“Yes, well,” Richard said, looking doubtful again, “we’ve got another interview scheduled for one.”
“I gotcha, Doc,” Mr. Wojakowski said. “Keep it short and sweet.” He turned back to Joanna. “Whaddya wanta know, Doc?”
Joanna looked at Richard, uncertain whether he really wanted her to proceed, but he nodded, so she offered Mr. Wojakowski a chair, thinking, We have to establish some kind of code for situations like this. “I just want to find out a little bit about you, Mr. Wojakowski, get to know you, since we’re going to be working together,” Joanna said, sitting down opposite him. “Your background, why you volunteered for the project.” She switched the recorder on.
“My background, huh? Well, I’ll tell ya, I’m an old navy man. Served on the USS Yorktown. Best ship in WWII till the Japs sank her. Sorry,” he said at her look, “that’s what we called ’em back then. The enemy, the Japanese.”
But she hadn’t been thinking about his use of the offensive word Japs. She’d been calculating his age. If he’d been in World War II, he had to be nearly eighty. “You say you served on the Yorktown?” she said, looking at his file. Name. Address. Social Security number. Why wasn’t his age listed? “That was a battleship, wasn’t it?” she said, stalling for time.
“Battleship!” he snorted. “Aircraft carrier. Best damn one in the Pacific. Sank four carriers at the Battle of Midway before a Jap sub got her. Torpedo. Got a destroyer that was standing in the way, too. The Hammann. Went down just like that. Dead before she even knew it. Two minutes. All hands.”
She still couldn’t find his age. Allergies to medications. Health history. He’d marked “no” to everything from high blood pressure to diabetes, and he looked spry and alert, but if he was eighty—
“ . . . took the Yorktown a lot longer to sink,” he was saying. “Two whole days. Terrible thing to watch.”
Work history, references, person to contact in case of emergency, but no birthdate. By design?
“ . . . the order to abandon ship, and the sailors all took off their shoes and lined them up on the deck. Hundreds and hundreds of pairs of shoes—”
“Mr. Wojakowski, I can’t find—”
“Ed,” he corrected, and then, as if he knew what she was going to ask next, “I joined the navy when I was thirteen. Lied about my age. Told ’em the hospital where they had my birth certificate had burned down. Not that they were checking things like that right after Pearl.” He looked challengingly at her. “You’re way too young to know what Pearl Harbor is, I s’pose.”
“The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor?”
“Surprise? Thunderbolt, is more like it. The U.S. of A. just sitting there, mindin’ her own business, and blam! No declaration of war, no warning, no nothin’. I’ll never forget it. It was a Sunday, and I was reading the funny papers. ‘The Katzenjammer Kids,’ I can still see it. I look up, and in comes the lady from two doors down, all out of breath, and says, ‘The Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor!’ Well, none of us even knew where Pearl Harbor was, except my kid sister. She’d seen it in a newsreel at the movies the night before. Desperadoes, that’s what was playing. Randolph Scott. And the very next day, I went downtown to the navy recruiting center and signed up.”
He paused momentarily for breath, and Joanna said quickly, “Mr.—Ed, what made you volunteer for the project? How did you find out about it?”
“Saw a notice in the recreation center at Aspen Gardens. That’s where I live. And then when I came in and talked to the doc, I thought it sounded interesting.”
“Had you ever been involved in a research study here at the hospital before?”
“Nope. They put up notices all the time. Most of them you have to have some special thing wrong with you—hernias or can’t see good or something, and I didn’t, so I couldn’t be in ’em.”
“You said the project sounded interesting,” Joanna said. “Can you be more specific? Were you interested in near-death experiences?”
“I’d seen shows about ’em on TV.”
“And that was why you wanted to participate in the project?”
He shook his head. “I had more than enough near-death experiences in the war.” He winked. “Tunnels and lights, let me tell you, they’re nothing compared to seeing a Zero coming at you, and the machine gun you’re supposed to be firing jams. Those damned 1.1 millimeters, they were always sticking, and you had to have a gunner’s mate crawl underneath ’em with a hammer and unjam ’em. I remember one time Straight Holecek, we called him Straight ’cause he was always drawing to inside straights, well, anyway, he—”
No wonder Richard had been reluctant to have her question Mr. Wojakowski with Amelia coming in a few minutes. He’d moved around to stand behind Mr. Wojakowski. She glanced up at him, and he grinned at her.
