Passage

“Oh, good,” a middle-aged woman in a green dress said. “I was coming to see you. I’m Sally Zimmerman from Surgery. I just wanted to drop this by.” She held out a book. The orange-and-yellow cover read Eight Great Grief Helps. “It’s really helpful,” she said. “It has all kinds of mourning exercises and closure activities.”

“You keep thinking it can’t get any worse,” Richard murmured.

“That’s in there, too,” she said, taking the book back from him and thumbing through it. “Here it is. ‘How to Raise Your Hope Quotient.’ ”

The next day Mr. Wojakowski came. “I’m sorry I went on about Joanna like that,” he said. “Nobody’d told me what happened.” He shook his head. “Gone just like that! You never get used to it. One minute they’re standing next to you on the gunnery deck and the next, gone! Bucky Tobias, my bunkmate. Nineteen years old. ‘Think the Japs know where we are?’ he said to me, and ten seconds later, wham! half the deck’s gone and nothing left! I heard he was on drugs,” he said, and for a moment Richard thought he was talking about his bunkmate on the Yorktown.

“Sixteen years old,” Mr. Wojakowski said. “Damned waste. I still can’t believe it.” He shook his head. “I just saw her that day up in Medicine looking for you.”

“Looking for me?” Richard said and felt a pain in his side, like a knife going in.

“Yeah, and whatever it was she was trying to find you for, it musta been important. She practically ran me over. ‘Did somebody call battle stations?’ I asked her, she was movin’ so fast.”

“When was this?” Richard demanded.

“Monday morning. I was over here seeing a friend of mine — had a stroke square dancing — after I did my hearing-research-sitting-around.”

“What time did you see her?”

“Let’s see,” he said, scratching his cheek, “Musta been around thirteen hundred hours. I came up right after I was done in the arthritis center, and that goes from eleven to twelve forty-five.”

One o’clock, Richard thought. She must have been on her way down to the ER. “And she told you she was looking for me?”

“Yeah, she said she had to find you right away, so she didn’t have time to talk.”

Joanna hadn’t been looking for Vielle. She had been looking for him. He had to tell her, so she wouldn’t go on thinking it was her fault. It was the least he could do.

“Just wanted you to know how bad I feel,” Mr. Wojakowski said, picking up his hat. “She was a great little gal. Reminded me of a navy nurse I dated in Honolulu. Pretty as a picture. Killed off Tarawa. Japs sank the transport she was being shipped home on.”

As soon as Mr. Wojakowski left, he plugged in the phone and called the ER. Vielle wasn’t there. He had her paged, and then sat there by the phone, waiting for her to call. She didn’t, but Mrs. Brightman did. And his old roommate.

“I was just watching CNN,” Davis said, without preamble. “What the hell kind of hospital are you working in? Did you know this Lander person?”

“Yes,” Richard said.

“But you’re all right?” Davis asked, and it was more a statement than a question.

Richard wondered what Davis would say if he said, “No.” If he said, “The NDEs aren’t temporal-lobe hallucinations. They’re real.” He already knew. “You can’t seriously believe that!” And “First Foxx and now you? I knew it was a virus!” and “Have you called the Star yet? Make them pay you for an exclusive, at least. You’re going to need the money now that you’re going to be out of a job.”

“I’m all right,” Richard said.

“You’re sure?” Davis asked, and sounded really concerned.

“Yes,” Richard said, and went down to the ER to talk to Vielle. The crime scene tape had been removed, but there were cops at all the doors. They checked Richard’s ID badge against a computer list before they let him in. Vielle was at the station desk, writing up a chart with her bandaged hand.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “She wasn’t looking for you that day to ask you about Dish Night. She was looking for me.”

“For you?” she said blankly. “But you weren’t—”

“I’d told her I was going to go talk to Dr. Jamison.”

“And Dr. Jamison had just been down here,” she said, and he could see the relief in her face, as if a load had been lifted off her.

“When she asked you about the movie Titanic, did she say what she was trying to — ” he said, and saw she wasn’t listening. She had glanced up, toward the door, and gone suddenly stock-still. He looked over at the door.

Joanna was standing in it. Richard’s heart began to beat frantically, like a trapped bird battering its wings against the bars. She wasn’t dead. It was all, all, the blood and the flatline and the White Star Line offices, a dream, it had only felt real because of elevated acetylcholine levels and temporal-lobe stimulation.

“Joanna,” he breathed, and took a step toward her.

“I’m June Wexler, Joanna Lander’s sister,” the woman at the door said, and it was like hearing the news all over again. She’s dead, he thought, and finally believed it. She’s been dead three days.