“Something happened to Joanna, didn’t it?” Maisie said, her voice rising. “Didn’t it?”
Her mother, trying to protect her, had told her Joanna had moved away, had kept Barbara and the other nurses from telling her the truth. And now he had—Behind her head the line on her heart monitor was zigzagging sharply. What if he told her, and she went into V-fib from the shock of it? She had already coded twice.
“You have to tell me,” Maisie said, but that wasn’t true. The heart monitor was setting off alarms in the nurses’ station. In a minute a nurse would be down here to shoo them out, to quiet her down, and he wouldn’t have to be the one to tell her. “Please,” Maisie said, and Kit nodded at him.
“Joanna didn’t move away, Maisie,” he said gently. “She died.”
Maisie gaped at him, her mouth open, her eyes wide with shock, not even moving. Behind her on the screen of the monitor, the green line spiked, and then collapsed. I’ve done it, Richard thought. I’ve killed her.
“I knew it,” Maisie said. “That’s why she didn’t come to see me after I coded.” She smiled, a radiant smile. “I knew she wouldn’t just move away and not come and tell me good-bye,” she said happily. “I knew it.”
“The executioner is, I believe, an expert, and
my neck is very slender. Oh, God, have pity on my soul, oh, God, have pity on my soul . . . ”
—ANNE BOLEYN’S LAST WORDS, SPOKEN JUST BEFORE HER BEHEADING
JOANNA TORE BACK along the Promenade Deck. Let the wireless operator still be there, she prayed as she ran. Let him still be sending.
The slant of the deck had gotten worse while she was in the smoking room, and the ship had begun to list. She had to put her hand out to keep from falling against the windows as she ran. Don’t let the stairs be underwater, she thought, and then, There was a crew stairway near the aft staircase, and began trying doors.
Locked. The second one opened on a tangle of ropes that fell forward onto the deck. The next was locked. Where is it? she thought, yanking on the doorknob, and the door came abruptly open on a metal stairway.
It wasn’t the one she’d seen before. It was narrower, steeper, and the stairs were open, the rungs made of metal latticework. The other stairway had had doors on each deck, but this one was open. She could see, looking below her through the latticed steps, that it went all the way down. What if he’s down there? Joanna thought, her hand still gripping the doorknob.
Joanna looked back down the Promenade Deck. Greg Menotti was halfway down the deck, running hard, his arms and legs pumping. “You have to show me where the collapsibles are,” he shouted, and Joanna darted inside the stairway. The door swung shut with a click, and she fled up the steps, her feet clattering loudly on the metal stairs.
They tilted forward, so that her feet kept sliding backward off them. She needed to hang on to the metal railing, but she couldn’t. She looked down at her hands. She was carrying a cafeteria tray. You’ve carried it all the way up to Peds without even knowing it, she thought, and tried to give it to the nurse with no hips, but she wasn’t in Peds, she was on the stairs, and Greg was coming. You have to let go of it, she thought, and dropped the tray, and it fell through the stairs, hitting the stairs below and falling again, down and down, deck after deck after deck.
Joanna grabbed on to the metal side railing with both hands. It was sharp, so sharp it cut into her palms, and wet. She looked up. Water was trickling down from somewhere above. It’s too late, Joanna thought, the railing cutting into her hands like a knife. It’s going down.
But Jack Phillips had continued sending to the very end, even after the bow was underwater, even after the captain had told him it was every man for himself. Joanna released her left hand from the railing and began climbing again, staggering a little with the awkward angle of the steps, hitting her hips against the table, knocking her Kool-Aid over, her mother saying, “Oh, Joanna,” and reaching for the glass and a towel at the same time, soaking up the Kool-Aid, the towel turning red, redder, soaking through, and Vielle saying, “Hurry! The movie’s starting,” handing her the tub of popcorn, and Joanna feeling her way along the dark passage, unable to see anything, afraid the movie had already started, hoping it was only the coming attractions, seeing light ahead, flickering, golden, like a fire . . . she was on her knees, her fingers tangled in the metal latticework of the step above her. No, she thought, not yet, I have to send the message, and pulled herself to her feet. She started up the steps.