“ . . . and just then a Zero dived straight at us, and Straight gives a yelp and drops his hammer right on my foot, and—”
“So if it wasn’t NDEs you were interested in, what was it about the project that interested you?” Joanna asked.
“I told you I served on the Yorktown,” he said, “and let me tell you, she was a great ship. Brand-new and bright as a button, and real bunks to sleep in. She even had a soda fountain. You could go in there and order a chocolate malted or a cherry phosphate, just like the drugstore back home.” He smiled reminiscently. “Well, after we hit Rabaul, they put Old Yorky, that’s what we called her, on patrol duty down in the Coral Sea, and for six weeks we just sat there, playing acey-deucey and bettin’ on whose toenails’d grow the fastest.”
Joanna wondered what this had to do with why he had volunteered. She had a sneaking suspicion there was no connection at all, that he simply used any opening anybody gave him to talk about the war, and if she didn’t stop him, he’d go right on through the Battle of Midway.
“Mr. Wojakowski,” she said. “You were going to tell me why you volunteered for this project.”
“I am,” he said. “Well, so anyway, we’re sitting there twiddling our thumbs, and by the end of a week we were bored as hell and couldn’t wait for the Japs to dive-bomb us. At least it’d be something to do. Speaking of dive-bombing, did I ever tell you about what Jo-Jo Powers did at Coral Sea? The first time out his squadron doesn’t hit anything, all their torpedoes miss, and so he’s getting ready for his second run, and he says, ‘I’m going to hit that flight deck if I have to lay my bomb on it myself,’ and—”
“Mr. Wojakowski,” Joanna said firmly. “Your reason for volunteering.”
“You ever been over to Aspen Gardens?”
She shook her head.
“You’re lucky. It’s just like being on patrol duty in the Coral Sea, only without the acey-deucey. So I thought I’d come on over and do something interesting.”
Which was an excellent reason. “Have you ever had a near-death experience yourself, Mr. Wojakowski?”
“Not till the doc put me in that doughnut thing all hooked up like Frankenstein. I’d always thought that tunnel and light and seeing Jesus stuff was all a bunch of hooey, but, sure enough, there I was in a tunnel. No Jesus, though. I still say that’s a bunch of hooey. I saw too much stuff in the war to put much stock in religion. One time, at Coral Sea—”
She let him ramble on, satisfied that he wasn’t one of Mr. Mandrake’s spies. It was clear the real reason he’d volunteered was to have somebody new to tell his war stories to. And if Mr. Mandrake tries to pump him, it’ll serve him right, she thought, smiling to herself. He’ll get the whole history of the war in the Pacific. And if Amelia didn’t get here soon, she would, too. She glanced at the clock. It was nearly two. Where was she?
Joanna’s pager beeped. “Excuse me,” Joanna said and made a point of pulling it out of her pocket and looking at it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve got a call I’ve got to take.”
“Sure, Doc,” he said, looking disappointed. “Those are great little gizmos. Wish we’d had ’em back in WWII. It sure woulda helped the time we—”
r /> “We’ll call you as soon as we’ve finished setting up the schedule,” Joanna said, escorting him firmly across the lab to the door with him still talking. She opened the door. “We should know in a day or two.”
“Anytime’s fine. I got all the time in the world,” he said, and Joanna felt suddenly remorseful.
“Ed,” she said, “you never finished telling me about the dive-bomber, the one who said he’d hit the flight deck if he had to lay the bomb on there himself. What happened to him?”
“You mean Jo-Jo?” he asked. “Well, I’ll tell ya. He said he’d sink that carrier if it was the last thing he ever did, and he did it, too. It was a sight to see, him coming in straight at the Shokaku, his tail on fire, Zeroes all around him. But he did just what he said he was gonna do, laid that bomb right on her flight deck, even though he couldn’ta been more than two hundred feet above that deck when he dropped it, and then, wham! his bomber crashed into the ocean.”
