But something had changed. What? The monitors were all working, and if there had been some change in Carl’s vitals, they would have started beeping. She looked around the room at the computer, the IV stand, the heater. She put her hands in front of the vent. No air was coming out.
The heater shut off, she thought, and then, What I heard wasn’t a sound. It was the silence afterward. That was what I heard in the tunnel. That’s why I can’t describe it. Because it wasn’t a sound. It was the silence after something shut off, she thought, and almost, almost had it.
“Here we go, Carl, a nice toasty blanket,” Guadalupe said, unfolding a blue square. “I warmed it up for you in the microwave.” She stopped and stared at Joanna’s face, her clenched fists. “What’s wrong?”
I almost had it and now it’s gone again, Joanna thought, that’s what’s wrong. “I was just trying to remember something,” she said, making her hands unclench.
She watched Guadalupe lay the blanket over Carl, watched her tuck it around his shoulders. Something to do with a blanket and a heater. No, not a heater, she thought, in spite of the blanket, in spite of the woman’s saying, “It’s so cold.” It was something else, something to do with high school, and ransacking the pockets of Richard’s lab coat, and a place she had never been. A place that was right on the tip of her mind.
I know, I know what it is, she thought, and the feeling of dread returned, stronger than before.
17
“And in my dream an angel with white wings came to me, smiling.”
“Interesting,” Richard said when Joanna told him about the episode of the heater. “Describe the feeling again.”
“It’s a…” she searched for the right word, “…a conviction that I know where the hallway in my NDE is.”
“You’re not talking about a flashback, are you? You don’t find yourself there again?”
“No. And, no, it’s not déjà vu,” she said, anticipating his next question. “I know I’ve never been there before.”
“How about jamais vu? That’s the feeling that you’re in a strange place even though you’ve been there many times? It’s a temporal-lobe phenomenon, too.”
“No,” she said patiently. “It’s a place I know I’ve never been, but I recognize it. I know what it is, but I just can’t think of it. It’s like,” she pushed her glasses up on her nose, trying to think of a parallel, “okay, it’s like, one day I was at the movies with Vielle, and I saw this woman buying popcorn. I knew I’d seen her somewhere, but I couldn’t place her. I had the feeling it was something negative, so I didn’t want to go up to her and ask her, and I spent the whole movie trying to think whether she worked at the hospital or lived in my apartment building or had been a patient. It’s that feeling.” She looked expectantly at Richard.
“Who was she?”
“One of Mr. Mandrake’s cronies,” she said, and grinned. “Three-fourths of the way through the movie, Meg Ryan had her palm read, and I thought, ‘That’s where I know her from. She’s a friend of Mr. Mandrake’s,’ and Vielle and I sneaked out before the credits.”
Richard looked thoughtful. “And you think the heater going off was the same kind of trigger as the palm reading.”
“Yes, except it didn’t work. All three times I’ve felt like the answer was just out of reach—” She realized she was starting to make the clutching gesture again and stopped herself. “But I couldn’t get it.”
“When the feeling occurred, did you experience any nausea?”
“No.”
“Unusual taste or smell?”
“No.”
“Partial images?”
“Partial images?” she asked.
“Like when you’re trying to think of someone’s name, and you remember that it begins with a T.”
She knew what he meant. When Meg Ryan held her palm out to the fortune-teller, she had had a sudden memory of Mr. Mandrake calling to her from down the hall. “No.”
He nodded vigorously. “I didn’t think so. I think what you’re experiencing is a sense of incipient knowledge, a feeling of significance. It’s a visceral sensation of possessing knowledge coupled with an inability to state what the content of that knowledge is. It’s an effect of temporal-lobe stimulation, which turns on a significance signal in the limbic system, but without any content attached to it.”
“Like the sound,” Joanna said.
“Exactly. I’ll bet you both it and this feeling of recognizing the tunnel are temporal-lobe effects.”
“But I know—”
He nodded. “There’s an intense feeling of knowing. The person experiencing it will state definitely that he understands the nature of God or the cosmos, but when he’s asked to elaborate, he can’t. It’s a common symptom in temporal-lobe epileptics.”
“And NDEers,” Joanna said. “Over twenty percent of them believe they were given special knowledge or an insight into the nature of the cosmos.”
“But they can’t articulate it, right?”
“No,” she said, remembering an interview with a Mrs. Kelly. “The angel said, ‘Look at the light,’ ” Mrs. Kelly had said, “and as I did I understood the meaning of the universe.”
Joanna had waited, minirecorder running, pencil poised. “Which is?” she’d asked finally, and then, when Mrs. Kelly looked blank, “What is the meaning of the universe?”
“No one who hasn’t experienced it could possibly understand,” Mrs. Kelly had said haughtily. “It would be like trying to explain light to a blind man,” but Joanna could still remember the frantic, frightened look on her face. She hadn’t had a clue.
“But the knowledge NDEers feel they have is metaphysical,” Joanna said to Richard. “This feeling has nothing to do with religion or the nature of the cosmos.”
“I know, but in a subject with a scientific background, that sense of cosmic awareness might take another, secular form.”
“Like thinking I recognize the location of the tunnel.”
He nodded. “And attributing significance to random items, like the blanket and the heater, which is also a common phenomenon. What you’re interpreting as recognition is really just temporal-lobe overstimulation.”
“You’re wrong. I do know what it is. I just can’t…”
“Exactly,” Richard said. “You can’t tell me what it is because it’s an emotion, not actual knowledge. Feeling without content.”
Richard’s theory made sense. It explained why, in spite of repeated incidents, she was no closer to an answer, and why the stimuli seemed so unrelated—a blanket, a heater shutting off, Richard’s lab coat, a floor that looked wrong. And something to do with high school, she thought, don’t forget that.
“But it feels so real…”
“That’s because it’s the same neurotransmitters as are present when the brain experiences an actual insight,” Richard said. “If you have another incident, document everything you can about it. Circumstances, accompanying symptoms—”
“And if next time I actually figure out what it is?” she asked.
He grinned. “Then it wasn’t temporal-lobe stimulation. But I’m betting it is. It would account for the presence of such varied endorphins, and nearly all the core elements are also temporal-lobe symptoms—sounds, voices, light, feelings of ineffability and warmth…”
It wasn’t warm, Joanna thought stubbornly, it was cold. And I do know where it is. And the next time I have an incident, I’ll figure it out.