Passage (109 page)

She did, but Maisie didn’t get to watch them because her mom had started staying in her room all the time, even at night. It didn’t matter. Most of the time she was too tired to even watch
The Sound of Music
and she just lay there and thought about Joanna.

They kept having to take her down to have echocardiograms and one of the times when they were getting her into position, the button on her pager got pressed, and Vielle and a crash cart and about a hundred doctors and nurses showed up, and a couple of minutes later Dr. Wright came running in, all panting and out of breath, and after that she didn’t feel so worried, but she still felt terrible. It was hard to breathe, even with the oxygen mask, and her head hurt.

Her heart doctors came in and told her they were going to put a special pump in that would help her heart do its work. “An L-VAD or a bivad?” she asked.

“An L-VAD,” they said, but then they didn’t.

“They’ve decided to wait till you’re feeling better,” her mom said. “And, anyway, your new heart’s going to be here any day now.”

“When they put a new heart in,” Maisie asked Vielle the next time she came in to check her vitals, “do they cut your chest open?”

“Yes,” Vielle said, “but it won’t hurt.”

“And your arms have IVs in them and stuff?” Maisie said.

“Yes, but you’ll be under the anesthetic. You won’t feel a thing.”

“Can I have some adhesive tape?” Maisie asked. “And some scissors?” and when her mom went down to the cafeteria for dinner, Maisie took her dog tags off and went to work.

The next day her mom said, “You have to think positive thoughts, sweetie. You have to say to yourself, ‘My new heart’s going to come in just a few days, and then this will all be over, and I’ll forget all about feeling uncomfortable. I’ll get to go to school again and play soccer!’ ”

And a little while later, Vielle came in and said, “You just have to hang on a little longer, honey,” but she couldn’t. She was too tired, even, to push the button on her special pager, and then she was in the tunnel.

There was no smoke this time, and no light either. The tunnel was totally black. Maisie put her hand out, trying to feel the wall, and touched a narrow metal strut. Next to it there was nothing for a little ways and then another metal strut, at a different angle, and another.

“I’ll bet this is the
Hindenburg
,” she said. “I’ll bet I’m up inside the zeppelin.” She looked up, trying to see the inside of the big silver balloon far overhead, but it was too dark, and the floor she was walking on wasn’t a metal catwalk, it was soft, and too wide. Even when she took hold of the metal strut and stretched out both arms as far as they would reach, she couldn’t feel anything but space on the other side of the tunnel.

So it must not be the
Hindenburg
, she thought, but she didn’t dare let go of the strut for fear it was and she would fall.

She worked her way along, walking carefully along the soft floor and holding on to one strut and then the next one, and after a few minutes the struts on the side she was on disappeared, and there was nothing to hold on to on either side of her. I must be at the end of the tunnel, she thought, peering into the darkness.

A light shone suddenly, mercilessly, in her eyes. She put up her hand to protect her eyes, but it was too bright. “The explosion!” she thought.

The light swung suddenly away from her. She could see its long beam as it swung, like the beam from a flashlight. There were little specks of dust in it. It swung around in a big arc, lighting the struts behind her as it went, and she could see they were the underneath part of a grandstand, full of people. Up above the tunnel where she had been standing was a big red-and-gold sign that said “Main Entrance.”

The light swung in front of her and then stopped and shone on a man standing on a round box dressed all in white. Even his boots were white, and his top hat. The light made a circle around him. “La-deez and gentlemen!” he said, really loud. “Kindly direct your attention to the center ring!”

“I like this part the best,” someone said. Maisie turned. A little girl was standing next to her. She had on a white dress and a big blue sash. She was holding a fluffy pink puff of cotton candy on a paper cone. “My name’s Pollyanna,” the little girl said. “What’s yours?”

“Maisie.”

“I love the circus, don’t you, Mary?” Pollyanna said, eating cotton candy.

“Not Mary,” Maisie said. “Maisie.”

“Ladeez and gentlemen!” the ringmaster said, real loud, “we now present, for your entertainment, an act so sensational, so stupendous, so amazing, it has never been attempted anywhere!” He pointed his whip with a flourish, and the spotlight swung again so that its smoky beam shone straight up at a little platform at the top of a narrow ladder. There were people standing on it, dressed in fancy white leotards.

