Connie Willis - Passage

She took a grateful swig of the Pepsi. “You’re right,” she said. “I haven’t had anything since this morning.” She immediately felt better. And maybe it was just low blood sugar, she thought as they went down to Peds, combined with worry over Maisie.

And there was certainly reason to worry. “The doctors can’t keep her stabilized,” Barbara told her in the elevator. “They’ve put her on stronger and stronger antiarrhythmics, which all have serious liver and kidney side effects, but nothing seems to be working. Except in Mrs. Nellis’s mind, where everything’s wonderful, Maisie’s getting better every day, and her coding is just a little blip. That’s what she called it,” she said disgustedly. “A little blip.”

Which on the Yorktown would have meant a Japanese Zero, Joanna said silently, thinking of Mr. Wojakowski. Or a torpedo.

She went up to the CICU. Maisie was asleep, an oxygen line under her nose, electrodes hooked to her chest, her IV hooked to almost as many bags as Ms. Grant’s had been. Joanna tiptoed a few inches into the partly darkened room and stood there watching her a few minutes. And there was no need to wonder where the sense of dread came from this time. Because it was one thing to simulate dying and another altogether to be staring it in the face.

What did you see, kiddo, when you coded? Joanna asked her silently. A partly opened door, and people in white, saying, “What’s happened?” Saying, “It’s so cold”? I hope you saw a beautiful place, Joanna thought, all golden and white, with heavenly music playing, like Ms. Grant. No, not like Ms. Grant. Like Mrs. Woollam. A garden, all green and white.

Joanna stood in the dark a long time, and then went back up to her office, telling Barbara, “I’ll be around at least till eleven. Page me,” and typed in interviews until after midnight, waiting for her pager to go off, for the phone to ring.

But in the morning Maisie was as chirpy as ever. “I get to go back to my regular room tomorrow. I hate these oxygen things,” she told Joanna. “They don’t stay in your nose at all. Where were you yesterday? I thought you said you were supposed to tell what you saw in your NDE right away so you wouldn’t forget or confabulate stuff.”

“What did you see?” Joanna asked.

“Nothing,” Maisie said disgustedly. “Just fog, like last time. Only it was a little thinner. I still couldn’t see anything, though. But I heard something.”

“What was it?”

Maisie scrunched her face into an expression of concentration. “I think it was a boom.”

“A boom.”

“Yeah, like a volcano erupting or a bomb or something. Boom!” she shouted, flinging her hands out.

“Careful,” Joanna said, looking at the IV in Maisie’s arm.

Maisie glanced casually at it. “It was a big boom.”

“You said you think it was a boom,” Joanna said. “What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t exactly hear it,” Maisie said. “There was this noise, and then I was in this foggy place, but when I tried to think about what kind of a sound it was, I couldn’t exactly remember. I’m pretty sure it was a boom, though.”

Like a volcano erupting, Joanna thought, and she just happened to be reading about Mount Vesuvius right before she coded. But Maisie was still a better subject than anyone else she’d interviewed lately. “What happened then?”

“Nothing,” Maisie said. “Just fog, and then I was back in my room.”

“Can you tell me about coming back? What was it like?”

“Fast,” Maisie said. “One second I was looking around trying to see what was in the fog, and the next I was back, just like that, and the crash team guy was rubbing the paddles together and saying, ‘Clear.’ I’m glad I came back when I did. I hate it when they do the paddles.”

“They didn’t shock you?” Joanna asked, thinking, I need to ask Barbara.

“No, I know ’cause the guy said, ‘Good girl, you came back on your own.’ ”

“You said you were looking around at the fog,” Joanna said. “Can you tell me exactly what you did?”

“I sort of turned in a circle. Do you want me to show you?” she asked and began pushing the covers back.

“No, you’re all hooked up. Here,” she said, grabbing a pink teddy bear, “show me with this.”

Maisie obligingly turned the bear in a circle on the covers. “I was standing there,” she said, holding the bear so it was facing her, “and I looked all around,” she turned the bear in a circle till it was facing away from her, “and then I was back.”

She was facing back down the tunnel when she returned, Joanna thought. If it was a tunnel. “Did you walk this way before you came back?” she asked, demonstrating with the bear.

“Hunh-unh, ’cause I didn’t know what might be in there.”

A tiger, Joanna thought. “What did you think might be in there?”

“I don’t know,” Maisie said, lying tiredly back against the pillows, and that was her cue.

She switched the recorder off and stood up. “Time for you to rest, kiddo.”

“Wait, you can’t leave yet,” Maisie said. “I haven’t told you about the fog, what it looked like. Or Mount St. Helens.”

“Mount St. Helens?” Joanna said. “I thought you were reading about Mount Vesuvius.”

“They’re both volcanoes,” Maisie said. “Did you know at Mount St. Helens this guy lived right up on the volcano, and they kept telling him he couldn’t stay there, it was going to blow up, but he wouldn’t listen to them? When it erupted, they couldn’t even find his body.”

I need to tell Vielle that story, Joanna thought. “Okay, you told me about Mount St. Helens,” she said. “Now it’s time for you to rest. Barbara said I wasn’t supposed to tire you out.”

“But I haven’t told you about Mount Vesuvius. There were all these earthquakes and then they stopped, and then, about one o’clock, there was all this smoke and it got all dark, and the people didn’t know what happened, and then all this ash and rocks started falling down, and the people got under these long porch things—”

“Colonnades,” Joanna said.

“Colonnades, but it didn’t help, and then—”

“You can tell me later,” Joanna said.

“—and they all tried to grab their stuff and run out of the city. This one lady had a golden bracelet, and—”

“You can tell me later. After you rest. Put your oxygen cannula on,” and Joanna made it to the door.

But not out. “When are you coming?” Maisie demanded.

“This afternoon,” she said, “I promise,” and went up to her office.

Halfway there she ran into Tish. “I asked Dr. Wright if we could move your session up to one, and he said to ask you,” she said. “I’ve got a dentist appointment.”

Or a hot date, Joanna thought. “Sure,” she said. “Is he in the lab?”

“No, he was just leaving to go see Dr. Jamison,” Tish said, “but he said he’d be back by noon. Doesn’t it drive you crazy that he’s so oblivious?”

Oblivious, Joanna thought. Something about being oblivious to something terrible that was happening.

“Of course it doesn’t drive you crazy,” Tish said disgustedly, “because you’re exactly the same. Did you hear anything I just said?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “One o’clock.”

“And he said to ask you if you’d been able to reach Mrs. Haighton yet,” Tish said.

Mrs. Haighton. “I’ll go try her right now,” Joanna said and went on to her office to spend what was left of the morning leaving fruitless messages for Mrs. Haighton and staring at her Swedish ivy, trying to remember where she’d seen the tunnel.