Passage

  “Why can’t you come, too?”

  “I have to stay here,” he said, and she saw that he was holding a water bucket.

  “And save people’s lives,” Maisie said.

  He smiled under his painted-on, sad-looking expression. “And save people’s lives.” He squatted down and lifted up the canvas again. “Now go, kiddo. I want you to run lickety-split.”

  Maisie ducked under the canvas and stood poised in the opening a moment, clutching her dog tags, and then looked back at him.

  “I know who you are,” she said. “You’re not really Emmett Kelly, are you? That’s just a metaphor.”

  The clown put his gloved finger up to his wide white mouth in a sh-shhing motion. “I want you to run straight for the Victory garden,” he said.

  Maisie smiled at him. “You can’t fool me,” she said. “I know who you really are,” and ran into the darkness, as fast as she could.

  “There! If the boat goes down, you’ll remember me.”

  —WORDS SPOKEN TO MINNIE COUTTS BY A CREWMAN ON THE TITANIC WHO HAD GIVEN HIS LIFEJACKET TO HER LITTLE BOY

  TWO DAYS after successfully reviving Maisie, Richard’s special pager went off again. This time, trying not to think of what the strain of two codes in three days might do to Maisie’s system or what deadly side effect the theta-asparcine might have produced, he made it up to CICU in three minutes flat.

  Evelyn met him as he skidded into the unit, all smiles. “Her heart’s here,” she said. “Maisie’s in being prepped. I tried to call you.”

  “My special pager went off,” he said, still not convinced there wasn’t a disaster, and Evelyn said, unruffled, “She was quite insistent that you and Vielle Howard be informed, and I guess she took matters into her own hands.”

  She had, in more ways than one. After the transplant surgery, which took eight hours and went without a hitch, one of the attending nurses told him Maisie had taped her dog tags to the bottom of her foot and was furious that they’d been removed. “What if I’d died?” she’d demanded indignantly as soon as her airway was removed, and, in spite of the danger of infection due to the immunosuppressants she was taking, she was allowed to wear her dog tags, swabbed with disinfectant, wrapped around her wrist, “just in case.”

  Maisie’s mother, absolutely impossible now that her faith in positive thinking had been confirmed, had, according to the nurse, tried to talk her out of them, to no avail.

  “I need them,” Maisie had said. “In case I get complications. I might get a blood clot or reject my new heart.”

  “You won’t do any such thing,” her mother had said. “You’re going to get well and come home and go back to school. You’re going to take ballet lessons” —something Richard could not in his wildest dreams imagine Maisie doing, unless a ballet-related flood or volcanic eruption was involved—“and grow up and have children of your own.” To which Maisie, ever the realist, had replied, “I’ll still die sometime. Everybody dies sooner or later.”

  After a week of family only, Maisie was allowed visitors, provided they wore paper gowns, booties, and masks, and limited their visits to five minutes, and visited two at a time. That meant her mother was always present, which cramped Maisie’s style considerably, although she still told Richard plenty of grisly details about her surgery. “So then they crack your chest open,” she demonstrated, “and they cut your heart out and put the new one in. Did you know it comes in a cooler, like beer?”

  “Maisie—” her mother protested. “Let’s talk about something cheerful. You need to thank Dr. Wright. He revived you after you coded.”

  “That’s right,” Evelyn said, coming in to check the numerous monitors. “Dr. Wright saved your life.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Maisie said.

  “I know he didn’t do your transplant surgery, like Dr. Templeton,” Mrs. Nellis said, looking embarrassed, “but he helped by starting your heart again so you could get your new heart.”

  “I know,” Maisie said, “but—”

  “A lot of people worked together to get you your new heart, didn’t they?” Mrs. Nellis said. “Your Peds nurses and Dr.—”

  “Maisie,” Richard said, leaning forward, “who did save your life?”

  Maisie opened her mouth to answer, and Evelyn, adjusting her IV, said, “I know who she means. You mean the person who donated your heart, don’t you, Maisie?”

  “Yes,” Maisie said after a moment, and Richard thought, That isn’t what she was going to say. “I wish they told you what their name was,” Maisie said. “They don’t tell you anything, not how they died or whether they were a boy or a girl or anything.”

