Passage (108 page)

She pointed, and Joanna saw that the sky had turned a pale, lovely lavender, and all around them, lavender-pink in the growing light, were glittering icebergs. “The ice field,” Joanna murmured, and looked down at the hyacinth water.

They were sitting on the grand piano from the A La Carte Restaurant, the wide walnut top with its curving sides floating steadily on the surface. A piece of sheet music still stood open against the music stand. “I guess pianos do float, after all,” Joanna said, and saw that the keyboard was underwater, the keys shimmering pale pink and black through the lavender water.

“There was a tuba at the circus,” the little girl said. “And a big drum. Is the
Carpathia
going to come save us?”

No, Joanna thought. Because this isn’t the Atlantic, in spite of the water, in spite of the icebergs, and even if it were, it was too late. The
Carpathia
had steamed up well before dawn.

The sun would be up any minute, staining the sky and the ice and the water rose-pink, and then flooding the east with light. The icebergs would flare into snowy brilliance. Maybe that’s what Mr. Mandrake’s subjects saw, Joanna thought. They believed it was an Angel of Light, but it wasn’t. It was the ice field, glittering like diamonds and sapphires and rubies in the blinding light of the sun.

“Jump!” the little girl commanded. She circled her arms into a hoop. “Jump!”

The bulldog looked curiously at her, his head to one side.

The little girl dropped her arms. “What will happen when the
Carpathia
gets here?” she asked.

The
Carpathia
isn’t coming, Joanna thought. It’s too far for her to come, too far for anyone or anything to come and save us.

“They check your name off on a list when you go on board,” the little girl said. She had taken off her hair ribbon and was tying it around the dog’s neck. “What’ll I tell them when they say, ‘What’s your name, little girl?’ ” She tied the hair ribbon into a bow. It was singed at the ends. “If you don’t know your name, they don’t let you on.”

It doesn’t matter, it isn’t coming, Joanna thought, but she said, “How about if I give you a name, like you named Ulla?”

The little girl looked skeptical. “What name?”

Not Maisie, Joanna thought. The name of some child who had been on the
Titanic.
Lorraine. But Lorraine Allison had gone down, the only child in First Class who had not been saved. Not Lorraine. Not the name of any child who’d died on the
Titanic.
Not Beatrice Sandstrom or Nina Harper or Sigrid Anderson.

The little girl who had been on the
Lusitania
who had gotten separated from her mother-what was her name?-the little girl the stranger had saved. “He threw her into the boat,” she could hear Maisie’s voice saying, “and then he jumped in, and they were both saved.”

Helen. Her name had been Helen. “Helen,” Joanna said. “I’m going to call you Helen.”

The little girl picked up the dog’s front paw. “How do you do?” she said. “My name is Helen.” She dropped her voice to a gruff bass. “How do you do? My name’s Ulla.” She let go of his paw. “Roll over, Ulla!” she commanded, “Play dead!”

The French bulldog sat, his ear cocked, not understanding. The wind that had sprung up as it grew light died down, and the water, already smooth as glass, became even smoother, but the sky did not change. It remained pink, reflecting its rosy light on the water and the ice and the polished walnut of the
piano. “Stay!” Helen said to the unmoving dog, and they all obeyed, the sky and the water and the sea.

An eon went by. Helen stopped trying to teach the dog tricks and took him onto her lap. The wind that had sprung up as it grew light, died down, and the water stilled even more, till it was imperceptible from the pink sky. But the sun did not come up. And no ship appeared on the horizon.

“Is this still the NDE?” Helen asked. She had set the dog down and was leaning over the side of the piano, staring down into the water.

“I don’t know,” Joanna said.

“How come we’re just sitting here?”

“I don’t know.”

“I bet we’re becalmed,” Helen said, trailing her hand lazily back and forth in the still water. “Like in that poem.”

“What poem?”

“
You
know, the one with the bird.”

“ ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’?” Joanna said and remembered Mr. Briarley saying, “ ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ is not, contrary to the way it is popularly taught, a poem about similes and alliteration and onomatopoeia. Neither is it about albatrosses and oddly spelled words. It is a poem about resurrection.”

And Purgatory, Joanna thought, the ship eternally becalmed, the crew all dead, “alone on a wide, wide sea,” and wondered if that was what this was, a place of punishment and penance. In ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ a rain had come, and a breeze, washing away sin, setting them free. Joanna scanned the sky, but there were no clouds, no wind. It was still as death.

“How come we’re becalmed?” Helen asked.

“I don’t know,” Joanna said.

“
I
bet we’re waiting for somebody,” Helen said.

No, Joanna thought, not Maisie. Don’t let it be Maisie we’re waiting for.

“We have to be waiting for something,” Helen said, trailing her hand lazily back and forth in the pink water. “Otherwise something would happen.”

Something
was
happening. The light was changing, jagged
peaks of ice going from pink to peach, the sea turning from rose to coral. The sun’s going down, Joanna thought, though there had been no sun, only the pink, even light.

“What’s happening?” Helen asked, creeping closer to Joanna.

“It’s getting dark,” Joanna said, thinking hopefully of the clear, shining stars.

Helen shook her head, her dark curls bobbing. “Hunh-
unnh,”
she said. “It’s getting red.”

It was, staining the water the red of sandstone mesas, the red of canyons. “It got red in the big top,” Helen said. “All around.”

Joanna put her arm around her, around Ulla, pulling them close, shielding them from the sky. “Don’t let it be Maisie,” she whispered. “Please.”

The sky continued to redden, till it was the color of fire, the color of blood. The red of disaster.

M
AISIE WAS REALLY GOOD
. She didn’t push the button on her pager, even though Dr. Wright didn’t come see her for a really long time.

