Passage

She walked to the door, opened it, and then turned around. “I don’t know who else to tell this to,” she said. “Joanna saved my life. My uncle… living with someone…,” she stopped and tried again. “I was going under, and she got me to go out, she convinced me to use Eldercare, she invited me to Dish Night. She told me,” she took a ragged breath, “she wished she could die saving somebody’s life. And she did. She saved mine.”

She left then, but the head of the board came, to remind him of the Coping with Post-Trauma Stress Workshop, and Nurse Hawley with Practical Mourning Management, and an elderly volunteer with a copy of the Book of Mormon. And on Tuesday, Eileen and two other nurses from three-west, to take him to the funeral. “We won’t take no for an answer,” they said. “It’s not good to be alone at a time like this.”

He supposed Tish had put them up to it, but although he had finally slept, he still felt bone-tired and unable to concentrate, unable to think of an excuse they would accept. And maybe this was a good idea, he thought, climbing into the cramped Geo. He wasn’t sure he was in any shape to drive.

“I still can’t believe she’s dead,” one of the nurses said as soon as they had pulled out of the parking lot.

“At least she didn’t suffer,” the other one said. “What was she doing down in the ER, anyway?”

“Have you thought about grief counseling, Richard?” Eileen asked.

“I’ve got a great book you should read,” the first nurse volunteered. “It’s called The Grief Workbook, and it’s got all these neat depression exercises.”

There was a crowd at the church, mostly people from the hospital, looking odd out of their lab coats and scrubs. He saw Mr. Wojakowski and Mrs. Troudtheim. Joanna’s sister stood by the door of the narthex, flanked by two little girls. He wondered if Maisie would be there, and then remembered that her mother relentlessly shielded her from “negative experiences.”

“Look, there’s the cute policeman who took all of our statements,” one of the nurses said, pointing to a tall black man in a dark gray suit.

“I don’t see Tish anywhere,” the other one said, craning her neck.

“She isn’t coming,” the nurse said. “She said she hates funerals.”

“So do I,” the other one said.

“It isn’t a funeral,” Eileen said. “It’s a memorial service.”

“What’s the difference?” the first nurse asked.

“There’s no body. The family’s having a private graveside service later.”

But when they came into the sanctuary, there was a bronze casket at the front, with half of its lid raised and a blanket of white mums and carnations on the other half. “We don’t have to file past and look at her, do we?” the shorter nurse asked.

“Well, I’m not,” Eileen said and slid into a pew. The other two nurses sat down next to her. Richard stood a moment looking at the casket, his fists clenched, and then walked up the aisle. When he got to the casket, he stood there a long moment, afraid to look down, afraid Joanna’s terror and her panic might be reflected in her face, but there was no sign of it.

She lay with her head on an ivory satin pillow, her hair arranged around her head in unfamiliar curls. The dress she was wearing was unfamiliar, too, high-necked, with lace ruffles, and around her neck was a silver cross. Her white hands lay folded across her chest, hiding the slashed aorta, the Y incision.

A gray-haired woman had come up beside him. “Doesn’t she look natural?” she said. Natural. The mortician had set her glasses high on the bridge of her nose, and put rouge on her white cheeks, dark red lipstick on her bloodless lips. Joanna had never worn lipstick that color in her life. In her life.

“She looks so peaceful,” the gray-haired woman said, and he looked earnestly into Joanna’s face? hoping it was true, but it wasn’t. Her ashen, made-up face held no expression at all.

He continued to stand there, looking blindly down at her, and after a minute Eileen came up and led him back to the pew. He sat down. The nurse who had recommended Ten Steps reached across Eileen and handed him a pamphlet. It was titled “Four Tips for Getting Through the Funeral.” The organist began playing.

Kit came in, leading a tall, graying man. Vielle was with them. They sat down several rows ahead. “Who’s getting married?” the man said, and Kit bent toward him, whispering, and no wonder she hadn’t been shocked by what he’d told her. She witnessed horrors every day.

And the funeral was one of them. A soloist sang, “On Jordan’s Banks I Stand,” and then the minister preached a sermon on the necessity of being saved “while there is yet time, for none knows the day or the hour when we will suddenly come face to face with God’s judgment.