  “That’s because they don’t want you to worry about it,” Mrs. Nellis said. “You’re supposed to be thinking positive thoughts to help you get well.”

  “It’s positive they saved my life,” Maisie said.

  “Cheerful topics,” Mrs. Nellis admonished. “Tell Dr. Wright what Dr. Murrow brought you.”

  Dr. Murrow had brought her a giant Mylar balloon with a heart on it. “It’s got helium in it, not hydrogen, so you don’t have to worry about it blowing up like the Hindenburg,” Maisie told him and had to be cautioned again about cheerful topics.

  In the week that followed, the red heart balloon was joined by Mylar balloons with smiley-faces and teddy bears on them (no regular balloons allowed in CICU, and no flowers), and Maisie’s room filled up with dolls and stuffed animals and visitors. Barbara came up from Peds to see her and stopped by the lab afterward to tell Richard Maisie wanted to see him and to thank him. “You saved her life,” she said, and it reminded him of what Maisie had said, or, rather, not said, on his first visit.

  He wondered if that was what she wanted to see him about. “Was her mother there when you visited her?” he asked Barbara.

  “Yes,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I wouldn’t go down there right now. Mr. Mandrake was going in as I was coming out. I’d steer clear of him if I were you. He’s in a foul mood these days, thanks to Mabel Davenport.”

  “Mabel Davenport? You mean Mrs. Davenport?” Richard asked. “Why? What did she do?”

  “You mean you haven’t heard?” She leaned confidentially toward him. “You will not believe what’s happened. His new book, Messages from the Other Side, is coming out next month,” she paused expectantly, “the twentieth, to be exact.”

  “Wonderful,” Richard said, wondering what there was in that news to make her smile so smugly. “And?”

  “And Communications from Beyond is coming out on the tenth. With a nationwide book tour and, rumor has it, an even bigger advance than Mr. Mandrake’s.”

  “Communications from Beyond?”

  “By Mabel R. Davenport. Mr. Mandrake says she made the whole thing up. She says he tried to make her remember things she never saw and he’s got it all wrong, there’s no Angel of Light, no Life Review, just a golden aura that confers psychic powers, which Mrs. Davenport claims she has. She says she’s been in contact with Houdini and Amelia Earhart. I can’t believe you haven’t heard about this. It’s been all over the tabloids. Mr. Mandrake’s furious. So I’d wait till this afternoon before I went down to see Maisie.”

  He did, but when he went down Ms. Sutterly was there, and he had the feeling Maisie wanted to speak to him in private, so he merely waved at her from the door and went back that evening, but then, and for the next several days, her room was jammed with people, in spite of the two-visitors rule, and he was busy, too, meeting with the head of research and the grant proposals people about further research on theta-asparcine. He had to settle for keeping tabs on Maisie by calling CICU.

  The nurses’ reports were almost as optimistic as Maisie’s mother’s. Maisie was showing no signs of rejection, the fluid in her lungs was steadily diminishing, and she was beginning to eat (this last reported by Eugene, who, being in charge of her menus, took a personal responsibility for her appetite).

  When Richard went down Monday, the entire Peds staff was there, and Tuesd
ay and Wednesday, her mother. Finally, on Friday, he ran into Mrs. Nellis leaving the CICU, pulling her mask and gown off as she went. “Oh, good, Dr. Wright, you’re here,” she said hurriedly. “I have to meet with Dr. Templeton, and I was nervous about leaving Maisie with—” she shot a glance back toward Maisie’s room, “but I know I can trust you to keep the conversation upbeat and positive.”

  He went in, curious to see who he was supposed to be protecting Maisie from, and hoping it wasn’t Mandrake. It wasn’t. It was Mr. Wojakowski, in a mask and baseball cap. “—and he did it, he laid that bomb right on the flight deck of the Shokaku,” Mr. Wojakowski was saying.

  “And he was already dead?” Maisie said, her eyes wide with excitement.

  “He was already dead. But he did it.” Mr. Wojakowski looked up. “Hiya, Doc. I was just telling Maisie here about Jo-Jo Powers.”

  “I didn’t know you two knew each other,” Richard said.

