Passage Read online

  “The light enveloped me, and I felt happy and warm and safe,” Lisa Andrews, whose heart had stopped during a C-section, had said, but she’d shivered as she said it, and then sat for a long time, gazing bleakly into the distance. And Jake Becker, who had fallen off a ledge while hiking in the Rockies, had said, trying to describe the tunnel, “It was a long way away.”

  “The tunnel was a long way away from you?” Joanna had asked.

  “No,” Jake had said angrily. “I was right there. In it. I’m talking about where it was. It was a long way away.”

  Joanna went over to the window and looked out at the snow. It was coming down faster now, covering the cars in the visitors’ parking lot. An elderly woman in a gray coat and a plastic rain bonnet was laboriously scraping snow off her windshield. Heart attack weather, Vielle had said. Car accident weather. Dying weather.

  She pulled the curtains closed and went back over to the bed and sat down in the chair beside it. Carl wasn’t going to speak, and the cafeteria would close in another ten minutes. She needed to go now if she ever wanted to eat. But she sat on, watching the monitors, with their shifting lines, shifting numbers, watching the almost imperceptible rise and fall of Carl’s sunken chest, looking at the closed curtains with the snow falling silently beyond them.

  She became aware of a faint sound. She looked at Carl, but he had not moved and his mouth was still half-open. She glanced at the monitors, but the sound was coming from the bed. Can you describe it? she thought automatically. A deep, even sound, like a foghorn, with long pauses between, and after each pause, a subtle change in pitch.

  He’s humming, she thought. She fumbled for her minirecorder and switched it on, holding it close to his mouth. “Nmnmnmnm,” he droned, and then slightly lower, shorter, “nmnm,” pause while he must be taking a breath, “nmnmnm,” lower still. Definitely a tune, though she couldn’t recognize it either, the spaces between the sounds were too long. But he was definitely humming.

  Was he singing on a summer lake somewhere, while a pretty girl played a ukulele? Or was he humming along with Mrs. Davenport’s heavenly choir, standing in a warm, fuzzy light at the end of a tunnel? Or was he somewhere in the dark or the jungles of Vietnam, humming to himself to keep his fears at bay?

  Her pager began abruptly to beep. “Sorry,” she said, scrabbling to turn it off with her free hand. “Sorry.” But Carl hummed on undisturbed, nmnm, nmnm, nmnm, nmnm, nm, nm. Oblivious. Unreachable.

  The number showing on the pager was the ER. “Sorry,” Joanna said again and switched off the recorder. “I have to go.” She patted his hand, lying unmoving at his side. “But I’ll come see you again soon,” and she headed down to the ER.

  “Heart attack,” Vielle said when she got there. “Digging his car out of a ditch. Coded briefly in the ambulance.”

  “Where is he?” Joanna said. “Up in CICU?”

  “No,” Vielle said. “He’s right here.”

  “In the ER?” Joanna said, surprised. She never talked to patients in the ER, even though there were times she wished she could so she could interview them before Mr. Mandrake did.

  “He came back really fast after coding, and now he’s refusing to be admitted till the cardiologist gets here,” Vielle said. “We’ve paged him, but in the meantime the guy’s driving everybody crazy. He did not have a heart attack. He works out at his health club three times a week.” She led Joanna across the central area toward the trauma rooms.

  “Are you sure he’s well enough to talk to me?” Joanna asked, following her.

  “He keeps trying to get out of bed and demanding to talk to someone in charge,” Vielle said, sidling expertly between a supply cart and a portable X-ray machine. “If you can distract him and keep him in bed till the cardiologist gets here, you’ll be doing everybody a big favor. Including him. Listen, there’s your subject now.”

  “Why isn’t my doctor here yet?” a man’s baritone demanded from the end examining room. “And where’s Stephanie?” His voice sounded strong and alert for someone who’d just coded and been revived. Maybe he was right, and he hadn’t had a heart attack at all. “What do you mean, you haven’t gotten in touch with her yet? She has a cell phone,” he shouted. “Where’s a phone? I’ll call her myself.”

  “You aren’t supposed to get up, Mr. Menotti,” a woman’s voice said. “You’re all hooked up.”

