Kit came on the line. “Sorry,” she said. “He’s been doing ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ all morning. I thought it might be a clue, but it’s Longfellow, so he would have taught it in junior English, not senior.”
“ ‘ “Oh, father! I hear the church-bells ring, oh, say, what may it be?” ’ “Mr. Briarley said in the background.” ‘“’Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!” and he steered for the open sea.’ ”
“I need you to look up some things,” Joanna said. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
“I told you,” Kit said. “I want to help.”
Joanna read her the list. When she got to the mechanical camel, Kit said, “I know that one. Yes, there’s a photo of it in one of the books.”
“Do you know what deck the gymnasium was on?”
“Yes, the—”
“They say the dead can’t speak,” Mr. Briarley said, “but they can!”
“It was on the Boat Deck,” Kit said. “I found that when I was looking for the Morse lamp.”
All right, scratch the gymnasium. She read her the rest of the list. “I’ll work on these tonight,” Kit said. “Oh, and I found out about the staircases. There were three of them. The rear one was the second-class stairway. It was all the way in the stern, next to the A La Carte Restaurant. The aft stairway was midway between it and the Grand Staircase. It’s described as a less elegant version of the Grand Staircase, with its own skylight and the same gold-and-wrought-iron balustrades.”
And scratch the stairway, Joanna thought, going back to the transcript after they hung up. She must have stored every single thing Mr. Briarley had ever said about the Titanic in long-term memory. Who says we don’t remember what we learned in high school?
She transcribed Mr. Ortiz’s NDE and then called Vielle, but the line was busy. She called her again when she got home and managed to wake her up. “I’m sorry,” Joanna said. “You sound like you’re feeling better.”
“I am,” Vielle said.
“Will you be back at work tomorrow?”
“No,” Vielle said. “I’m still pretty wobbly.” And she must be, Joanna thought after she hung up. Or groggy, because she hadn’t said a word about the dangers of going under.
Tish was still out the next day, too, and nursing subs were impossible to get. “Do you know what they said when I called and asked for a sub?” Richard said when Joanna got to work. “ ‘Spring has sprung.’ So I rescheduled Mr. Sage for tomorrow. It’s supposed to be a twenty-four-hour bug, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Vielle’s already been out a couple of days,” Joanna said, thinking it was just as well they’d had to cancel. She needed to finish the list of people who’d had more than one NDE, and she wanted to go over her earlier NDEs and analyze them for possible clues.
She spent all morning in the office doing just that and ignoring the blinking light on her answering machine. At lunchtime she went down to the lab and foraged some lunch from the lab coat pockets of Richard, who had spent the morning like she had, staring at a computer screen. “How’s it going?” she asked him, taking the Butterfinger he gave her.
“Terrible,” he said, leaning back from the screen. “I still haven’t found anything to explain why Mrs. Troudtheim keeps kicking out. Or why you felt the fear you describe. Only a few cortisol receptors were activated.”
“I felt the fear I describe because I was on the Titanic and D Deck was underwater, and I was afraid I couldn’t get back.”
“You’re still having the feeling that what you’re seeing is the Titanic, huh?”
“Yes, and it’s not just a feeling,” she said. “The places I described to you were on the Titanic, and the reason the stairway didn’t have marble steps and a cherub was because it wasn’t the Grand Staircase. It was the second-class staircase, and it was right where it was supposed to be, next to the A La Carte Restaurant. That’s the dining room I saw, and it did have walnut paneling and rose-colored chairs and—”
“How do you know this?” Richard said, sitting forward, and then, accusingly, “Have you been reading about the Titanic? No wonder you keep seeing it.”
“No, of course I haven’t been reading about it,” she said. “I know that would contaminate the NDE. I asked someone—”
“Asked someone?” he said, coming up out of his chair. “At Mercy General? My God, if Mandrake—”
“It’s no one who works here,” Joanna said hastily. “I asked a friend with no connection to the hospital, and I specifically asked her not to volunteer any information, just to confirm whether the things I’ve seen were on the Titanic. And they were, the gymnasium with the mechanical camel and the wireless room and—”
He was giving her his Bridey Murphy look again. “What are you saying? That there’s no possible way you could know all these details, so what you’re seeing is real?”
