Passage (6 page)

“Didn’t the nurse say you were supposed to stay in bed?” he said.

“I will in just a minute. What’s your favorite disaster? Mine’s the
Hindenburg,”
Maisie said, turning back to the photo of it, falling tail first, engulfed in flames. “This one crew guy was up on the balloon part when it blew up and everybody else fell, but he hung on to the metal things.” She pointed to the metal framework visible among the flames.

“Struts,” Richard said.

“His hands all burned off, but he didn’t let go. I need to tell Joanna about him when she comes.”

“Did she say when she was coming?” Richard asked.

She shrugged, bending over the picture, her nose practically touching it, as if she was looking for the hapless crewman amid the flames. Or the dog. “I don’t know if she knows I’m here yet. I told Nurse Barbara to page her. Sometimes she turns her pager off though, but she always comes to see me as soon as she finds out I’m here,” Maisie said, “and I have lots more
Hindenburg
pictures to show you. See, here’s the captain. He died. Did you know—”

He interrupted her. “Maisie, I’ve got to go.”

“Wait, you can’t go yet. I know she’ll be here pretty soon. She always comes just as soon as—”

Barbara poked her head in the door. “Dr. Wright? There’s a message for you.”

“See,” Maisie said as if that proved something.

“I thought I told you to get back in bed,” Barbara said, and Maisie hastily climbed up into it. “Dr. Wright, Tish Vanderbeck said to tell you that she’d gotten in touch with Dr. Lander and asked her to come up to Medicine.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Maisie, I’ve got to go meet Dr. Lander. It was nice talking to you.”

“Wait, you can’t go
yet,”
Maisie said. “I haven’t told you about the girl and the little boys.”

She looked genuinely distressed, but he didn’t want to miss Dr. Lander again. “All right,” he said. “One quick story and then I have to go.”

“Okay,” she said. “Well, the people had to jump out because everything was on fire. The girl jumped, but the little boys were too scared to, and one of them, his hair caught on fire, so his mother
threw
him out. The crew guy was on fire, too, his hands, but he didn’t let go.” She looked up innocently. “What do you think that would be like? Being on fire?”

“I don’t know,” Richard said, wondering if talking about such grisly things with such a sick little girl was a good idea. “Terrible, I’d think.”

Maisie nodded. “I think I’d let go. There was this other guy—”

Talk about letting go. “Maisie, I
have
to go find Dr. Lander. I don’t want to miss her.”

“Wait! When you see Dr. Lander, tell her I have something to tell her. About near-death experiences. Tell her I’m in Room 456.”

“I will,” he said and started out.

“It’s about the crew guy who was up inside the balloon part of the
Hindenburg
when it exploded. He—”

At this rate, he would be here all day. “I’ve got to go, Maisie,” he said and didn’t wait for her to protest. He hurried back down the hall, turned left, and immediately got lost. He had to stop and ask an orderly how to get to the walkway.

“You go back down this hall, turn right, and go clear to the end of the hall,” the orderly said. “Where are you trying to get?”

“Medicine,” Richard said.

“That’s in the main building. The fastest way is to go down this hall and turn left till you come to a door marked ‘Staff.’ Through there there’s a stairway. It’ll take you down to second. You take the walkway and then cut through Radiology to the service elevator, and take it back up to third.”

Richard did, practically running down the last hallway, afraid Dr. Lander would have come and gone. She wasn’t there yet. “Or at least I haven’t seen her,” the charge nurse said. “She might be in with Mrs. Davenport.”

He went down to Mrs. Davenport’s room, but she wasn’t there. “I
wish
she’d get here,” Mrs. Davenport said. “I have
so
much to tell her and Mr. Mandrake. While I was floating above my body, I heard the doctor say—”

“Mr. Mandrake?” Richard said.

“Maurice Mandrake,” she said. “He wrote
The Light at the End of the Tunnel.
He’s going to be so excited that I’ve remembered—”

“I thought Dr. Lander was interviewing you.”