Maisie stood staring up at them, her mouth open. They looked like Barbie dolls, they were such a long way up. Their leotards sparkled in the smoky bluish light of the spotlight. “ . . . those wizards of the tent top,” the ringmaster was saying, “those heroes of the high wire!”

A band struck up a fanfare, and Maisie looked across the ring to see where the band was. They were sitting in a big white bandstand, wearing bright red jackets with gold decorations on their shoulders. One of them had a tuba.

“Look!” Pollyanna said, pointing up with her cotton candy. Maisie looked up again. The people on the platform were
bowing and smiling, waving one of their arms in big wide swoops and hanging on to the ladder with the other one.

“We proudly present,” the ringmaster was saying, “the daring, the dazzling, the devil-may-care . . . ” He paused, and the band played another fanfare. “ . . . death-defying . . . Wallendas!”

“Oh, no,” Maisie said.

The band started playing a slow, pretty song, and one of the girl Wallendas picked up a long white pole and stepped onto the end of the high wire. She had short blond hair like Kit’s. “You have to get down!” Maisie shouted up to her.

The girl Wallenda started out across the high wire, holding her pole in both hands. “There’s going to be a disaster!” Maisie shouted. “Go back! Go back!”

The girl continued to walk, placing her feet in their flat white shoes carefully, carefully. Maisie tilted her head back, trying to see the top of the tent. She could see the Wallendas, waiting for their turns to go out on the high wire, but everything above them was black, like there wasn’t a tent above them at all, just sky.

If it was the sky, there’d be stars, she thought, and just then she saw one. It glittered, a tiny white point of light, high above the Wallendas’ heads. So maybe it’s all right, Maisie thought, looking at the star. It glittered again, and then flared brightly, brighter even than the spotlight, and turned red.

“Fire!” Maisie shouted, but the Wallendas didn’t pay any attention. The girl Wallenda reached the middle of the wire, and a man Wallenda started out toward her.

Maisie ran as hard as she could across the center ring, her feet sinking in the sawdust, over to the bandstand. “The big top’s on fire!” she shouted, but the band didn’t pay any attention to her either.

She ran over to the conductor. “You have to play the duck song!” she cried, “the song that means the circus is in trouble! ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever!’ ” but he didn’t even turn around. “See!” Maisie said, yanking on his sleeve and pointing up at the fire. It was burning a line down the roof of the tent now, making a jagged red tear.

“Get down!” she shouted to the Wallendas, pointing, and one of the Wallendas saw the fire and started climbing down the ladder. The girl Wallenda who looked like Kit was still out in the middle of the wire. One of the men Wallendas threw her a rope, and she dropped her white pole and grabbed it. She wrapped her legs around it, and slid down.

“Fire!” somebody shouted in the grandstand, and all the people looked up, their mouths open like Maisie’s had been, and began to run down off the grandstand.

The fire burned along the high wire, along the rigging, moving lines of flame. Like messages, Maisie thought. Like SOSs. Somebody grabbed Maisie’s arm. She turned around. It was Pollyanna. “We have to get out of here!” Pollyanna said, tugging Maisie back across the ring toward the main entrance.

“We can’t get out that way!” Maisie said, resisting. “The animal run’s in the way.”

“Hurry, Molly!” Pollyanna said.

“Not Molly,” Maisie said. “Maisie!” but the band had started playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever” and Pollyanna couldn’t hear her.

“Look,” Maisie said, reaching inside the neck of her hospital gown. “My name is Maisie. It’s all written right here, on my dog tags.”

They weren’t there. She fumbled wildly at her neck, searching for her dog tags. They must have fallen off, back there while she was standing in the entranceway, looking up at the Wallendas.

“Well, Margie or whatever your name is, we better get out of here,” Pollyanna said. She took Maisie’s hand.

“No!” Maisie said, wrenching it away from her. “I have to find them!” She ran wildly back across the center ring. “I have to,” she shouted over her shoulder as she ran, “or they won’t know who I am when they find my body.”

“I thought you said we can’t get out that way,” Pollyanna called to her. “I thought you said it wasn’t clear.”

“Clear,” her heart doctor said, and the jolt jerked her really hard, but it must not have worked. The heart monitor was still whining.

“All right,” her heart doctor said. “If you’ve got anything, now’s the time to try it,” and Dr. Wright said, “Start the theta-asparcine. Start the acetylcholine.”