“No, of course not.”
“You said you were afraid you couldn’t get back—”
“That’s because it feels like it’s a real place, like it’s really happening, but I know it’s not,” she added hastily, “and Mr. Briarley talked about the Titanic all the time. Every one of the details I’m talking about could have come from him or the movie or A Night to Remember.”
He visibly relaxed. “So what are you trying to tell me?”
“I’m trying to tell you it’s the Titanic, not an amalgam or the first image the L+R happened to find that fit all the stimuli. It’s the Titanic for a reason. It has something to do with what the NDE is, with how it works.”
“But you don’t know what the reason is,” Richard said. “Does everything you’re seeing match the Titanic?”
“No. There should have been people on the Boat Deck uncovering the boats, and the bridge shouldn’t have been empty, and the call letters the wireless operator was sending weren’t right.”
“And you still haven’t seen or heard the name Titanic or any reference to an iceberg. Or have you?”
“No, but I think those discrepancies and omissions may be a clue to deciphering the NDE.” She told him her dream-imagery theory. “I think the details that don’t fit may be symbolic.”
He nodded as if that were the answer he’d expected. And here it comes, she thought.
She was right. “Your conscious mind has confabulated a rationale to justify the sense of significance,” he said. “The fact that it’s so elaborate, even to explaining details that don’t belong in the scenario, has to mean temporal-lobe stimulation is central to the NDE. The feeling you’re having that there’s a connection—”
“I know, I know. Never mind,” she said. “The feeling I’m having is a sense of incipient knowledge, it’s a feeling of significance, and it’s all right there in the scans. I just have one question.”
“What is it?”
“What would the scans look like if it wasn’t just a temporal-lobe sensation, if there really was a connection? Would they look any different? Never mind.” There was no way she was going to convince him until she had the connection in her hands and could show it to him.
She couldn’t do that till she went under again, but she could at least try to decipher what she’d already seen. She broke her NDEs down into individual images and drew a map of the routes she’d taken and of the Boat Deck, marking the wireless room and the bridge and the place where the sailor had stood, working the Morse lamp, and then made a second list for Kit. Was there a grand piano in the A La Carte Restaurant? A birdcage? Was C Deck enclosed in glass or open? Did the Titanic have a squash court?
In the late afternoon—or at least she thought it was late afternoon; when she glanced at her watch, it was nearly six—someone knocked on her door. Mr. Mandrake, she thought, and glanced at the bottom of the door to see if the light showed under it.
The knock came again. “It’s Ed Wojakowski, Doc. I got your dog tags for ya.” She opened the door. “They’re not the real thing,” he said, handing her a chain with a metal tag. Maisie’s name was engraved on it in neat let
ters. “It’s really one of those medical alert things, but you said metal and a neck chain, and it’s got those.”
“It’s perfect,” Joanna said, turning the tag over, expecting to see the red medical alert symbol, but it was plain silver.
“I filed the medical stuff off,” he said, looking very pleased with himself. “I asked around like I told you I would, but no-body’d seen one of them dog tag machines in years, and then I went to get a prescription filled and there this was. Tags made while you wait.”
“Thank you,” Joanna said. “How much do I owe you?”
He looked insulted. “Glad to do it,” he said. “Reminds me of the time when I was on the Yorktown and me and Bucky Parteri needed to get us a couple of leave passes so we could go see these WACs on Lanai. Well, we asked around, but the captain and the shore patrol were really cracking down, so then we thought, What about getting somebody to make us a couple, and . . . ”
It was a long story, some of it no doubt derived from real events and some symbolic. Joanna didn’t try to sort out which. She waited for something resembling a break in the action and said, “I’d love to hear the rest of this, but I really should take this to Maisie.”