“Oh—” Joanna said.
“But he did it, even if he was already dead when that bomb went off. He still did it.”
“On board the Pacific from Liverpool to N. Y.
—Confusion on board—Icebergs around us on every side. I know I cannot escape. I write the cause of our loss that friends may not live in suspense. The finder will please get it published. Wm. Graham.”
—MESSAGE FOUND IN A BOTTLE, 1856
IT TOOK ANOTHER twenty minutes and two more stories about the Yorktown to get rid of Mr. Wojakowski. “My gosh,” Joanna said, leaning against the door she had finally managed to shut behind him, “he’s harder to get away from than Maisie.”
“Do you think he’s one of Mandrake’s?” Richard asked.
“No, if he were a True Believer, we’d have heard all about it. He’ll actually make a very good subject if I can just keep him away from the topic of the USS Yorktown. He’s got an eye and an ear for detail, and he talks.”
Richard grinned. “You can say that again. Are you sure that’s an advantage?”
“Yes. There’s nothing worse than a subject who answers in monosyllables, or just sits there. I’ll take talkative any day.”
“Then I can schedule him?”
“Yes, but I’d do it right before another subject’s session. Otherwise, we’ll never get him turned off.” She went over to the desk and put down Mr. Wojakowski’s file. “I kept hoping Amelia Tanaka would come in and provide a good cutoff point. She was supposed to be here by now. Is she usually late?”
“Always,” Richard said, “but she usually calls.”
“Oh, maybe she did,” Joanna said, pulling her pager out. “I gave her my pager number.” She hastily called the switchboard and asked for her messages.
“Amelia Tanaka said she’d be late, she’ll be there by two,” the switchboard operator said. “And Nurse Howard wants you to call her.” That was Vielle, and she must not be calling about an NDE. When it was someone who’d coded, she simply left a message for Joanna to come to the ER.
She’s found out what Greg Menotti meant by “fifty-eight,” Joanna thought. She glanced at the clock. It was one-forty. “I’m running down to the ER,” she told Richard, hanging up the phone. “Amelia will be here at two. I’ll be back before then.”
“What is it?” he asked. “An NDE?”
“No,” she said, “I just have to find out something from Vielle.” What fifty-eight means.
And it’s probably nothing, she told herself, hurrying down the steps to fifth. Vielle will probably tell me Greg Menotti was trying to say something perfectly ordinary, like, “Try Stephanie’s office. The address is 1658 Grant.” Or, “I can’t be having a heart attack. I did fifty-eight laps at my health club this morning.”
But he wasn’t, she thought, crossing the walkway to the main building and the elevator. He wasn’t talking about laps or phone numbers. He was talking about something else. He was trying to tell us something important.
She took the elevator down to first and ran down the stairs and along the hall to the ER. Vielle was at the central desk, making entries on a chart. Joanna hurried over to her. “You found out what it meant, didn’t you?” she said. “What was he trying to say?”
“Who?” Vielle said blankly. “What are you talking about?”
“Greg Menotti. The heart attack patient who coded on Tuesday.”
“Oh, right,” Vielle said, “the myocardial infarction who kept saying, ‘fifty-nine.’ ”
“Fifty-eight,” Joanna said.
“Right. I’m sorry. I was going to check his girlfriend’s phone number,” she said, pushing her elasticized cap back off her forehead. “I forgot all about it.” She looked past Joanna. “I’ll check on it this afternoon, I promise. Is that why you came down here?”
“No,” Joanna said. “You called me, remember?”
“Oh, right,” Vielle said, looking uncomfortable. “You weren’t there.” She busied herself with the chart again.
“Well?” Joanna said. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Nothing. I don’t remember. It was probably about Dish Night. Do you know how hard it is to come up with movies that don’t have any deaths in them? Even comedies. Shakespeare in Love, Sleepless in Seattle, Four Weddings and a Funeral. I spent an hour and a half in Blockbuster last night, looking for something death-free.”
And you are clearly trying to change the subject, Joanna thought. Why? And what had she called about? Something she had obviously changed her mind about telling her.
