It was Greg Menotti all over again. “Do you remember anything between the wheelchair and the curtains?” Joanna asked.
“No,” he said. “Not between.”
“What about dreams?” Joanna asked. “Coma patients sometimes dream.”
“Dreams,” he said thoughtfully, “no,” and there was no de-fensiveness in his voice, no avoiding of her eyes. He said it quite matter-of-factly.
And that was that. He didn’t remember. And she should thank him, tell him to get some rest, get out of here before she was caught redhanded and waiverless by Guadalupe. But she didn’t get up. “What about sounds?”
He shook his head.
“Or voices, Carl?” she said, reverting to his first name without thinking. “Do you remember hearing any voices?”
He had started to shake his head again, but he stopped and stared at her. “I remember your voice,” he said. “You said you were sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” she had said, apologizing for her beeper going off, for having to leave.
“There were voices calling my name,” he said, “saying I was in a coma, saying my fever was up.”
That was us, Joanna thought, whispering about his condition, calling him Coma Carl. Guadalupe was right, he could hear us, and felt ashamed of herself.
“Were you here?” he said, looking slowly around the hospital room.
“Yes,” she said. “I used to come and sit with you.”
“I could hear your voice,” he said, as if there were something about that that he couldn’t understand. “So it must have been a dream. I was really here, the whole time.” He looked up at her. “It didn’t feel like a dream.”
“What didn’t?”
He didn’t answer. “Could you hear me?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” she said carefully. “Sometimes you hummed, and once you said, ‘Oh, grand.’ ”
He nodded. “If you heard me, it must have just been a dream.”
It took all her willpower not to blurt out, “Was ‘grand’ the Grand Staircase? What were you humming?” Not to say, “You were on the Titanic, weren’t you? Weren’t you?”
“If you heard me, I couldn’t really have been there,” he said eagerly.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because it was too far—” He stopped and looked at the door.
Too far for her to come. She said urgently, “Too far for what?” and the door opened.
“Hi,” a lab technician said, coming in with a metal basket of tubes and needles. “No, don’t get up,” he said to Joanna, who’d jerked guiltily to her feet. “I can do it from this side.” He set the basket on the table over the bed. “Don’t let me interrupt you two,” he said, putting on gloves. “I just need to take some blood.” He tied a strip of rubber around Carl’s arm.
Joanna knew she should say, “Oh, that’s okay,” and chat with him while he drew the blood, but she was afraid if she did, Carl would lose the tenuous thread of memory.
“Too far for what?” she asked, but Carl wasn’t listening. He was looking fearfully at the needle the technician had pulled out.
“This will just be a little sting,” the technician said reassuringly, but Carl’s face had already lost its frightened look.
“It’s a needle,” he said, in the same wondering tone as when he’d asked her if she’d been here in the room, and extended his arm so the technician could insert the needle, attach it to the glass tube. Carl’s dark blood flowed into the tube.
The technician deftly filled the tube, pulled the needle out, pressed cotton to it. “There,” he said, putting a strip of tape over it. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“No.” Carl turned to look at the IV in his other arm.
“Okay, you’re all set. See you later,” the technician said, the glass basket clanking as he went out.
He hadn’t shut the door all the way. Joanna got up and started over to close it. “It was just the IV,” Carl said, looking curiously at the clear narrow tubing dangling from the IV bag. “I thought it was a rattler.”
Joanna stopped. “Rattler?”
“In the canyon,” Carl said, and Joanna sat down again, greeting card and pen in hand.
“I was hiding from them,” Carl said. “I knew they were out there, waiting to ambush me. I’d caught a glimpse of one of them at the end of the canyon.” He squinted as he said it, bringing his hand up as if to shade his eyes. “I tried climbing up the rocks, but they were crawling with rattlers. They were all around,” his voice rose in fear, “rattling. I wonder what that was,” he said in a totally different tone of voice. “The rattling.” He looked around the hospital room. “The heater, maybe? When you were in here, did it make a rattling sound?”
