Passage

“How long were you there?” she laughed. “No, let me guess. Maisie’s wonderful at thinking up excuses for why you have to stay just a little longer. She’s one of the world’s great stallers. And one of the world’s great kids.”

He nodded. “She told me she has cardiomyopathy and that she’d gone into V-fib.”

Joanna nodded. “Viral endocarditis. They can’t get her stabilized, and she keeps having reactions to the antiarrhythmia drugs. She’s a walking disaster.”

“Hence the interest in the Hindenburg,” he said.

She nodded. “I think it’s a way of indirectly addressing her fears. Her mother won’t let her talk about them directly, won’t even acknowledge the possibility that Maisie might die,” she said. “But more than that, I think Maisie’s trying to make sense of her own situation by reading about other people who’ve had sudden, unaccountable, disastrous things happen to them.” She ate another raisin. “Plus, children are always fascinated by death. When I was Maisie’s age, my favorite song was ‘Poor Babes in the Wood,’ about two children ‘stolen away one bright summer’s day’ and left in the woods to die. My grandmother used to sing it to me, to my mother’s horror. The elderly are fascinated by death, too.”

“Did they?” Richard asked curiously. “Die? The babes in the wood?”

She nodded. “After wandering around in the dark for several stanzas. ‘The moon did not shine and the stars gave no light,’ ” she recited. “ ‘They wept and they sighed, and bitterly cried, and the poor little children, they lay down and died.’ After which the birds covered them with strawberry leaves.” She sighed nostalgically. “I loved that song. I think because it had children in it. Most of Maisie’s disasters involve children. Or dogs.”

Richard nodded. “There was a dog on the Hindenburg. Named Ulla. It survived the crash.”

She wasn’t listening. “Did she say what she wanted to talk to me about?”

“Near-death experiences.”

“Oh, dear, I hope she didn’t go into V-fib and code again.”

“I don’t think so. She was up and around. The nurse had a hard time keeping her in bed.”

“I should go see her,” Joanna said, looking up the stairs.

She crept up them and opened the door a crack. “…an Angel of Light, with golden light radiating from him like sparkling diamonds,” Mr. Mandrake was saying.

She eased the door shut. “Still there.”

“Good,” Richard said, “because I haven’t had a chance to convince you to come work with me on my project yet, and you haven’t finished telling me what people experience during an NDE. And we haven’t had dessert yet.” He reached in his lab coat pocket and pulled out a package of peanut M M’s.

She shook her head. “No, thanks. They’d just make me thirsty.”

“Oh, in that case,” he said. He reached in his right pocket. “Mocha Frappuccino,” he said, pulling out a bottle and setting it on the step, and then pulling out another. “Or…” he read the label, “mandarin green tea with ginseng.”

“You’re amazing,” Joanna said, taking the Frappuccino. “What else do you have in there? Champagne? Lobster thermidor? All I’ve got in my pockets is a postcard and my tape recorder and…” she fumbled in her cardigan pockets, “…my pager — oops, which I’d better turn off. I don’t want it going off and giving away our position to Mr. Mandrake,” she switched it off, “and three used Kleenexes.” She opened the Frappuccino. “You wouldn’t have a straw, would you?”

He pulled a paper-wrapped one out of his pocket. “You said there’s a sensation of darkness,” he said, handing it to her. “Not a tunnel?”

She unwrapped the straw. “The majority of them call it a tunnel, but that isn’t what they describe. For some it seems to be a spinning vortex, for others a passage or hallway or narrow room. Several of my subjects have described darkness collapsing in around them.”

Richard nodded. “The visual cortex shutting down.” He jerked a thumb up toward the door. “What about the life review?”

“Only about a quarter of my subjects describe having one,” Joanna said, sipping her Frappuccino, “but the flashing of your life before your eyes is a well-documented phenomenon in accidents. Mr. Mandrake says the NDE, or near-afterlife experience, as he prefers to call it—”

“He told me,” Richard said, grimacing.

“—has ten core elements: out-of-body experience, sound, tunnel, light, dead relatives, Angel of Light, a feeling of peace and love, a life review, the bestowing of universal knowledge, and a command to return. Most of my subjects experience three or four of the elements, usually the sound, the tunnel, the light, and a sense that people or angels are present, though when they’re questioned, they have trouble describing them.”