Connie Willis - Passage

Tish read the affidavit. “What’s this for?” she said. “I’m not providing you an alibi for a crime, am I?”

“No,” Joanna said. “I just need you to document when and where my NDE account was written.”

“You never asked me to document any of the others,” Tish said suspiciously.

“Dr. Wright usually documents them,” Joanna lied. She looked pointedly at her watch. “It’s one-fifteen.”

“It is?” Tish said anxiously and signed the paper. “Is that all you need?”

“No,” Joanna said, holding up the tape. “This is the tape of my account.” She wrapped it in another sheet of paper and taped the ends closed. “I need you to sign across the tape and date it.”

“All this for an NDE where you see the post office?” Tish said. “If I ever have an NDE, I certainly hope it has something more exciting in it than the post office.”

No, you don’t, Joanna thought. She handed Tish the pen. “It’s one-seventeen.”

Tish looked at her watch and then signed it. “Is that it?”

“No, one more thing,” Joanna said, picking up the phone. “I want you to witness me making this phone call.” She punched in Kit’s number, hoping, for the first time, that Mr. Briarley would answer the phone, and wondering what she’d say if he didn’t. “Hi, we’re performing a little experiment here. Is your Uncle Pat alive?”

Tish was tapping her foot again. And what if no one answered? She obviously wouldn’t be willing to stick around while Joanna attempted to call—

“Hello?” a woman’s voice, not Kit’s, answered. “Hello?”

I dialed the wrong number, Joanna thought. “Is… I’m trying to reach Kit Gardiner,” she stammered. “Is she there?”

“No,” the woman said. “This is Mrs. Gray, the Eldercaregiver.”

“Is Mr. Briarley there?”

“No,” Mrs. Gray said. “They just left for the emergency room.”

“Emergency room,” Joanna said numbly. Mr. Briarley’s dead, and I knew it, even though there was no way I could have known. She jammed down the phone and started for the door.

“Where are you going?” Tish said. “I thought you wanted me to witness your phone call.”

Joanna stopped, staring at her blankly.

“So, do you want me to sign something saying who you called and what you said?” Tish asked.

“No,” Joanna managed to say. “You can leave now.”

“Okay,” Tish said doubtfully. “I thought that was why you wanted me to stay, to witness it.”

To witness it. To attest to the fact that she couldn’t have known he was dead beforehand. Dead. And himself again, no longer struggling to remember his niece or the word for “tea.” Well and happy, with his memory restored. On the Other Side.

“Dr. Lander?” Tish asked, looking anxiously at her. “Are you okay?”

No, Joanna thought. They’re real. They’re not a hallucination. “I’m fine. Go on, Tish. I know you wanted to get to lunch.”

Tish nodded. “The cute new obstetrician I told you about hasn’t figured out when the cafeteria’s open,” she said, digging through her tote bag. “I brought a whole bunch of quarters for the vending machines. Where is that coin purse? I’ll admit Doritos and Skittles aren’t very romantic, but since there aren’t any restaurants around here—Oh, good, here it is.” She brought out a red polka-dotted coin purse and stuck it in her pocket. “Somebody really needs to open one across the street,” she said, starting for the door. “They’d make a killing,” and was finally gone.

Joanna forced herself to wait till she heard the ding and whoosh of the elevator, then raced out of the lab and down to the ER. It can’t be true, she thought, tearing down the stairs. The mediums were fakes, and Mrs. Davenport’s a moron. There wasn’t a shred of truth to any of their claims. It couldn’t be true. But there wasn’t any other way she could have known. No one had discussed it while she was under. Richard and Tish didn’t even know Mr. Briarley, and if Kit had called and left her a message, Richard would have mentioned it as soon as she came out.

Joanna burst through the side door to the ER and stood there, panting. She couldn’t see Kit anywhere, or paramedics or the crash team. Over by the ambulance doors a security guard straightened from leaning against the wall and looked at her. You have to act normal, she thought, and tried to slow her breathing, calm her expression, look like she was just down here looking for someone.

She tried to spot the aide—what was her name, Nina?—that Vielle was always yelling at, or the gangly intern, but the flu had apparently taken its toll. She didn’t recognize a soul, and she couldn’t just march into the trauma rooms, particularly not with the security guard eyeing her, although he had apparently seen her lanyard and ID and decided she was on staff and belonged here. He had gone back to leaning against the wall.

She still couldn’t go barging into trauma rooms. She’d have to ask the admissions nurse. She pushed her way across the ER and out to the admissions desk. “I’m looking for Patrick Briarley,” she said urgently to the admissions nurse, whom she didn’t recognize. “His niece, Kit Gardiner, would have brought him in.”

“Briarley?” the nurse said, typing in his name and looking for several moments at the screen. “You’re too late.”

Too late. I knew that, Joanna thought. I saw him on the Other Side. I can document it.

“He just left,” the nurse said.

“Left?” The word made no sense.

The nurse looked defensive. “There was nothing on his record about him staying until you arrived, Dr.—?” she said, trying to read Joanna’s ID badge. “Do you want his home number? I’d call it for you, but I don’t think they’re there yet. They just left, not five minutes ago.”

“For upstairs?” He hadn’t died, after all. The crash team had managed to revive him. “He’s been admitted?”

“For a cut thumb?” the nurse said.

A cut thumb? Not a stroke or a heart attack. A cut thumb. He wasn’t dead. She had frightened herself like a superstitious child, spooked by shadows.

“You say he was cut,” Joanna said. “How badly?”

“You’ll have to talk to the resident on duty,” the nurse said, staring suspiciously at Joanna’s ID badge. “Dr. Carroll. That’s who treated him.”

Joanna turned and walked purposefully into the ER, wishing it were an intern instead of a resident who’d treated him. They talked freely about patients and treatments to anybody who asked them. Vielle was always drilling patient confidentiality into them. “At least by the time they’re residents, they’ve learned that,” she’d told Joanna, “even if they haven’t learned anything else.”

She’d have to ask one of the nurse’s aides. Oh, good, Nina was here after all, over by the instrument sterilizer. She walked over to her. “Nina, I need—”

Nina jumped and dropped a pair of forceps. “Oh, Dr. Lander, what are you doing down here?” she said, looking nervously around. “If you’re looking for Nurse Howard, she’s not here.”

“I know. It’s you I need to talk to. Who assisted Dr. Carroll with the patient who was just in with a cut thumb? Mr. Briarley?”

“Mr. Briarley?” Nina said, sounding relieved for some reason, but, instead of answering, she motioned Joanna into the communications room. It was still unfinished, the radio console trailing wires, and boxes everywhere. Nina pulled the door shut. “So we can talk without all that noise.”