Passage. Part 5

"Then you don't agree with Noyes and Linden that the NDE's a result of the human mind's inability to comprehend its own death?"

"No, and I don't agree with Dr. Roth's theory that it's psychological detachment from fear.There's no evolutionary advantage to making dying easier or more pleasant. When the body's injured, the brain initiates a series of survival strategies. It shuts down blood to every part of the body that can do without it, it increases respiration rate to produce more oxygen, it concentrates blood where it's most needed-"

"And you think the NDE is one of those strategies?" Joanna asked.

He nodded. "Most patients who've had NDEs were revived by paddles or norepinephrine, but some began breathing again on their own."

"And you think the NDE was what revived them?"

"I think the neurochemical events causing the NDE revived them, and the NDE is a side effect of those events. And a clue to what they are and how they work. And if I can find that out, that knowledge could eventually be used to revive patients who've coded. Are you familiar with the new RIPT scan?"

Joanna shook her head. "Is it similar to a PET scan?"

He nodded. "They both measure brain activity, but the RIPT scan is exponentially faster and more detailed. Plus, it uses chemical tracers, not radioactive ones, so the number of scans per subject doesn't have to be limited. It simultaneously photographs the electrochemical activity in different subsections of the brain for a 3-D picture of neural activity in the working brain. Or the dying brain."

"You mean you could theoretically take a picture of an NDE?"

"Not theoretically," Richard said. "I've-"

The door above them opened.

They both froze.

Above them a man's voice said, "-very productive session. Mrs. Davenport has remembered experiencing the Command to Return and the Life Review while she was dead."

"Oh, G.o.d," Joanna whispered, "It's Mr. Mandrake."

Richard craned his neck carefully around the corner.

"You're right," he whispered back. "He's holding the door partway open."

"Can he see us from there?"

He shook his head.

"Then it's true?" a young woman's voice said from the door.

"That's Tish," Joanna whispered.Richard nodded, and they both sat there perfectly still, their heads turned toward the stairs and the door, listening alertly.

"Your whole life really does flash before you when you die?" Tish asked.

"Yes, the events of your life are shown to you in a panorama of images called the Life Review,"

Mr. Mandrake said. "The Angel of Light leads the soul in its examination of its life and of the meaning of those events. I've just been with Mrs. Davenport. The Angel showed her the events of her life and said, 'See and understand.' " Mandrake must have leaned against the door and opened it wider because his voice was suddenly louder. "See and understand we shall," he said. "Not only shall we understand our own lives but life itself, the vast ocean of understanding and love that shall be ours when we reach eternity."

Richard looked at Joanna. "How long is he likely to go on like that?" he whispered.

"Eternally," she whispered back.

"So you really believe there's an afterlife?" Tish asked.

Doesn't she have any patients to attend to? Joanna thought, exasperated. But this was Tish, to whom flirting was as natural as breathing. She couldn't help sending out spinnerets over any male, even Mr. Mandrake. And Richard had obviously met her. Joanna wondered how he'd managed to get away.

"I don't think there's an afterlife," Mr. Mandrake said. "I know it. I have scientific evidence it exists."

"Really?" Tish said.

"I have eyewitnesses," he said. "My subjects report that the Other Side is a beautiful place, filled with golden light and the faces of loved ones."

There was a pause. Maybe he's leaving, Joanna thought hopefully.

The door opened still farther, and someone started down the stairs. Richard shot to his feet and was across the landing in an instant, pulling Joanna to her feet, pressing them both flat against the wall, his arm across her, holding her against the wall. They waited, not breathing.

The door clicked shut, and footsteps clattered down the cement stairs toward them. He'd be down to the landing in another minute, and how were they going to explain their huddling here like a couple of children playing hide-and-seek? Joanna looked questioningly at Richard. He put his finger to his lips. The footsteps came closer.

"Mr. Mandrake!" Tish's distant voice called, and they could hear the door open again. "Mr.

Mandrake! You can't go down that way. It's wet."

"Wet?" Mr. Mandrake said.