There was a sound, and she braced herself against going into the darkness, into the tunnel again. The sound came again from below, echoing, metallic. He’s on the stairs, Joanna thought. He’s coming up them. She looked down through the open steps, but it wasn’t him, it was Greg Menotti starting up the stairs.
Hurry, she thought, and scrambled up the last of the steps, through the door, and was out on the Boat Deck, running, past the air shaft, past the raised roof of the Grand Staircase. Behind her, a door slammed. Hurry, hurry, she thought, and raced past the empty lifeboat davits. The light was still on in the wireless room. She could see it under the door up ahead. The wireless operator kept sending till the power failed, she thought, he kept—
The tail of her cardigan caught, yanking her backward. She fell awkwardly onto one knee. “Where are the—?” Greg demanded, and there was a sudden, deafening roar of steam. Smoke swirled around them, and she thought, Maybe I can escape in the fog, but when she tried, he grabbed for her wrist, his other hand clutching a fold of her cardigan.
He yanked her to her feet. “The collapsibles,” he shouted over the roar of the steam. “Where are they?”
“On top of the officers’ quarters,” Joanna said. She pointed with her pinioned hand in the direction of the bow. “Down there.”
He pushed her ahead of him, her wrist twisted behind her back. “Show me,” he said. He half-walked, half-shoved her past the funnel, past the wireless shack.
“I have to send a message,” Joanna said, her eyes on the light under the door of the wireless shack. “It’s important.”
“The important thing is getting off this ship before it goes down,” he said, pushing her forward.
He’s not real, Joanna thought, willing him to disappear. He’s a confabulation, a metaphor, a misfiring. I’ve invented him out of my own desperation to make sense of what’s happening, out of my own panic and denial. He isn’t really here. He died six weeks ago. He can’t do anything to anybody. But even though she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to see his lifeless body in the ER, his fingers still dug into her wrist, his hand still propelled her roughly forward, past the chart room to the officers’ quarters.
“They would have been there,” Joanna said, pointing with her chin at the flat roof above them.
“Where?” he said, looking up. “It’s too dark. I can’t see.”
“These are the officers’ quarters. They were stored on top,” she said. “But they aren’t there. This isn’t the Titanic, it’s—”
He climbed onto a deck chair, still grasping her wrist, pulling her up after him onto the chair, onto a windlass. He reached across to a stanchion, stretching, and let go of her wrist. Joanna didn’t wait. She jumped down off the windlass, off the deck chair, and ran for the wireless shack.
The door was shut, and on it was a large poster. “Do you know someone at risk?” it read. “You can save a life.”
She pushed the door open, praying, Please let him still be there, please let him still be sending.
He was. He sat bent over the wireless key, his coat off, his headphones on over his blond hair, his finger jabbing fiercely at the telegraph key. The blue spark leaped between the poles of the dynamo. It’s still working, she thought, a wave of relief washing over her. “I have to send a message,” she said breathlessly. “It’s important.”
Jack Phillips didn’t glance up, didn’t pause in his steady tapping. He can’t hear me, she thought, because of the headphones. “Jack,” she said, touching his shoulder. He tu
rned impatiently, pulling one of the headphones away from his ear. “Mr. Phil—” she said and stopped, staring.
“We are 157–337 running north and south. Wait listening on 6210.”
—LAST RADIO MESSAGE FROM AMELIA EARHART AND FRED NOONAN
MAISIE INSISTED on hearing everything. “How did she die?” she asked Richard. “In a disaster?”
“No,” Richard said.
“She was stabbed by a man on drugs in the ER,” Kit said, and Maisie nodded in confirmation, as if they had said yes, in a disaster. And wasn’t it? Unexpected, undeserved death, caused by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. How was it different from being in Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius blew? Or on the Lusitania?
“Did he stab her lots of times?” Maisie was asking.
Richard looked worriedly at the door. The CICU nurse had already been in once and demanded to know what they were doing. “I felt funny before,” Maisie had said smoothly, “but then Dr. Wright and Ms. Gardiner came to see me and made me feel better.”
