Connie Willis - Passage

Amelia hopped onto the examining table and lay down on her back. “Oh, good,” she said, “you covered up that light. It kept blinding me.”

Richard shot Joanna an approving glance and then picked up an oxygen indicator and clipped it onto Amelia’s finger. “We continuously monitor pulse and BP.”

He stepped back to the console and typed in something. The monitors above the terminal lit up. Changing readouts appeared on the lower right screen. Oxygen levels 98 percent, pulse 67. He went back over to the table. “Amelia, I’m going to put the electrodes on now.”

“Okay,” Amelia said.

Richard pulled the neck of the hospital gown down and attached electrodes to her chest. “These monitor heart rate and rhythm,” he said to Joanna. He attached a blood pressure cuff to Amelia’s arm. “Okay,” he said to her. “It’s time for you to put on your sleep mask.”

“Okay,” she said, raising her head slightly as she positioned the mask over her eyes, and then lying back down. Richard began attaching electrodes to her temples and her scalp. “Wait!” She tried to sit up.

“What is it?” Joanna said. “Is something wrong?”

“Yes,” Amelia said. She felt blindly for her hair clip with her left hand, took it out, and shook out her long hair. “Sorry, it was digging into the back of my head,” she said, lying back down. “I didn’t unhook anything, did I?”

“You’re fine,” Richard said, reattaching the electrodes to her temples. He began attaching smaller ones along her scalp.

Joanna looked at her, lying there with her black hair fanned out around her pale face. She looks like Sleeping Beauty, she thought, and wondered if Sleeping Beauty had had visions during her hundred years of being in a coma. And if she had, of what? Tunnels and lights, or a boat on a lake? A middle-aged nurse came bustling in. “I’m sorry I’m late. I was with a patient.”

“You can start a saline IV,” Richard said, lifting the sides of Amelia’s sleep mask to stick electrodes at the corners of her eyes. “These electrodes record eye movements during the period when the subject’s in REM sleep.”

The nurse had tied a piece of rubber tubing around Amelia’s arm and was expertly probing for a vein. Richard raised Amelia’s other arm and placed a two-inch-thick piece of foam under it. To reduce external stimuli, Joanna thought, watching him place them under her knees, her legs.

“Is the IV in?” Richard asked the nurse. “Okay, start the tracers.” He leaned over Amelia. “Do you hurt anywhere? Anything pinch? Pull? Ache?”

“Nope,” Amelia said, smiling blindly up at him. “I’m fine.”

“Good,” he said. He picked up a pair of headphones, plugged them into a jack, and put them on. He listened for a moment and then took them off and brought them over to Amelia. “We’re ready to start,” he said. “I’m going to put the headphones on you now. You ready?”

“Can I have a blanket?” Amelia asked. “I always get cold.”

Cold? Joanna wondered. She had said she felt warm and cozy. Joanna thought back to Lisa Andrews, shivering as she said she felt warm and safe.

“When do you get cold, Amelia?” she asked.

“Afterward. When I wake up, I’m freezing.”

“Body temperature drops when you’re lying down,” Nurse Hawley said, and Joanna could have throttled her.

“Do you wake up and then get cold, or are you already cold when you wake up?” Joanna asked.

“I don’t know. After, I think,” but there was that same questioning inflection in her voice.

Richard spread a white cotton blanket over Amelia’s body, leaving the arm with the IV uncovered. “How’s that?” he asked her.

“Good.”

“Okay, I’m putting your headphones on,” he said to her. He placed them over her ears upside down, the headband under her chin. So they don’t obstruct the scan, Joanna thought.

“White noise is being fed through the headphones,” Richard said to Joanna. “It masks any stray inner-ear noises along with any outside sound. Amelia?” he said loudly. No answer. “Okay,” he said, stepping around Joanna to take down the cardboard screen in front of the scan. “You ready?”

“Yes,” Joanna said, but looking down at Amelia, lying still and silent under the white blanket, her black hair splayed out around her head, she felt a shiver of anxiety. “You’re sure this procedure is safe?”

“I’m sure,” Richard said. “And you don’t have to whisper. Amelia can’t hear you. It’s perfectly safe.”

That’s what the passengers on the Hindenburg thought, Joanna thought. And Mr. O’Reirdon had coded in the middle of a scan. “But what if something did go wrong while Amelia’s under?”

“There’s a program that continuously monitors the vitals readouts and the RIPT scan images,” Richard said. “Any abnormality in brain function or heart activity triggers a computer alarm that automatically stops the dithetamine and administers norepinephrine. If it’s a serious problem, the computer’s hooked up to the code alarm for a crash cart team.”

“On this floor?” Joanna asked, thinking of a crash cart trying to find its way up from five-west.

“On this floor,” Richard reassured her. “In this wing. But we won’t need it. The procedure’s perfectly safe, and the subjects are continuously monitored during and after the session.”

“I think I should tell you nothing’s happening,” Amelia said, her voice with the too-loud emphasis of nonhearing.

Richard raised one headphone an inch, said, “Coming right up,” and replaced it carefully over her ear. “You think there’s some other precaution we should be taking?” he asked Joanna.

Yes, Joanna thought. “No.”

“Okay, then, let’s do it,” he said. “Nurse, start the zalepam. I put the subjects into non-REM sleep first,” he explained to Joanna, “though it’s possible for them to achieve an NDE-state without.”

Nurse Hawley began the feed. Richard positioned himself in front of the console. After a minute, Amelia’s hands relaxed, the fingers splaying out a little from the position they had consciously held. Her face, half-hidden by the sleep mask, the electrodes, seemed to relax, too, the lips parting slightly, her breathing becoming lighter. Joanna glanced at the readouts. Amelia’s pulse had risen slightly and her brainwaves were shallower.

“See how the activity shifts from the motor and sensory cortexes to the inner brain,” he said, pointing to the screens. “She’s in non-REM sleep. Okay, now I’m starting the dithetamine. Watch.” He pointed to the scan image again, where the color in the anterior temporal lobe was deepening from yellow to red and changing shape. “The temporal lobe’s taking on the characteristic pattern of the NDE,” he said, and, as the temporal lobe flared to red, “And we have liftoff.”

“She’s experiencing an NDE?” Joanna looked up at the image and then back down at Amelia. “Right now?”

He nodded. “She should be looking at the light,” he said, “and feeling warm and peaceful.”

Joanna looked at Amelia. There was no indication that she was experiencing a tunnel or a bright light, and no sense, as Joanna had felt with Coma Carl or Greg Menotti, of Amelia’s being somewhere far away, out of reach. She simply looked asleep, her lips still slightly parted, her face relaxed, giving no clue of what she was experiencing.

Joanna looked up at the screen, but its bright blotches of blue and red and yellow told her no more than Amelia’s expression.

Richard had said her brain activity and vital signs were being monitored and an alarm would go off at any change in her blood pressure or brain function, but what if it didn’t show up on the monitors? Fourteen percent of NDEers reported having frightening experiences, devils and monsters and suffocating darkness. What if something terrifying was happening to Amelia right now and she had no way to tell them?