“Dr. Wright,” Mr. Mandrake said, “you have already taken up more than half of my appointment time with Mr. Wojakowski here—”
Richard ignored him. “What happened to the sailor, the one who fired the machine gun?” he said to Mr. Wojakowski.
“Norm Pichette? Didn’t make it.” He shook his head.
Didn’t make it.
“Dr. Wright,” Mandrake said, “if this is your way of undermining my research—”
“Peritonitis,” Mr. Wojakowski said. “Died the next day.”
“What happened to the other one?”
“Dr. Wright,” Mandrake bellowed.
“The one out cold in sick bay? George Weise?” Mr. Wojakowski said. “He recovered fine. Got a letter about him from Soda Pop Papachek the other day.”
“You mean a message,” Richard said gaily. “You were right, Mandrake, it is a message.”
Mandrake pursed his lips. “What are you talking about?”
Richard clapped him on the shoulder. “You wouldn’t understand. There are more things in heaven and earth, Manny, old boy, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. And you’re about to find out what they are.”
“I am . . . I . . . a sea of . . . alone.”
—ALFRED HITCHCOCK, SHORTLY BEFORE HIS DEATH
AFTER A LONG TIME, the darkness seemed to diminish a little, the blackness taking on a tinge of gray, the stars beginning to dim. “The sun is coming up,” Joanna said to the little French bulldog, though she still couldn’t see him, and began to scan the sky to the east for a telltale pallor along the horizon. But she could not make out the horizon, and the light, if that was what it was, leaked evenly from all directions into the sky, if that was what it was.
It grew light so slowly that Joanna thought she had been mistaken, that she had only imagined the diminishing of the blackness, but after an endless time, the stars went out, not one by one, but all together, and the sky turned charcoal and then slate. A little wind came up, and the night took on an early-morning chill.
It’s four o’clock, Joanna thought. That was when the Carpathia had steamed up, having come fifty-eight miles in three hours at pushing, punishing speed. The people in the lifeboats had seen it in the black-gray of near dawn, first her light and then the tall stack, streaming smoke. But though Joanna stared, squinting, toward the southwest, there was no light, no smoke.
There’s nothing out there at all, she thought, but as the darkness continued to diminish, she could make out a jagged horizon, as of distant mountains. The Blessed Realm, she thought, hope fluttering up in her. Or the Isle of Avalon.
“Maybe we’re saved after all,” she said, looking down at the dog, and when she did, she saw that it was not the French bulldog she was holding after all, but the little girl from the Hartford circus fire, Little Miss 1565. Her face was smudged with soot, and ash had caught in her sausage curls.
“I never had a dog,” the little girl said. “What’s his name?” and Joanna saw that the little girl was holding the French bulldog in her arms.
Joanna brushed a flake of ash from the little girl’s hair. “I don’t know,” she said.
“I will give you a name then,” the little girl said to the dog, holding him up, her smudged hands clutching it around its fat middle. “I will call you Ulla.”
Ulla. “Who are you?” Joanna asked, “what’s your name?” and waited, afraid, for the answer. Not Maisie. Please don’t let it be Maisie.
“I don’t know,” the little girl said, dandling the dog by its paws. “Can you do tricks, Ulla?” she said, and then to Joanna, “The dog at the circus could jump through a hoop. He had a purple collar. That color.”
She pointed, and Joanna saw that the sky had turned a pale, lovely lavender, and all around them, lavender-pink in the growing light, were glittering icebergs. “The ice field,” Joanna murmured, and looked down at the hyacinth water.
They were sitting on the grand piano from the A La Carte Restaurant, the wide walnut top with its curving sides floating steadily on the surface. A piece of sheet music still stood open against the music stand. “I guess pianos do float, after all,” Joanna said, and saw that the keyboard was underwater, the keys shimmering pale pink and black through the lavender water.
“There was a tuba at the circus,” the little girl said. “And a big drum. Is the Carpathia going to come save us?”
