“I don’t want him to see me like this,” Mrs. Aspinall said tearfully, dabbing at her eyes.
“I’ll get you a Kleenex,” Guadalupe said, disappearing around the corner of the nurses’ station.
Joanna didn’t hesitate. She bolted out the door, across the hall, and into the waiting room, and just in time. Guadalupe reappeared with the Kleenex, Mrs. Aspinall blew her nose, and all three of them started toward Carl’s room.
There was no one in the waiting room. Joanna leaned against the door, waiting for them to go into the room. It’s an SOS, Joanna thought, belated understanding pouring in like seawater through the gash in the Titanic’s side. That’s what the NDE is. It’s the dying brain sending out a call for help, a distress signal, tapping out Morse-code messages to the nervous system: “Come at once. We have struck a berg.”
Transmitting signals to the brain’s neurotransmitters, trying to find one that could kick lungs that were no longer breathing into action, trying to find one that could jump-start a heart that was no longer beating. Trying to find the right one.
And sometimes it succeeded, reviving patients who were clinically dead, bringing them back abruptly, miraculously. Like Mr. O’Reirdon. Like Mrs. Woollam. Because the message got through.
“Carl, oh, Carl!” Mrs. Aspinall said tearfully. “You’re all right!”
Joanna looked down the hall. Mrs. Aspinall and Guadalupe had gone into the room, and the aide was headed back toward the elevators, carrying a piece of equipment.
Joanna waited till she’d gone into the elevator, and then ran down to the nurses’ station. She grabbed up the phone receiver from behind the counter, leaning over it to punch in the lab’s number. If Guadalupe caught her out here, she’d just think she’d gone and then come back.
If Carl hasn’t blabbed, she thought, listening to the phone ring. “Answer, Richard,” she murmured. “Answer.”
Answer. That was what the NDE was doing, too, punching in numbers and listening to the phone ring, trying to get through, hoping someone would answer on the other end. And if Richard knows it’s an SOS, she thought, he’ll be able to figure out what the other end is.
And no wonder her mind, trying to make sense of it, had fastened on to the Titanic. It was the perfect metaphor. The SOS sent five minutes after the Californian’s wireless operator had gone to bed, the Morse lamp, the rockets, the screams for help from the water. And above all, Phillips sitting in the wireless room, faithfully tapping out, “SOS, CQD,” tapping out, “We are flooded up to the boilers,” sending out calls for help to the very end.
Richard wasn’t answering. He’s sitting at the console, she thought, staring at Mrs. Troudtheim’s scan, trying to figure out the problem. “It’s not a problem, Richard,” she murmured. “It’s the answer.” And it made evolutionary sense, just like he had predicted it would. The NDE wasn’t cushioning the body from trauma, wasn’t setting a death program in motion. It was trying to stop it.
The answering machine clicked on. “This is Dr. Wright’s office. If you wish to leave—” his voice said, but Joanna had already jammed the phone down and was pelting up the stairs to the lab.
Richard wasn’t there. The door was locked, so he intended to be gone for longer than a few minutes. She unlocked it and went in, and then stood there, staring around the deserted lab, trying to think where he might have gone. Down to the cafeteria for lunch? she thought, and glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to one. The cafeteria might actually be open this time of day.
He said he had an appointment, she thought, and tried to remember his words when he was in her office. He’d said, “I’m going to be out of the lab for a while.” Where?
Dr. Jamison, she thought, what Richard had said clicking in suddenly. She walked rapidly over to the phone and called the switchboard. “Get me Dr. Jamison’s office,” and listened to another droning ring.
Doesn’t anybody answer their phones? Joanna thought. No, and the brain kept calling and calling, trying first one number and then, when there was no answer, another. Dialing and redialing, punching in code after code, trying to connect.
She depressed the receiver button and called the switchboard again. “Where’s Dr. Jamison’s office? What floor?”
“I’ll have to look that up,” the operator said, and, after a maddening minute, “841.”
“Thanks,” Joanna said and started to hang up, then thought better of it. “I want you to page her for me,” she said.
“Do you want her to call the lab?”
“No. My pager. And I want you to page Dr. Wright, too,” she said, reaching in her pocket to switch her pager on, thinking with a sudden sinking feeling, He won’t have his turned on either.
She hung up. Room 841 was in the west wing. The shortest way would be to go down to fifth and take the walkway across. No, they were painting the walkway on fifth. Down to the walkway on third. She scribbled a note: “Went to find you. Page me,” dropped it on his desk, and ran out, slamming the door behind her, not even taking the time to lock it, hitting the elevator button again and again, willing it to open, willing it not to stop on fifth, or fourth.
When the elevator opened on third, she ran down the hall, across the walkway, and through Medicine to the other walkway. Don’t let Mrs. Davenport be out taking a constitutional, she thought, glancing nervously at the door to her room. I don’t have time to listen to her latest confabulations.
Joanna pressed close to the other wall and hurried past the half-open door, past the sunroom, past the nurses’ station.
“Hey, Doc!” a voice called behind her. “Doc!” Mr. Wojakowski. She kept going, acting as if she hadn’t heard him. Down to the end of the hall. Around the corner. Into the walkway.
The walkway door opened behind her. “Doc!” Mr. Wojakowski called, panting. “Doc Lander! Wait up!” and there was nothing to do but turn around.
“I thought that was you, Doc,” he said, beaming. “I saw you back there and tried to catch you as you went past, but you were going like you’d just heard ’em sound ‘Battle Stations.’ Where you headin’ in such a hurry?”
“I’m looking for Dr. Wright. I have to find him right away,” she said.
“I haven’t seen him,” he said cheerfully. “I came to visit a friend of mine.” He nodded his head back in the direction of Medicine. “Had a stroke. Bad one, too. One whole side paralyzed, can’t talk. Happened while he was square dancing. Fell over right in the middle of a dosey-doh—”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Joanna said, glancing toward the end of the walkway. “I wish I could stay and talk. I—”
“You know who you remind me of? Ace Willey. He was a midshipman on the Yorktown, and he was always in a hurry. ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going in such a hurry?’ I used to say to him. ‘You’re on a damned ship.’ Well, one day, he’s hurrying across the hangar deck, and he steps into an open hatch and—”
“Mr. Wojakowski, I’d love to hear the rest of your story, but I’ve got to go. I have to find Dr. Wright.” She took off across the walkway, looking determinedly ahead.
“Wait up, Doc.” He caught up to her as she reached the door. “I had something I wanted to ask you.”
She pushed open the door. “Mr. Wojakowski, I—”
“Ed.”
“Ed,” she said, not stopping. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t have time to talk.”
“I just wanted to know if you’d ever got that schedule of yours figured out,” he said, panting to keep up with her.