It was true. She even looked better, though Richard couldn’t have said quite how. Her eyes were still shadowed, her lips still faintly blue, but the strength was back in her voice, and the interest. “Did the crash team work on her?” she asked. “Did they use the paddles?”
“They did everything they could to save her,” Richard said, and there was no point in using layman’s terms with an expert like Maisie, “but the knife had sliced the aorta. She died of acute hemorrhage.”
Maisie nodded knowingly. “What happened to the one who stabbed her?”
“The police killed him,” Kit said.
“Good.” Maisie leaned back against her pillows, and then sat up again. “You said Joanna found out something important. What?”
“We don’t know,” Richard said. He explained about Joanna telling Mr. Wojakowski she had something important to tell him, about her trying to tell them something when she was dying.
“Was it about the Titanic?” Maisie asked.
Richard looked across the bed at Kit. “What makes you say that?”
“She was always asking me about the Titanic. Was it about a wireless message?”
“Why?” Richard said, afraid to ask.
“She asked me to look up about the wireless messages the last time she came to see me,” Maisie said.
“When was that?” Richard asked. He started to say, “She died on the fourteenth,” and could hear Joanna saying, Don’t lead, don’t lead.
“Umm,” Maisie said, screwing her face in thought. “She asked me to look up the messages, and it took a long time because my mom was here a lot and I went into A-fib a couple of times and had to have all these tests. And then she came and asked me was there a garden on the Titanic, and I had to look that up—”
“A garden?” Kit asked. “There was a list of garden references in her patients’ NDEs,” she said to Richard.
“Was there a garden?” Richard asked Maisie.
“Kind of. There was a picture of the Verandah Café in one of my books, and it looked like a garden. You know, with flowers and vines and trees and stuff. I called her and told her she should come look at it and that I had the wireless messages all done.”
“Was that the same day she came and asked you about the garden?”
“No, she asked me the day before, and when I called her, she said she couldn’t come, she was too busy, and she promised she’d come later, but she didn’t. I thought she forgot, but she didn’t.” She looked up at Richard. “I don’t know exactly what day it was. You can ask Nurse Barbara. I bet she’ll know.”
There was no need to. Whoever Joanna had been to see the day she died, it wasn’t Maisie. “When did you call her, Maisie?” Richard asked. “What time of day?”
“Right after my mom left to go see her lawyer. I think nine o’clock.”
Nine o’clock, and she had told Maisie the same thing she’d told Kit, that she was busy, that she’d come see her later.
“Did she say when she was going to come see you?” Richard asked.
“She said right after lunch.”
“And when is lunch?” Kit asked.
“Eleven-thirty.”
Joanna had intended to go see Maisie and then hadn’t. That confirmed that something had happened, but not what. “Did she say what she was busy working on?”
“I think the Titanic wireless messages, ’cause she asked me to find out what ones they sent.”
Richard and Kit looked at each other. “Did she say why she wanted to know that?”
Maisie shook her head. “She just said to write them down, so I did.” She reached over to the nightstand, and the line on her heart monitor began to jump.
“Here, let me,” Kit said hastily, coming around the bed. Maisie lay back against her pillow, and the line steadied. Kit opened the drawer. “I don’t see it,” she said.
“It’s inside the Secret Garden box,” Maisie said. Kit picked up the video, slid the tape out, looked in the box and then shook it. A tightly folded piece of paper fell out.
Kit handed it to Maisie, who unfolded it carefully. “Okay, the first one—I listed them by the times they sent them,” she explained. “The first one was at five after twelve. The last one was at two-ten. It sank at two-twenty.” She stopped to take a breath. “Okay, so the first one said, ‘CQD,’ that means, ‘all stations distress,’ ” another breath, “ ‘MGY,’ that means the Titanic,” yet another breath, “and then where they are.” She handed it to Richard.
He stared blankly at the first message on the page, printed in Maisie’s childish hand. “CQD. CQD. MGY 41.46N, 50.14W. CQD. MGY.”
“The Titanic didn’t use SOS as its distress signal?” he asked, hope roaring up in him.