"They've been painting all the stairwells."There was a pause. Richard's arm tightened against Joanna, and then there was a sound of footsteps going back up.

"Where were you going, Mr. Mandrake?" Tish asked.

"Down to the ER."

"Oh, then, you need to go over to Orthopedics and take the elevator. Here, let me show you the way."

Another long pause, and the door clicked shut.

Richard leaned past Joanna to look up the stairs. "He's gone."

He took his arm away and turned to face Joanna. "I was afraid he was going to insist on seeing for himself if the stairs were wet."

"Are you kidding?" Joanna said. "He's based his entire career on taking things on faith."

Richard laughed and started up the stairs toward the door. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," she said. "He's still out there."

Richard stopped and looked down at her questioningly. "He said he was going down to the ER."

She shook her head. "Not while he's got an audience."

Richard opened the door cautiously and eased it shut again. "You're right. He's telling Tish how the Angel of Light explained the mysteries of the universe to Mrs. Davenport."

"That'll take a month," Joanna said. She slumped down resignedly on the step. "You're a doctor.

How long does it take for someone to starve to death?"

He looked surprised. "You're hungry?"

She leaned her head back against the wall. "I had a Pop-Tart for breakfast. About a million years ago."

"You're kidding," he said, rummaging in the pockets of his lab coat. "Would you like an energy bar?"

"You have food?" she said wonderingly.

"The cafeteria's always closed when I try to eat there. Is it ever open?"

"No," Joanna said.

"There don't seem to be any restaurants around here either."

"There aren't," Joanna said. "Taco Pierre's is the closest, and it's ten blocks away.""Taco Pierre's?"

She nodded. "Fast-food burritos and E. coli."

"Umm," he said. He pulled out an apple, polished it against his lapel, and held it out to her.

"Apple?"

She took it gratefully. "First you save me from Mr. Mandrake and then from starvation," she said, taking a bite out of the apple. "Whatever it is you want me to do, I'll do it."

"Good," he said, reaching in his other pocket. "I want you to define the near-death experience for me."

"Define?" she said around a mouthful of apple.

"The sensations. What people experience when they have an NDE." He pulled out a foil-wrapped Nutri-Grain bar and handed it to her. "Do they all experience the same thing, or is it different for each individual?"

"No," she said, trying to tear the energy-bar wrapper open. "There definitely seems to be a core experience, as Mr. Mandrake calls it." She bit the paper, still trying to tear it. "Defining it's another matter."

Richard took the energy bar away from her, tore it open, and handed it back to her.

"Thanks," she said. "The problem is Mr. Mandrake's book and all the near-death-experience stuff out there. They've told people what they should see, and sure enough, they all see it."

He frowned. "Then you don't think people actually see a tunnel and a light and a divine figure?"

She took a bite of energy bar. "I didn't say that. NDEs didn't start with Mr. Mandrake or this current crop of books. There are accounts dating all the way back to ancient Greece. In Plato's Republic, there's an account of a soldier named Er who died and traveled through pa.s.sageways leading to the realms of the afterlife, where he saw spirits and something approaching heaven. The eighth-century Tibetan Book of the Dead talks about leaving the body, being suspended in a foggy void, and entering a realm of light. And most of the core elements seem to go way back."

She took another bite. "It's not that people don't see the tunnel and all the rest. It's just that it's so hard separating the wheat from the chaff. And there's tons of chaff. People tend to use NDEs to get attention. Or to stump for their belief in the paranormal. Twenty-two percent of people who claim they've had NDEs also claim to be clairvoyant or telekinetic, or to have had past-life regressions like Bridey Murphy. Fourteen percent claim they've been abducted by aliens."

"So how do you separate the wheat from the chaff, as you call it?"

She shrugged. "You look for body language. I had a patient last month who said, 'When I looked at the light, I understood the secret of the universe,' which, by the way, is a common comment, and when I asked her what it was, she said, 'I promised Jesus I wouldn't tell,' but as she said it, she put her hand out, as if reaching for something just out of her grasp," Joanna said,demonstrating. "And you look for experiences outside the standard imagery, for consistency. People tend to include many more specific details, some of them seemingly irrelevant, when they're describing what they've actually experienced than when they're describing what they think they should have seen."

