Passage. Part 90

"Jump!" the little girl commanded. She circled her arms into a hoop. "Jump!"

The bulldog looked curiously at her, his head to one side.

The little girl dropped her arms. "What will happen when the Carpathia gets here?" she asked.

The Carpathia isn't coming, Joanna thought. It's too far for her to come, too far for anyone or anything to come and save us.

"They check your name off on a list when you go on board," the little girl said. She had taken off her hair ribbon and was tying it around the dog's neck. "What'll I tell them when they say, 'What's your name, little girl?' " She tied the hair ribbon into a bow. It was singed at the ends. "If you don'tknow your name, they don't let you on."

It doesn't matter, it isn't coming, Joanna thought, but she said, "How about if I give you a name, like you named Ulla?"

The little girl looked skeptical. "What name?"

Not Maisie, Joanna thought. The name of some child who had been on the t.i.tanic. Lorraine.

But Lorraine Allison had gone down, the only child in First Cla.s.s who had not been saved. Not Lorraine. Not the name of any child who'd died on the t.i.tanic. Not Beatrice Sandstrom or Nina Harper or Sigrid Anderson.

The little girl who had been on the Lusitania who had gotten separated from her mother-what was her name?-the little girl the stranger had saved. "He threw her into the boat," she could hear Maisie's voice saying, "and then he jumped in, and they were both saved."

Helen. Her name had been Helen. "Helen," Joanna said. "I'm going to call you Helen."

The little girl picked up the dog's front paw. "How do you do?" she said. "My name is Helen."

She dropped her voice to a gruff ba.s.s. "How do you do? My name's Ulla." She let go of his paw.

"Roll over, Ulla!" she commanded, "Play dead!"

The French bulldog sat, his ear c.o.c.ked, not understanding. The wind that had sprung up as it grew light died down, and the water, already smooth as gla.s.s, became even smoother, but the sky did not change. It remained pink, reflecting its rosy light on the water and the ice and the polished walnut of the piano. "Stay!" Helen said to the unmoving dog, and they all obeyed, the sky and the water and the sea.

An eon went by. Helen stopped trying to teach the dog tricks and took him onto her lap. The wind that had sprung up as it grew light, died down, and the water stilled even more, till it was imperceptible from the pink sky. But the sun did not come up. And no ship appeared on the horizon.

"Is this still the NDE?" Helen asked. She had set the dog down and was leaning over the side of the piano, staring down into the water.

"I don't know," Joanna said.

"How come we're just sitting here?"

"I don't know."

"I bet we're becalmed," Helen said, trailing her hand lazily back and forth in the still water. "Like in that poem."

"What poem?"

"You know, the one with the bird."

" 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'?" Joanna said and remembered Mr. Briarley saying, " 'TheRime of the Ancient Mariner' is not, contrary to the way it is popularly taught, a poem about similes and alliteration and onomatopoeia. Neither is it about albatrosses and oddly spelled words. It is a poem about resurrection."

And Purgatory, Joanna thought, the ship eternally becalmed, the crew all dead, "alone on a wide, wide sea," and wondered if that was what this was, a place of punishment and penance. In 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' a rain had come, and a breeze, washing away sin, setting them free.

Joanna scanned the sky, but there were no clouds, no wind. It was still as death.

"How come we're becalmed?" Helen asked.

"I don't know," Joanna said.

"I bet we're waiting for somebody," Helen said.

No, Joanna thought, not Maisie. Don't let it be Maisie we're waiting for.

"We have to be waiting for something," Helen said, trailing her hand lazily back and forth in the pink water. "Otherwise something would happen."

Something was happening. The light was changing, jagged peaks of ice going from pink to peach, the sea turning from rose to coral. The sun's going down, Joanna thought, though there had been no sun, only the pink, even light.

"What's happening?" Helen asked, creeping closer to Joanna.

"It's getting dark," Joanna said, thinking hopefully of the clear, shining stars.

Helen shook her head, her dark curls bobbing. "Hunh-unnh," she said. "It's getting red."

It was, staining the water the red of sandstone mesas, the red of canyons. "It got red in the big top," Helen said. "All around."

Joanna put her arm around her, around Ulla, pulling them close, shielding them from the sky.