“Hang on, honey,” Vielle said. “Don’t leave us,” but she had to find her dog tags. They weren’t in the main entrance. She dropped to her knees and dug in the sawdust, sifting it in her hands.

A lady ran by, kicking sawdust onto Maisie’s hands. “Don’t—” she said, and a big girl ran by, and a man carrying a little boy. “Stop it,” she said. “You’re mashing it! I have to find my dog tags!”

But they didn’t listen. They ran past her into the darkness of the tunnel. “You can’t get out that way!” Maisie said, grabbing at the big girl’s skirt. “The animal run is in the way.”

“It’s on fire!” the big girl said and yanked the tail of her skirt away so hard it tore.

“You have to go out the performers’ entrance!” Maisie said, but the big girl had already disappeared into the darkness, and a whole bunch of people were running after her, kicking the sawdust all over, trampling it, stepping on Maisie’s hands.

“You’re messing it all up,” Maisie said, cradling her bruised fingers in her other hand. She struggled to her feet. “This isn’t the way out!” she shouted, holding up her hands to make the people stop, but they couldn’t hear her. They were screaming and shrieking so loud she couldn’t even hear the band playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” They were stumbling against her, shoving her, pushing her into the tunnel.

It was dark in the tunnel and full of smoke. Somebody shoved Maisie, still on one knee, and she fell forward, her hands out, and came up against hard metal bars. The animal run, she thought, and tried to pull herself up to standing, but they were pressing her flat against the bars, mashing her chest.

“Open the cage!” somebody shouted.

“No! The lions and tigers will get out,” she tried to shout, but the smoke was too thick, her ribs were being crushed into the bars of the cage, and if she didn’t get out of there they were going to push her chest right through the bars.

She started to climb up the side of the run, pulling up with one hand and then the other, trying to get above the pushing
people. If she could get up on top of the animal run, maybe she could crawl over it to the door.

But it was too high. She climbed and climbed, and there were still bars. She pulled herself up hand over hand, away from the screaming people, and now she could hear the band. They were playing a different song. A German song, like the one in
The Sound of Music
, only it wasn’t the band, it was a piano with a light, tinny sound, like the one on the Hindenburg.

She had been wrong. It was the
Hindenburg
, after all. It wasn’t the animals’ run, she was in the rigging inside the balloon, and she had to hold on tight or she would fall out of the sky. Like Ulla.

Far below her, in New Jersey, the children piled up against the cage, screaming. “You can’t get out that way,” she shouted down to them. The fire was all around her, the roaring flames like snowy fields, so bright you couldn’t look at them, and she knew if she let go, she would fall and fall, and they wouldn’t know her name.

“My name is Maisie,” she said, “Maisie Nellis,” but there was no air left in her lungs, only the smoke, thick as fog, and the bars were hot, she couldn’t hold on much longer, they were melting under her hands. The snowy fields under her got brighter, and she saw it wasn’t snow, it was apple blossoms. Beautiful, soft white apple blossoms.

If I fell onto them, it wouldn’t hurt at all, she thought. But she couldn’t let go. They wouldn’t know who she was. They would bury her in a grave that only had a number on it, and nobody would ever know what had happened to her. “Joanna!” she shouted. “Joanna!”

“Nothing,” Maisie’s heart doctor said.

“Increase the acetylcholine,” Dr. Wright said.

“It’s been four minutes,” the heart doctor said. “I think it’s time.”

“No,” Dr. Wright said, sounding mad. “Come on, Maisie, you’re a whiz at stalling. Now’s the time to stall.”

“Hang on, honey,” Vielle said, holding tight to her white, lifeless hand. “Hang on.”

“Let go,” somebody down below her said. Maisie looked down. She couldn’t see anything but smoke.

“Just let go,” the voice said, and a hand reached up through the smoke, a hand with a white glove on.

“It’s too far,” Maisie said. “I have to wait till the
Hindenburg
gets closer to the ground.”

“There isn’t time,” he said. “Let go.” He reached his gloved hand up farther, and she could see a raggedy black sleeve.

Maisie scrunched her eyes up, trying to see him through the smoke, trying to see if he had a red nose and a banged-up black hat. “Are you Emmett Kelly?” she called down to him.