. Wright has gone home,” the operator said.
“I know,” Maisie said. “I need his number so I can call him tomorrow. To make an appointment,” she added.
“An appointment?” the operator said doubtfully, but gave her the number. Maisie called it, just in case he hadn’t gone home, but nobody answered. Nobody answered the next day either, even though she called every half hour.
She would have to go see him. She called the operator again and asked where Dr. Wright’s office was. “602,” the operator told her, which was good. She would have to take the elevator, but her room was 422, so his office should be right above it, and she wouldn’t have to walk very far.
The hard part would be getting down to the elevator without anybody seeing her. The little girl in The Secret Garden had gone at night, but Dr. Wright wouldn’t be in his office then, and she couldn’t do it in the morning because that was when they made the bed and helped her take her shower and brought the library cart around. And at two o’clock her mother came.
She would have to do it after they picked up the lunch trays. As soon as they made her bed, she went over to the closet and got her clothes and put them under the covers. She laid one of the Titanic books open on top of the lump it made so it wouldn’t show, and then lay down and rested so she would have enough energy for the walking.
She ate a lot of her lunch, too, and Eugene, when he came in to pick up the tray, said, “Awright! That’s what I like to see! You keep eatin’ like that, and you’ll be out of this place in no time!”
She had put on her pants and socks before lunch. As soon as he took her tray out, she put on her shoes and turtleneck. She put her robe on over her clothes, pulled the covers up, and lay down, catching her breath and listening.
The little boy in 420 started crying. Footsteps came down the hall and went in the room.
She’d better turn on the TV so the nurses would think she was watching a video and wouldn’t come in to see what she was doing. She got the remote off the bed table, rewound The Secret Garden, and hit “play.”
The crying stopped. After a few minutes footsteps came out of the room and went back toward the nurses’ station. On the TV, the little girl was sneaking up a long winding staircase. Maisie got out of bed, and took off her robe. She stuck it under the covers and tiptoed to the door. There was nobody in the hall, and she couldn’t see Barbara or anybody in the nurses’ station. She snuck really fast to the elevators, pushed the button, and then stood inside the door of the waiting room till the elevator light blinked on. The elevator door opened, and she darted across and pushed “six.”
Her heart was pounding really hard, but it was partly because she was scared that somebody would see her before the door shut. “Come on!” she whispered, and it finally shut, really slow, and the elevator started going up.
Okay. Now all she had to do was find 602. When the elevator opened, she got out and looked around. There were lots of doors, but none of them had numbers on them. TTY-TDD, a sign on one of them said.
She walked down the hall. LHS, the doors said, and OT, but no numbers. A lady carrying a clipboard came out of a door marked PT. She stopped when she saw Maisie, and frowned, and for a minute Maisie was afraid she knew she was a patient. The lady came over to her, holding the clipboard against her chest. “Are you looking for somebody, honey?” she asked.
“Yes,” Maisie said, trying to sound very certain and businesslike. “Dr. Wright.”
“He’s in the east wing,” the lady said. “Do you know how to get there?”
Maisie shook her head.
“You need to go back down to fifth and take a right, and you’ll see a sign that says ‘Human Resources.’ You go through that door, and it’ll take you to the east wing.”
Is it real far? Maisie wanted to ask, but she was afraid the lady would ask her where she had come from, so she said, “Thank you very much,” and went back to the elevator, walking fast so the lady wouldn’t know she was a patient.
She rested in the elevator and then got out and turned right, like the woman said, and walked down the hall. The sign was a long way down the hall. Her heart started to beat real hard. She stopped and rested a minute, but a man came out of one of the doors, carrying a tray full of blood tubes, so she had to start walking again.
The door to the walkway was heavy. She had to push really hard on the handle to get it to open. Inside was a straight gray hallway. Maisie didn’t know how long it was, but it was way farther than she was supposed to walk. Maybe she’d better not go down it. But it was a long way back to the elevators, too, and after she found Dr. Wright and he told her Joanna’s address, she could tell him he needed to take her back, and he could get a wheelchair or something. And she could walk really slow.
She started down the hallway. It was a funny hallway. It didn’t have any windows or doors or anything, and no railings along the side to hang on to like in the rest of the hospital. She put one hand on the wall, but it wasn’t as good, you got a lot tireder than with a railing.
“I think I’d better rest for a little while,” she said, and sat down with her back against the wall, but it didn’t help. She still couldn’t get her breath, and the lights on the wall kept swimming around in a funny way. “I don’t feel good,” she said, and lay down on the floor.
There was a loud noise, and the lights flared into brightness and then went nearly all the way out, turning a dark red. Like the lights on the Titanic, Maisie thought, right before they went out. I hope these don’t go out, or the hall’ll be really dark. But it wasn’t the hall. It was the tunnel she had been in before. She could sense the tall, straight walls on either side of her.
This is an NDE, she thought, and sat up off the tile floor. Only it wasn’t tile. It felt funny. She wished it weren’t so dark, and she could see it. She had to look at everything so she could tell it to Joanna.
And listen to everything, she thought, remembering the sound before the lights turned red. It had been a boom, or a loud clap. Or maybe an explosion. She couldn’t remember exactly. I should have been listening, she thought. I’m supposed to report on what I saw.
Her heart had stopped pounding, and she didn’t feel dizzy anymore. She stood up and started walking along the tunnel between the high, straight walls. It was dark and foggy, like before, and really warm. She turned and looked back. It was dark and foggy both ways.
“I told Mr. Mandrake there wasn’t any light,” she said, and right then a light flickered at the end of the tunnel. It was red, like the lights in the hall had been, and wobbly, like somebody running carrying a lantern or something, and that must be what it was, because she could see people running toward her, though she couldn’t see who they were because of the fog.
“Hurry!” they shouted. “This way! Call a code! Now!”
They ran past her. She peered at them as they went past, trying to see their faces through the fog. Mr. Mandrake said they were supposed to be people you knew who’d died, like your grandma, but Maisie didn’t know any of them. “Get that cart over here,” one of the ladies said to her as she ran past. She had on a white dress and white gloves. “Stat!”
“Clear,” a man said. He was wearing a suit, like Dr. Murrow always wore. “Again. Clear.”
“Do you know who she is?” the lady with the white gloves said.
“My name’s Maisie,” she tried to say, but they weren’t listening. They just kept on running past.
“She must be a patient,” the man said. “Do you know who she is?” he said to somebody else.
“It’s on my dog tags,” Maisie said.
“What’s she doing up here?” the man said. “Clear.”
The light flared brightly, like an explosion, and she was back in the hallway and a bunch of nurses and doctors were kneeling over her. “Awwll riight!” the man said.
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