Passage

“No,” Barbara said. “Something about the Titanic. That was Maisie’s latest craze. Do you know how to get to CICU?” She gave them complicated instructions, which Richard jotted down for his map, and they started toward the elevator.

“Dr. Wright, wait,” Barbara said, hurrying after them. “There’s something you need to know. Maisie doesn’t — ” she said, and then stopped.

“Maisie doesn’t what?”

She bit her lip. “Nothing. Forget it. I was just going to warn you she looks pretty bad. This last episode — ” she stopped again.

“Then maybe I shouldn’t—”

“No. I think seeing you is just what she needs. She’ll be overjoyed.” But she wasn’t. Maisie lay wan and uninterested against her pillows, a daunting array of monitors and machines crowded around her, nearly filling the room. Her TV was on, and the remote lay on the bed close to her hand, but she wasn’t watching the screen, she was staring at the wall below it. Her breath came in short, shallow pants.

There were at least six bags hanging from the IV pole. The tubing ran down to her foot, and when he looked at her hand, he could see why. It looked like she had been in a fight, the whole back of it covered in overlapping purple and green and black bruises. A metal ID tag hung around her neck.

“Hi, Maisie,” Richard said, trying not to let any of the horror he felt into his voice. “Remember me? Dr. Wright?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, but there was no enthusiasm in her voice.

“I’ve got somebody I want you to meet,” he said. “Maisie, this is Kit. She’s a friend of mine.”

“Hi, Maisie,” Kit said.

“Hi,” Maisie said dully.

“I told Kit you’re an expert on disasters,” Richard said. He turned to Kit. “Maisie knows all about the Hindenburg and the Hartford circus fire and the Great Molasses Flood.”

“The Great Molasses Flood?” Kit said to Maisie. “What’s that?”

“A big flood,” Maisie said in that same flat, uninterested tone. “Of molasses.”

He wondered if this was what Barbara had started to warn him about. If it was, he could see why she had changed her mind. He would never have believed it, that Maisie, no matter how sick she was, could be reduced to this dull, passive state. No, not passive. Flattened.

“Did people die?” Kit was asking Maisie. “In the Great Molasses Flood?”

“People always die,” Maisie said. “That’s what a disaster is, people dying.”

“Dr. Wright told me you were friends with Dr. Lander,” Kit said.

“She came to see me sometimes,” Maisie said, and her eyes strayed to the TV.

“She was a friend of mine, too,” Kit said. “When was the last time Dr. Lander came to see you, Maisie?”

“I don’t remember,” Maisie said, her eyes on the screen.

“It’s important, Maisie,” Kit said, reaching for the remote. She clicked off the TV. “We think Dr. Lander found out something important, but we don’t know what. We’re trying to find out where she was and who she talked to—”

“Why don’t you write and ask her?” Maisie said.

“Write and ask her?” Richard said blankly.

Maisie looked at him. “Didn’t she leave you a forwarding address either?”

“A forwarding address?”

“When she moved to New Jersey.”

“Moved to — ? Maisie, didn’t anybody tell you?” Richard blurted.

“Tell me what?” Maisie asked. She pushed herself to a sitting position. The line on her heart monitor began to spike. Richard looked appealingly across the bed at Kit.

“Something happened to Joanna, didn’t it?” Maisie said, her voice rising. “Didn’t it?”

Her mother, trying to protect her, had told her Joanna had moved away, had kept Barbara and the other nurses from telling her the truth. And now he had — Behind her head the line on her heart monitor was zigzagging sharply. What if he told her, and she went into V-fib from the shock of it? She had already coded twice.

“You have to tell me,” Maisie said, but that wasn’t true. The heart monitor was setting off alarms in the nurses’ station. In a minute a nurse would be down here to shoo them out, to quiet her down, and he wouldn’t have to be the one to tell her. “Please,” Maisie said, and Kit nodded at him.

“Joanna didn’t move away, Maisie,” he said gently. “She died.”

Maisie gaped at him, her mouth open, her eyes wide with shock, not even moving. Behind her on the screen of the monitor, the green line spiked, and then collapsed. I’ve done it, Richard thought. I’ve killed her.

“I knew it,” Maisie said. “That’s why she didn’t come to see me after I coded.” She smiled, a radiant smile. “I knew she wouldn’t just move away and not come and tell me good-bye,” she said happily. “I knew it.”

49

“The executioner is, I believe, an expert, and my neck is very slender. Oh, God, have pity on my soul, oh, God, have pity on my soul…”

—Anne Boleyn’s last words, spoken just before her beheading

Joanna tore back along the Promenade Deck. Let the wireless operator still be there, she prayed as she ran. Let him still be sending.