Passage (110 page)

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, kiddo,” he said. “I’ll catch you.” He stretched his white-gloved hand up really far, but it was still a long way underneath. “We have to get you out of here.”

“I can’t,” she said, clinging to the burning bars. “When they find me, they won’t know who I am.”

“
I
know who you are, Maisie,” he said, and she let go. And fell and fell and fell.

“No pulse,” Vielle said.

“Her heart was just too damaged,” her heart doctor said. “It just couldn’t stand the strain.”

“Clear,” Dr. Wright said. “Again. Clear.”

“It’s been five minutes.”

“Increase the acetylcholine.”

He caught her. She couldn’t see him for the smoke, but she could feel his arms under her. And then all of a sudden the smoke cleared, and she could see his face-the red nose, the brown painted-on beard, the white down-turned mouth. “You
are
Emmett Kelly,” she said, squinting at him, trying to see his real face under the clown makeup. “Aren’t you?”

He put her down so she was standing in the sawdust, and tipped his banged-up hat and made a funny bow. “There isn’t much time,” he said. He took her hand in his white gloved one, and started running across the big top toward the performers’ entrance, dragging Maisie with him.

The whole roof was on fire now, and the poles holding up the tent, and the rigging. A big piece of burning canvas came crashing down right in front of the band, and the man playing the tuba made a funny “bla-a-a-t-t-t” and then went on playing.

Emmett Kelly ran with Maisie past the band, his big clown shoes making a flapping up-and-down noise. A clown in a funny fireman’s hat ran past them dragging a big fire hose. An elephant ran past, and a German shepherd.

Emmett Kelly led her between them, pulling Maisie out of the way of a white horse. Its tail was on fire. “There’s the performers’ entrance,” he said, pointing at a door with a black curtain across it as he ran. “We’re almost there.”

He suddenly stopped, pulling Maisie up short. “Why’d you do that?” Maisie asked, and one of the on-fire poles came crashing down, bringing the performers’ entrance crashing down with it, and the ladder the Wallendas had stood on. The roof of the tent came down on top of all of it, on fire, covering it up, and smoke boiled up.

The clown in the funny fireman’s hat shouted, “There’s no way out!”

“Yes, there is, kiddo,” Emmett Kelly said. “And you know what it is.”

“There isn’t any way out. The main entrance is blocked,” she said. “The animal run’s in the way.”

“You know the way out,” he said, bending down and gripping her by the shoulders. “You told me, remember? When we were looking at your book?”

“The tent,” Maisie said. “They could’ve got out by crawling under the tent.”

Emmett Kelly led Maisie, running, back across the ring to the far side of the tent. “There’s a Victory garden on the far side of the lot,” he said as they ran. “I want you to go over there and wait till your mother comes.”

Maisie looked at him. “Aren’t you coming with me?”

He shook his head. “Women and children only.”

They reached the side of the tent. The canvas was tied down with stakes. Emmett Kelly squatted down in his funny, too-big pants and untied the rope. He lifted up the canvas so Maisie could go under. “I want you to run to the Victory garden.” He raised the canvas up higher.

Maisie looked out under the canvas. It was dark outside, darker even than the tunnel. “What if I get lost?” she said and started to cry. “They won’t know who I am.”

Emmett Kelly stood up and reached in one of his tattered pockets and pulled out a purple spotted handkerchief. He started to wipe Maisie’s eyes with it, but it wouldn’t come all the way out of his pocket. He yanked on it, and the end of it came out in a big knot, tied to a red bandanna. He pulled on the bandanna, and a green handkerchief came out and then an orange one, all knotted together.

Maisie laughed.

He pulled and pulled, looking surprised, and a lavender handkerchief came out, and a yellow one, and a white one with apple blossoms on it. And a chain with Maisie’s dog tags on the end of it.

He put the chain around her neck. “Now hurry,” he said. “The whole place is on fire.”

