Passage

“Yes,” Joanna said, and ran toward the stern, past the band getting out its instruments, setting up its music stands. The violinist set his black case on top of the upright piano and snapped the latches open.

“ ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band,’ ” the conductor said, and the bass viol player sorted through a sheaf of sheet music, looking for it.

Past Lifeboat Number 9, where a young man was saying good-bye to a young woman in a white dress and a veil. “It’s all right, little girl,” he said. “You go, and I’ll stay awhile.” Past Number 11, where the mustached man she had seen in the writing room and in the lounge, dealing out hand after hand of cards, was lifting two children into the boat. Past Number 13, where an officer was calling, “Anyone else to go in this boat? Any more women and children?”

Joanna shook her head and hurried past. And into a man in a denim shirt and suspenders. “No need to panic, folks,” he said, herding people toward the bow. “Just walk slowly. Don’t run. Plenty of time.”

Joanna backed away from him. And into the officer. He took her arm. “You need to get into a boat, miss,” he said, leading her back toward Number 13. “There isn’t much time.”

“No,” she said, but he was gripping her arm tightly, he was propelling her over to the davits.

“Wait for this young lady,” he called to the crewman in the boat.

“No,” Joanna said, “you don’t understand. I have to—”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said, and his grip on her arm was like iron, it was cutting off her circulation. “It’s perfectly safe.”

“No!” She wrenched free of him and ran down the deck, past the officer, as if he were still chasing her, past the band and into the foyer of the Grand Staircase, thinking, The elevator. The elevator will be faster.

She pushed the gold-and-ivory button. “Come on, come on,” she said, and pushed it again, but the arrow above the door didn’t move. She abandoned it and ran over to the head of the staircase, down the stairs to B Deck, C Deck, thinking, What if it’s blocked like he said?

It wasn’t. It was clear. “Again. Clear,” the resident said, and Joanna was in the emergency room and Vielle was holding her hand.

“I’ve got a pulse.”

“Vielle,” Joanna said, but Vielle wasn’t looking at her, she was looking at the aide who had come out in the hall that day they had the fight, she was telling her, “If he doesn’t answer his page, go get him. He’s in 602.”

“Vielle, tell Richard the NDE’s a distress call the dying brain sends out,” Joanna tried to say, but there was something in her mouth, choking her.

“He’s coming, Joanna,” Vielle said, holding tight to her hand. “Just hang on.”

“If Richard doesn’t get here in time, tell him the NDE’s a distress signal. It’s important,” Joanna tried to say around the choking thing in her throat. They’ve intubated me, she thought, panicked, and tried to pull it out, but it wasn’t an airway, it was blood. She was coughing it up and out of her, gallons and gallons of blood. “Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” It was pouring out of her, and all over Vielle and the resident and the nurse, choking her, drowning her.

“Help,” she cried, “I have to tell Richard. It’s an SOS,” but it wasn’t Vielle, it was the man with the mustache and she was back on the Boat Deck. The band was playing “Goodnight, Irene,” and the officer was loading Number 4.

“I want you to do something for me when you reach New York,” the mustached man was saying to Joanna, putting something in her hand.

She looked down at it. It was a note, written in a childish round cursive. “If saved,” it read, “please inform my sister Mrs. F. J. Adams of Findlay, Ohio. Lost. J. H. Rogers.”

“Please see that my sister gets this,” he said, closing her fingers over the note. “Tell her it’s from me.”

“But I’m not going to — ” Joanna said, but he had already melted into the crowd, and the officer was headed toward her, calling, “Miss! Miss!” She jammed the note into her pocket and ran down the deck toward the aft staircase, darting between couples, past a pair of cheerleaders in purple-and-gold pleated skirts, between families saying good-bye.

“But he’s going to be all right, isn’t he?” a woman in a white coat and white knitted cap said to an officer.

The officer looked pityingly at her. “We’re doing everything we can.”

Joanna pushed past the woman, but the way to the aft staircase was mobbed with people in kerchiefs and cloth caps, fighting to get into the boats, and sailors trying to free the boats, trying to lower them. “You can’t get through this way!” the sailor who had worked the Morse lamp called to her. He jerked his thumb back toward the stern. “Try the second-class stairway,” and she turned and ran past the empty davits of the boats that had already been lowered, to the second-class stairway.