  Vielle opened the door and led Joanna into the room, where a nurse’s aide was vainly trying to keep a young man from removing the electrodes pasted to his chest. A very young man, not more than thirty-five, and tan and well muscled. She could believe he worked out three times a week.

  “Stop that,” Vielle said and pushed him back against the bed, which was at a forty-five-degree angle. “You need to stay quiet. Your doctor will be here in a few minutes.”

  “I have to get in touch with Stephanie,” he said. “I don’t need an IV.”

  “Yes, you do,” Vielle said. “Nina here will call her for you.” She looked at the heart monitor and then checked his pulse.

  “I already tried,” the aide said. “She isn’t answering.”

  “Well, try again,” Vielle said, and the aide scooted out. “Mr. Menotti, this is Dr. Lander. I told you about her.” She pushed him firmly back against the bed. “I’ll let you two get acquainted.”

  “Don’t let him get up,” she mouthed silently to Joanna and went out.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Mr. Menotti said. “You’re a doctor, maybe you can talk some sense into them. They keep saying I had a heart attack, but I couldn’t have. I work out three times a week.”

  “I’m not a medical doctor. I’m a cognitive psychologist,” Joanna said, “and I’d like to talk to you about your experience in the ambulance.” She pulled a release form out of her cardigan pocket and unfolded it. “This is a standard release form, Mr. Menotti—”

  “Call me Greg,” he said. “Mr. Menotti’s my father.”

  “Greg,” she said.

  “And what do I call you?” he asked and grinned. It was a very cute grin, if a little wolfish.

  “Dr. Lander,” she said dryly. She handed him the form. “The release form says that you give your permission for—”

  “If I sign it, will you tell me your first name?” he asked. “And your phone number?”

  “I thought your girlfriend was on her way here, Mr. Menotti,” she said, handing him a pen.

  “Greg,” he corrected her, trying to sit up again. Joanna leaped forward to hold the form so he could sign it without exerting himself.

  “There you go, Doctor,” he said, handing her back the form and pen. “Look, I’m thirty-four. Even if you’re not a doctor, you know guys my age don’t have heart attacks, right?”

  Wrong, Joanna thought, and usually they aren’t lucky enough to be revived after they code. “The cardiologist will be here in a few minutes,” she said. “In the meantime, why don’t you tell me what happened?” She switched on the minirecorder.

  “Okay,” he said. “I was on my way back to the office from playing racquetball—I play racquetball twice a week, Stephanie and I go skiing on the weekends. That’s why I moved out here from New York, for the skiing. I do downhill and cross-country, so you can see it’s impossible for me to have had a heart attack.”

  “You were on the way back to the office—” Joanna prompted.

  “Yeah,” Greg said. “It’s snowing, and the road’s really slick, and this idiot in a Jeep Cherokee tries to cut in front of me, and I end up in the ditch. I’ve got a shovel in the car, so I start digging myself out, and I don’t know what happened then. I figure a piece of ice off a truck must have hit me in the head and knocked me out, because the next thing I know, there’s a siren going, and I’m in an ambulance and a paramedic’s sticking these ice-cold paddles on my chest.”

  Of course, Joanna thought resignedly. I finally get a subject Maurice Mandrake hasn’t already corrupted, and he doesn’t remember anything. “Can you remember anything at all
between your—between being hit in the head and waking up in the ambulance?” Joanna asked hopefully. “Anything you heard? Or saw?” but he was already shaking his head.

  “It was like when I had my cruciate ligament operated on last year. I tore it playing softball,” he said. “One minute the anesthesiologist was saying, ‘Breathe deeply,’ and the next I was in the recovery room. And in between, nothing, zip, nada.”

  Oh, well, at least she was keeping him in bed until the cardiologist got there.

  “I told the nurse when she said you wanted to talk to me that I couldn’t have had a near-death experience because I wasn’t anywhere near death,” he said. “When you do talk to people who have died, what do they say? Do they tell you they saw tunnels and lights and angels like they say on TV?”

  “Some of them,” Joanna said.

  “Do you think they really did or that they just made it up?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “If I ever do have a heart attack and have a near-death experience, you’ll be the first one I’ll call.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Joanna said.

