Passage. Part 29

I have to convince her to transfer before something happens, she thought, and was in the tunnel, but much farther away from the door than she had been before, and this time the door was open. It spilled golden light half the length of the pa.s.sage.

She couldn't see shadows or movements in it, as she had before, or hear any voices. She stood still, listening for their murmur, and then thought, You did it again. You forgot to listen for the sound.

But it wasn't a sound, or, rather, a cessation of sound. It was a feeling of having heard a sound brought on by the temporal lobe. There was no actual sound.

But standing there in the tunnel, she was sure there had been. A sound like-what? A roar. Or something falling. She felt a strong impulse to turn around and look back down the dark pa.s.sage as if that would help her identify it, to go back down the pa.s.sage toward it.

No, she thought, holding carefully still, not even turning her head, it'll send you back to the lab.

Don't do that. Not until you've seen what lies beyond the door, and began walking toward it.

The light seemed to grow brighter as she approached it, illuminating the walls and the wooden floor, which still gave a look of impossible length to the corridor. The walls were white, and so were the doors, and as she neared the end of the corridor, she could see they had numbers on them.

What if one of them's fifty-eight? she thought, clenched her fists at her sides, and went on. "C8,"

the doors read, the letters and numbers in gold, "C10, C12." The light continued to grow brighter.

She had expected it to become unbearably bright as she got closer, but it didn't, and as she came nearer the open door, she could make out shapes in it. Figures in white robes, radiating golden light.

Angels.

18.

"I dread the journey greatly."

-Mary Todd Lincoln, in a letter written shortly before her death.

Joanna's first thought was: Angels! Mr. Mandrake will be furious.Her second thought was, No, not angels. People. The light came from behind them, around them, outlining them in golden light so that it seemed to radiate from them, from their white robes. And they weren't robes. They were white dresses with skirts that trailed the floor. Old-fas.h.i.+oned dresses.

The dead relatives, Joanna thought, but they weren't gathered around the door, waiting to welcome her to the Other Side. They milled about, or stood in little groups of two or three, murmuring quietly to each other. Joanna moved closer to the door, trying to make out what they were saying.

"What's happened?" a young woman in a long, high-necked dress asked. Her hair hung down her back nearly to her waist.

A long-dead relative, Joanna thought, trying to see past her to the man she was speaking to. He spoke, and his voice was too low for Joanna to hear. She squinted at the light surrounding him, as if it would make his voice clearer, and saw that he was wearing a white jacket and had a pleasant face.

An unfamiliar face. And so was the woman's. Joanna had never seen either of them before.

The young woman said something else to the man, who bowed from the waist, and walked over to two people standing together, a man and a woman. The other woman was in white, too, but her hair was piled on top of her head. Her hands were white, too, and when she placed her hand on the gentleman's arm, it flashed, sparkling. The man had a trimmed white beard that looked like something from an old photo alb.u.m, and so did the woman's hair, but their faces were unfamiliar. If they're dead relatives, Joanna thought, they must be someone else's.

The woman with her hair down her back spoke to the bearded man. Joanna took another step forward, nearly up to the door, trying to hear. The bearded man said, "I'm sure it's nothing."

Joanna shot an anxious glance back down the pa.s.sageway. That was what he'd said the last time, and then the woman had said, "It's so cold," and the NDE had ended. If she was going to test her theory that the pa.s.sageway was the way back, that going back down the tunnel would end the NDE, she needed to do it now, before the NDE ended on its own, but she wanted to stay and hear what they were talking about.

It's a clue to where this is, she thought, hesitating, poised on one foot, ready to run, trying to decide. Like Cinderella at the ball, with the clock striking midnight, she thought, and then, looking at the women again in their long white dresses, that's what this must be, a ball. That's why the woman's hand on the bearded man's arm was white, because she was wearing white gloves, and the sparkling flash when she moved her hand was jewels in a bracelet. And the young man was dressed in a white dinner jacket. She shaded her eyes against the light, trying to see what the man with the white beard was wearing.

"It's so cold," the young woman said, and Joanna gave her one last, frustrated glance, then turned and ran down the pa.s.sageway.

