Passage

“Good,” she said, “but I also think we should mask the light. Garland’s explanation for the bright light NDEers see is that it’s the light above the operating table, and the reason it’s blindingly bright is because their pupils are dilated.”

Richard looked happily at her. “This is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping you’d help me with. I’ll get some black paper over it right away. We’re going to make a great team.”

Joanna smiled back at him, then walked over and looked at the gunmetal-gray supply cabinet and the tall wooden glass-doored medicine cupboard, left over from an earlier hospital era, her hands on her hips. “Is there anything else you want changed?” Richard asked.

“No,” she said. “Added.” She reached in her cardigan pocket and pulled out an object wrapped loosely in newspaper. “This is our tennis shoe.”

“Tennis shoe?” Richard said, looking at the newspaper-wrapped object. It was clearly not big enough to be a shoe, unless it was a child’s.

“Hasn’t Mr. Mandrake told you about the shoe yet?” she said. “I’m surprised. He tells everybody how the shoe is scientific proof of the reality of NDEs. Even more than Aunt Ethel.”

She stuck the newspaper-wrapped object back in her pocket and went over to his desk. “A woman named Maria coded during an operation.” She pulled his chair out. “Afterward, she reported floating above her body on the examining table, and she described the procedures they were doing to her in highly accurate detail.”

“A number of patients have done that,” he said. “Described the intubation and the paddles. But couldn’t they have gotten that information from previous hospital visits?”

“Or from an episode of ER,” Joanna said dryly. “Maria described something else, though, and it constitutes the  ‘scientific proof’ Mr. Mandrake’s always referring to.” She pushed the chair over in front of the gunmetal cabinet. “Maria said that when she was up near the ceiling, she saw a shoe on a ledge outside the window, a red tennis shoe.” She stepped up on the chair, looked at the top of the cabinet, frowning, and stepped back down. “The shoe wasn’t visible from any other part of the room, but when the doctor went up to the next floor and leaned all the way out of the window, there it was.”

“Which proved that the soul had actually left the body and was hovering above it,” Richard said.

“And, by extension, that everything the subject experiences in an NDE is real and not just a hallucination.” She dragged the chair over to the wooden medicine cupboard and stepped up on it. “Pretty convincing, huh? The only problem is, it never happened. When researchers tried to verify it, it turned out there was no such event, no such patient, no such hospital.”

She withdrew the newspaper-wrapped object from her pocket. “Of course, even if it had been a true story, it wouldn’t have proved anything. The shoe could have been visible from some other part of the hospital, or the patient or the NDE researcher could have put it there. If and when a subject tells us he saw this,” she said, holding up the object, “I’ll consider the possibility that he really was out of his body.”

“What is it?” Richard asked.

“Something no one’s likely to guess,” she said, leaning forward on tiptoe and stretching up to place it on top of the cupboard. “Including you. If you don’t know, you can’t accidentally communicate the knowledge to anyone.” She wadded up the newspaper and stepped back down. “I’ll give you a clue,” she said, dropping the crumpled paper into his hand. “It’s not a shoe.” She turned and looked speculatively at the clock on the wall.

“Do you want the clock taken down, too?”

“No, although it might be a good idea to move it to where the subject can’t see it. The fewer objects the subject has to confabulate about, the better. Actually, I was wondering about your subject. What time did you say she’d be here?”

“She was scheduled for eleven, and she called to say she had an exam and would be a few minutes late. She’s a premed student,” he said, glancing at the clock. “But I expected her by now.”

“Your subject pool is premed students?”

“No, just Ms. Tanaka,” he said. “The other volunteers are all—”

“Volunteers?” she said. “You’re using volunteers? How did you describe the project in your call for volunteers?”

“Neurological research. I’ve got a copy right here,” he said, going over to his desk.

“Did it mention NDEs?”

“No,” he said, rummaging through the stacks of papers. “I told them what the project entailed when they came in for screening.”

“What kind of screening?”

“A physical and a psych profile.” He found the call for volunteers and handed it to her. “And I asked them what they knew about near-death experiences and if they’d ever had one. None of them had.”

“And you’ve sent some of them under already?”

“Yes. Mrs. Bendix has been under once, and Mr. Wojakowski and Ms. Tanaka, that’s the one who’s coming in today, have been under twice.”

“Did you take all the applications at once and then bring them in for screenings?”