No, Joanna thought. Because this isn’t the Atlantic, in spite of the water, in spite of the icebergs, and even if it were, it was too late. The Carpathia had steamed up well before dawn.
The sun would be up any minute, staining the sky and the ice and the water rose-pink, and then flooding the east with light. The icebergs would flare into snowy brilliance. Maybe that’s what Mr. Mandrake’s subjects saw, Joanna thought. They believed it was an Angel of Light, but it wasn’t. It was the ice field, glittering like diamonds and sapphires and rubies in the blinding light of the sun.
“Jump!” the little girl commanded. She circled her arms into a hoop. “Jump!”
The bulldog looked curiously at her, his head to one side.
The little girl dropped her arms. “What will happen when the Carpathia gets here?” she asked.
The Carpathia isn’t coming, Joanna thought. It’s too far for her to come, too far for anyone or anything to come and save us.
“They check your name off on a list when you go on board,” the little girl said. She had taken off her hair ribbon and was tying it around the dog’s neck. “What’ll I tell them when they say, ‘What’s your name, little girl?’ ” She tied the hair ribbon into a bow. It was singed at the ends. “If you don’t know your name, they don’t let you on.”
It doesn’t matter, it isn’t coming, Joanna thought, but she said, “How about if I give you a name, like you named Ulla?”
The little girl looked skeptical. “What name?”
Not Maisie, Joanna thought. The name of some child who had been on the Titanic. Lorraine. But Lorraine Allison had gone down, the only child in First Class who had not been saved. Not Lorraine. Not the name of any child who’d died on the Titanic. Not Beatrice Sandstrom or Nina Harper or Sigrid Anderson.
The little girl who had been on the Lusitania who had gotten separated from her mother-what was her name?-the little girl the stranger had saved. “He threw her into the boat,” she could hear Maisie’s voice saying, “and then he jumped in, and they were both saved.”
Helen. Her name had been Helen. “Helen,” Joanna said. “I’m going to call you Helen.”
The little girl picked up the dog’s front paw. “How do you do?” she said. “My name is Helen.” She dropped her voice to a gruff bass. “How do you do? My name’s Ulla.” She let go of his paw. “Roll over, Ulla!” she commanded, “Play dead!”
The French bulldog sat, his ear cocked, not understanding. The wind that had sprung up as it grew light died down, and the water, already smooth as glass, became even smoother, but the sky did not change. It remained pink, reflecting its rosy light on the water and the ice and the polished walnut of the piano. “Stay!” Helen said to the unmoving dog, and they all obeyed, the sky and the water and the sea.
An eon went by. Helen stopped trying to teach the dog tricks and took him onto her lap. The wind that had sprung up as it grew light, died down, and the water stilled even more, till it was imperceptible from the pink sky. But the sun did not come up. And no ship appeared on the horizon.
“Is this still the NDE?” Helen asked. She had set the dog down and was leaning over the side of the piano, staring down into the water.
“I don’t know,” Joanna said.
“How come we’re just sitting here?”
“I don’t know.”
“I bet we’re becalmed,” Helen said, trailing her hand lazily back and forth in the still water. “Like in that poem.”
“What poem?”
“You know, the one with the bird.”
“ ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’?” Joanna said and remembered Mr
. Briarley saying, “ ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ is not, contrary to the way it is popularly taught, a poem about similes and alliteration and onomatopoeia. Neither is it about albatrosses and oddly spelled words. It is a poem about resurrection.”
And Purgatory, Joanna thought, the ship eternally becalmed, the crew all dead, “alone on a wide, wide sea,” and wondered if that was what this was, a place of punishment and penance. In ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ a rain had come, and a breeze, washing away sin, setting them free. Joanna scanned the sky, but there were no clouds, no wind. It was still as death.
“How come we’re becalmed?” Helen asked.
“I don’t know,” Joanna said.
“I bet we’re waiting for somebody,” Helen said.
No, Joanna thought, not Maisie. Don’t let it be Maisie we’re waiting for.