“You can’t even find kids’ movies,” Vielle was rattling on. “Cinderella’s father, Bambi’s mother, the Wicked Witch of the West—what is it, Nina?” she said to an aide who had come up, and that was odd, too. Vielle usually shouted at aides who interrupted her.
“Mrs. Edwards at the desk said to give this to you,” Nina said, handing a blown-up photograph to Vielle. It was a picture of a blond, tattooed teenager in a knitted cap, obviously a mug shot since there was a long string of numbers along the bottom.
“You didn’t have another shooting, did you?” Joanna asked.
“No,” Vielle said defensively. “It’s been quiet as a church in here all day. Nothing but sprained ankles and paper cuts. Why did Mrs. Edwards say to give this to me?” she asked Nina.
“The police said if this guy comes in, you’re supposed to call them, he shot a guy in the leg with a nail gun—”
“Thank you, Nina,” Vielle said, handing her back the paper. “Go show it to Dr. Thayer.”
“If the guy he shot shows up, you’re supposed to call them, too,” Nina said. “They’re both gang members—”
“Thank you, Nina.”
As soon as Nina was gone, Joanna said, “A nail gun! Vielle, when are you going to transfer out of here? It’s dangerous—”
“I know, I know, you’ve told me before,” she said, looking past Joanna. “Oops, gotta go.” She started toward the front of the ER, where two men were holding a pasty-faced woman up by the armpits.
“Vielle—”
“See you tomorrow night at Dish Night,” Vielle said, breaking into a trot.
Too late. The woman vomited all over the floor and the two men. One of the men let go and jumped backward out of the line of fire, and the woman slid sideways onto the floor. Vielle, her worried look back, caught her before she fell.
There was no point in waiting around. The woman was obviously going to take some time, and it was already nearly two. And what could she say if she did stay? “Vielle, why did you really call me? And don’t tell me it was about Bambi’s mother!”
Joanna went back upstairs. Amelia still wasn’t there. “Did you find out what you needed to know?” Richard asked.
“No,” Joanna said. In more ways than one.
“By the way, Vielle—”
There was a knock on the door, and Amelia swept in, exclaiming, “I am so sorry I’m late. Can you believe my professors all decided to give an exam the same week?” She divested herself of her backpack, gloves,
and coat with the same speed as she had two days before, talking the entire time. “I know I blew it. I hate biochem!”
Her long black hair was twisted up into the messy-looking topknot all the college students were wearing these days. She shook it out and twisted it up again into an even messier knot. “I got a D, I know it,” she said, securing it with a large gold plastic clip. “Do you want me to go get undressed, Dr. Wright?”
“Not yet,” he said. “Dr. Lander needs to ask you some questions first.”
“Amelia,” Joanna said, indicating one of the three chairs. She sat down herself, and Richard came around and took the other one. “You’re a premed student, is that right?”
Amelia plopped down in the third. “Not after the biochem exam I just took. It was even worse than anatomy. I was premed. Now I’m dead meat.”
Joanna wrote down “premed.” “And you’re how old?”
“Twenty-four,” Amelia said. “I know, that’s old to still be in premed. I got a BA in music theater before I decided I didn’t want to be an actress.”
An actress. Good at playing roles. At fooling people. “Why did you decide you didn’t want to be an actress?”
“I realized the only parts I was ever going to get were Tuptim and Miss Saigon, and I was never going to get to play Marian the librarian or Annie Get Your Gun, so I decided to go to medical school instead. At least doctors can always get parts.” She grinned up at Joanna. “You know, kidneys, gallbladders, livers.”
A joke, which True Believers hardly ever told. If there was any characteristic NDE nuts and ESPers and UFO ab-ductees had in common it was a complete lack of a sense of humor. And Amelia also had a knowledge of science and a willingness to volunteer information that indicated she had nothing to hide. I believe we have a winner, Joanna thought. “Can you tell me why you volunteered for the project?” she asked.
Amelia glanced guiltily at Richard. “Why I volunteered?” she said and looked away. “Well . . . ”
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, Joanna thought.