Passage (84 page)

“No,” Richard said, “I wasn’t there.” I was in the White Star offices in New York, too stupid to tell the difference between an office building and a ship, too late to be of any use.

“Oh, sorry,” the police officer said. “I’d been told you witnessed the murder.”

“No,” Richard said.

The officer hung up, and Richard unplugged the phone. And turned his pager off. But that only made it worse. When they couldn’t get him on the phone, they came. Eileen from Medicine, to bring him a wonderful book called
The Healing Help Book
, and Maureen from Radiology with
Nine Steps to Recovering from Personal Tragedy
, and Dr. Jamison.

She had a book, too.
The Idiots’ Guide to Mourning?
Richard wondered, but it was a medical journal. “This is that study I called you about,” she said. “I’ve found concentrating on your work is the best way to get through a loss.” She tried to hand him the journal. “It’s the article by Barstow and Skal. They did a study of aspartate endorphins, and theta-asparcine—”

“The project’s canceled.”

Her face went maddeningly sympathetic. “I understand how you feel, but in a week or two—”

She left the journal on the desk. Richard shut the door behind her, but that didn’t stop anyone either. Tara from Ob-Gyn knocked timidly and then opened the door as if he were one of her patients, and the resident who’d been on duty in the ER didn’t knock at all.

“I thought you’d want to know the results of the autopsy,” and Richard wondered for one long, awful moment if he would say, “They found water in her lungs.”

“The cause of death was acute hemorrhage leading to hypovolemic shock,” the resident said. “It was just bad luck that the knife happened to hit the aorta. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the knife would have hit a rib, or, at the very worst, punctured a lung. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

He flipped up a sheet. “She bled out in under two minutes. There wasn’t anything anybody could’ve done.” I could have kept my pager on, Richard thought. I could have gone under two minutes earlier. In time to make it to the Titanic.

“We got the results on Calinga, too,” he said.

Calinga? That must be the teenager. He’d never heard his name.

“Enough rogue to kill an elephant.” The resident shook his head. “Sixteen years old.” He slapped the file shut. “Well, anyway, I thought you’d want to know Dr. Lander didn’t suffer.” He started for the door. “She would have lost consciousness in under a minute. She probably didn’t even have time to realize what had happened.”

That afternoon Vielle came up. “I came . . . ” she said and then hesitated.

“To bring me a copy of
The Dummies’ Guide to Grieving?”
Richard said bitterly.

“I know,” she said. “Dr. Chaffey gave me a copy of
Coping with the Death of a Colleague.
A colleague!” She looked like she hadn’t been home either. She was still wearing the same rumpled dark blue scrubs and surgical cap. Her eyes were red and swollen, with maroon smudges under them, like bruises, and
her hand and her arm were both bandaged. “You keep thinking it can’t get any worse, and then it does,” she said.

“I know,” he said and pulled out a chair for her.

She sank down onto it. “I came because . . . I keep seeing her there in the ER, I keep thinking about what she must have been going through those last few . . . There was this guy in the ER who’d had a myocardial infarction. Joanna interviewed him, and right before he died, he said, ‘Too far away for her to come,’ and Joanna said he was trying to tell her something, she kept talking about it, and then she . . . ” She looked up at Richard. “I know this’ll sound like I’m crazy, and I guess I am a little. I keep seeing her running up to me and him whirling around, and the knife—” she said, and he realized that, rumpled as they were, they couldn’t be the same scrubs. Those were covered with blood.

“I just stood there,” Vielle said, staring blindly ahead of her. “I didn’t do
anything.
I should have—”

“What?” Richard said. “Tried to stop him? He was on rogue.”

“I could have warned her,” she said. “If I’d shouted at her, told her not to come any closer . . . I didn’t even see her till she was right next to him. I was looking at the knife he was holding, and by the time I saw her . . . she just walked right into it.”

And why didn’t she see what was going on? he wondered. Why hadn’t she noticed the charged silence, the frightened expressions on their faces?

Vielle blew her nose. “Anyway, I keep going over everything in my mind, what she . . . and I have to ask you, even if it does sound crazy. When Joanna underwent the NDE experiments, what did she see?”

He stared at her.

