The biochem final and professors in lab coats. She’s had weeks to rationalize what she saw, he thought, to confabulate it into something that makes sense. Or at least more sense than the Titanic. “When did you realize it was the biochem lab you’d been in?” he asked.
She looked at him, bewildered. “What do you mean?”
“Was it a few days after your session or more recently?”
“It was right then,” Amelia said, “when I was having the NDE. I didn’t tell you and Dr. Lander because I was afraid you’d make me go under again. I said I saw the same things I’d seen before, the door and the light and the happy, peaceful feeling, but I didn’t. I saw the lab.”
It wasn’t the Titanic, Richard thought. She didn’t see the Titanic.
“It wasn’t really the lab, though,” Amelia said, “because the cabinets aren’t really locked, like they were in the NDE, and it wasn’t my biochem professor, it was Dr. Eldritch from anatomy and this director I had when I was majoring in musical theater. And I was so frightened.”
“Of what?” Richard asked.
“Of failing,” she said, and he could hear the fear in her voice. “Of the final.”
She wasn’t on the Titanic, he thought, trying to take this in. She was in her biochem lab. “What happened then?” he managed to ask.
“I started to look for the key. I had to find it. I had to get into the cabinet and find the right chemical. I looked under the lab tables and in all the drawers,” she said, her voice tightening, “but it was dark, I couldn’t see—”
The connection wasn’t the Titanic. And that was what Joanna had realized when she talked to Carl Aspinall.
“—and the labels on the drawers didn’t make any sense,” Amelia was saying. “There were letters on them, but they weren’t words, they were just letters and numbers, all strung together, like code. And I was so frightened . . . and then I was back in the lab, so I guess I found it and I guess I passed. I don’t know what grade I got.” She laughed embarrassedly. “I told you it sounded crazy.”
“No,” he said. “No, you’ve been very helpful.”
She nodded, unconvinced. “I have to go to my anatomy lab, but—” she took another deep breath, “—if you want me to, I’ll go under again. I owe it to Dr. Lander.”
“That may not be necessary,” he said, and, as soon as she was gone, called Carl Aspinall.
He was afraid Mrs. Aspinall would be the one to answer the phone, but she didn’t, and when Carl said, “Hello, Aspinalls’ residence,” Richard said, “Mr. Aspinall, this is Dr. Wright. No, wait, don’t hang up. I understand that you don’t want to talk about your experience. I just want you to answer one question. Did your experience take place on the Titanic?”
“The Titanic?” Carl said, and the astonishment in his voice told Richard all he wanted to know.
He hadn’t been on the Titanic. And that was the revelation that had sent Joanna on her plunge down to the ER. It wasn’t what he’d told her about his NDE, it was the fact that he hadn’t seen the Titanic, and Joanna, realizing that that wasn’t the connection, that she had been on the wrong track, had seen what the real answer was, and run to tell him.
He had to make sure. He called Maisie. “When you had your NDEs, Maisie, were you on a ship?” he asked her when the nurse finally let him talk to her.
“A ship?” she said, and he could see the face she was making. “No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know,” Maisie said. “It didn’t feel anything like a ship.”
“What did it feel like?”
“I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “I told Joanna I thought it was inside, but I think it was outside, too. Someplace both inside and outside,” and the carefulness of her answer convinced him more than anything else that if she’d been on a ship she would have known it, and the answer lay elsewhere.
But where? It had to lie somewhere in the NDEs, in some common thread they all shared, even though neither Amelia’s nor Maisie’s, nor, presumably, Carl Aspinall’s, were anything like Joanna’s. “But it has to be there,” he told Kit on the phone, “because as soon as Joanna realized Carl hadn’t been on the Titanic, she knew what it was.”
“And it has to be something that’s in all of them,” Kit said. “Did you record what Amelia said just now?”
“No,” he said. “She was too nervous. I’ve transcribed everything I remember, though.”
“What about your own?” Kit said. “Have you transcribed it?”