And into the lab. "I want to hear about your return," Richard said as soon as Tish had finished monitoring her and removed the electrodes and the IV.

"Was it-?" he said and then clamped his lips shut. "Tell me about your return."

She told him what she'd done. "Why? Did it look different on the scans?""Radically," he said, pleased, and started over to the console, as if he were finished.

"Wait, you have to hear about the rest of the NDE," Joanna said. "I saw another one of the core elements this time. Angels."

"Angels?" Tish said. "Really?"

"No," Joanna said, "but figures dressed all in white, or 'snowy raiment,' as Mr. Mandrake would say."

"Did they have wings?" Tish asked.

"No," Joanna said. "They weren't angels. They were people. They were dressed in long white robes, and there was light all around them," Joanna said. "I'd always a.s.sumed that people saw what they thought were angels and then gave them the traditional white robes and haloes because that was what they'd learned angels looked like in Sunday school. But now I wonder if it isn't the other way around, that they see the white robes and the light surrounding them, and that's what makes them think they're angels."

"Did they speak to you?" Tish asked.

"No, they didn't seem to know I was there," Joanna said. She told Richard what the woman had said.

"You could hear them talking," he said.

"Yes," she said, "and it wasn't the telepathic communication some NDEers report. They were speaking, and I could hear some of what they said, and some I couldn't, because they were too far away."

"Or because it lacked content," Richard said, "like the noise or the feeling of recognition."

No, Joanna thought, typing her account into the computer that afternoon, because I don't know what they said, and I know where the tunnel is. I'm sure of it.

Someplace with numbers on the doors and a door at the end, where people stood, milling around in white dresses. A party? A wedding? That would explain the preponderance of white. But why would they keep asking, "What's happened?" Had the groom jilted the bride? And why would the men be in white, too? When was the last time you saw a bunch of men and women dressed in white, standing around complaining about the cold?

During a hospital fire drill, she thought. Hospitals are full of people wearing white, and that was where nearly all patients experienced their NDEs. The vast majority of them had their NDEs in an ER, surrounded by doctors and nurses and a buzzing code alarm and a resident, leaning over the unconscious patient, s.h.i.+ning a light in their eyes, asking, "What happened to him?" It made perfect sense.

Except that the ER staff didn't wear white, they wore green or blue or pink scrubs, and the trauma rooms weren't numbered C8, C10, C12. C. What did C stand for?Confabulation, she thought. Stop thinking about it. Get busy, which turned out to be easier than she thought. The torrent of NDEs continued for several days, and Joanna dutifully interviewed every one, though they didn't prove all that useful. They were uniformly unable to describe what they'd experienced, as if ineffability had infected every aspect of their NDE: the length of time they'd been there, the manner of their return, the things they'd seen, including angels.

"They looked like angels," Mr. Torres said irritably when Joanna asked him to describe the figures he'd seen standing in the light, and when she asked him if he could be more specific, "Haven't you ever seen an angel?"

I need to talk to someone intelligent, Joanna thought, and went down to the ER, but they were swamped. "Head-on between a church bus and a semi," Vielle said briefly and ran off to meet a gurney being brought in by the paramedics. "I'll call you."

"Forget about this one," the resident said. "She's DOA."

Dead on arrival. Arrival where? Joanna wondered, and went up to see Mrs. Woollam. She'd promised her she'd visit again, and she wanted to ask her if she'd ever seen people in the garden or on the staircase.

Mrs. Woollam wasn't there, and it was obvious she hadn't been taken somewhere for tests. The bed was crisply made up, with a blanket folded across the foot and a folded hospital gown lying on top of it. Her insurance must have run out, Joanna thought, disappointed, and walked down to the nurses' station. "Did you move Mrs. Woollam to another room, or did she go home?" she asked a nurse she didn't know.

The nurse looked up, startled, and then rea.s.sured at the sight of Joanna's hospital ID, and Joanna knew instantly what she was going to say. "Mrs. Woollam died early this morning."

I hope she wasn't afraid, Joanna thought, remembering her clutching her Bible to her frail chest like a s.h.i.+eld. "She went very quietly, while she was reading her Bible," the nurse was saying. "She had such a peaceful expression."