“They both are. They work together, you know.”

“They
work
together?”

“Yes, I think so. They’ve both come in and interviewed me.”

That doesn’t mean they work together, Richard thought.

“—although I have to say, she’s not nearly as nice as Mr. Mandrake. He’s so interested in what you have to say.”

“Did she tell you they worked together?”

“Not exactly,” she said, looking confused. “I assumed . . . Mr. Mandrake’s writing a new book about messages from the Other Side.”

She didn’t know for certain that they worked together, but if that was even a possibility . . . Messages from the dead, for God’s sake.

“Excuse me,” he said abruptly and walked out of the room, straight into a tall, gray-haired man in a pin-striped suit. “Sorry,” Richard said, and started past, but the man held his arm.

“You’re Dr. Wright, aren’t you?” he said, gripping Richard’s hand in a confident handshake. “I was just on my way up to see you. I want to discuss your research.”

Richard wondered who this was. A fellow researcher? No, the suit was too expensive, the hair too slick. A hospital board member.

“I intended to come see you after I saw Mrs. Davenport, and here you are,” he said. “I assume you’ve been in listening to her account of her NDE, or, as I prefer to call them, her NAE, near-afterlife experience, because that’s what they are. A glimpse of the afterlife that awaits us, a message from beyond the grave.”

Maurice Mandrake, Richard thought. Shit. He should have recognized him from his book jacket photos. And paid more attention to where he was going.

“I’m delighted you’ve joined us here at Mercy General,” Mandrake said, “and that science is finally acknowledging the existence of the afterlife. The science and medical establishments so often have closed minds when it comes to immortality. I’m delighted that you don’t. Now, what exactly does your research entail?”

“I really can’t talk now. I have an appointment,” Richard said, but Mandrake had no intention of letting him go.

“The fact that people who have had near-death experiences consistently report seeing the same things proves that they are not mere hallucinations.”

“Dr. Wright?” the charge nurse called from her desk. “Are you still looking for Dr. Lander? We’ve located her.”

“Jo?” Mandrake said delightedly. “Is that who your appointment’s with? Lovely girl. She and I work together.”

Richard’s heart sank. “You work together?”

“Oh, yes. We’ve worked closely on a number of cases.”

I should have known, Richard thought.

“Of course, our
emphasis
is different,” Mandrake said. “I am currently interested in the message aspect of the NAEs. And we have different interview methods,” he added, frowning slightly. “Were you supposed to meet Dr. Lander here? She is often rather difficult to locate.”

“Dr. Lander’s not the person I have the appointment with,” Richard said. He turned to the charge nurse. “No. I don’t need to see her.”

Mandrake grabbed his hand again. “Delighted to have met you, Dr. Wright, and I’m looking forward to our working together.”

Over my dead body, Richard thought. And I won’t be sending you any messages from beyond the grave.

“I must go see Mrs. Davenport now,” Mandrake said, as if Richard were the one who had detained him, and left him standing there.

He should have known better. NDE researchers might collect data and do statistical samplings, might publish papers in
The Psychology Quarterly Review
, might even make a good impression on children, but it was all a blind. They were really latter-day spiritualists using pseudoscientific trappings to lend credibility to what was really religion. He started down the hall to the elevators.

“Dr. Wright!” Tish called after him.

He turned around.

Tish said, “Here she is,” and turned to hurry after a young woman in a skirt and cardigan sweater walking toward the nurses’ station. “Dr. Lander,” she said as she caught up to her. “Dr. Wright wants to talk to you.”

Dr. Lander said, “Tell him I’m—”

“He’s right
here,”
Tish said, waving him over. “Dr. Wright, I found her for you.”

Damn you, Tish, he thought, another minute and I would have been out of here. And now what am I supposed to tell Dr. Lander I wanted her for?

He walked over. She was not, as Tish had said, mousy, although she did wear glasses, wire-rimmed ones that gave her face a piquant look. She had hazel eyes and brown hair that was pulled back with silver barrettes.