“Did she see the
Titanic?”
she asked, and before he could answer, she rushed on tearfully, “The reason I’m asking is, she asked me all these questions about the movie, about this one scene, and when I asked her why we didn’t just rent it and watch it again, she said she couldn’t, and then yesterday Kit told me Joanna was having her do all this research on the
Titanic
, and she’d seemed so preoccupied and worried these last few weeks . . . Is that what she saw in her NDE? The Titanic?”

“Yes,” he said, and watched her face go rigid with horror.

“I knew it,” she whispered. “Oh, God, I just stood there. I—”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “It was mine.”

“You don’t understand,” she said, anguished. “She wanted me to transfer up to Peds.” She stood up. “She said the ER was dangerous. Dangerous!”

He reached for her hand. “Vielle, listen to me. It wasn’t your fault. I had my pager turned off. I—”

She shook his hand off angrily. “She wouldn’t even have been in the ER if I’d listened to her. She came down there to talk to me about Dish Night, about a stupid
movie!”
she said, and flung herself out of the room and down the hall.

“Vielle, wait!” he said and started after her, but she’d already disappeared into the elevator.

He punched the “down” button impatiently, and the other elevator opened.

“Oh, good,” a middle-aged woman in a green dress said. “I was coming to see you. I’m Sally Zimmerman from Surgery. I just wanted to drop this by.” She held out a book. The orange-and-yellow cover read
Eight Great Grief Helps.
“It’s really helpful,” she said. “It has all kinds of mourning exercises and closure activities.”

“You keep thinking it can’t get any worse,” Richard murmured.

“That’s in there, too,” she said, taking the book back from him and thumbing through it. “Here it is. ‘How to Raise Your Hope Quotient.’ ”

The next day Mr. Wojakowski came. “I’m sorry I went on about Joanna like that,” he said. “Nobody’d told me what happened.” He shook his head. “Gone just like that! You never get used to it. One minute they’re standing next to you on the gunnery deck and the next, gone! Bucky Tobias, my bunk-mate. Nineteen years old. ‘Think the Japs know where we are?’ he said to me, and ten seconds later, wham! half the
deck’s gone and nothing left! I heard he was on drugs,” he said, and for a moment Richard thought he was talking about his bunkmate on the Yorktown.

“Sixteen years old,” Mr. Wojakowski said. “Damned waste. I still can’t believe it.” He shook his head. “I just saw her that day up in Medicine looking for you.”

“Looking for me?” Richard said and felt a pain in his side, like a knife going in.

“Yeah, and whatever it was she was trying to find you for, it musta been important. She practically ran me over. ‘Did somebody call battle stations?’ I asked her, she was movin’ so fast.”

“When was this?” Richard demanded.

“Monday morning. I was over here seeing a friend of mine—had a stroke square dancing—after I did my hearing-research-sitting-around.”

“What time did you see her?”

“Let’s see,” he said, scratching his cheek, “Musta been around thirteen hundred hours. I came up right after I was done in the arthritis center, and that goes from eleven to twelve forty-five.”

One o’clock, Richard thought. She must have been on her way down to the ER. “And she told you she was looking for me?”

“Yeah, she said she had to find you right away, so she didn’t have time to talk.”

Joanna hadn’t been looking for Vielle. She had been looking for him. He had to tell her, so she wouldn’t go on thinking it was her fault. It was the least he could do.

“Just wanted you to know how bad I feel,” Mr. Wojakowski said, picking up his hat. “She was a great little gal. Reminded me of a navy nurse I dated in Honolulu. Pretty as a picture. Killed off Tarawa. Japs sank the transport she was being shipped home on.”

As soon as Mr. Wojakowski left, he plugged in the phone and called the ER. Vielle wasn’t there. He had her paged, and then sat there by the phone, waiting for her to call. She didn’t, but Mrs. Brightman did. And his old roommate.

“I was just watching CNN,” Davis said, without preamble.

“What the hell kind of hospital are you working in? Did you know this Lander person?”

“Yes,” Richard said.

“But you’re all right?” Davis asked, and it was more a statement than a question.

Richard wondered what Davis would say if he said, “No.” If he said, “The NDEs aren’t temporallobe hallucinations. They’re real.” He already knew. “You can’t seriously believe that!” And “First Foxx and now you? I
knew
it was a virus!” and “Have you called the
Star
yet? Make them pay you for an exclusive, at least. You’re going to need the money now that you’re going to be out of a job.”