Good, Joanna thought, and hoped she was in the beautiful, beautiful garden. She went back to the door of the room and stood there, imagining Mrs. Woollam lying there, her white hair spread out against the pillow, the Bible lying open where it had fallen from her frail hands.

I hope it's all true, Joanna thought, the light and the angels and the s.h.i.+ning figure of Christ. For her sake, I hope it's all true, and went back up to the lab. But Richard was busy working on Mrs.

Troudtheim's scans, and there were all those tapes to be transcribed and two NDEers she hadn't interviewed. She got some blank tapes from her office and went down to see Ms. Pekish.

She was almost as uncommunicative as Mr. Sage, which was actually a blessing. The effort to get answers out of her kept her from thinking about Mrs. Woollam, alone somewhere in the dark.

Not alone, she corrected herself. Mrs. Woollam had been sure Jesus would be with her.

"And then I saw my life," Ms. Pekish said.

"Can you be more specific?" Joanna asked.Ms. Pekish frowned in concentration. "Things that happened."

"Can you tell me what some of those events were?"

She shook her head. "It all happened pretty fast."

She was equally vague when it came to describing the light, and she wouldn't even venture a guess as to the sound. Ms. Grant, at least, did. "It sounded like music," she said, her thin face uplifted as if she were hearing it right then. "Heavenly music."

Ms. Grant had coded during stem cell replacement therapy for her lung cancer. She was bald and had the drawn, concentration-camp look of late-stage cancer. Joanna was surprised she was willing to talk about her experience, but when Joanna handed her the release form-her last one, she needed to pick up some more from the office-she signed it eagerly.

"It was beautiful there," she said before Joanna could ask her anything. "There was light all around me, and I felt no fear, just peace."

She had obviously had the cla.s.sic kind of positive NDE Mr. Mandrake claimed proved there was a heaven, and Joanna couldn't help being glad.

"I was standing in a doorway," Ms. Grant said, "and beyond it I could see a beautiful place, all white and gold and sparkling lights. I wanted to go there, but I couldn't. A voice said, 'You are not allowed on this side.' "

That was cla.s.sic, too. NDEers frequently talked about wanting to 'cross over' and being told they couldn't, or being stopped by a barrier-a gate or a threshold of some kind. Mrs. Jarvis, the first NDEer she had ever interviewed, had told her, "I knew the bridge divided the land of the living from the land of the dead," and Mr. Olivetti had said, "I knew if I went through that gate, I could never come back."

"And then I was back here," Ms. Grant said, indicating her hospital bed, "and they were working on me."

"You said you heard music," Joanna said. "Can you be more specific? Voices? Instruments?"

"No voices," Ms. Grant said, "just music. Beautiful, beautiful music."

"When did you hear it?"

"It was there the whole time, till the very end," Ms. Grant said, "all around me, like the light and the feeling of peace."

"I think that's everything," Joanna said and shut her notebook. She reached to turn off the recorder.

"What have other people said they saw?" Ms. Grant asked.

Joanna looked up, wondering if she had another Mr. Funderburk on her hands, determined toget everything she was ent.i.tled to. "I don't usually-"

"Have they seen a place like that, white and gold and full of lights?" Ms. Grant asked, and her voice was more agitated than eager. Joanna glanced at the IV bags, thinking, I need to check and see what drugs she's on.

"Have they?" Ms. Grant insisted.

"Yes, some subjects have talked about seeing a beautiful place," Joanna said carefully.

"Do they say what happens next if you don't come back?" she asked, and it wasn't agitation in her voice, it was fear. Joanna wondered if she should call the nurse. "Does anybody ever talk about bad things happening to them there?"

"Did you see something that frightened you?" Joanna asked.

"No," she said, and then, as if Joanna's question had rea.s.sured her, "No. It was all beautiful. The light and the music and the feeling of peace. I didn't feel any fear at all while I was there, just calmness and peace."

And, afterward, dread, Joanna thought, on her way back up to her office. "And how can we not be afraid of death?" Mrs. Woollam had said. Joanna pushed open the door to the third-floor walkway to the main building. It was dark out, the wide windows reflecting blackness. What time was it, anyway? She glanced at her watch. Six-thirty, and she still had all these NDEs to write up.