  “Mr. Wojakowski made me my dog tags that Joanna gave me,” Maisie said. “He was on the Yorktown. He tells the best stories.”

  That he does, Richard thought, and he has found the perfect audience. Someone should have thought of this before. “I can’t stop,” he said. “I just came to see how you’re doing.”

  “Really good,” Maisie said. “Nurse Vielle brought me a Charlie’s Angels poster, and my mom’s lawyer brought me that balloon,” she pointed to a Mylar balloon with a butterfly on it, “and Eugene brought me this,” Maisie said, pulling a bright pink baseball cap out from under her pillow. “Back from the Grave and Ready to Party” was written on it in purple letters. Richard laughed.

  “I know,” Maisie said. “I think it’s really cool, but my mom won’t let me wear it. She says I’m supposed to be thinking about positive things, not graves and stuff. Everybody’s been to see me except Kit. She couldn’t come ’cause she has to take care of her uncle, but she said tomorrow you’re all bringing me a surprise.”

  We are? Richard thought.

  “What is it?” Maisie demanded, and then appraisingly, “I think I already have enough balloons. And teddy bears.”

  “It’s a surprise. You’ll have to wait till tomorrow,” he said. He’d better call Kit and find out what this was about.

  “It looks like you two have a lot of visiting to do, so I’ll be moseying along,” Mr. Wojakowski said.

  “No, wait!” Maisie protested. “You have to tell me about the time the Yorktown got all shot up.” She turned back to Richard. “The Japanese thought they’d sunk her, and they had to fix her really fast.”

  “In three days flat,” Mr. Wojakowski said, sitting down again. “And the ship’s carpenter says, ‘Three days!’ and threw his hammer so hard it went right through the bulkhead, and the harbormaster says, ‘That’s just one more hole you’re gonna have to fix,’ and—” They didn’t even notice Richard leaving. A match made in heaven.

  He called Kit as soon as he got back to the lab. “Maisie told Vielle she’d always wished she could go to Dish Night,” Kit said, “so we’re setting it up for her. The nurses are letting us hold it in the CICU conference room tomorrow at four, after considerable negotiations, and I was wondering if you could pick up the videos. Vielle thought maybe Volcano or The Towering Inferno.”

  “What about Maisie’s mother?” Richard asked.

  “Not a problem. She has a meeting with Daniels, Dutton, and Walsh at four. She’s fighting to get Maisie into a clinical trial for a new antirejection drug.”

  He rented Volcano and, since The Towering Inferno was checked out, Twister. “Disasters, huh?” the short kid who waited on him said. “You should rent Titanic.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Richard said.

  When he got up to CICU, Kit and Vielle were already in Maisie’s room in their masks and gowns, and Maisie was higher than her Mylar balloons. “He’s here!” she said the second he walked in. “They said I had to wait till you got here to find out what the surprise is. So what is it?”

  “We’ll tell you when we get there,” Vielle said, bringing in a wheelchair. Evelyn came in to get Maisie’s heart monitor and IVs ready to go. Richard and Kit helped her into the wheelchair, and Richard wheeled her three doors down to the conference room.

  “Dish Night!” Maisie said when she saw the movie posters.

  “Not only Dish Night,” Kit said, “but a Disaster Double Feature.” Richard held up the videos.

  “Actually, Dr. Templeton says you can only watch one today,” Evelyn said.

  “Then we’ll have to watch the other one at our next Dish Night,” Kit said, “after you get out of the hospital.”

  “I get to go to a real Dish Night?” Maisie said, transported, and Richard hoped this wasn’t too much excitement for her. He handed her the videos, and Kit and Vielle bent over her, one on each side, discussing which one to watch and explaining the rules of Dish Night.

  “Rule Number One, no talking about work,” Kit said. “For you that means no talking about your transplant.”

  “Or rib cages. Or beer coolers,” Vielle said. “Rule Number Two, only movie food can be eaten.”

  “Dr. Templeton said no popcorn yet,” Kit said. “We’ll have that at our next Dish Night. For now he said you could have a snow cone.” She produced a cone of shaved ice and two bottles of syrup. “Red or blue?”

  “Blue!” Maisie said.

