Connie Willis - Passage

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 turned impatiently, pulling one of the headphones away from his ear. “Mr. Phil—” she said and stopped, staring.

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.