Passage

She did that as soon as she got to work, hoping Vielle would be busy so she couldn’t interrogate her again. She was. The ER was jammed. “Spring has sprung!” Vielle said, and when Joanna looked confused, remembering the sleet she’d just driven to work in, explained, “Flu season, in force. Fevers, dehydration, projectile vomiting — you’d better get out of here.”

“You, too,” Joanna said. “I just came to tell you I invited someone to Dish Night.”

“Oh, please tell me it’s Officer Denzel!”

“It’s not,” Joanna said. “It’s the niece of my high school English teacher. That’s who I went to see the other day when I borrowed your car. Mr. Briarley,” Joanna said, wondering how she was going to explain why she’d gone to see him. “He has Alzheimer’s.”

“Alzheimer’s,” Vielle said, shaking her head sympathetically. “Didn’t he have a Do Not Resuscitate order? His relatives should definitely get one for him if this happens again. We get last-stage Alzheimer’s patients in here, and reviving them isn’t a kindness,” Vielle said, and Joanna realized Vielle thought that Mr. Briarley had coded and been revived, and that she’d gone over to record his NDE.

Maybe I can let her go on thinking that, Joanna thought, but Kit might say something. And Vielle’s your best friend. You have no business lying to your best friend. But she couldn’t tell her the truth. If she so much as mentioned the Titanic —

“Remember when we were talking the other night about the best way to die?” Vielle was saying. “Well, Alzheimer’s has got to be the worst, forgetting everything you ever knew or loved or were, and knowing it’s happening. Was he a good teacher?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “He used to recite pages and pages of Keats and Shakespeare, and his tests were incredibly hard.”

“He sounds like a real gem,” Vielle said sarcastically.

“He was. He had this dry sense of humor, and he knew everything, all about literature and writers and history. He was always telling us the most fascinating things. Did you know Charles Lamb’s sister stabbed their mother to death one night at the dinner table with a table knife?”

“It sounds like you paid a lot more attention in English class than I did,” Vielle said.

But not enough, Joanna thought, not enough, because I can’t remember what he said about the Titanic. “He knew everything. That’s why I went to see him,” Joanna said, hoping Vielle wouldn’t ask her to be more specific. “I didn’t know he had Alzheimer’s, and I met his niece, and I had to invite her. She’s his full-time caregiver and she never gets out, the only time she leaves the house is to go to the grocery store, and they never have any visitors—”

“Gilbert and Sullivan try to rescue another drowning victim,” Vielle murmured.

“I’m not — well, all right, maybe I am, but she’s very nice, you’ll like her.”

“So that was why you tore off like that in my car and were gone for over four hours,” Vielle said skeptically. “To ask your old English teacher a question? About Charles Lamb’s sister?”

“No,” Joanna said. “Is there any particular video you want me to get for tonight? Besides Glory?”

“How about Meet Joe Black?” Vielle said. “About a woman who falls so much in love with Death she nearly ends up dying.”

“I’ll get a comedy,” Joanna said and went up to see Guadalupe, who wasn’t there.

“She’s out today,” an unfamiliar nurse at the charge desk said. “She’s got this flu that’s going around.”

“Oh,” Joanna said. “Well, will you tell her when she comes back that, yes, I’m still interested in having the nurses write down what Mr. Aspinall says.”

“I’ll leave a note for her,” the nurse said, grabbing a pad of Post-it notes. “Still interested… nurses… write down…” she said, writing, and looked up. “Are you sure you mean Mr. Aspinall? He—”

“Yes, I’m aware he’s in a coma,” Joanna said. “Guadalupe will know what the message means.”

She watched the nurse finish writing the message and stick it in Guadalupe’s box and then went down to Coma Carl’s room. His wife was sitting next to his bed, reading aloud from a paperback. “ ‘ “We got him now,” Buck drawled, reining in his horse,’ ” she read. “ ‘ “He can’t get through thataway. Even an Apache tracker’d get lost in among them canyons.” ’ ”

Joanna looked at Carl. In the week since she’d seen him he’d clearly gone downhill. His chest and his face both looked more sunken than before, and grayer. The number of bags on his IV stand had multiplied, and so had the number of monitors.

“Dr. Lander!” Mrs. Aspinall said, surprised and pleased. She closed the book.

“I just thought I’d stop in for a moment and see how Mr. Aspinall was doing,” Joanna said.