“You were in a canyon?” she said, trying to take in what he was telling her.
“In Arizona,” he said. “In a long, narrow canyon.”
Joanna listened, still trying to take it in, taking notes almost automatically. In Arizona. In a canyon.
“It had had a stream in it,” Carl said, “but it was all dried up. Because of the fever. It was dark, because the walls were so high and steep, and I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were out there, waiting.”
The rattlers? “Who was up there waiting?”
“They were,” he said fearfully. “A whole band of them, arrows and knives and tomahawks! I tried to outride them, but they shot me in the arm,” he said, grabbing at his arm as if he were trying to pull an arrow out. “They—” His shoulders jerked, and his face contorted. The arm connected to the IV came up, as if fending off an attack. “They killed Cody. I found his body in the desert. They’d scalped him. His head was all red,” Carl said. “Like the canyon. Like the mesas.” His fists clenched and unclenched compulsively. “All red.”
“Who did that?” Joanna asked. “Who killed Cody?” and he looked at her as if the answer were obvious.
“The Apaches.”
Apaches. Not patches. Apaches. He hadn’t been on the Titanic. He’d been in Arizona. She’d been wrong about the Titanic being universal. But he had said, “Oh, grand.” He had made rowing motions with his hands. And just now he had said, “It was too far—”
“You were in Arizona,” she began, intending to ask, “Do you remember being anywhere else?”
“No!” he shouted, shaking his head vehemently. “It wasn’t Arizona. I thought it was, because of the red sandstone. But it wasn’t.”
“Where was it?” Joanna asked.
“Someplace else. I was really here, though, the whole time,” he said as if to reassure himself. “It was just a dream.”
“Did you have other dreams?” she asked. “Were you other places besides Arizona?”
“There wasn’t any other place,” he said simply.
“You said, ‘Oh, grand.’ ”
He nodded. “I could see telegraph poles off in the distance. I thought they must be next to a railroad line. I thought if I could reach it before the train came through—” he said, as if that were an explanation.
“I don’t understand.”
“I thought I could catch the Rio Grande. But there weren’t any tracks. Just the telegraph wires. But I could still send a message. I could climb one of the poles and send a message.”
She was only half-listening. Rio Grande. Not Grand Staircase. Rio Grande.
“ . . . and it was too far to ride on horseback,” Carl was saying, staring straight ahead, “but I had to get it through.” As he spoke, he jogged gently up and down, his arms bent as if he were holding on to reins.
This is what Guadalupe thought was rowing, Joanna thought, even though it didn’t look like rowing. It looked like what it was, Carl riding a horse. He wasn’t humming, “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” she thought. It was probably “Home on the Range.”
And Mrs. Woollam had been in a garden. Mrs. Davenport had seen an angel. But she had wanted it to be a woman in a nightdress. She had wanted it to be the Verandah Café and the Grand Staircase. To fit her theory. S
o she had twisted the evidence to fit, ignored the discrepancies, led the witnesses, and believed what she wanted to. Just like Mr. Mandrake.
She had been so set on her idea she’d refused to accept the truth-that Carl had gotten his desert, his Apaches, from the Westerns his wife read to him, incorporating them into the red expanse of his coma the way she’d incorporated Mr. Briarley’s Titanic stories into hers. Because they happened to be there in long-term memory.
And the imagery meant nothing. It wasn’t universal. It was as random, as pointless, as Mr. Bendix’s seeing Elvis. And the feeling of something significant, something important, came from an overstimulated temporal lobe. And meanwhile, she had bullied Amelia Tanaka, she had harassed a man just out of a coma and possibly endangered his health, breaking rules right and left. Acting like a nutcase.
“ . . . before it got dark,” Carl was saying, “but when I got closer, I saw the Apaches were already there.”
Joanna put the bluebird greeting card and the pen in her pocket and stood up. “I should go,” she said. Before Guadalupe catches me in here. Before the review board finds out you didn’t sign a waiver. Before anyone finds out how I’ve acted. She patted the covers. “You need to get some sleep.”
