Joanna burst through the side door to the ER and stood there, panting. She couldn’t see Kit anywhere, or paramedics or the crash team. Over by the ambulance doors a security guard straightened from leaning against the wall and looked at her. You have to act normal, she thought, and tried to slow her breathing, calm her expression, look like she was just down here looking for someone.
She tried to spot the aide—what was her name, Nina?—that Vielle was always yelling at, or the gangly intern, but the flu had apparently taken its toll. She didn’t recognize a soul, and she couldn’t just march into the trauma rooms, particularly not with the security guard eyeing her, although he had apparently seen her lanyard and ID and decided she was on staff and belonged here. He had gone back to leaning against the wall.
She still couldn’t go barging into trauma rooms. She’d have to ask the admissions nurse. She pushed her way across the ER and out to the admissions desk. “I’m looking for Patrick Briarley,” she said urgently to the admissions nurse, whom she didn’t recognize. “His niece, Kit Gardiner, would have brought him in.”
“Briarley?” the nurse said, typing in his name and looking for several moments at the screen. “You’re too late.”
Too late. I knew that, Joanna thought. I saw him on the Other Side. I can document it.
“He just left,” the nurse said.
“Left?” The word made no sense.
The nurse looked defensive. “There was nothing on his record about him staying until you arrived, Dr.—?” she said, trying to read Joanna’s ID badge. “Do you want his home number? I’d call it for you, but I don’t think they’re there yet. They just left, not five minutes ago.”
“For upstairs?” He hadn’t died, after all. The crash team had managed to revive him. “He’s been admitted?”
“For a cut thumb?” the nurse said.
A cut thumb? Not a stroke or a heart attack. A cut thumb. He wasn’t dead. She had frightened herself like a superstitious child, spooked by shadows.
“You say he was cut,” Joanna said. “How badly?”
“You’ll have to talk to the resident on duty,” the nurse said, staring suspiciously at Joanna’s ID badge. “Dr. Carroll. That’s who treated him.”
Joanna turned and walked purposefully into the ER, wishing it were an intern instead of a resident who’d treated him. They talked freely about patients and treatments to anybody who asked them. Vielle was always drilling patient confidentiality into them. “At least by the time they’re residents, they’ve learned that,” she’d told Joanna, “even if they haven’t learned anything else.”
She’d have to ask one of the nurse’s aides. Oh, good, Nina was here after all, over by the instrument sterilizer. She walked over to her. “Nina, I need—”
Nina jumped and dropped a pair of forceps. “Oh, Dr. Lander, what are you doing down here?” she said, looking nervously around. “If you’re looking for Nurse Howard, she’s not here.”
“I know. It’s you I need to talk to. Who assisted Dr. Carroll with the patient who was just in with a cut thumb? Mr. Briarley?”
“Mr. Briarley?” Nina said, sounding relieved for some reason, but, instead of answering, she motioned Joanna into the communications room. It was still unfinished, the radio console trailing wires, and boxes everywhere. Nina pulled the door shut. “So we can talk without all that noise.”
There hadn’t been all that much noise, but maybe Nina had had patient confidentiality drilled into her, too. “Who assisted Dr. Carroll in bandaging Mr. Briarley’s cut thumb?” Joanna asked.
“Nobody,” Nina said. “It wasn’t a bad enough cut for stitches. Dr. Carroll just butterflied it and then put a bandage on it because his niece said otherwise he’d forget what the butterfly was for and pull it off.”
Mr. Briarley cut his thumb. He was here in the ER having it bandaged while I was seeing him on the Titanic, and the feeling that he was dead came from the temporal lobe, not the Other Side. And if the feeling, no, the conviction, that Mr. Briarley was dead was false, what about the conviction that the Titanic was somehow the key to NDEs?
“…funny old guy,” Nina was saying. “He kept saying, ‘Who would have thought the old man would have had so much blood in him?’ and something about the ocean.”
“ ‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?’ ” Joanna said.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Nina said. “Is that from something?”
“Macbeth,” Joanna said. She could remember him acting out scenes for them, with a ruler for a sword. “ ‘Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.’ ”
Horrible imaginings. What an appropriate quotation to remember. That was exactly what she’d been indulging in. “Lady Macbeth suffers from a lack of imagination,” he’d said in class, “and Macbeth from too much, hearing voices and seeing ghosts.”
“Is there a phone in the waiting room?” she asked Nina abruptly.
“Sure,” Nina said, “but I can bring you one.”
She went out. Joanna could hear a woman’s voice saying plaintively, “You don’t understand, the British are com—” before Nina shut the door behind her.
She was back immediately with a cordless phone. “There’ll be phones in here if they ever get this thing done,” she said, handing it to Joanna.
“Thanks,” Joanna said and didn’t wait for Nina to leave to punch in the number. The line was busy. Joanna hit “end” and then “redial.”
“I have to warn them!” the same woman’s voice said, loud even through the door, and rising ominously. “One if by land, two if by sea!”
“Uh-oh,” Nina said, leaning out the door to look. “It sounds like another nutcase just came in. I hope it’s just a schizo and not somebody on rogue. After what happened—” She stopped, looking nervous. “What I mean is, they’re so out of it, they don’t even know what they’re doing. They look at you, and they don’t even see you. It’s like they’re in this whole other place.”
Joanna wasn’t listening. The phone was ringing.
“Nina!” a man’s voice called. “John! I need some assistance here. Stat.”
“I gotta go,” Nina said, looking out the door. Three rings. Four.
“I’m fine!” the woman shrieked. “You don’t understand, I saw the signal! It was real!”
“Nina! Get out here! Guard!”
“Just leave the phone on the station desk when you’re done.” Nina went out, shutting the door behind her. Six rings. Seven.
“Hello,” Mr. Briarley said.
Relief flooded over Joanna. “Mr. Briarley?”
“Yes. Who’s calling?”
“I… it’s Joanna Lander,” she stammered. “I—”
“Oh, yes, Ms. Lander. Did you wish to speak to Kit?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get her. Kit!” she heard him call, “it’s Joanna Lander,” and Kit came on the line.
“Oh, hi, Joanna. Look, I’m afraid I haven’t had time to look for the book or find out the things you asked about. Uncle Pat cut his thumb, and—”
“I know,” Joanna said. “Is he all right?”
“He’s fine, though I was really scared when I saw all that blood. I didn’t know a cut thumb could bleed like that.”