“I’m all right,” Richard said.

“You’re sure?” Davis asked, and sounded really concerned.

“Yes,” Richard said, and went down to the ER to talk to Vielle. The crime scene tape had been removed, but there were cops at all the doors. They checked Richard’s ID badge against a computer list before they let him in. Vielle was at the station desk, writing up a chart with her bandaged hand.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “She wasn’t looking for you that day to ask you about Dish Night. She was looking for me.”

“For you?” she said blankly. “But you weren’t—”

“I’d told her I was going to go talk to Dr. Jamison.”

“And Dr. Jamison had just been down here,” she said, and he could see the relief in her face, as if a load had been lifted off her.

“When she asked you about the movie
Titanic
, did she say what she was trying to—” he said, and saw she wasn’t listening. She had glanced up, toward the door, and gone suddenly stock-still. He looked over at the door.

Joanna was standing in it. Richard’s heart began to beat frantically, like a trapped bird battering its wings against the bars. She wasn’t dead. It was all, all, the blood and the flatline and the White Star Line offices, a dream, it had only felt real because of elevated acetylcholine levels and temporal-lobe stimulation.

“Joanna,” he breathed, and took a step toward her.

“I’m June Wexler, Joanna Lander’s sister,” the woman at
the door said, and it was like hearing the news all over again. She’s dead, he thought, and finally believed it. She’s been dead three days.

“I’m glad I found the two of you together,” Joanna’s sister said, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “I understand you both worked with Joanna. I was wondering if I could talk to you about her.”

Her voice sounded like Joanna’s, too, but somehow harsher. That’s from crying, he thought, looking at her reddened eyes, the Kleenex in her hands.

“I hadn’t talked to her in several months, and . . . ” She dabbed at her eyes with a Kleenex. “We always think there’ll be plenty of time, and then suddenly there isn’t any time at all . . . I was wondering if you knew whether she had been saved?” she said, and Richard wondered if she had somehow found out that he’d gone after her and failed.

“Saved?” Vielle said.

“Accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as her personal savior,” Joanna’s sister said. “I’d tried several times to bring her to the Lord, but each time Satan hardened her heart against me.”

“Satan,” Vielle said.

“Yes. I tried to witness to her, to tell her of the destruction that awaits the unrepentant, of God’s judgment and the fire that shall never be quenched.” She dabbed at her eyes again.

Richard gazed at her. She didn’t look like Joanna at all. It was only a trick of hair color, of the glasses.

“I continued to pray that, in working with you,” she said to Richard, “and in speaking with people who had seen Christ face to face, she might come to believe.”

Richard realized after a moment that she was talking about near-death experiences.

“Did she?” she asked. “Tell you that she had been saved?”

“No,” Vielle snapped.

“And you’re sure she didn’t change her mind at the last minute?” She turned to Vielle. “They told me you were with her when she died. Did she say anything?”

Richard expected her to say “no” again, but instead she hesitated a fraction of a second before she said, “The knife slashed the aorta. Joanna lost consciousness almost immediately.”

“But even if it was in the last second,” Joanna’s sister said. “It’s never too late for Jesus to forgive you for your sins, even if it’s with your last breath that you beg that forgiveness. Did she?” Joanna’s sister said eagerly. “Say anything?”

“No,” Vielle said.

She’s lying, Richard thought. She did say something.

“Are you sure?” Joanna’s sister persisted. “I’ve read about near-death experiences. I know they see Jesus waiting to welcome them into heaven, and ‘they that have seen have believed.’ Surely even Joanna’s heart wasn’t so hardened that she wouldn’t repent when she saw the fate that awaited her.”

“I’m sure,” Vielle said stonily. “She didn’t say anything.”

“Then there’s no hope,” Joanna’s sister said, dabbing at her eyes, “and she is in hell.”

“Jo
anna
?” Vielle said, outraged. “How
dare
you-!”

“It is not I who have condemned her, but God,” Joanna’s sister said. “For is it not written, ‘But they that do not believe shall be cast into outer darkness, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’?”

“Get out,” Vielle said.