Passage

He was across the lab in two steps, his arms around her. “What happened?”

She told him through her tears. “She didn’t tell me because she knew what I’d say.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “She’s got to transfer out of there. It’s getting ridiculously dangerous.”

“I know, but she won’t,” she said, wiping at her tears with her hand. “She says they’re too shorthanded.”

He reached in his lab coat pocket and pulled out a package of Kleenex, which made her laugh. “I’m sorry to cry all over you,” she said.

“Anytime,” he said. “You doing okay now?”

She nodded and blew her nose. “I just keep thinking about what might have happened—”

“I know. Look, let me call Dr. Jamison and cancel our meeting, and you and I go get something to eat.”

It sounded wonderful, but if she went out with him, she was liable to blurt out what had happened with Mr. Briarley just like she’d blurted out the news about Vielle, and, worse, try to explain her conviction that Mr. Briarley could tell her the reason she was seeing the Titanic, and he’d decide she was too distraught or unstable to go under again.

And she had to go under again, had to ask Mr. Briarley, “What did you say in class that day? What does the Titanic have to do with NDEs?”

“No, I’m okay now, really,” she said. “I don’t want to take you away from what you’re doing, especially if you’re on to something, and I need to go transcribe my account.” She picked up the sealed tape and quickly stuck it in her cardigan pocket. “You said you needed it by two-thirty?”

“Actually, all I need is the very end,” he said. “You said you came back through the same passage, but it was in a different place?”

“No.” She explained about following Mr. Briarley, opening the door to the passage, realizing it was the same one. “The passage is always in the same location. Everything is. It’s a real place. I mean,” she said at his look, “it feels like a real place.”

“And the return was sudden?”

“Yes, like someone slapping a book shut — ” she said. “I just thought of something. Mrs. Woollam said one of her returns was like that, and I think it was a time when she revived on her own.”

“I’d like to see her account, too,” Richard said. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Thank you for the Kleenex. And the shoulder.”

He grinned. “As I said, anytime,” and went back over to the console.

She stood there a minute, looking at his blond head bent over the keyboard, wanting to tell him everything, and then said, “When do you think you’ll send me under again?”

“Tomorrow, if possible. I’d like to do another session at this lower dosage and see if it’s a factor. And see how the scans compare.”

“I’ll call Tish,” Joanna said and went to her office, cut the taped and signed paper off the tape, and began typing up the transcript.

Listening to the tape was like experiencing it all over again: leaning over the bow, looking down at the side of the ship, gazing down into nothingness, seeing Mr. Briarley in the library. “Have you met my niece?” Joanna typed, and thought, He didn’t remember that. She looked back over the conversation. He’d greeted her as if he hadn’t seen her since high school. There’d been no mention of having seen her just a few days before.

Because he didn’t remember those things, she thought. It wasn’t a whole and healthy Mr. Briarley she’d seen, but the old Mr. Briarley, whom she’d had in second period, the part of Mr. Briarley that had died. “Dying in pieces,” Vielle had said. And her acetylcholine-enhanced mind had given the idea concrete form. No wonder she had been convinced he was dead. Part of him was, and maybe that, and not his holding the key to the connection, was why she’d seen him on the Titanic. In which case he wouldn’t be able to tell her what the connection was and what the NDE was.

He has to, she thought, and continued going through the account, looking for clues. “ ‘And what noise soever ye hear, come not unto me, for nothing can rescue me,’ ” she typed, and, “I must take this to the post office first.”

She stared at the screen, her chin in her hands. When he’d said that, she’d assumed he meant the mail room. That was why she’d run after him, because the mail room was flooded. But she was almost sure he’d said “post office,” and, now that she thought about it, it was unlikely that passengers would have been allowed all the way down on G Deck. More likely, they would have handed their letters to a steward or dropped them in a mailbox or a mail slot. But Mr. Briarley had said “post office,” and he’d disappeared into one of the passages on C Deck, and the other rooms Joanna had seen — the A La Carte Restaurant and the lounge and the gymnasium — had all existed.

She called Kit. “I need to know if there was a post office on the Titanic, and if so, where it was.”

“You don’t mean the mail room?” Kit said. “I found out about it and the mail, by the way.”

“No, this would have been a post office for the passengers,” Joanna said.