“Are you leaving?” he said, and his hand lunged for her wrist like a striking snake. “Don’t leave.” He gripped it tightly. “I’m afraid I’ll go back there, and it’s getting dark back there. It’s getting redder.”
“It’s all right, Carl,” Joanna said soothingly. “It was just a dream.”
“No. It was a real place. Arizona. I knew it was, because of the mesas. But it wasn’t. And it was. I can’t explain it.”
“You knew Arizona was a symbol for something else.”
“Yes,” he said, and she thought, It does mean something. The NDE isn’t just random synapses firing, random associations. “What was it a symbol for, Carl?” she asked, and waited, breath held, for his answer.
“They scalped Cody. Took the top of his skull right off, and I could see his brain. It was all red,” he said. “I had to get out, before it got dark. I had to get the mail through.”
The mail. The letters floating in the ankle-deep water of the mail room, the names on their envelopes blurred and unreadable, and the mail clerk putting them onto higher and higher racks, dragging them up the carpeted stairs.
“The mail?” Joanna asked, her chest tight.
“For the Pony Express,” he said. “Cody was the regular rider, but they killed him, and I didn’t have any way to get the mail through. It was too far to ride on a horse, and the Apaches had cut the wires.”
And the Carpathia was too far away, Joanna thought. The Californian wasn’t answering. She thought of Mr. Briarley writing a postcard to Kit, sending up rockets, trying to send out messages. And none of them getting through.
“The mesa was a long way,” Carl was saying, “and I was afraid there wouldn’t be anything up there to make a fire with.”
“A fire?” Joanna said, thinking of Maisie.
“For the smoke signal. I got the idea from the Apaches. You hold the blanket down over the fire and then yank it back, and the smoke goes up.” He pulled back on an imaginary blanket, his hands holding its imaginary sides, a sharp backward motion with both hands. Like rowing. Like rowing.
“I didn’t know any Apache,” he said. “All I knew was Morse code.”
The sailor working the Morse lamp, and Jack Phillips, bent tirelessly over the wireless key, tapping out CQD, SOS—“SOS,” she said. “You sent an SOS.”
“And as soon as I did, the nurse was opening the curtains and I was back here.”
“You were back here,” Joanna said, remembering Mr. Edwards saying, “The light started to flash, and I knew I had to go back, and all of a sudden I was in the operating room.” Remembering Mrs. Woollam saying, “I was in the tunnel, and then all of a sudden I was back on the floor by the phone.” Remembering Richard saying, “Something just kicks them out.”
Out in the hall, a voice said excitedly, “We found her!”
Joanna glanced at the door, the half-open door she had forgotten to shut. “Finally,” Guadalupe’s voice said, and then, “Where were you? We’ve been looking all over for you.”
Looking all over. The steward, heading up the aft staircase to the Promenade Deck, checking the smoking room, the gymnasium, looking for Mr. Briarley. And Mr. Briarley, running down to G Deck, along Scotland Road, into the mail room, looking for the key. The key.
“Oh, my God!” Joanna breathed. “I know what it is!” She put her hand up to her mouth. “I remember what Mr. Briarley said!”
“Well, Wiley’s got her warmed up. Let’s go.”
—LAST RADIO BROADCAST BY WILL ROGERS BEFORE THE PLANE CRASH IN WHICH HE AND WILEY POST WERE KILLED
WHAT?” Carl said, alarmed. “What do you mean, you know what it is?” but Joanna didn’t hear him.
I have to tell Richard, she thought. I have to tell him I’ve figured it out.
She stood up. “You’re not leaving, are you?” Carl said, reaching for her wrist again. “You know what what is? What Arizona is?”
“He’s sitting up talking,” Guadalupe’s voice said out in the hall.
They’re coming this way, Joanna thought. She stood up and jammed the scribbled-on greeting card in her pocket. “Your wife’s here,” she said, and hurried toward the door before Carl could protest.