It was. Up above, the roof of the tent was one big flame, and the grandstands and the center ring and the bandstand were all burning, but the band was still playing, blowing on their trumpets and tubas in their red uniforms. They weren’t playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” though. They were playing a really slow, sad song. “What is that?” Maisie asked.

“ ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee,’ ” Emmett Kelly said.

“Like on the
Titanic,”
Maisie said.

“Like on the
Titanic,”
he said. “It means it’s time to go.”

“I don’t want to,” Maisie said. “I want to stay here with you. I know a lot about disasters.”

“That’s why you have to go,” he said. “So you can become a disasterologist.”

“Why can’t you come, too?”

“I have to stay here,” he said, and she saw that he was holding a water bucket.

“And save people’s lives,” Maisie said.

He smiled under his painted-on, sad-looking expression. “And save people’s lives.” He squatted down and lifted up the canvas again. “Now go, kiddo. I want you to run lickety-split.”

Maisie ducked under the canvas and stood poised in the opening a moment, clutching her dog tags, and then looked back at him.

“I know who you are,” she said. “You’re not really Emmett Kelly, are you? That’s just a metaphor.”

The clown put his gloved finger up to his wide white mouth in a sh-shhing motion. “I want you to run straight for the Victory garden,” he said.

Maisie smiled at him. “You can’t fool me,” she said. “I know who you really are,” and ran into the darkness, as fast as she could.

T
WO DAYS
after successfully reviving Maisie, Richard’s special pager went off again. This time, trying not to think of what the strain of two codes in three days might do to Maisie’s system or what deadly side effect the theta-asparcine might have produced, he made it up to CICU in three minutes flat.

Evelyn met him as he skidded into the unit, all smiles. “Her heart’s here,” she said. “Maisie’s in being prepped. I tried to call you.”

“My special pager went off,” he said, still not convinced there wasn’t a disaster, and Evelyn said, unruffled, “She was quite insistent that you and Vielle Howard be informed, and I guess she took matters into her own hands.”

She had, in more ways than one. After the transplant surgery, which took eight hours and went without a hitch, one of the attending nurses told him Maisie had taped her dog tags to the bottom of her foot and was furious that they’d been removed. “What if I’d died?” she’d demanded indignantly as soon as her airway was removed, and, in spite of the danger of infection due to the immunosuppressants she was taking, she was allowed to wear her dog tags, swabbed with disinfectant, wrapped around her wrist, “just in case.”

Maisie’s mother, absolutely impossible now that her faith in positive thinking had been confirmed, had, according to the nurse, tried to talk her out of them, to no avail.

“I need them,” Maisie had said. “In case I get complications. I might get a blood clot or reject my new heart.”

“You won’t do any such thing,” her mother had said. “You’re going to get well and come home and go back to school. You’re going to take ballet lessons” —something
Richard could not in his wildest dreams imagine Maisie doing, unless a ballet-related flood or volcanic eruption was involved—“and grow up and have children of your own.” To which Maisie, ever the realist, had replied, “I’ll still die sometime. Everybody dies sooner or later.”

After a week of family only, Maisie was allowed visitors, provided they wore paper gowns, booties, and masks, and limited their visits to five minutes, and visited two at a time. That meant her mother was always present, which cramped Maisie’s style considerably, although she still told Richard plenty of grisly details about her surgery. “So then they crack your chest open,” she demonstrated, “and they cut your heart out and put the new one in. Did you know it comes in a cooler, like beer?”

“Maisie—” her mother protested. “Let’s talk about something cheerful. You need to thank Dr. Wright. He revived you after you coded.”

“That’s right,” Evelyn said, coming in to check the numerous monitors. “Dr. Wright saved your life.”

“No, he didn’t,” Maisie said.

“I know he didn’t do your transplant surgery, like Dr. Templeton,” Mrs. Nellis said, looking embarrassed, “but he helped by starting your heart again so you could get your new heart.”

“I know,” Maisie said, “but—”

“A lot of people worked together to get you your new heart, didn’t they?” Mrs. Nellis said. “Your Peds nurses and Dr.—”

“Maisie,” Richard said, leaning forward, “who did save your life?”

