“On this floor?” Joanna asked, thinking of a crash cart trying to find its way up from five-west.
“On this floor,” Richard reassured her. “In this wing. But we won’t need it. The procedure’s perfectly safe, and the subjects are continuously monitored during and after the session.”
“I think I should tell you nothing’s happening,” Amelia said, her voice with the too-loud emphasis of nonhearing.
Richard raised one headphone an inch, said, “Coming right up,” and replaced it carefully over her ear. “You think there’s some other precaution we should be taking?” he asked Joanna.
Yes, Joanna thought. “No.”
“Okay, then, let’s do it,” he said. “Nurse, start the zalepam. I put the subjects into non-REM sleep first,” he explained to Joanna, “though it’s possible for them to achieve an NDE-state without.”
Nurse Hawley began the feed. Richard positioned himself in front of the console. After a minute, Amelia’s hands relaxed, the fingers splaying out a little from the position they had consciously held. Her face, half-hidden by the sleep mask, the electrodes, seemed to relax, too, the lips parting slightly, her breathing becoming lighter. Joanna glanced at the readouts. Amelia’s pulse had risen slightly and her brainwaves were shallower.
“See how the activity shifts from the motor and sensory cortexes to the inner brain,” he said, pointing to the screens. “She’s in non-REM sleep. Okay, now I’m starting the dithetamine. Watch.” He pointed to the scan image again, where the color in the anterior temporal lobe was deepening from yellow to red and changing shape. “The temporal lobe’s taking on the characteristic pattern of the NDE,” he said, and, as the temporal lobe flared to red, “And we have liftoff.”
“She’s experiencing an NDE?” Joanna looked up at the image and then back down at Amelia. “Right now?”
He nodded. “She should be looking at the light,” he said, “and feeling warm and peaceful.”
Joanna looked at Amelia. There was no indication that she was experiencing a tunnel or a bright light, and no sense, as Joanna had felt with Coma Carl or Greg Menotti, of Amelia’s being somewhere far away, out of reach. She simply looked asleep, her lips still slightly parted, her face relaxed, giving no clue of what she was experiencing.
Joanna looked up at the screen, but its bright blotches of blue and red and yellow told her no more than Amelia’s expression.
Richard had said her brain activity and vital signs were being monitored and an alarm would go off at any change in her blood pressure or brain function, but what if it didn’t show up on the monitors? Fourteen percent of NDEers reported having frightening experiences, devils and monsters and suffocating darkness. What if something terrifying was happening to Amelia right now and she had no way to tell them?
But she didn’t look terrified. In fact, she was smiling slightly, as if she were seeing something pleasant. Angels? Heavenly choirs? “How long does the NDE last?” Joanna asked.
“It depends,” Richard said, busy at the console. “Mr. O’Reirdon’s NDE lasted three minutes, but there’s no physical reason they can’t go ten to fifteen minutes.”
But four to six minutes causes brain death, Joanna thought, still unable to shake the feeling that this was an actual NDE and not a simulation.
“Theoretically, it could last as long as dithetamine’s being fed in,” he said, “but half the time, the—damn!”
“What? Is something wrong?” Joanna asked, glancing anxiously at the monitors and then at Amelia.
“She came out of the NDE spontaneously,” Richard said. “I don’t know if it’s a problem with the dosage or if it’s related to the NDE. It’s one of the things we need to find out, what’s kicking them out of the NDE-state and back into consciousness.”
“She’s awake?”
“No,” Richard said, taking another look at the monitors. “She’s back in non-REM sleep.”
Joanna looked down at Amelia. Her hands still lay limply on the foam. The pleased half-smile remained. “If the NDE is causing it,” Richard said, “it may be the same mechanism that causes patients experiencing an NDE to revive, and if that’s the case—”
There was a sound. “Shh,” Joanna said, and bent over Amelia.
“Is she awake?” Richard said, looking at the screens. “She shouldn’t be. The pattern shows her in non-REM sleep.”
“Shh,” Joanna said and bent close to Amelia’s mouth.
“Oh, no,” Amelia murmured, and her voice was hoarse and despairing. “Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no.”
8
“To die would be an awfully big adventure.”
Amelia Tanaka had no memory of anything negative in her NDE. “It was just like the last time,” she told Joanna. “There was a light, and this wonderful feeling.”
“Can you describe it?”
“The feeling?” Amelia said dreamily. “Calm… safe. I felt enveloped in love.”
You didn’t sound enveloped in love, Joanna thought. You sounded terrified. “Did you have that feeling the entire time?”
“Yes.”
Joanna gave up on that for the moment. “Can you describe the light?”
“It was beautiful,” Amelia said. “It was bright, but it didn’t hurt my eyes.”
“What color was it?”
“White. Like a lamp, only really bright,” she said, and this time she squinted, as if it had hurt to look at it, in spite of what she had said.
“Was the light there all the time?”
“No, not at first, not till after they opened the door.”
Richard looked sharply at Joanna. I’m going to have to tell him he can’t be present at these interviews, she thought. “Where was the door?” she asked impassively.
“At the end of… I don’t know,” Amelia said, frowning. “I was in a hall, or a tunnel, or…” She shook her head.
Joanna waited, giving her time to say something else. When she didn’t, Joanna said, “You said, ‘They opened the door.’ Can you be more specific?”
“Um, I didn’t actually see anybody open the door,” Amelia said. “It was dark, and then all of a sudden, there was a light, like when somebody opens a door at night and the light spills in. I thought…” She squinted again and then shook her head. “There was a light.”
“Did you hear anything?”
She shook her head, and then said, “There was a sound at the very beginning.”
“Can you describe it?”
“It was a…” A ringing or a buzzing, Joanna thought resignedly. “I can’t really describe it,” Amelia said. “I heard a sound, and then I was in this hall and the door opened and I saw the light. It was very real.”
“How did it feel real?”
“It wasn’t like a dream. I was really there,” but when Joanna pressed her about tactile sensations and sensory involvement, she turned vague again. “The light was all around me. I felt warm and… nice.”
“What about before the light? When you were in the dark place?”
Amelia smiled. “Peaceful.”
“Were you aware of the temperature?”
“No, not at all.”
You just said you felt warm, Joanna thought, but she didn’t say it. She switched the questioning to the door and the people in white, and then, after several minutes, brought the conversation back to feelings, but Amelia merely repeated that she had felt calm, nice, warm. “The warmth surrounded me, like the light,” she said, “and then Dr. Wright was removing my headphones and asking me how I was feeling.”