“My own?” he said blankly. “But it was—”
“Related to the Titanic,” she said. “I know, but there might be a clue in it. I think you’re right. I think there’s got to be a common thread, and the more NDEs we have, the more apt we are to find it.”
She was right. He wondered if, if he called Carl Aspinall back and explained that his nightmares, whatever they were, were purely subjective, if he’d be willing to talk to him. He doubted it.
Which left Amelia’s NDE, and his own, and Maisie’s. And the vision of the crewman on the Hindenburg. He made a list of the elements in each of them. Joseph Leibrecht had seen snow fields, whales, a train, a bird in a cage, and his grandmother, and heard church bells and the scream of tearing metal. Amelia had seen enzymes, lab drawers, and her professors. Joanna had seen stairways and stationary bicycles, and he hadn’t seen any of the above.
Joseph’s was clearly dreamlike, with disconnected images rapidly succeeding one another, and completely unlike Joanna’s. Amelia’s was somewhere in between. There were no time or image jumps, but there were logic gaps, whereas in his own—
He realized he didn’t know whether there were incongruities, except for the toy zeppelin, in his own or not. He’d assumed it was real, that Joanna’s were real, and later, going through Kit’s uncle’s books, he’d focused on the Titanic itself.
He hauled the books out again. People had in fact gathered at the White Star offices and at The New York Times building, but not inside. They had milled around in the streets outside, waiting for news from the Carpathia. When it finally came, there had been no public reading of the list of survivors. A list had been posted at the Times-Mary Marvin’s mother, there with her son-in-law’s mother, had yelped joyfully when she located her daughter’s name on it, and then stopped, aghast, when she realized Daniel’s wasn’t next to it—but for the most part, relatives had gone into the White Star building one by one to inquire. John Jacob Astor’s son had come back out immediately, his face buried in his hands.
And there hadn’t been a wireless room in the White Star building. There had been one at the Times, but it was up on the roof. The wireless operator had put the deciphered messages in a box attached to a rope, shaken the rope against the metal walls of the shaft to signal the reporters below, and dropped the box down the shaft.
Which told him what? That he hadn’t really been in the White Star offices? He already knew that. That he’d confabulated his NDE out of images from the movies and Joanna’s NDEs. But not why. Not what the connection was.
He listed all the elements—his pager, the woman in the high-necked blouse speaking into the telephone, the man bent over the wireless, the clock on the wall, the stairs, the man with the newspaper under his arm—and then called Amelia and asked her to come over. “Are you sending me under again?” she asked, and he could hear the fear in her voice.
“No,” he said. “We just need to ask you some questions. Will tomorrow morning at nine work?”
“No, I have a psych test.” She’s making excuses, he thought, like she did that last time Joanna tried to schedule her before she quit, but after a pause, she said, “Would eleven o’clock work?” and, amazingly, showed up on time.
He had asked Vielle to sit in on the session. “Amelia, we want you to tell us everything you can remember about your NDEs, starting with the first one,” he said, and Vielle switched on Joanna’s minirecorder.
Amelia nodded. “I promised you I’d do anything y
ou asked,” she said and launched into a detailed account, made even more detailed by his and Vielle’s questions.
“How many of your professors were in the office?” Vielle asked her.
“Four,” Amelia said. “Dr. Eldritch and my director and Mrs. Ashley, my high school English teacher, and my freshman chem lab professor. He wasn’t really a professor. He was a graduate student. I hated him. If you asked him a question, all he’d say was, ‘It’s something you need to figure out yourself.’ ”
“Your English teacher was there?” Richard asked, thinking of Mr. Briarley.
Amelia nodded. “I didn’t really have her, though. She died a month after school started.”
Vielle grilled her about the labels on the chemical bottles. “You know how in formulas, the numbers are below the line?” Amelia said. “These were all in a row.”
“Can you remember what any of the letters were?” Vielle asked.
She couldn’t. “Do you remember anything else that wasn’t right?” Vielle asked.
Amelia stared into space. “The coldness,” she said finally. “It’s always hot in that room. It has these old-fashioned heating vents. But in my NDE, it was freezing, like they’d left a door open somewhere.”