“We have to be waiting for something,” Helen said, trailing her hand lazily back and forth in the pink water. “Otherwise something would happen.”
Something was happening. The light was changing, jagged peaks of ice going from pink to peach, the sea turning from rose to coral. The sun’s going down, Joanna thought, though there had been no sun, only the pink, even light.
“What’s happening?” Helen asked, creeping closer to Joanna.
“It’s getting dark,” Joanna said, thinking hopefully of the clear, shining stars.
Helen shook her head, her dark curls bobbing. “Hunh-unnh,” she said. “It’s getting red.”
It was, staining the water the red of sandstone mesas, the red of canyons. “It got red in the big top,” Helen said. “All around.”
Joanna put her arm around her, around Ulla, pulling them close, shielding them from the sky. “Don’t let it be Maisie,” she whispered. “Please.”
The sky continued to redden, till it was the color of fire, the color of blood. The red of disaster.
“It’s all right, little girl. You go. I will stay.”
—LAST WORDS SPOKEN TO MARY MARVIN BY HER HUSBAND, DANIEL, AS HE PUT HER INTO ONE OF THE TITANIC’S LIFEBOATS
MAISIE WAS REALLY GOOD. She didn’t push the button on her pager, even though Dr. Wright didn’t come see her for a really long time.
After a whole week, she started worrying that maybe something had happened to him, like Joanna, and she asked Nurse Lucille to call him, she had a question about her pager she had to ask him, and Nurse Lucille told her he couldn’t come right now, he was busy working on something important, and asked her if she wanted to watch a video.
Maisie said no, but Nurse Lucille put in The Sound of Music anyway. She always put in The Sound of Music, every time. It was her favorite video, probably because she looked just like the wrinkly old nuns.
Finally, Kit came. She looked really pretty and excited. “Did Dr. Wright talk to Mr. Mandrake?” Maisie asked her.
“Yes,” Kit said. “This is a present from Richard-Dr. Wright. He said it’s to thank you for telling him about Mr. Mandrake.” She handed Maisie a package wrapped in red paper that looked like a video.
“What did Mr. Mandrake say?” Maisie said. “He did talk to Joanna that day, didn’t he? Did she tell him the thing Dr. Wright was trying to find out?”
“Open your present, and then I’ll tell you everything.” Kit walked swiftly to the door and pulled the curtains together. “Dr. Wright said to open it and get it put away before your mother comes back.”
“Really? What is it?” She began ripping the paper off. “The Hindenburg!” she said, looking happily at the picture of the flaming zeppelin on the box.
“Dr. Wright said to warn you the movie’s not exactly like the real Hindenburg crash. He says they changed the ending so the dog survives.”
“I don’t care!” Maisie said, clasping the video to her chest. “It’s perfect!”
“Where do you want me to put it?” Kit asked.
“Get one of my videos on the bottom of the nightstand No, not The Secret Garden. Nurse Evelyn loves The Secret Garden. She puts it in every time she’s on shift.”
“How about Winnie the Pooh?”
“Yeah, that’s good.”
Kit handed her the plastic video case. Maisie handed her The Hindenburg. “Here, open this,” she said, opened Winnie the Pooh, and took the video out.
Kit tore the cellophane off The Hindenburg and handed it back to Maisie, and she slid it out of its box, put it in the Winnie the Pooh box, and handed Kit the Winnie the Pooh video. “Put it on the bottom,” she said.
Kit slid it under the bottom video of the stack. “And I suppose you want me to take this home with me?” she asked, holding out the Hindenburg box. Maisie nodded. “You know, Maisie,” Kit said seriously, “after you get your new heart, you’re going to have to stop lying and tricking your mother.”
“What did Mr. Mandrake say?” Maisie said. “Did he tell Dr. Wright what Joanna said?”
“No,” Kit said, “but Richard found out anyway. Joanna was trying to tell us the NDE was a kind of SOS. It’s a message the brain sends out to the different chemicals in the brain to find one that will signal the heart to start beating and the patient to start breathing.”
