Connie Willis - Passage

“I made Eugene talk to all the orderlies and stuff who worked on the fifth floor, but nobody else had seen her. And then I got to thinking about there being a walkway on the fifth floor and maybe she was going up to it.”

“How did you know there was a walkway on the fifth floor?”

“Oh, you know,” Maisie said evasively, her eyes straying to the TV screen, where the von Trapp children were sticking a frog in Maria’s pocket. “They sometimes take me for tests and stuff. Anyway, I thought she might have been going over to the east wing, so I told Eugene to ask all the tray people who worked over there, but nobody’d seen her, so I tried to think who else besides nurses and tray people are usually out in the halls, like the guys who mop and run the vacuum thing.”

“Is that who told you who Joanna talked to?”

“No,” Maisie said, “So, anyway, Eugene told me one of the orderlies saw Joanna going down to the ER, but that wasn’t any good, you already knew she did that, but I wrote his name down anyway in case you wanted to talk to him.” She reached over to the bedstand, pulled out a folded sheet of paper like the one she’d written the wireless messages on, and unfolded it. He could see two names written on it. “Bob Yancey,” Maisie said.

“Is the name of the person Joanna talked to on there?” Richard asked, leaning forward to see the other name.

Maisie snatched the paper out of his reach. “I’m getting to that part,” she said, folding it up. “So, anyway, then this lady in the CICU went into V-fib, she had a quadruple bypass, and the chaplain came, and I thought, I’ll bet he goes to see all the really sick people, he came to see me one time when I coded, so if the person Joanna went to see had had an NDE, he might have seen her.”

The chaplain. Of course. Richard hadn’t even thought of him. “The chaplain saw her?”

“I’m getting to that part.” And it was obvious he was going to have to hear the whole story of how she’d found out before she told him what he wanted to know.

“So I was going to ask Eugene to ask him to come and see me, but when the meal thing came, it wasn’t him, it was this other guy, and when I asked him where Eugene was, he said, ‘He be taking a few days off,’ really madlike, so I said, ‘He didn’t get fired, did he?’ and he said, ‘No, and he don’t plan on it and I don’t neither, so don’t go askin’ me to play detective,’ and he wouldn’t even listen when I said all I wanted was to talk to the chaplain, he just put down the meal thing and left. So then I tried to think of a way to get the chaplain to come see me. I thought about telling the sector nurse I was worried about heaven and stuff, but I figured she’d tell my mom and my mom would get all upset. I figured I could pretend to be in A-fib if I couldn’t think of anything else—”

A-fib! I’ve created a monster, he thought.

“—but while I was trying to decide, the guy came in to draw blood, and he fastens the rubber tube thing around my arm and goes, ‘Are you the one who’s asking around about Joanna Lander?’ and I go, ‘Yes, did you see her?’ and he says he saw her in the room with this patient and he knows the name and his room and everything, because of them having to write it on those little tube things.” She handed over the paper triumphantly.

Richard unfolded it. “Room 508,” it read. “Carl Aspinall.”

“He said he was in a coma,” Maisie said.

Richard’s heart sank.

“What’s the matter?”

He looked at her eager, expectant face. She’d tried so hard and succeeded where the rest of them had failed. It seemed cruel to disappoint her, no matter what Joanna had said about always telling her the truth. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Isn’t he the one?”

“No,” Richard said. “I already know about Carl. Joanna had the nurses write down words he said while he was unconscious. Joanna was probably there to talk to the nurses.”

“Hunh- unh,” Maisie said. “Carl was talking to her. The blood guy said so. He said he was really surprised he was awake, and the nurses told him he just came out of his coma that morning all of a sudden, and everybody said it was a miracle.”

Came out of his coma. And told Joanna what he’d seen, told her something that gave her the key—Room 508. Richard reached for his cell phone, remembered he’d left it at the desk outside. “Thanks,” he said, starting for the door. “I need to go talk to him.”

“He’s not here,” Maisie said. “He went home, the blood guy said. Last week.”

He’d have to call Records, see if he could talk them into giving him an address, and if not, talk to his nurses. “I’ve gotta go, Maisie,” he said. “I need to find out where he lives.”

“3348 South Jackson Way,” Maisie said promptly, “but he’s not there. He went up to his cabin in the mountains.”

“Did the blood guy tell you that?”

“No. Eugene.” She reached over to the bedstand and extracted another sheet of paper. “Here’s how to get there.”

He read the instructions. The cabin was just outside of Timberline. “You’re a miracle worker, Maisie,” he said, sticking the paper in his pocket. “I owe you one.” He started out the door.

“You can’t go yet,” Maisie said. “You haven’t told me if you want me to keep on looking for people who saw Joanna.”

No, Richard thought. This is the one. It made perfect sense. Carl Aspinall had come out of his coma and told Joanna something about what he’d seen that had clicked with Joanna’s own experiences, something that had made her realize what the NDE was, how it worked.

Maisie was waiting expectantly. “You’ve already found the person I was looking for,” he said. “And you’re supposed to be resting. You rest and watch your video.”

“I hate The Sound of Music.” She flounced back against the pillow. “It’s so sweet. The only good part is where the nuns play that trick on the Nazi guys so they can escape.”

“Maisie—”

“And what if he isn’t the guy you’re looking for?” she said. “Or he goes into a coma again? Or dies?”

He gave in. “All right, you can keep looking, but no asking Eugene to do anything that will get him fired. And no faking A-fib. I’ll come see you as soon as I get back from seeing him.”

“Are you going to take Kit with you?” she asked.

“No. Why?”

“She’s nice,” Maisie said, looking up at the TV, where Captain von Trapp was singing to Maria. “I just think she’d be good at asking questions. You have to come and tell me what he said right away.”

“I will,” he said and went back to the lab to call Carl Aspinall, but there was no number listed for the mountain cabin. They must have a cell phone, Richard thought, they surely wouldn’t have taken off for the mountains a week after being released from the hospital without any way to get in touch, but the cell phone number was unlisted.

He would have to go there, which was just as well. If he called, he ran the risk of being told Aspinall was too ill to see him, of having Mrs. Aspinall say, “How would next week be?” He couldn’t wait till next week or even till tomorrow, not when he was this close. He called Kit. He doubted if she’d be able to find someone to watch her uncle on such short notice so she could go with him, but he could at least get Carl’s transcripts from her. He wanted to look at them before he interviewed Carl.

Kit’s line was busy. He looked at his watch. It was after two, and Timberline was a good hour and a half into the mountains. He tried Kit’s number again. Still busy. He’d have to go without the transcripts.

He grabbed his keys and started out the door and then stopped. He was doing just what Joanna had done, taking off without telling anyone where he was going. He called the ER and asked to speak to Vielle. “She can’t come to the phone,” the intern or whoever it was said. “We’ve got a real mess down here. Twenty-car pileup on I-70. Fog.”