  Richard leaned against the door, watching them. The bandage on Vielle’s arm had been taken off, though she still had the one on her hand, and the bruised, beaten look was gone from her eyes. Kit was in nearly as high spirits as Maisie. She was still very thin, but there was color in her cheeks. He remembered her standing in the lab, pale and determined, clutching the textbook, saying, “Joanna saved my life.”

  She saved all our lives, Richard thought, and wondered if that was what Maisie had meant when she said he hadn’t been the one who saved her life, if she realized it had been Joanna’s last words that had saved her life.

  “Rule Number Three, no Woody Allen movies,” Kit said.

  “And no Kevin Costner,” Vielle said.

  “And no Disney movies,” Maisie said vehemently.

  Richard watched them, thinking about Joanna that first Dish Night, laughing, saying, “This is a Titanic-free zone.”

  “There’s a reason I’m seeing the Titanic,” she’d told him, and she was right. The Titanic had been the perfect metaphor for the brain’s distress calls sent out frantically in all directions, by every method available, but he wondered, leaning against the door and looking at Maisie and Vielle and Kit, if that was the only connection. Because the Titanic wasn’t primarily about messages. It was about people who had, in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of the night, put forth a superhuman effort to save wives, sweethearts, friends, babies, children, dogs, and the first-class mail. To save something besides themselves.

  Joanna had wanted to die like W. S. Gilbert, and the Titanic was full of Gilberts. Assistant Engineer Harvey and Edith Evans and Jay Yates. Daniel Buckley shepherding the girls he had promised to take care of up through the First-Class Dining Saloon, up the Grand Staircase, into the boats, Robert Norman giving his lifejacket to a woman and her child, John Jacob Astor plunking a flowered hat on a ten-year-old boy and saying, “Now he’s a girl and now he can go.” Captain Smith, swimming toward one of the boats with a baby in his arms. And Jack Phillips. And the band. And firemen, stokers, engineers, trimmers, working to keep the boilers going and the dynamos running and the wireless working, the lights on. So it wouldn’t get dark.

  “Turn off the lights,” Vielle was saying. “We need to get this show on the road. It’s already four-thirty.”

  “She has a date,” Maisie said wisely.

  “How did you find out?” Vielle asked Maisie, her hands on her hips.

  “You have a date?” Kit said. “Who with? Please tell me it’s not with Harvey the Embalmer.”

  “It’s not,” Maisie said. “It’s with a cop.”

  “The one who look
s like Denzel Washington?” Kit asked. “You finally met him?”

  Vielle nodded. “I called him to see if he could help me find the taxi Joanna took,” she said, “and just how did you find out, Little Miss Gossip?”

  Maisie turned to Richard. “So I guess you and Kit will have to eat at the cafeteria, just the two of you,” she said.

  “I think it’s time to start the movie,” Kit said, whacking Maisie with the Volcano box. She handed Vielle the video, and Vielle turned the TV on and slid the video into the slot.

  “Wait! Don’t start yet! I forgot my ‘Back from the Grave and Ready to Party’ hat Eugene gave me,” Maisie said and added defensively, “I have to have it. It’s a party.”

  “I’ll go get it,” Richard said.

  “No,” Maisie said. “I have to get it,” and to Richard, “You don’t know where it is.”

  “You could tell me,” Richard started to say and then got a look at Maisie’s face, innocent and determined. She obviously had a reason for wanting to go back to her room, even if it meant wheeling her monitor and IV pole back, too. “We’ll be right back,” Richard said and maneuvered her and her equipment back down the hall.

  As soon as they got inside the room, Maisie said, “My hat’s under the pillow. Push me up to the nightstand.” She opened the drawer and brought out several tablet pages, folded into quarters. “It’s my NDE from when I coded,” she said, handing them to him. “I couldn’t write it down right away.”

  “That’s all right,” Richard said, touched that she had written the whole thing down. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Joanna said you should always write it down right away,” Maisie said disapprovingly, “so you won’t confabulate.”

  “That’s true,” Richard said, “but you can’t always. This will be very useful.”

  Maisie looked mollified. “Do you think Mr. Wojakowski tells the truth?”

  Out of left field. “The truth?” Richard said, stalling. He wondered if she had begun to catch Mr. Wojakowski in inconsistencies, like Joanna had.