“I still haven’t been able to get in touch with Mrs. Haighton,” Joanna reported. “She was at the Women’s Networking Seminar or the Women’s Investment Club, I forget which. And there’s a problem with Mr. Pearsall. He couldn’t come in tomorrow or Thursday, so I scheduled him for today after Amelia.”
“Good,” he said. If Mr. Pearsall’s NDE showed the same beta-endorphin levels—
“Sorry I’m late,” Tish said, coming in. “I was at Happy Hour till after midnight. You should’ve been there, Dr. Wright.”
“Umm,” Richard said, and to Joanna, “Have any of your subjects used the word floating to describe the out-of-body experience?”
“Nearly all of them,” she said. “Or hovering.”
“Do you know if there’s a correlation between out-of-body experiences and a blindingly bright light?”
“No, I can check.”
“Hi, Dr. Wright,” Amelia said, coming in. She shrugged out of her backpack. “I’m sorry I’m late. Again.”
Tish handed her a folded gown. “I’m Tish,” she said. “I’m going to be prepping you today.”
Amelia ignored her. “I got a B-plus on that biochem exam, Dr. Wright!” she said. “And an A on my enzyme analysis.”
“Great,” Richard said. “Why don’t you go get dressed, and we’ll get this show on the road,” and went over to the console to look at the scans again while Tish prepped Amelia and started the IV, and then went over to the examining table.
“All set?” he asked Amelia.
She nodded. “Can I have a blanket first, though? I’m always so cold afterward.”
“Were you just as cold both times?” Joanna asked. “Or were you colder one time than the other?”
Amelia considered that. “I was colder last time, I think.”
Which might mean that was an effect of lower endorphin levels, too, rather than lowered body temp. He had the nurse start the feed and then went back over to the console to watch Amelia’s NDE. Both the intensity of activity and the number of sites were greater this time, so the variation must not be due to a developed resistance.
He looked over at the examining table. Joanna, who had looked anxious at the beginning of the session, had relaxed, and Amelia’s face had the same Mona Lisa smile as during previous sessions.
Richard kept her under for four minutes. When she came out, there were no frightened murmurs, and, as he had expected, Amelia described the light as being brighter and “sort of shining out,” spreading her hands in a feathering motion to indicate rays. Definitely endorphin-generated.
“Did you have a warm, safe feeling?” he asked, and felt a sharp kick to his ankle.
“Can you describe the feelings you had during the NDE?” Joanna asked, her face impassive.
“I felt warm and safe just like Dr. Wright said,” Amelia said, smiling at him, and he knew Joanna would accuse him of leading, but Amelia mentioned the warmth and the light several more times as she recounted what she’d seen, and when Joanna asked her, poker-faced, if she’d experienced anything that frightened her, her answer was a definite no.
What she had seen was a long, dark room “like a hallway,” with an open door at the end of it, and people standing behind the door. “Did you recognize the people?” Joanna asked, and there was a pause before Amelia shook her head. “They were dressed in white,” she offered.
“What happened then?” Joanna asked.
Amelia pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders. “They just stood there,” she said.
Joanna wasn’t able to get much more out of her except that she had heard a sound (which she couldn’t identify) as she entered the hallway, and that just before that, she had had a momentary sensation of floating.
Definitely the beta-endorphins, Richard thought. He needed to look at the neurotransmitter analysis and the bloodwork, but if they were both higher than Amelia’s two previous sessions, then possibly all the core elements were endorphin-generated. Which would mean that the NDE might be what Noyes and Linden had thought—a protective mechanism to shield the brain from the traumatic emotions of dying and not a survival mechanism after all.
If the endorphin levels consistently matched, and if increased levels produced more core elements. He needed more data to prove either of those premises, which meant sending Amelia under again as soon as possible, but scheduling her for another session turned out to be almost as difficult as scheduling Mrs. Haighton for an interview.
“I’ve got a really big anatomy test coming up next week,” Amelia said, smiling apologetically at Richard. “Could we do it after next week?”
“I’d really like to schedule it earlier than that,” Richard said.
“Okay, Dr. Wright,” Amelia said, smiling at him, “but I want you to know you’re the only person I’d do this for, and if I flunk anatomy, it’ll be your fault.”
By the time they’d worked out a time, Mr. Pearsall had arrived. After what had happened the day before, he was a little worried about Mr. Pearsall’s being able to achieve the NDE-state, but he not only achieved it, he was right on the mark. His scan matched the standard nearly as closely as Tanaka’s, and in the interview afterward, he reported five core elements, including an out-of-body experience.
“I was lying on the table, waiting for you and the doctor to start,” he told Joanna. “I couldn’t see anything, of course, because of the mask and my eyes being closed, and then all of a sudden I could. I was up above the table, and I could see everything, the nurse checking my blood pressure, and you, holding a little tape recorder up to my mouth, and the doctor over at the computer. There were colored patterns on the screens, and they kept changing, from yellow to orange and from blue to green.”
“You said you were above the table,” Joanna said. “Can you be more specific?”
“I was all the way up next to the ceiling,” Pearsall said. “I could see the tops of the windows and the cabinets.” But not what Joanna put up on top of the medicine cupboard, Richard thought, and everything else he described he’s looking at right now or could have seen when he came into the room.
He was impressed all over again at Joanna’s savvy. He shuddered to think what would have happened if he hadn’t asked her to work with him. Headlines in the Star: “Scientists Prove Life After Death Real,” with a testimonial from Mr. Mandrake and sidebar interviews with Dr. Foxx and Ms. Coffey the moon psychic. And no funding again ever, even from Mercy General. No credibility.
Joanna gave credibility to the project just by being on it. Sitting there in her cardigan sweater and wire-rimmed glasses, she was an island of sanity and sense in a field full of cranks and nutcases. He would never pick up the Star and find she’d decided the Other Side was real. And she wasn’t just sensible, she was intelligent, and an amazing interviewer. Without seeming to do anything at all, she elicited much more information than he’d been able to.
“What happened then?” she was asking Mr. Pearsall.
“I heard a sound, and then I was in a dark place,” Mr. Pearsall said.
“Can you describe the sound?” Joanna asked.
“It was a sort of… rumbling, like a truck going by… or a clattering.”
Or bullets hitting the wing of a Wildcat, Richard thought, wondering what the sound was that they all had so much trouble identifying. Was it a completely alien sound?
“And when I got to the end of the tunnel, there was a gate barring the way. I wanted to get through, but I couldn’t,” Mr. Pearsall said, but without any anxiety in his voice, and when Joanna asked him to describe the light, he said, “It was brighter than anything I’ve ever seen, and it made me feel peaceful and warm and safe.”