He agreed. “Tell her hi for me. I wish they were the real thing, like the ones I had in the navy. Did I ever tell you how I fell overboard and lost ’em? We were on our way back to Pearl—”
It was after eight by the time Joanna got away from Mr. Wojakowski, and Maisie was asleep. “I’ll bring them by in the morning,” she told Barbara. “How’s she doing?”
“They had to take her off the amiodipril.”
“I know. Maisie told me they’d put her back on nadolal.”
Barbara nodded. “They’re out of new drugs to try. That’s why her mother fought so hard to get her into the clinical trials of amiodipril. They’re talking about putting her on a new ACE-blocker, but it has really severe side effects, and she’s already pretty weakened.”
“And a heart?”
“Pray for a school bus accident,” she said. “Sorry. It’s been a long day, and I think I’m getting the flu. She’s doing fine right now, and who knows, maybe there’ll be a miracle.”
“Maybe,” Joanna said and went back upstairs to go over her NDEs with a fine-tooth comb, looking for clues, till after eleven.
She didn’t find any, and in the morning when she went back to see her, Maisie was down having a heart cath. “She’s staying out of A-fib so far,” Barbara reported. “She said if you came by, to give you this.” She handed Joanna a sheet of paper from a tablet repeatedly folded into a tight packet.
Joanna waited to unfold it till she was back in her office. Written on it in pencil was a list of ships: Carpathia, Burma, Olympic, Frankfurt, Mount Temple, Baltic. I must really have paid attention in class, she thought, though, even hearing the names, she had no memory of Mr. Briarley having talked about them in class.
Which doesn’t mean he didn’t, she thought. And there were examples of people recalling books and movies almost verbatim. The phenomenon was called cryptomnesia. Which was what it had been determined Bridey Murphy had, Joanna thought wryly.
“We’ve got a problem,” Richard said as soon as she walked in.
“Tish is still out?”
“No, she’s back, but Mr. Sage just called to cancel.”
“Has he got the flu, too?”
“This is Mr. Sage,” Richard said irritably. “It took me ten minutes to get the fact that he was canceling out of him. So, can I send you under?”
“Sure,” Joanna said. “What time?”
“I told Tish eleven.”
She nodded and went back to her office. Kit had called. “The gymnasium was on the Boat Deck,” her message said, “on the starboard side just aft of the officers’ quarters. The Marconi shack was on the port side even with the officers’ quarters.”
Everything Mr. Briarley had ever said. Did that include his showing them a map of the Boat Deck? She couldn’t remember, but he might have. Maisie’s disaster books were full of maps and diagrams: the route Amelia Earhart’s plane had taken, the ruins of Pompeii, the layout of the Hindenburg’s gondola.
Joanna called Kit. The line was busy. She called Maisie.“Maisie, you said MGY were the call letters for the Titanic, and then you started to say something else. What was it?”
“You said I wasn’t supposed to talk about anything except what you asked.”
“I know. That still goes, except for this one thing. What were you going to say?”
“That I knew it was MGY because of the message the Titanic sent. ‘MGY CQD PB. Come at once. We have struck a berg.’ CQD means ‘help,’ ” Maisie explained.
“I thought the Titanic sent SOSs.”
“It did, but—are you sure it’s okay to tell you this?”
“I’m sure,” Joanna said.
“Well, first it sent CQDs, and then Harold Bride, that was the other wireless guy, said, kind of laughing, ‘Let’s send SOS. That’s the new distress code, and it may be your last chance to send it.’ ”
“Well, it can’t be helped.”
—LAST WORDS OF GEORGE C. ATCHESON, AIDE TO GENERAL MACARTHUR, WHEN HE SAW THAT THE PLANE CARRYING HIMSELF AND TWELVE OTHERS WAS GOING TO CRASH INTO THE PACIFIC
THE ENTIRE TIME they were prepping Joanna, Tish chattered about how sick she’d been. “I thought I was going to die,” she said, sounding not at all unhappy about it. “I ached all over, and I was so dizzy.” She attached the electrodes to Joanna’s chest. “I practically passed out on the way down to my car,” she said, fitting the sleep mask over Joanna’s eyes, “and this doctor who was in the elevator with me had to drive me home. His name’s Ted.”