“Dr. Lander,” he said. “I—”

“Look, Dr. Wright,” she said, putting her hand up to stop him. “I’m sure you’ve had a fascinating near-death experience, but right now’s not the time. I’ve had a very bad day, and I’m not the person you want to talk to anyway. You need to see Maurice Mandrake. I can give you his pager number.”

“He’s in with Mrs. Davenport,” Tish said helpfully.

“There, Tish will show you where he is. I’m sure he’ll want
to know all the details. Tish, take him in to Mr. Mandrake.” She started past him.

“Don’t bother, Tish,” he said, angered by her rudeness. “I’m not interested in talking to Dr. Lander’s partner.”

“Partner?” Dr. Lander wheeled to face him. “Who told you I was his partner? Did
he
tell you that? First he steals all my subjects and
ruins
them and
now
he’s telling people we work together! He has no right!” She stamped her foot. “I do
not
work with Mr. Mandrake!”

Richard grabbed her arm. “Wait. Whoa. Time out. I think we need to start over.”

“Fine,” she said. “I do
not
work with Maurice Mandrake. I am
attempting
to do legitimate scientific research on near-death experiences, but he is making it
absolutely
impossible—”

“And I’ve been
attempting
to contact you to talk to you about your research,” he said, extending his hand. “Richard Wright. I’m doing a project on the neurological causes of the near-death experience.”

“Joanna Lander,” she said, shaking his hand. “Look, I’m really sorry. I—”

He grinned. “You’ve had a bad day.”

“Yes,” she said, and he was surprised by the bleakness of the look she gave him.

“You said this was a bad time to talk,” he said hastily. “We don’t have to do it right now. We could set up a meeting tomorrow, if that would be better.”

She nodded. “Today just isn’t—one of my subjects—” She recovered herself. “Tomorrow would be good. What time?”

“Ten o’clock? Or we could meet for lunch. When is the cafeteria open?”

“Hardly ever,” she said, and smiled. “Ten is fine. Where?”

“My lab’s up on six-east,” he said. “602.”

“Tomorrow at ten,” she said, and started down the hall, but before she had gone five steps she had turned and begun walking back toward him.

“What—” he said.

“Shh,”
she said, passing him. “Maurice Mandrake,” she murmured, and pushed open a white door marked “Staff Only.” He glanced back, saw a pin-striped suit coming around the
corner, and ducked in the door after her. It was a stairway, leading down.

“Sorry,” she said, starting down the gray-painted cement stairs, “but I was afraid if I had to talk to him right then, I’d kill him.”

“I know the feeling,” Richard said, starting down the stairs after her. “I already had one encounter today.”

“This’ll take us down to first,” she said, already down to the landing, “and then to the main elevators.” She stopped short, looking dismayed.

“What is it?” he said, coming down to where she was standing. A strip of yellow “Do Not Cross” tape stretched across the stairway. Below it, the stairs gleamed with shiny, wet, pale blue paint.

M
AYBE THE PAINT’S DRIED
,” Dr. Wright said, even though it was obviously still wet.

Joanna stooped and touched it. “Nope,” she said, holding her finger up to show him the pale blue spot on the tip.

“And there’s no other way out?”

“Back the way we came,” she said. “Did Mr. Mandrake happen to tell you where he was going?”

“Yes,” Richard said. “In to see Mrs. Davenport.”

“Oh, no, he’ll be in there forever,” she said. “Mrs. Davenport’s life review is longer than most people’s lives. And it’s been three hours since I saw her last. She’s no doubt ‘remembered’ all sorts of details in the meantime. And what she hasn’t, Mr. Mandrake will manufacture.”

“How did a nutcase like Mandrake get permission to do research in a reputable hospital like Mercy General anyway?” he asked.

“Money,” she said. “He donated half the royalties of
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
to them. It’s sold over twenty-five million copies.”