After a whole week, she started worrying that maybe something had happened to him, like Joanna, and she asked Nurse Lucille to call him, she had a question about her pager she had to ask him, and Nurse Lucille told her he couldn’t come right now, he was busy working on something important, and asked her if she wanted to watch a video.

Maisie said no, but Nurse Lucille put in
The Sound of Music
anyway. She always put in
The Sound of Music
, every time. It was her favorite video, probably because she looked just like the wrinkly old nuns.

Finally
, Kit came. She looked really pretty and excited. “Did Dr. Wright talk to Mr. Mandrake?” Maisie asked her.

“Yes,” Kit said. “This is a present from Richard-Dr. Wright. He said it’s to thank you for telling him about Mr. Mandrake.” She handed Maisie a package wrapped in red paper that looked like a video.

“What did Mr. Mandrake say?” Maisie said. “He
did
talk to Joanna that day, didn’t he? Did she tell him the thing Dr. Wright was trying to find out?”

“Open your present, and then I’ll tell you everything.” Kit walked swiftly to the door and pulled the curtains together. “Dr. Wright said to open it and get it put away before your mother comes back.”

“Really? What is it?” She began ripping the paper off.
“The Hindenburg!”
she said, looking happily at the picture of the flaming zeppelin on the box.

“Dr. Wright said to warn you the movie’s not exactly like
the real
Hindenburg
crash. He says they changed the ending so the dog survives.”

“I don’t
care
!” Maisie said, clasping the video to her chest. “It’s perfect!”

“Where do you want me to put it?” Kit asked.

“Get one of my videos on the bottom of the nightstand No, not
The Secret Garden.
Nurse Evelyn loves
The Secret Garden.
She puts it in every time she’s on shift.”

“How about
Winnie the
Pooh?”

“Yeah, that’s good.”

Kit handed her the plastic video case. Maisie handed her
The Hindenburg.
“Here, open this,” she said, opened
Winnie the Pooh
, and took the video out.

Kit tore the cellophane off
The Hindenburg
and handed it back to Maisie, and she slid it out of its box, put it in the
Winnie the Pooh
box, and handed Kit the
Winnie the Pooh
video. “Put it on the bottom,” she said.

Kit slid it under the bottom video of the stack. “And I suppose you want me to take this home with me?” she asked, holding out the
Hindenburg
box. Maisie nodded. “You know, Maisie,” Kit said seriously, “after you get your new heart, you’re going to have to stop lying and tricking your mother.”

“What did Mr. Mandrake say?” Maisie said. “Did he tell Dr. Wright what Joanna said?”

“No,” Kit said, “but Richard found out anyway. Joanna was trying to tell us the NDE was a kind of SOS. It’s a message the brain sends out to the different chemicals in the brain to find one that will signal the heart to start beating and the patient to start breathing.”

“After they code,” Maisie said.

“Yes, and now that Richard knows what it is, he can design a method to send those same chemicals to—”

“He really does have a coding treatment?” Maisie asked excitedly. “I just made that up.”

Kit shook her head. “Not yet, but he’s working on it. He’s developed a prototype, but it still has to be tested,” her face got real serious, “and even if it works—”

“He might not do it in time,” Maisie said, and was afraid Kit was going to lie and say, “Of course he will,” but she didn’t.

“He said to tell you that, no matter what happens, you did something important,” Kit said. “You helped make a discovery that may save lots and lots of lives.”

A few days later Richard came and asked the nurses a whole bunch of questions about what she weighed and stuff. He hardly talked to Maisie at all, except right when he was leaving, he looked up at the TV and he said, “Seen any good movies lately?”

“Yes!” she said, “this
really
good movie, except for they made the dog a dalmatian instead of a German shepherd. And they left out the guy who had the NDE, but the rest is pretty good. I love the part where the guy goes and lets the dog out.”

She watched it over and over. She had the meal guy put it in for her when he came to get her supper tray and had the night shift nurse’s aide take it out before she went to sleep.

Sometimes she didn’t feel like watching TV or anything. It was hard to breathe, and she got all puffed up in spite of the dopamine. Her heart doctors came in and told her they were going to put her on dobutamine, and after that she felt a little better and felt like talking to Kit when she came to see her.

“Do you still have your pager?” Kit asked.

“Yes,” Maisie said and showed her how she had it clipped to her dog tags chain.

“It’s very important that you wear it all the time,” Kit said. “If you start to feel like you did before you coded, or if you hear your monitor start to beep, you push the button. Don’t wait. Push it right away.”

“What if then I don’t code?” Maisie asked. “Will I get in trouble?”

“No,” Kit said, “not at all. You push it, and then you try to hang on. Dr. Wright will come right away.”

“What if he’s not in the hospital?”

“He’ll be in the hospital.”

“But what if he’s a long way away, like the
Carpathia?”
Maisie persisted. “It’s a really big hospital.”

“He knows all the shortcuts,” Kit said.

Dr. Wright came again with three of Maisie’s heart doctors and her mom’s lawyer, and they asked her how she was feeling
and looked at her monitors and then went out in the hall. Maisie could see them talking, though they were too far away for her to hear what they were saying. Dr. Wright talked for a little while, and then her heart doctor talked a lot, and then the lawyer talked for a really long time and handed them a lot of papers, and everybody left.

A couple of days after that, Vielle came to see her. She was wearing a pager, too. “They won’t let me work in the ER until my hand gets better,” she said, looking mad only not really, “so they sent me up here to take care of you.” Vielle looked up at the TV. “What
is
that?” She made a face. “The
Sound of Music?
I hate
The Sound of Music.
I always thought Maria was way too cheerful. Don’t you have any good videos around here? I can see I’m going to have to bring in some of mine.”