"Don't let it be Maisie," she whispered. "Please."

The sky continued to redden, till it was the color of fire, the color of blood. The red of disaster.

58.

"It's all right, little girl. You go. I will stay."

-Last words spoken to Mary Marvin by her husband, Daniel, as he put her into one of the t.i.tanic's lifeboats.

Maisie was really good. She didn't push the b.u.t.ton on her pager, even though Dr. Wright didn't come see her for a really long time.

After a whole week, she started worrying that maybe something had happened to him, like Joanna, and she asked Nurse Lucille to call him, she had a question about her pager she had to ask him, and Nurse Lucille told her he couldn't come right now, he was busy working on something important, and asked her if she wanted to watch a video.

Maisie said no, but Nurse Lucille put in The Sound of Music anyway. She always put in The Sound of Music, every time. It was her favorite video, probably because she looked just like the wrinkly old nuns.

Finally, Kit came. She looked really pretty and excited. "Did Dr. Wright talk to Mr.

Mandrake?" Maisie asked her.

"Yes," Kit said. "This is a present from Richard-Dr. Wright. He said it's to thank you for telling him about Mr. Mandrake." She handed Maisie a package wrapped in red paper that looked like a video.

"What did Mr. Mandrake say?" Maisie said. "He did talk to Joanna that day, didn't he? Did she tell him the thing Dr. Wright was trying to find out?"

"Open your present, and then I'll tell you everything." Kit walked swiftly to the door and pulled the curtains together. "Dr. Wright said to open it and get it put away before your mother comes back."

"Really? What is it?" She began ripping the paper off. "The Hindenburg!" she said, looking happily at the picture of the flaming zeppelin on the box.

"Dr. Wright said to warn you the movie's not exactly like the real Hindenburg crash. He says they changed the ending so the dog survives."

"I don't care!" Maisie said, clasping the video to her chest. "It's perfect!"

"Where do you want me to put it?" Kit asked.

"Get one of my videos on the bottom of the nightstand No, not The Secret Garden. Nurse Evelyn loves The Secret Garden. She puts it in every time she's on shift."

"How about Winnie the Pooh?"

"Yeah, that's good."

Kit handed her the plastic video case. Maisie handed her The Hindenburg. "Here, open this,"

she said, opened Winnie the Pooh, and took the video out.

Kit tore the cellophane off The Hindenburg and handed it back to Maisie, and she slid it out of its box, put it in the Winnie the Pooh box, and handed Kit the Winnie the Pooh video. "Put it on the bottom," she said.Kit slid it under the bottom video of the stack. "And I suppose you want me to take this home with me?" she asked, holding out the Hindenburg box. Maisie nodded. "You know, Maisie," Kit said seriously, "after you get your new heart, you're going to have to stop lying and tricking your mother."

"What did Mr. Mandrake say?" Maisie said. "Did he tell Dr. Wright what Joanna said?"

"No," Kit said, "but Richard found out anyway. Joanna was trying to tell us the NDE was a kind of SOS. It's a message the brain sends out to the different chemicals in the brain to find one that will signal the heart to start beating and the patient to start breathing."

"After they code," Maisie said.

"Yes, and now that Richard knows what it is, he can design a method to send those same chemicals to-"

"He really does have a coding treatment?" Maisie asked excitedly. "I just made that up."

Kit shook her head. "Not yet, but he's working on it. He's developed a prototype, but it still has to be tested," her face got real serious, "and even if it works-"

"He might not do it in time," Maisie said, and was afraid Kit was going to lie and say, "Of course he will," but she didn't.

"He said to tell you that, no matter what happens, you did something important," Kit said. "You helped make a discovery that may save lots and lots of lives."

A few days later Richard came and asked the nurses a whole bunch of questions about what she weighed and stuff. He hardly talked to Maisie at all, except right when he was leaving, he looked up at the TV and he said, "Seen any good movies lately?"

"Yes!" she said, "this really good movie, except for they made the dog a dalmatian instead of a German shepherd. And they left out the guy who had the NDE, but the rest is pretty good. I love the part where the guy goes and lets the dog out."

She watched it over and over. She had the meal guy put it in for her when he came to get her supper tray and had the night shift nurse's aide take it out before she went to sleep.

