Connie Willis - Passage

She went down the stairs and along a corridor full of offices. It was usually deserted, but not today. A group of elderly people were sitting in the hall on plastic chairs, playing cards. One of them stood up as soon as he saw Joanna and waved his cards at her. “Hiya, Doc,” he said.

This is not my day, Joanna thought. “Mr. Wojakowski,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Ed,” he corrected. He cocked his thumb at the door behind him. “This is that hearing project I told you about.” He leaned toward her confidentially. “I gotta say, Doc, your project was a hell of a lot more interesting than this thing. All we do is sit around with headphones on and raise our hands if we hear a beep.”

Joanna looked at the cardplayers. “And play acey-deucey?”

“Naw, none of them were ever in the navy. All they know how to play is hearts. I been trying to talk ’em into poker, but they’re all too cheap. Say, I heard one of the docs down in the ER got shot. You know anything about that?”

That must be what the two nurses by the elevator had been gossiping about. “No.”

“I hope it’s nothing serious. Did I ever tell you about the time on the Yorktown. when I got shot right in the—well, it ain’t polite to say where—and I start yelping and Big Bunion Pakigian says—”

“Mr. Wojakowski?” a lab-coated technician with a clipboard said from the door.

“Be right there,” Mr. Wojakowski said. “Well, anyway, Doc, you see you don’t go getting shot. And if you need me on your project, you just go ahead and schedule me. Like I say, all we do’s sit around. I got plenty of time to do your project and this one both.”

“Mr. Wojakowski,” the technician said disapprovingly.

Mr. Wojakowski leaned close to Joanna and whispered, “4-F.” Joanna had to laugh. The technician looked even crabbier. “See ya, Doc,” Mr. Wojakowski said jauntily, handed his cards to one of the volunteers, and disappeared through the door.

She looked at her watch and went back up to the surgical ward. Mr. Ortiz’s door was shut. “One of his drains came out,” the sub nurse told her. “It’ll be another twenty minutes at least.”

Joanna thanked her and went up to see Maisie. Mrs. Nellis was just coming out of the room, smiling brightly. “Maisie’s on a new drug and it’s working wonders. She’s stabilized, and it’s completely eliminated the fluid-retention problem. If this keeps up, I’ll be able to take her home before you know it.”

She was right. Maisie’s arms and legs weren’t as puffy, but, because the swelling had gone down, you could see how pitifully thin she’d gotten. Her hospital ID bracelet dangled loosely from her birdlike wrist. At least she can stop worrying about them having to cut it off, Joanna thought.

“I’ve been reading about the Titanic so I’d be ready to help you with your research,” Maisie said eagerly, reaching immediately in the bedside drawer for her tablet and pencil. “So, what do you want me to look up?”

“Are you sure you shouldn’t be resting?” Joanna asked. “I just saw your mom, and she said you’d just started on a new drug.”

“It’s not new,” Maisie said. “It’s nadolal, the same one I was on before I was on the amiodipril.”

The one that couldn’t keep her stabilized, Joanna thought. The one she was on when she coded.

“And all I do is rest. Looking up stuff doesn’t make me tired. It’s a lot more fun than watching stupid videos.” She waved her hand at the TV, where Winnie the Pooh was playing soundlessly.

“All right. I need to know the names of all the ships the Titanic sent SOSs to,” Joanna said. That should be safe, and, according to Kit, time-consuming.

Maisie frowned at her. “You don’t send SOSs to anybody. You just send them out and hope somebody hears you.”

“That’s what I meant,” Joanna said, “the names of the ships the Titanic’s wireless contacted.”

Maisie wrote “ships” in her childish round hand. “I bet there’s a lot of them ’cause the wireless operator kept sending right up till it sank.”

“Maisie—”

“His name was Jack Phillips, and the captain told him he could stop. ‘At a time like this, it’s every man for himself,’ he said, but he just kept on sending.”

“Maisie,” Joanna said seriously, “if you’re going to help me, you can’t tell me things about the Titanic, just the answers to my questions. Not anything else. It’s important. Do you understand?”

“Uh-huh,” Maisie said. “Because of confabulation, right?”

She is entirely too smart, Joanna thought. “Yes. Telling me things could contaminate the project. Do you think you can do that? Just tell me the answers and nothing else?”

“Uh-huh. Can I tell you stuff not about the Titanic?”

“Of course,” Joanna said. “Is that why you called me, because you had something to tell me?”

“Well, ask you, really,” Maisie said, and Joanna braced herself. “What if Mercy General burned down?”

And where did this come from? Joanna wondered. “The alarms would go off, and we’d get all the patients outside,” Joanna said. “And there’s a sprinkler system that comes on automatically.”

“No, I know that,” Maisie said. “I mean, what about their ID bracelets? They’re plastic. If the hospital burned up, they’d melt and nobody would know who they are.”

The hospital bracelet again. This has to do with Little Miss 1565, Joanna thought. Maisie’s afraid she’ll die and no one will identify her. But everyone in the hospital knew her, she was surrounded by family and friends. Why was she worried about that? Was she taking a small and manageable worry and making it stand for the things that were really worrying her, a metaphor for fears she was too frightened to face? Like loss of identity?

Which is the thing everyone’s afraid of when it comes to death, Joanna thought. Not judgment or separation or the fires of hell, but the idea of not existing. That’s why everyone likes Mr. Mandrake’s Other Side, Joanna thought. It isn’t because it promises light and warm, fuzzy feelings. It’s because it promises that, even though the heart has stopped and the body shut down, you won’t suffer the fate of Little Miss 1565. That the people gathered at the gate will know who you are, and so will you.

“Your doctor ID would burn right up, too,” Maisie was saying. She pointed at Joanna’s hospital ID hanging from its woven lanyard. “They should be metal.”

Like dog tags, Joanna thought.

“So, what else do you want me to find out?” Maisie said, as if the matter had been settled. “Do you want me to write down the wireless messages he sent to the different ships?”

“No, just the name of the ships,” Joanna said and then thought of something. “And the call letters of the Titanic.”

“I don’t have to look that up. I already know. It’s MGY, because—” she said, and then stopped.

“Because why?” Joanna asked, but Maisie didn’t answer. She folded her arms and stared belligerently at Joanna.

“Maisie?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”

“You told me I was supposed to tell you the answer and not anything else.”

“You’re right, I did. That’s just what I wanted.” Only what I really wanted was the call letters to be CQD, not MGY.

“Okay, what else?” Maisie said.

“That’s all, just the call letters and the names of the ships,” Joanna said.