“Joanna asked me that, too,” Maisie said. “They did later on.” She leaned forward to take the paper from him. “Here it is,” she showed him the place, “ ‘MGY SOS,’ at twelve-fifteen.”
SOS. Had Joanna seen the wireless operator tapping out one of those messages and wanted outside confirmation? Or was she trying to find out something else, and the clue was here, in Maisie’s list? But it couldn’t be, because Joanna had never seen it. “Maisie,” he asked, “when you called Joanna, did you tell her about the messages you’d found?”
“No,” Maisie said. “I just told her I’d found them out. I showed her two of them before.”
“Which two?” Richard asked, handing her back the list.
“This one,” she said, pointing, “and this one.”
“ ‘Come quick. Our engine-room flooded up to the boilers.’ And ‘Sinking. Cannot hear for steam.’ ” Joanna had asked Kit about steam and fires on the Titanic that might have caused smoke.
“Had she asked you other things about the Titanic?” Kit asked.
“Yeah, she asked me did it have an elevator and a swimming pool. And about the Carpathia.”
An elderly nurse poked her head in the door. “It’s been five minutes.” Richard nodded. Kit stood up.
“No, you can’t go yet,” Maisie said and set the monitor zigzagging jerkily. “You haven’t told me what you think she found out or how you’re going to figure it out. Please, Nurse Lucille,” she appealed to the nurse, “just two more minutes, and then I’ll rest, I promise.” She lay obediently back against the pillows as if to prove it. “I’ll drink my Ensure.”
“All right,” Lucille said, defeated. “Two more minutes, and that’s all.” She went out.
As soon as she was gone, Maisie sat up. “Okay, tell me,” she said. “You think she went to see somebody and they told her something, don’t you? That’s why you came to see me, because you thought it was me, right? But it wasn’t. I bet it was one of her NDE people, so the first thing we’ve gotta do—”
“We?” Richard said. “You aren’t doing anything except resting.”
“But I could—” Maisie stopped short and slumped back against the pillows.
“Maisie?” he said, glancing anxiously at Kit, who had looke
d at the monitor and then back at Maisie. Maisie was watching the door.
Lucille came in with a small can with a straw in it. She set it on the tray across Maisie’s bed. “All of it,” she said.
“This is vanilla,” Maisie said. “Don’t you have any chocolate?”
“All of it,” Lucille said and walked out.
“I hate vanilla,” Maisie muttered, and pushed the can to one side. “I bet Mr. Mandrake knows who all the NDE people are. We could go ask—”
“You aren’t going anywhere, Maisie. I mean it,” Richard said, “you’re not going to do anything except rest and get strong so you’ll be ready for your new heart. Kit and I will find out who Joanna was talking to.”
“I wouldn’t be doing anything,” Maisie said, appealing to Kit. “Just asking people when they come to do stuff if they saw her talking to anybody, the guy who empties the wastebasket and stuff. I wouldn’t even get out of bed.” She looked at Richard. “Please. Joanna said I was really good at finding stuff out.”
And you fully intend to go ahead whether I give you permission or not, he thought. He wondered how Joanna would have handled her, and then realized he knew. She had put her to work looking up wireless messages and Pacific islands. “All right,” he said, looking at Kit, who nodded, “you can help, but you have to promise you’ll rest—”
“And do everything your nurses tell you,” Kit said.
“I will,” Maisie said meekly.
“We mean it,” Richard said. “You’re just to ask questions. You’re not to do anything or go anywhere.”
“They won’t let me anyway,” Maisie said disgustedly, and Richard wondered what the story behind that was. “I promise. I’ll just ask questions.”
“All right,” Richard said. “The time we’re looking for is after eleven and before twelve-fifteen.” Maisie started to reach over to the nightstand, and Kit leaped to get a pencil and tablet for her.
“Eleven and twelve-fifteen,” Maisie said, writing them down. “Do you want me to page you when I find out?”
Richard smiled. “You can just call me,” he said. He fished one of his cards out of the pocket of his lab coat.
Passage Page 72