And how was she going to explain her being here? she wondered, peering out the door. Mrs. Aspinall was standing next to the nurses’ station, Guadalupe and the aide bent comfortingly over her. “You shouldn’t cry now,” the aide was saying, “it’s all over.”
“I don’t want him to see me like this,” Mrs. Aspinall said tearfully, dabbing at her eyes.
“I’ll get you a Kleenex,” Guadalupe said, disappearing around the corner of the nurses’ station.
Joanna didn’t hesitate. She bolted out the door, across the hall, and into the waiting room, and just in time. Guadalupe reappeared with the Kleenex, Mrs. Aspinall blew her nose, and all three of them started toward Carl’s room.
There was no one in the waiting room. Joanna leaned against the door, waiting for them to go into the room. It’s an SOS, Joanna thought, belated understanding pouring in like seawater through the gash in the Titanic’s side. That’s what the NDE is. It’s the dying brain sending out a call for help, a distress signal, tapping out Morse-code messages to the nervous system: “Come at once. We have struck a berg.”
Transmitting signals to the brain’s neurotransmitters, trying to find one that could kick lungs that were no longer breathing into action, trying to find one that could jump-start a heart that was no longer beating. Trying to find the right one.
And sometimes it succeeded, reviving patients who were clinically dead, bringing them back abruptly, miraculously. Like Mr. O’Reirdon. Like Mrs. Woollam. Because the message got through.
“Carl, oh, Carl!” Mrs. Aspinall said tearfully. “You’re all right!”
Joanna looked down the hall. Mrs. Aspinall and Guadalupe had gone into the room, and the aide was headed back toward the elevators, carrying a piece of equipment.
Joanna waited till she’d gone into the elevator, and then ran down to the nurses’ station. She grabbed up the phone receiver from behind the counter, leaning over it to punch in the lab’s number. If Guadalupe caught her out here, she’d just think she’d gone and then come back.
If Carl hasn’t blabbed, she thought, listening to the phone ring. “Answer, Richard,” she murmured. “Answer.”
Answer. That was what the NDE was doing, too, punching in numbers and listening to the phone ring, trying to get through, hoping someone would answer on the other end. And if Richard knows it’s an SOS, she thought, he’ll be able to figure out what the other end is.
And no wonder her mind, trying to make sense of it, had fastened on to the Titanic. It was the perfect metaphor. The SOS sent five minutes after the Californian’s wireless operator h
ad gone to bed, the Morse lamp, the rockets, the screams for help from the water. And above all, Phillips sitting in the wireless room, faithfully tapping out, “SOS, CQD,” tapping out, “We are flooded up to the boilers,” sending out calls for help to the very end.
Richard wasn’t answering. He’s sitting at the console, she thought, staring at Mrs. Troudtheim’s scan, trying to figure out the problem. “It’s not a problem, Richard,” she murmured. “It’s the answer.” And it made evolutionary sense, just like he had predicted it would. The NDE wasn’t cushioning the body from trauma, wasn’t setting a death program in motion. It was trying to stop it.
The answering machine clicked on. “This is Dr. Wright’s office. If you wish to leave—” his voice said, but Joanna had already jammed the phone down and was pelting up the stairs to the lab.
Richard wasn’t there. The door was locked, so he intended to be gone for longer than a few minutes. She unlocked it and went in, and then stood there, staring around the deserted lab, trying to think where he might have gone. Down to the cafeteria for lunch? she thought, and glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to one. The cafeteria might actually be open this time of day.
He said he had an appointment, she thought, and tried to remember his words when he was in her office. He’d said, “I’m going to be out of the lab for a while.” Where?
Dr. Jamison, she thought, what Richard had said clicking in suddenly. She walked rapidly over to the phone and called the switchboard. “Get me Dr. Jamison’s office,” and listened to another droning ring.
Doesn’t anybody answer their phones? Joanna thought. No, and the brain kept calling and calling, trying first one number and then, when there was no answer, another. Dialing and redialing, punching in code after code, trying to connect.
She depressed the receiver button and called the switchboard again. “Where’s Dr. Jamison’s office? What floor?”