“After they code,” Maisie said.
“Yes, and now that Richard knows what it is, he can design a method to send those same chemicals to—”
“He really does have a coding treatment?” Maisie asked excitedly. “I just made that up.”
Kit shook her head. “Not yet, but he’s working on it. He’s developed a prototype, but it still has to be tested,” her face got real serious, “and even if it works—”
“He might not do it in time,” Maisie said, and was afraid Kit was going to lie and say, “Of course he will,” but she didn’t.
“He said to tell you that, no matter what happens, you did something important,” Kit said. “You helped make a discovery that may save lots and lots of lives.”
A few days later Richard came and asked the nurses a whole bunch of questions about what she weighed and stuff. He hardly talked to Maisie at all, except right when he was leaving, he looked up at the TV and he said, “Seen any good movies lately?”
“Yes!” she said, “this really good movie, except for they made the dog a dalmatian instead of a German shepherd. And they left out the guy who had the NDE, but the rest is pretty good. I love the part where the guy goes and lets the dog out.”
She watched it over and over. She had the meal guy put it in for her when he came to get her supper tray and had the night shift nurse’s aide take it out before she went to sleep.
Sometimes she didn’t feel like watching TV or anything. It was hard to breathe, and she got all puffed up in spite of the dopamine. Her heart doctors came in and told her they were going to put her on dobutamine, and after that she felt a little better and felt like talking to Kit when she came to see her.
“Do you still have your pager?” Kit asked.
“Yes,” Maisie said and showed her how she had it clipped to her dog tags chain.
“It’s very important that you wear it all the time,” Kit said. “If you start to feel like you did before you coded, or if you hear your monitor start to beep, you push the button. Don’t wait. Push it right away.”
“What if then I don’t code?” Maisie asked. “Will I get in trouble?”
“No,” Kit said, “not at all. You push it, and then you try to hang on. Dr. Wright will come right away.”
“What if he’s not in the hospital?”
“He’ll be in the hospital.”
“But what if he’s a long way away, like the Carpathia?” Maisie persisted. “It’s a really big hospital.”
“He knows all the shortcuts,” Kit said.
Dr. Wright came again with three of Maisie’s heart doctors and her mom’s lawyer, and they asked her how she was feeling and looked at her monitors and then went out in the hall. Maisie could see them talking, though they were too far away for her to hear what they were saying. Dr. Wright talked for a little while
, and then her heart doctor talked a lot, and then the lawyer talked for a really long time and handed them a lot of papers, and everybody left.
A couple of days after that, Vielle came to see her. She was wearing a pager, too. “They won’t let me work in the ER until my hand gets better,” she said, looking mad only not really, “so they sent me up here to take care of you.” Vielle looked up at the TV. “What is that?” She made a face. “The Sound of Music? I hate The Sound of Music. I always thought Maria was way too cheerful. Don’t you have any good videos around here? I can see I’m going to have to bring in some of mine.”
She did, but Maisie didn’t get to watch them because her mom had started staying in her room all the time, even at night. It didn’t matter. Most of the time she was too tired to even watch The Sound of Music and she just lay there and thought about Joanna.
They kept having to take her down to have echocardiograms and one of the times when they were getting her into position, the button on her pager got pressed, and Vielle and a crash cart and about a hundred doctors and nurses showed up, and a couple of minutes later Dr. Wright came running in, all panting and out of breath, and after that she didn’t feel so worried, but she still felt terrible. It was hard to breathe, even with the oxygen mask, and her head hurt.
Her heart doctors came in and told her they were going to put a special pump in that would help her heart do its work. “An L-VAD or a bivad?” she asked.
“An L-VAD,” they said, but then they didn’t.
“They’ve decided to wait till you’re feeling better,” her mom said. “And, anyway, your new heart’s going to be here any day now.”
“When they put a new heart in,” Maisie asked Vielle the next time she came in to check her vitals, “do they cut your chest open?”
“Yes,” Vielle said, “but it won’t hurt.”
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