  “In which case, I’ll need your phone number,” he said, and grinned the wolfish grin again.

  “Well, well, well,” the cardiologist said, coming in with Vielle. “What have we here?”

  “Not a heart attack,” Greg said, trying to sit up. “I work out—”

  “Let’s find out what’s going on,” the cardiologist said. He turned to Joanna. “Will you excuse us for a few minutes?”

  “Of course,” Joanna said, gathering up her recorder. She went out into the ER. There was probably no reason to wait, Greg Menotti had said he hadn’t experienced anything, but sometimes, on closer questioning, subjects did remember something. And he was clearly in denial. To admit he’d had an NDE would be to admit he’d had a heart attack.

  “Why hasn’t he been taken to CICU?” the cardiologist’s voice, clearly talking to Vielle, said.

  “You’re not taking me anywhere till Stephanie gets here,” Greg said.

  “She’s on her way,” Vielle said. “I got in touch with her. She’ll be here in just a few minutes.”

  “All right, let’s have a listen to this heart of yours and see what’s going on,” the cardiologist said. “No, don’t sit up. Just stay there. All right . . . ”

  There was a minute or so of silence, while the cardiologist listened to his heart, and then instructions that Joanna couldn’t hear. “Yes, sir,” Vielle said.

  More murmured instructions. “I want to see Stephanie as soon as she gets here,” Greg said.

  “She can see you upstairs,” the cardiologist said. “We’re taking you up to CICU, Mr. Menotti. It looks like you’ve had a myocardial infarction, and we need to—”

  “This is ridiculous,” Greg said. “I’m fine. I got knocked out by a piece of ice, is all. I didn’t have a heart—” and then, abruptly, silence.

  “Mr. Menotti?” Vielle said. “Greg?”

  “He’s coding,” the cardiologist said. “Drop that bed and get a crash cart in here.” The buzz of the code alarm went off, and people converged on the room, running. Joanna backed out of the way.

  “Start CPR,” the cardiologist said, and something else Joanna couldn’t hear. The code alarm was still going, an intermittent ear-splitting buzz. Was it a buzzing or a ringing? Joanna thought irrelevantly. And then, wonderingly, that’s the sound they’re hearing before they go into the tunnel.

  “Get those paddles over here,” the cardiologist said. “And turn off that damned alarm.” The buzzing stopped. An IV pole clanked noisily. “Ready for defib, clear,” the cardiologist said, and there was a different kind of buzz. “Again. Clear.” A pause. “One amp epi.”

  “Too far away,” Greg Menotti’s voice said, and Joanna let out her breath.

  “He’s back,” someone said, and someone else, “Normal sinus rhythm.”

  “She’s too far away,” Greg said. “She’ll never get here in time.”

  “Yes, she will,” Vielle said. “Stephanie’s already on her way. She’ll be here in just a few minutes.”

  There was another pause. Joanna strained to hear the reassuring beep of the monitor. “What’s the BP?” the cardiologist said.

  “Fifty-eight,” but it was Greg Menotti’s voice.

  “Eighty over sixty,” another voice said.

  “No,” Greg Menotti said angrily. “Fifty-eight. She’ll never get here in time.”

  “She was just a few blocks away,” Vielle said. “She’s probably already pulling into the parking lot. Just hang on, Greg.”

  “Fifty-eight,” Greg Menotti said, and a pretty blond in a blue parka came hurrying into the ER, the nurse’s aide who’d been in the room before right behind her, saying, “Ma’am? You need to wait in the waiting room. Ma’am, you can’t go in there.”

  The blond pushed into the room. “Stephanie’s here, Greg,” Joanna heard Vielle say. “I told you she’d get here.”

  “Greg, it’s me, Stephanie,” the blond said tearfully. “I’m here.”

  Silence.

  “Seventy over fifty,” Vielle said.

  “I just left my cell phone in the car for a minute while I ran into the grocery store. I’m so sorry. I came as soon as I could.”

  “Sixty over forty and dropping.”

  “No,” Greg said weakly. “Too far away for her to come.” And then the steady flatline whine of the heart monitor.

  “Over Forked River. Course Lakehurst.”