Sometimes she didn't feel like watching TV or anything. It was hard to breathe, and she got all puffed up in spite of the dopamine. Her heart doctors came in and told her they were going to put her on dobutamine, and after that she felt a little better and felt like talking to Kit when she came to see her.

"Do you still have your pager?" Kit asked.

"Yes," Maisie said and showed her how she had it clipped to her dog tags chain.

"It's very important that you wear it all the time," Kit said. "If you start to feel like you did before you coded, or if you hear your monitor start to beep, you push the b.u.t.ton. Don't wait. Push it right away.""What if then I don't code?" Maisie asked. "Will I get in trouble?"

"No," Kit said, "not at all. You push it, and then you try to hang on. Dr. Wright will come right away."

"What if he's not in the hospital?"

"He'll be in the hospital."

"But what if he's a long way away, like the Carpathia?" Maisie persisted. "It's a really big hospital."

"He knows all the shortcuts," Kit said.

Dr. Wright came again with three of Maisie's heart doctors and her mom's lawyer, and they asked her how she was feeling and looked at her monitors and then went out in the hall. Maisie could see them talking, though they were too far away for her to hear what they were saying. Dr. Wright talked for a little while, and then her heart doctor talked a lot, and then the lawyer talked for a really long time and handed them a lot of papers, and everybody left.

A couple of days after that, Vielle came to see her. She was wearing a pager, too. "They won't let me work in the ER until my hand gets better," she said, looking mad only not really, "so they sent me up here to take care of you." Vielle looked up at the TV. "What is that?" She made a face. "The Sound of Music? I hate The Sound of Music. I always thought Maria was way too cheerful. Don't you have any good videos around here? I can see I'm going to have to bring in some of mine."

She did, but Maisie didn't get to watch them because her mom had started staying in her room all the time, even at night. It didn't matter. Most of the time she was too tired to even watch The Sound of Music and she just lay there and thought about Joanna.

They kept having to take her down to have echocardiograms and one of the times when they were getting her into position, the b.u.t.ton on her pager got pressed, and Vielle and a crash cart and about a hundred doctors and nurses showed up, and a couple of minutes later Dr. Wright came running in, all panting and out of breath, and after that she didn't feel so worried, but she still felt terrible. It was hard to breathe, even with the oxygen mask, and her head hurt.

Her heart doctors came in and told her they were going to put a special pump in that would help her heart do its work. "An L-VAD or a bivad?" she asked.

"An L-VAD," they said, but then they didn't.

"They've decided to wait till you're feeling better," her mom said. "And, anyway, your new heart's going to be here any day now."

"When they put a new heart in," Maisie asked Vielle the next time she came in to check her vitals, "do they cut your chest open?"

"Yes," Vielle said, "but it won't hurt.""And your arms have IVs in them and stuff?" Maisie said.

"Yes, but you'll be under the anesthetic. You won't feel a thing."

"Can I have some adhesive tape?" Maisie asked. "And some scissors?" and when her mom went down to the cafeteria for dinner, Maisie took her dog tags off and went to work.

The next day her mom said, "You have to think positive thoughts, sweetie. You have to say to yourself, 'My new heart's going to come in just a few days, and then this will all be over, and I'll forget all about feeling uncomfortable. I'll get to go to school again and play soccer!' "

And a little while later, Vielle came in and said, "You just have to hang on a little longer, honey,"

but she couldn't. She was too tired, even, to push the b.u.t.ton on her special pager, and then she was in the tunnel.

There was no smoke this time, and no light either. The tunnel was totally black. Maisie put her hand out, trying to feel the wall, and touched a narrow metal strut. Next to it there was nothing for a little ways and then another metal strut, at a different angle, and another.

"I'll bet this is the Hindenburg," she said. "I'll bet I'm up inside the zeppelin." She looked up, trying to see the inside of the big silver balloon far overhead, but it was too dark, and the floor she was walking on wasn't a metal catwalk, it was soft, and too wide. Even when she took hold of the metal strut and stretched out both arms as far as they would reach, she couldn't feel anything but s.p.a.ce on the other side of the tunnel.

So it must not be the Hindenburg, she thought, but she didn't dare let go of the strut for fear it was and she would fall.