Passage

The nurse pushed the wheelchair into the room and over next to the bed. “It was an aluminum piano, but still!” Maisie said, bounding out of the wheelchair before the nurse could get the footrests flipped up. She dug in the drawer of the stand next to her bed. “I bet it fell on somebody when the Hindenburg blew up.”

I’ll bet it did, Joanna thought.

“Maisie,” the nurse said, holding the monitor wires and the tube of gel to attach the electrodes.

“Why don’t you get into bed?” Joanna suggested, “and I’ll look for the book.”

“Not the book,” Maisie said, still digging. “The paper. The piano weighed 397 pounds.”

“Maisie,” the nurse said firmly.

“Did you know there was a reporter there?” she said, matter-of-factly yanking her hospital gown up so the nurse could attach electrodes to her flat little-girl chest. “He reported the whole thing. ‘Oh, this is terrible!’ Ow! That’s cold! ‘Oh, the humanity.’ ”

She chattered on while the nurse checked the monitor, adjusted dials, and checked the readouts. It had nothing to do with NDEs, but Joanna hadn’t really expected it to. Maisie had spent the better part of three years in hospitals — she knew exactly how to distract nurses, put off unpleasant procedures, and, above all, get people to stay and keep her company.

“All right, now don’t get out of bed,” the nurse ordered. “See that she rests,” she said to Joanna and went out.

“You heard what she said,” Joanna said, standing up. “How about if I come see you tomorrow morning?”

“No,” Maisie said. “You can’t go yet. I haven’t told you about the NDE thing yet. You know how I didn’t see anything that time I almost died, and Mr. Mandrake said I did, that everybody sees a tunnel and an angel. Well, they don’t. This guy, he worked on the Hindenburg, and he was up inside the balloon part when it blew up, and everybody else fell off, but he didn’t. He hung on to the metal struts and it was really hot. His hands got all burned into these black claws,” she demonstrated, “and he wanted to let go, but he didn’t. He squinched his eyes shut” — she demonstrated — “and he saw all these different things.”

She unfolded the paper and handed it to Joanna. It was a Xerox of a page out of a book. “I don’t know if it was a real near-death experience or not because, if he was dead, he would have let go, wouldn’t he? But he saw stuff like in one. Snow and a train and a whale flipping its tail up out of the ocean.”

She leaned forward, careful not to unhook her electrodes, and handed the folded paper to Joanna. “I like the part the best when he’s in the birdcage and he has to hang on with his feet like on a trapeze so he won’t fall into the fire.”

Joanna unfolded the paper and read the account of what the crewman had seen: glittering white fields and the whale Maisie had described and then the sensation of a train going by. He had been surprised that it didn’t stop, he had decided it must be an express, but that couldn’t be right. There was no express to Bregenz.

Joanna looked up. “I think you’re right, Maisie,” she said. “I think this was a near-death vision.”

“I know,” Maisie said. “I figured it was when I read about him seeing the snow, because it’s white like the light everybody says they see. Did you get to the part where the snow turns into flowers?”

“No,” Joanna said and began reading again. He had seen his grandmother, sitting by the fire, and then himself as a bird in a cage being thrown into it, and then the white fields again, but not of snow, of apple blossoms in fields stretching beneath him in endless heavenly meadows.

“Well, what do you think?” Maisie said impatiently.

I wish he were one of my interview subjects, Joanna thought. His account was full of details and, except for the mention of the heavenly meadows, devoid of the standard religious imagery and tunnels and brilliantly white lights. The kind of NDE account she dreamed of and hardly ever got.

“I think he was brave to keep hanging on, don’t you?” Maisie said, “with his hands hurting so bad and everything.”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “Can I keep this?”

“That’s what I made Nurse Barbara copy it for, so you could use it in your research.”

“Thank you,” Joanna said, and folded the paper up again.

“I don’t think I could’ve,” Maisie said thoughtfully. “I think I would’ve probably let go.”

Joanna stopped in the act of sticking the paper in her pocket. “I’ll bet you would’ve hung on,” she said.

Maisie looked seriously at her for a long minute, and then said, “Did I help you with your research?”

“You did,” Joanna said. “You can be my research assistant anytime.”

“I’m going to look for other ones,” she said. “I’ll bet lots of people in disasters had them, like during earthquakes and stuff.”

I’ll bet they did, Joanna thought.

“I’ll bet the people at Mount St. Helens realty had them.” She shoved the covers back and started to get out of bed.

“Not so fast,” Joanna said. “You’re all hooked up. You can only be my research assistant if you do what the nurses tell you. I mean it. You’re supposed to be resting.”