  —LAST WIRELESS MESSAGE OF THE HINDENBURG

  ARE YOU SURE you told her I was looking for her?” Richard asked the charge nurse.

  “I’m positive, Dr. Wright,” she said. “I gave her your number when she was here this morning.”

  “And when was that?”

  “About an hour ago,” she said. “She was interviewing a patient.”

  “And you don’t know where she went from here?”

  “No. I can give you her pager number.”

  “I have her pager number,” Richard said. He had been trying her pager all morning and getting no response. “I don’t think she’s wearing it.”

  “Hospital regulations require all personnel to wear their pagers at all times,” she said disapprovingly and reached for a prescription pad as if to record the infraction.

  Well, yes, he thought, and if she had it on, it would make his life a lot easier, but it was a ridiculous rule-he turned his own pager off half the time. You were constantly being interrupted otherwise. And if he got Dr. Lander in trouble, she’d hardly be inclined to work with him.

  “I’ll try her pager again,” he said hastily. “You said she was interviewing a patient. Which patient?”

  “Mrs. Davenport. In 314.”

  “Thank you,” he said and went down the hall to 314. “Mrs. Davenport?” he said to a gray-haired woman in the bed. “I’m looking for Dr. Lander, and—”

  “So am I,” Mrs. Davenport said peevishly. “I’ve been having her paged all afternoon.”

  He was back to square one.

  “She told me I could have the nurse page her if I remembered anything else about my near-death experience,” Mrs. Davenport said, “and I’ve been sitting here remembering all sorts of things, but she hasn’t come.”

  “And she didn’t say where she was going after she interviewed you?”

  “No. Her pager went off when I was right in the middle, and she had to hurry off.”

  Her pager went off. So, at that point, at least, she had had it turned on. And if she had hurried off, it must have meant another patient. Someone who’d coded and been revived? Where would that be? In CICU? “Thank you,” he said and started for the door.

  “If you find her, tell her I’ve remembered I did have an out-of-body experience. It was like I was above the operating table, looking down. I could see the doctors and nurses working over me, and the doctor said, �
�It’s no use, she’s gone,’ and that’s when I heard the buzzing noise and went into the tunnel. I—”

  “I’ll tell her,” Richard said, and went back out into the hall and down to the nurses’ station.

  “Mrs. Davenport said Dr. Lander was paged by someone while she was interviewing her,” he said to the nurse. “Do you have a phone I can use? I need to call CICU.”

  The nurse handed him a phone and turned pointedly away.

  “Can you give me the extension for CICU?” he said. “I—”

  “It’s 4502,” a cute blond nurse said, coming up to the nurses’ station. “Are you looking for Joanna Lander?”

  “Yes,” he said gratefully. “Do you know where she is?”

  “No,” she said, looking up at him through her lashes, “but I know where she might be. In Pediatrics. They called down earlier, looking for her.”

  “Thanks,” he said, hanging up the phone. “Can you tell me how to get to Peds? I’m new here.”

  “I know,” she said, smiling coyly. “You’re Dr. Wright, right? I’m Tish.”

  “Tish, which floor is Peds on?” he asked. “The elevators are that way, right?”

  “Yes, but Peds is in the west wing. The easiest way to get there is to go over to Endocrinology,” she said, pointing in the other direction, “take the stairs up to fifth, and cross over—” She stopped and smiled at him. “I’d better show you. It’s complicated.”

  “I’ve already found that out,” he said. It had taken nearly half an hour and asking three different people to get from his office down to Medicine. “You can’t get there from here,” a pink-smocked aide had said to him. He’d thought she was kidding. Now he knew better.

  “Eileen, I’m running up to Peds,” Tish called to the charge nurse, and led him down the hall. “It’s because Mercy General used to be South General and Mercy Lutheran and a nursing school, and when they merged, they didn’t tear out anything. They just rigged it with all these walkways and connecting halls and stuff so it would work. Like doing a bypass or something.” She opened a door marked “Hospital Personnel Only” and started up the stairs. “These stairs go up to fourth, fifth, and sixth, but not seventh and eighth. If you want those floors, you have to go down that hall we were just in and use the service elevator. So how long have you been here?”