The gla.s.sed-in walkway was freezing. She pulled her cardigan around her and started across the walkway.

She stopped. Something about the walkway reminded her of the tunnel. What? Not the sound of a heater shutting off, since it obviously hadn't been on in here all day, and anyway, there was a low hum from the hospital's generating plant across the way.

And this feeling wasn't the overwhelming sense of knowing she had had before. It was less intense, like seeing someone who reminded you of someone else. The walkway's like the tunnel, she thought, but how? The walkway was wider and higher than the hallway and the hallway was lined with doors, not windows.

It's something about the floor, Joanna thought, suddenly certain. But this one was nothing at all like the floor in the tunnel. It was tiled in nondescript gray tiles speckled with pink and yellow.

It's not this walkway, she thought, squinting at the tiles, but it's a walkway here in the hospital, a walkway I've been in. But none of the walkways had a wooden floor. The one on second was carpeted, and the ones that led over to the east wing were tiled, too. Only the Sloper Inst.i.tute building was old enough that it had wooden floors, but the bas.e.m.e.nt walkway that led under the street to it was all concrete.

But it's one of them, she thought, hurrying the rest of the way across the walkway, through the door, and down the corridor to the elevator. It was just opening, and empty. She pressed "two" and leaned back against the wall, her eyes closed, trying to remember which one it was, trying to visualizetheir floors. The third-floor walkway had beige tile and was lower by half a step than the corridors at either end. The carpet in the second-floor walkway was blue, no, blue-green- I shouldn't be doing this, Joanna thought, opening her eyes, I should go straight up to the lab.

Richard said if I had the feeling of significance again to go right to the lab so he could capture it on the RIPT. She reached forward to press the b.u.t.ton for six, and then let her hand fall. The numbers above the door blinked "two," and she walked quickly down the corridor to the walkway. She knew instantly, looking at the well-worn carpet, which was dark plum, that it wasn't the right one either.

Yes, well, and you knew the carpet was blue-green, too, she thought, retracing her steps, and how do you know that this compulsion to find out isn't the result of temporal-lobe stimulation? But when the elevator came, she pressed "three" and got out at third to go look at the west-wing walkway.

This part of the hospital was all newly carpeted in heather gray, with color-coded lines showing the way to outpatient surgery and the urology clinic and X-ray, down the length of the long hallway.

"Just follow the yellow brick road," she'd heard a nurse tell a patient one day when she was taking a shortcut up to Coma Carl's. She followed the red line-how appropriate!-to outpatient surgery and turned left, hoping the recarpeting hadn't extended as far as the walkway.

It hadn't, but the painting had. The half-open door to the walkway was blocked off not only by yellow crime-scene tape, but also by two orange traffic cones, and, when she sidled around them to look through the door, its entire length was swathed in plastic drop cloths. "You can't get through that way," a pa.s.sing orderly told her. "You have to go up to fifth and over."

Good old Mercy General, Joanna thought. You can't get there from here. The nearest elevator was all the way down at the end of outpatient surgery. She took the stairs instead, hoping she didn't encounter any more paint or tape. She didn't, and, amazingly, Maintenance wasn't doing both walkways at the same time.

She opened the door and went in. She knew before she'd come five steps that it wasn't this one either. The floor was tiled with alternating black and white squares, like a checkerboard, and the angle where they met at the bottom of the door was perfectly square. But so was the one in the tunnel, she thought, stepping back to look at the end of the walkway. It didn't curve. Why did I think it curved?

Perspective caused the rows of black and white tiles to seem to narrow at the far end, making the walkway appear longer than it was. Like the tunnel? It had seemed impossibly long, but could that have been some trick of perspective?

She squatted down, squinting at the place where the door and the tiles met. Was it something about the wooden boards as the perspective narrowed them that made the floor look curved? No, not curved- "Lose something?" someone said, standing over her.

She looked up. It was Barbara. "Just my mind," Joanna said and stood up, dusting off her hands.

"What are you doing over here?"

Barbara held out two cans of Pepsi and a Snickers bar. "The vending machines in our wing are all out. This is dinner. I'm glad I ran into you. I wanted to tell you Maisie Nellis went into V-fib againthis afternoon-"