Well, no wonder she’s so chipper, Joanna thought, wishing Tish would hurry up and put the headphones on. She wanted to focus on what she was going to do and where she was going to go when she got on board.
If she got on board. Richard had announced he was decreasing the dosage, “which will decrease the amount of temporal-lobe stimulation. That should lessen the intensity of the sense of significance, which should allow a different unifying image.”
No, it won’t, Joanna thought, because that’s not what it is. There’s a connection, and I’m going to find out what. But first I have to make sure it’s not an amalgam.
“Ted insisted on going inside with me and getting me settled before he left,” Tish was saying, holding the headphones, ready to put them on. “He’s new here. He’s an obstetrician, and,” she bent over Joanna and whispered, “he’s really cute, his hair’s a little darker blond than Dr. Wright’s, and he has gray—”
“Tish, is Joanna ready?” Richard called from the console.
“Just about.” She dropped her voice again, “Gray eyes and no scans,” and blessedly, put on the headphones.
All right, Joanna thought, I’m going to try to find the Grand Staircase, and if that fails, the First-Class Dining Saloon. The green velvet fleur-de-lis’d chairs would prove it was the Titanic, and there might also be menus or a bill-of-fare with RMS Titanic on it. But the A La Carte Restaurant was locked, she thought. What if the dining saloon is, too? And she was in the passage.
It was dry, and level, and there were only a few people outside the door. It must be earlier, Joanna thought, but when she stepped over the threshold, the young woman had changed out of her nightgown and into a red coat and a fur stole made of red-fox heads with sharp noses and shiny black glass eyes. The woman with the piled-up hair was wearing a coat, too, and a lifejacket.
“It’s so cold,” the young woman said, shivering. “Shouldn’t we go up to the Boat Deck?”
Joanna hoped they would. Then she would know where the door to the Grand Staircase was. But the bearded man shook his head and said, “I have sent the steward to find out what is happening. Until then, I think it best that we remain here.”
“Yes, Edith,” the other woman said, putting a white-gloved hand on the young woman’s arm, “we’ll ask the steward to light
a fire,” and they turned to go back into the passage.
Joanna stepped out of their way and out into the middle of the deck. The Grand Staircase should be in the middle of the ship or slightly forward, which meant she needed to go toward the bow. She wondered if she could, or whether any movement in that direction would take her back to the lab.
I’ll have to risk it, she thought, looking toward the bow. There was another deck light that way, shining with a blinding brilliance she couldn’t see past. She shielded her eyes and walked into it.
And into a wall. It extended all the way to the windows with no doors in it. Now what? she thought. I’ll have to access the Grand Staircase from one of the other decks, and remembered there was an entrance to it from the Boat Deck. The band had stood just inside the doors to it while they played.
She ran down the deck to the aft staircase. It was locked, but the door to the second-class stairway wasn’t. She ran up the three flights to the Boat Deck. Her red tennis shoe was still in the door, wedging it open. She left it there and walked toward the bow, trying every door. They were all locked, even the one to the wireless shack. She went around to the gymnasium.
Greg Menotti was just coming out, dressed in a white Nike sweatshirt and dark blue sweatpants, a water bottle strapped to his leg. “Greg,” she said. “Do you know where the Grand Staircase is?”
“Grand Staircase?” he said. “You mean the main staircase? It’s over here.” He jogged over to the aft stairway, Joanna in his wake.
“No, not that one,” she said breathlessly. “The Grand Staircase. It has marble steps and a bronze cherub.”
He was shaking his head. “You’re really out of shape, you know that?” he said. “How often do you jog?”
“You haven’t seen any other stairways? What about on the other decks? Did you see any other stairways there?”