"And what have they actually experienced?" Richard asked.

"Well, there's definitely a sensation of darkness, and a sensation of light, usually in that order.

There also seems to be a sound of some kind, though n.o.body seems to be able to describe it very well. Mr. Mandrake says it's a buzzing-"

"-so all of his patients say it's a buzzing," Richard said.

"Yes, but even they don't sound all that convinced," Joanna said, remembering the uncertainty in Mrs. Davenport's voice. "And my subjects are all over the map. It's a click, it's a roar, it's a sc.r.a.ping sound, and it's a shriek."

"But there definitely seems to be a sound?"

"Oh, yes, eighty-eight percent of my patients mentioned it. Without prompting."

"What about the floating-above-your-body-on-the-operating-table?" Richard asked, pulling a box of raisins out of his pocket.

"Mr. Mandrake claims sixty percent of his patients have an out-of-body experience, but only eleven percent of mine do. Seventy-five percent of mine mention feelings of peacefulness and warmth, and nearly fifty percent say they saw some kind of figure, usually religious, usually dressed in white, sometimes s.h.i.+ning or radiating light."

"Mandrake's Angel of Light," Richard said.

She held out her hand, and he tipped some raisins into her palm. "Mr. Mandrake's brainwashees see an Angel of Light and their dead relatives, waiting to greet them on the Other Side, but for everyone else, it seems to be religion-specific. Christians see angels or Jesus unless they're Catholics, then they see the Virgin Mary. Hindus see Krishna or Vishnu, non-believers see relatives. Or Elvis."

She ate a raisin. "That's what I mean about chaff. People bring so many biases from their own background, it's almost impossible to know what they actually saw."

"What about children?" he asked. "Don't they have fewer preconceived ideas?"

"Yes," Joanna said, "but they're also more apt to want to please the adult who's interviewing them, as proved by the nursery-school-abuse cases of the eighties. Children can be manipulated to say anything."

"I don't know," he said doubtfully. "I met a little girl today who didn't look too influenceable.

You know her. Maisie?"

"You talked to Maisie Nellis?" she said, and then frowned. "I didn't know she was back in again."Richard nodded. "She told me to tell you she has something important to tell you. We had quite a chat about the Hindenburg."

She smiled. "So that's the disaster of the week?"

He nodded. "That and the Great Mola.s.ses Flood. Did you know that twenty-one people met a pancakelike death in 1919?"

"How long were you there?" she laughed. "No, let me guess. Maisie's wonderful at thinking up excuses for why you have to stay just a little longer. She's one of the world's great stallers. And one of the world's great kids."

He nodded. "She told me she has cardiomyopathy and that she'd gone into V-fib."

Joanna nodded. "Viral endocarditis. They can't get her stabilized, and she keeps having reactions to the antiarrhythmia drugs. She's a walking disaster."

"Hence the interest in the Hindenburg," he said.

She nodded. "I think it's a way of indirectly addressing her fears. Her mother won't let her talk about them directly, won't even acknowledge the possibility that Maisie might die," she said. "But more than that, I think Maisie's trying to make sense of her own situation by reading about other people who've had sudden, unaccountable, disastrous things happen to them." She ate another raisin.

"Plus, children are always fascinated by death. When I was Maisie's age, my favorite song was 'Poor Babes in the Wood,' about two children 'stolen away one bright summer's day' and left in the woods to die. My grandmother used to sing it to me, to my mother's horror. The elderly are fascinated by death, too."

"Did they?" Richard asked curiously. "Die? The babes in the wood?"

She nodded. "After wandering around in the dark for several stanzas. 'The moon did not s.h.i.+ne and the stars gave no light,' " she recited. " 'They wept and they sighed, and bitterly cried, and the poor little children, they lay down and died.' After which the birds covered them with strawberry leaves." She sighed nostalgically. "I loved that song. I think because it had children in it. Most of Maisie's disasters involve children. Or dogs."