“ ‘You have seen what lies on the Other Side then?’ I asked her, and I could see the answer in her face, radiant with joy. She was a skeptic no longer. ‘You were right, Mr. Mandrake,’ she said. ‘It was a message from the Other Side.’ What more proof do we need of the afterlife that awaits us? Joanna herself has told us, with her last breath, her last words.”
Her last words, Richard thought. “Why do people in movies always say things like ‘The murderer is… Bang!’ ” Joanna had said at Dish Night. “You’d think, if they had something that important to communicate, they’d say it first.”
“Joanna used her last words to send a message from the Other Side,” Mr. Mandrake said. “How can we fail to heed that message? I for one intend to as I complete my new book, Messages from the Other Side.”
“ ‘You’re doing it wrong,’ ” she had said. “ ‘Important words first.’ ” “ ‘Tell Richard… SOS.’ ”
“Joanna had only a few minutes to live,” Mandrake said, “and how did she choose to spend it?
By sharing her vision of the afterlife with us.”
“She didn’t think it was the Titanic,” Kit had said. “She said she wished she could die saving somebody’s life.”
Mandrake must have finished. The organ was playing “Shall We Gather at the River?” and people were starting to file out. Richard followed them into the aisle, and then stood there, staring at Joanna’s casket.
“I don’t think that was what she was trying to tell you,” Vielle had said. “I think she was trying to tell you something good.”
People filed out past him, talking about the flowers, the solo, the casket. “She can’t be gone,” Nina sobbed to a gangly resident, “I can’t believe it.”
“I can’t believe it about fox, can you?” Davis’s message on the answering machine had said. “Warn me before it hits the star,” and Richard hadn’t understood the message at all. “She kept saying, ‘Water,’ ” Vielle had said. “She was really saying, ‘Walter.’ ”
The minister laid a hand on his arm. “Do you wish to say good-bye to the departed?” he whispered. “They’re about to close the casket.” Richard looked up the aisle. Two men in black suits stood by the casket, hands folded in front of them.
“There’ll be a luncheon in the fellowship hall downstairs,” the minister said. “We hope you’ll stay.” He gave Richard’s arm a gentle squeeze and walked up the aisle, nodding to the men as he went. They began moving the spray of flowers.
“The best plan would be to decide in advance what you wanted your last words to be and then memorize them, so you’d be ready,” Joanna had said.
The two men lowered the casket lid.
“Whatever it was must’ve been important,” Mr. Wojakowski had said. “She was in such a hurry to tell you, she almost ran me down.”
“Are you all right?” Eileen said, coming rapidly up the aisle to him.
The men fastened the casket lid shut and began shifting the blanket of flowers so it lay in the center.
“Look, we’re all going to go over to Santeramo’s and get a pizza,” Eileen said, taking his arm and leading him out of the sanctuary and over to the other two nurses. “Why don’t you come with us?”
“No,” he said, looking around for Kit and Vielle. He couldn’t see them.
“It’d do you good,” the nurse who had given him the pamphlet said. “It’d get your mind off it.”
“You need to eat something,” the other nurse said.
“I need to get back to the hospital. Vielle’s giving me a ride back,” he said firmly and set out through the crowd to find her and Kit.
The minister and Joanna’s sister were standing with Mandrake. “—just acknowledging there’s an afterlife isn’t enough,” Joanna’s sister was saying stubbornly to Mandrake. “You have to confess your sins before you can be saved.”
He couldn’t see Vielle anywhere, or Kit. They must have left, or else gone downstairs to the fellowship hall. He started across to the basement steps and ran into Mr. Wojakowski, holding forth to a circle of elderly ladies. “Hiya, Doc,” he said. “Sad, sad thing. I’ve seen a lot of funerals. On the Yorktown, they—”
“When you saw Joanna, that last day,” Richard said, “did she say what she wanted to tell me?”
“Nope. She was in too big a hurry. She didn’t even hear me the first coupla times I yelled at her. ‘Did somebody call battle stations?’ I asked her. At Midway, they’d call battle stations, and boy, did everybody scramble for their tin hats, ’cause they knew in about five minutes all hell’d be breaking loose. They’d run up those gangways so fast they didn’t even take time to put on their pants, scared as rabbits—”
“Joanna was scared?” Richard asked. “She seemed frightened, upset?”
“Joanna? Hell, no. She looked like my bunkmate Frankie Cocelli used to look during a battle. Little skinny guy, looked like you could snap him in two, but not afraid of anything. ‘Let me at ’em!’ he’d shout when the sirens went, and go tearing off like he couldn’t wait to get shot at. Did, too. Did I ever tell you how he got it? This Jap Zero—?”
“And that’s how Joanna looked?” Richard persisted. “Eager? Excited?”
“Yeah. She said she had to go find you, that she had something important to tell you.”
“But she didn’t say what?”
“Nope. So anyway, this Zero—”
Richard spotted Vielle, just inside the door. “Excuse me,” he said and edged his way through the crowd to her. “I’ve been looking for you,” he said.
“I was outside with Kit. She had to take her uncle home,” Vielle said. “He kept asking her who’d died, over and over.” She shook her head. “Poor man. Or maybe he’s the lucky one. At least he won’t remember this funeral.”
“I need to talk to you,” Richard said. “I need to know exactly what Joanna said to you in the ER.”
“If you’re worried about what Mandrake said, forget it. He’s lying,” Vielle said. “Joanna never voluntarily said two words to him in her life, let alone that NDEs were a message from the Other Side.”
“I know that,” he said impatiently. “I need to know what she said to you.”
“There’s no point in torturing yourself over—”
“The exact words. It’s important.”
She looked curiously at him. “Did something happen?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. What did she say? Exactly.”
“She said, ‘Tell Richard,’ ” Vielle said, squinting in her effort to remember. “ ‘It’s…’ The resident was trying to start an airway, and she waved him away. And then, ‘SOS. SOS.’ ”
He grabbed a pen out of his pocket and scribbled the words on the order of service. “ ‘Tell Richard… it’s… SOS, SOS,’ ” he said. “Is that all?”
“Yes. No. Just before that, she grabbed for my hand and said, ‘Important.’ ”
Important.
“Are you okay?” Vielle said.
“Yeah,” he said, staring at the order of service. Tell Richard it’s… what? What had she been trying to tell him when they interrupted her to put the airway in?
“Look, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be alone right now,” Vielle said, “especially after that travesty of a funeral.” She glared across the room at Mandrake and Joanna’s sister. “Some of us from the ER are going to go get something to eat. Why don’t you come with us?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve got to get back to the hospital.” He walked quickly out into the parking lot and caught a ride with Mrs. Dirksen from Personnel.
“Wasn’t that a beautiful sermon?” she asked him. “I loved the music.”
“Umm,” Richard said, not listening. Tell Richard it’s… Important. She had been trying to tell him something. Something important.