“Joanna talked about it being cold, too,” Vielle said after Amelia was gone. “Did Joseph Leibrecht?”
“He talked about seeing snow fields,” Richard said, “but he also talked about a boiling sea and being tossed in a fire. And there was nothing hot or cold in my NDE.”
“You and Amelia were both looking for something,” Vielle offered.
“Joanna was, too,” Richard said, “but Joseph Leibrecht wasn’t.”
“What about her English teacher being someone who’d died?”
He shook his head. “That’s one of the core elements.”
“There’s no chance you can convince Carl Aspinall to talk to you?” she asked.
“They’re not answering their phone.”
Vielle nodded wisely. “Caller ID. I don’t suppose it’s worth driving up there again?”
No, he thought, and that wasn’t where the answer lay anyway. It lay with Mr. Briarley, and he couldn’t get it out of him either. “It’s something you need to figure out for yourself,” the graduate assistant had said.
“Could you send Amelia under again?” Vielle asked as he walked her to the door of the lab.
“Maybe,” he said, “although the chances are she’ll have a repeat of the same unifying image.”
“Oh, good, you’re here,” a voice said, and Maisie’s mother came in, dressed in a sunny yellow suit. “Is this a bad time?”
“I was just leaving. I’ll work on it some more and call you,” Vielle said and scooted out.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Maisie’s mother said. “Here.” She handed him a small black box.
“What’s this?” he asked. It looked like a very small Palm Pilot.
“Your pager. You said a problem with implementing your procedure was that the window of opportunity was too short, only four to six minutes, you said.”
What I said was that irreversible brain death occurs in four to six minutes, he thought, but she can’t even bring herself to say the words or to admit that what she wants me to do is bring Maisie back from the dead.
“This pager solves that problem,” she said, looking pleased as punch.
“I already have a pager,” he said. And even if this one went off the second Maisie coded, he would still have to get to a phone and find out where she was. If anyone was bothering to answer the phone during an emergency.
“It isn’t an ordinary pager,” Mrs. Nellis said. “It’s a locational device. Maisie has one of these, and so do each of her doctors and nurses, and, in the case of a coding situation, they’ve been instructed to hit this button immediately,” she pointed to a red button on the end of the box, “and your pager will beep. It has a distinctive beep, so you won’t confuse it with your own pager.”
It probably plays “Put On a Happy Face,” he thought.
“As soon as you hear it beep,” Mrs. Nellis flowed on, “you press this button,” she indicated a black button on the side, “and the location in the hospital the signal was sent from will appear on this screen. It will say ‘Cardiac Intensive Care Unit’ or ‘west wing, fourth floor’ or wherever. Maisie will be in her room in the CICU most of the time, of course, but, as you said, she might be down for tests, or,” she crossed her fingers coyly, “in the OR, getting prepped for her new heart, and this way you’ll know exactly where she is. I wanted one that would also plot where you were and map out the shortest route, but the computer engineer who designed this said the technology didn’t exist yet.”
“The technology for reviving patients who’ve coded doesn’t exist yet either, Mrs. Nellis,” he said, trying to give her back the pager.
“But it will,” she said confidently, “and when it does, you won’t have to worry about the problem of locating her. I realize there’s still the problem of reaching her quickly, but I’ve got another programmer working on that.”
And I know the shortest route, Richard thought. I have the whole map of the hospital in my head, all the stairs, all the shortcuts. I could get to Maisie in time, if I had a way to revive her. If I knew what Joanna was trying to tell me.
“Of course, this is really just a precaution. Maisie’s doctors expect her to get a heart any day now, and she’s doing really well, they’re so pleased with her numbers. Now,” she said, putting the pager firmly in his hand, “I knew you’d want to see it in action, so Maisie’s going to activate her pager at two-ten so you can hear the beep and see how the locator screen works.”
“Two-ten?” Richard said.
“Yes, I suggested two o’clock so you’d know for certain it was a drill, but she insisted on two-ten. I have no idea why.”
