Passage

“That’s what I meant,” Joanna said, “the names of the ships the Titanic’s wireless contacted.”

Maisie wrote “ships” in her childish round hand. “I bet there’s a lot of them ’cause the wireless operator kept sending right up till it sank.”

“Maisie—”

“His name was Jack Phillips, and the captain told him he could stop. ‘At a time like this, it’s every man for himself,’ he said, but he just kept on sending.”

“Maisie,” Joanna said seriously, “if you’re going to help me, you can’t tell me things about the Titanic, just the answers to my questions. Not anything else. It’s important. Do you understand?”

“Uh-huh,” Maisie said. “Because of confabulation, right?”

She is entirely too smart, Joanna thought. “Yes. Telling me things could contaminate the project. Do you think you can do that? Just tell me the answers and nothing else?”

“Uh-huh. Can I tell you stuff not about the Titanic?”

“Of course,” Joanna said. “Is that why you called me, because you had something to tell me?”

“Well, ask you, really,” Maisie said, and Joanna braced herself. “What if Mercy General burned down?”

And where did this come from? Joanna wondered. “The alarms would go off, and we’d get all the patients outside,” Joanna said. “And there’s a sprinkler system that comes on automatically.”

“No, I know that,” Maisie said. “I mean, what about their ID bracelets? They’re plastic. If the hospital burned up, they’d melt and nobody would know who they are.”

The hospital bracelet again. This has to do with Little Miss 1565, Joanna thought. Maisie’s afraid she’ll die and no one will identify her. But everyone in the hospital knew her, she was surrounded by family and friends. Why was she worried about that? Was she taking a small and manageable worry and making it stand for the things that were really worrying her, a metaphor for fears she was too frightened to face? Like loss of identity?

Which is the thing everyone’s afraid of when it comes to death, Joanna thought. Not judgment or separation or the fires of hell, but the idea of not existing. That’s why everyone likes Mr. Mandrake’s Other Side, Joanna thought. It isn’t because it promises light and warm, fuzzy feelings. It’s because it promises that, even though the heart has stopped and the body shut down, you won’t suffer the fate of Little Miss 1565. That the people gathered at the gate will know who you are, and so will you.

“Your doctor ID would burn right up, too,” Maisie was saying. She pointed at Joanna’s hospital ID hanging from its woven lanyard. “They should be metal.”

Like dog tags, Joanna thought.

“So, what else do you want me to find out?” Maisie said, as if the matter had been settled. “Do you want me to write down the wireless messages he sent to the different ships?”

“No, just the name of the ships,” Joanna said and then thought of something. “And the call letters of the Titanic.”

“I don’t have to look that up. I already know. It’s MGY, because — ” she said, and then stopped.

“Because why?” Joanna asked, but Maisie didn’t answer. She folded her arms and stared belligerently at Joanna.

“Maisie?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”

“You told me I was supposed to tell you the answer and not anything else.”

“You’re right, I did. That’s just what I wanted.” Only what I really wanted was the call letters to be CQD, not MGY.

“Okay, what else?” Maisie said.

“That’s all, just the call letters and the names of the ships,” Joanna said.

“That’s hardly anything,” Maisie protested. “It’ll take me about five minutes. Don’t you have anything else you want me to find out?”

It was tempting to ask her about the Morse lamp. She’d have the answer more promptly even than Kit, and Joanna knew Maisie could keep a secret. She was a master at it. But she also wouldn’t be able to resist saying, “Did you know…?” “I need to know about the Carpathia,” Joanna said, deciding. The Carpathia hadn’t shown up on the scene until well after the Titanic had gone down, so information about it couldn’t contaminate her NDEs, and there was a ton of information on the Carpathia. It should keep Maisie occupied for days.

“Car-pa-thia,” Maisie said, writing it down. “What do you need to know?”

“Everything,” Joanna told her. “Where it was, when it found out the Titanic was in trouble and what it did, and how it picked up the survivors.”

“And who they were,” Maisie said, writing busily. “I know who one of them was. Mr. Ismay.” Her tone conveyed contempt. “He was the owner guy, but he didn’t even try to save people, he just climbed in one of the lifeboats even though the men weren’t supposed to, it was supposed to be women and children first, and saved himself, the big coward. Everybody else was really brave, though, like—”

“Maisie,” Joanna warned. “Only the answers I asked for.”

“Okay,” Maisie said. “Can I tell you what Molly Brown said to Mr. Ismay? She was on the Carpathia when she said it.”