Maisie opened her mouth to answer, and Evelyn, adjusting her IV, said, “I know who she means. You mean the person who donated your heart, don’t you, Maisie?”

“Yes,” Maisie said after a moment, and Richard thought, That isn’t what she was going to say. “I wish they told you what their name was,” Maisie said. “They don’t tell you anything, not how they died or whether they were a boy or a girl or anything.”

“That’s because they don’t want you to worry about it,” Mrs. Nellis said. “You’re supposed to be thinking positive thoughts to help you get well.”

“It’s positive they saved my life,” Maisie said.

“Cheerful topics,” Mrs. Nellis admonished. “Tell Dr. Wright what Dr. Murrow brought you.”

Dr. Murrow had brought her a giant Mylar balloon with a heart on it. “It’s got helium in it, not hydrogen, so you don’t have to worry about it blowing up like the
Hindenburg,”
Maisie told him and had to be cautioned again about cheerful topics.

In the week that followed, the red heart balloon was joined by Mylar balloons with smiley-faces and teddy bears on them (no regular balloons allowed in CICU, and no flowers), and Maisie’s room filled up with dolls and stuffed animals and visitors. Barbara came up from Peds to see her and stopped by the lab afterward to tell Richard Maisie wanted to see him and to thank him. “You saved her life,” she said, and it reminded him of what Maisie had said, or, rather, not said, on his first visit.

He wondered if that was what she wanted to see him about. “Was her mother there when you visited her?” he asked Barbara.

“Yes,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I wouldn’t go down there right now. Mr. Mandrake was going in as I was coming out. I’d steer clear of him if I were you. He’s in a foul mood these days, thanks to Mabel Davenport.”

“Mabel Davenport? You mean Mrs. Davenport?” Richard asked. “Why? What did she do?”

“You mean you haven’t heard?” She leaned confidentially toward him. “You will not
believe
what’s happened. His new book,
Messages from the Other Side
, is coming out next month,” she paused expectantly, “the twentieth, to be exact.”

“Wonderful,” Richard said, wondering what there was in that news to make her smile so smugly. “And?”

“And
Communications from Beyond
is coming out on the tenth. With a nationwide book tour and, rumor has it, an even bigger advance than Mr. Mandrake’s.”

“Communications from Beyond?”

“By Mabel R. Davenport. Mr. Mandrake says she made the whole thing up.
She
says he tried to make her remember things she never saw and he’s got it all wrong, there’s no Angel of Light, no Life Review, just a golden aura that confers psychic
powers, which Mrs. Davenport claims she has. She says she’s been in contact with Houdini and Amelia Earhart. I can’t believe you haven’t heard about this. It’s been all over the tabloids. Mr. Mandrake’s furious. So I’d wait till this afternoon before I went down to see Maisie.”

He did, but when he went down Ms. Sutterly was there, and he had the feeling Maisie wanted to speak to him in private, so he merely waved at her from the door and went back that evening, but then, and for the next several days, her room was jammed with people, in spite of the two-visitors rule, and he was busy, too, meeting with the head of research and the grant proposals people about further research on theta-asparcine. He had to settle for keeping tabs on Maisie by calling CICU.

The nurses’ reports were almost as optimistic as Maisie’s mother’s. Maisie was showing no signs of rejection, the fluid in her lungs was steadily diminishing, and she was beginning to eat (this last reported by Eugene, who, being in charge of her menus, took a personal responsibility for her appetite).

When Richard went down Monday, the entire Peds staff was there, and Tuesday and Wednesday, her mother. Finally, on Friday, he ran into Mrs. Nellis leaving the CICU, pulling her mask and gown off as she went. “Oh, good, Dr. Wright, you’re here,” she said hurriedly. “I have to meet with Dr. Templeton, and I was nervous about leaving Maisie with—” she shot a glance back toward Maisie’s room, “but I know I can trust you to keep the conversation upbeat and positive.”