I do, Richard thought. It’s a code. She’s found out something.
“They sometimes take her down for tests at two, and she may be thinking if she were somewhere other than her room, it would provide a better test. She’s such an intelligent child.”
That she is, Richard thought. “And where am I supposed to be at two-ten?”
“You’re not,” she said. “That’s the point. Wherever you are, the pager will beep you and tell you where she is. Unfortunately, I have to meet with my lawyer at one-thirty, so I won’t be there, but Maisie can probably answer any questions you have.”
Let’s hope so, he thought, watching Mrs. Nellis go down to the elevator. Maisie must have found someone else who’d seen Joanna in the elevator or one of the hallways. Or, if he was lucky, in the room with Carl Aspinall. Mrs. Nellis stepped in the elevator. Richard waited for the door to close and then took off for the CICU.
“I was worried you wouldn’t be able to figure it out,” Maisie said when he walked in her room. “I thought maybe I should have said two-twenty, when it went down, instead of when they sent the last wireless message.”
“What did you find out?” Richard asked.
“Eugene talked to this orderly who saw Joanna that day. On two-east. He said he saw her talking to Mr. Mandrake.”
Mandrake. Then he really had seen her, he hadn’t just invented the incident for his self-serving eulogy. He must have waylaid her as she was on her way up to see Dr. Jamison.
“Well?” Maisie was demanding.
Richard shook his head. “Joanna may have run into Mandrake, but she wouldn’t have told him anything. Did this orderly hear what Mandrake said?”
Maisie shook her head. “I asked Eugene. He said he was too far away, but Mr. Mandrake said a whole bunch of stuff, and so did she. He said she was laughing.”
“Laughing? With Mandrake?”
“I know,” Maisie said, making a face. “I don’t think he’s very funny either. But that’s what Eugene said he said.”
What Eugene said he said. It was a third-hand, no, fourth-hand, story, from someone too far away to overhear, and the chance that Joanna w
ould have revealed anything substantive to Mandrake was nil, but Richard had promised Joanna he’d go down trying.
And you couldn’t go much lower than this. “I’ve been expecting you to call,” Mandrake said when Richard phoned him from the CICU’s front desk. “Mrs. Davenport told me she’d spoken with you about the messages she’s been receiving.”
I can’t do this, Richard thought, and almost hung up the phone. It’s betraying Joanna. She wouldn’t care, he thought suddenly. All she cared about was getting the message through to me. “I want to come see you,” he said. “Are you in your office?”
“Yes, but I’m afraid I have several appointments this afternoon, and my publisher—” There was a pause, presumably while he checked his schedule. “Would two o’clock . . . no, I have a meeting . . . and my publicist’s coming at three . . . would one o’clock work?”
“One o’clock,” Richard said and hung up, thinking, Hopefully in the next hour and a half the answer will come to me, and I won’t have to talk to him at all.
He started through Joanna’s transcripts again, making a list of everything they contained—swimming pool, Scotland Road, mail room, key—the key. What was the key?—rockets, gymnasium, mechanical bicycles, wireless shack, sacks of mail—looking for common elements with his and Amelia Tanaka’s. They had both talked about doors and bottles, a bottle of chemicals in Amelia’s and of ink in Joanna’s, but there hadn’t been any bottles in his. A key? He had had to turn the key to open the door to the hallway, Mr. Briarley had gone to the mailroom to get the key to the locker that contained the rockets, the sailor who’d operated the Morse lamp had said something about a key, and Amelia, in talking about the catalyst, had said, “I had to find the key.”
That’s pushing it, he thought, and Joseph Leibrecht hadn’t said anything about a key. And key wasn’t one of the words highlighted on the transcripts.
All right then, how about the words that were? Water? There was no water in either his or Amelia’s NDEs, and no fog. Time, he thought, remembering the clock on the wall of the White Star corridor. Amelia had been worried about finishing her final in time, and Joseph Leibrecht had mentioned hearing a church bell ring and knowing it was six o’clock. And the Titanic was all about running out of time.