Passage

“It’s a surprise. You’ll have to wait till tomorrow,” he said. He’d better call Kit and find out what this was about.

“It looks like you two have a lot of visiting to do, so I’ll be moseying along,” Mr. Wojakowski said.

“No, wait!” Maisie protested. “You have to tell me about the time the Yorktown got all shot up.” She turned back to Richard. “The Japanese thought they’d sunk her, and they had to fix her really fast.”

“In three days flat,” Mr. Wojakowski said, sitting down again. “And the ship’s carpenter says, ‘Three days!’ and threw his hammer so hard it went right through the bulkhead, and the harbormaster says, ‘That’s just one more hole you’re gonna have to fix,’ and—” They didn’t even notice Richard leaving. A match made in heaven.

He called Kit as soon as he got back to the lab. “Maisie told Vielle she’d always wished she could go to Dish Night,” Kit said, “so we’re setting it up for her. The nurses are letting us hold it in the CICU conference room tomorrow at four, after considerable negotiations, and I was wondering if you could pick up the videos. Vielle thought maybe Volcano or

The Towering Inferno.”

“What about Maisie’s mother?” Richard asked.

“Not a problem. She has a meeting with Daniels, Dutton, and Walsh at four. She’s fighting to get Maisie into a clinical trial for a new antirejection drug.”

He rented Volcano and, since The Towering Inferno was checked out, Twister. “Disasters, huh?” the short kid who waited on him said. “You should rent Titanic.”

“I’ve seen it,” Richard said.

When he got up to CICU, Kit and Vielle were already in Maisie’s room in their masks and gowns, and Maisie was higher than her Mylar balloons. “He’s here!” she said the second he walked in. “They said I had to wait till you got here to find out what the surprise is. So what is it?”

“We’ll tell you when we get there,” Vielle said, bringing in a wheelchair. Evelyn came in to get Maisie’s heart monitor and IVs ready to go. Richard and Kit helped her into the wheelchair, and Richard wheeled her three doors down to the conference room.

“Dish Night!” Maisie said when she saw the movie posters.

“Not only Dish Night,” Kit said, “but a Disaster Double Feature.” Richard held up the videos.

“Actually, Dr. Templeton says you can only watch one today,” Evelyn said.

“Then we’ll have to watch the other one at our next Dish Night,” Kit said, “after you get out of the hospital.”

“I get to go to a real Dish Night?” Maisie said, transported, and Richard hoped this wasn’t too much excitement for her. He handed her the videos, and Kit and Vielle bent over her, one on each side, discussing which one to watch and explaining the rules of Dish Night.

“Rule Number One, no talking about work,” Kit said. “For you that means no talking about your transplant.”

“Or rib cages. Or beer coolers,” Vielle said. “Rule Number Two, only movie food can be eaten.”

“Dr. Templeton said no popcorn yet,” Kit said. “We’ll have that at our next Dish Night. For now he said you could have a snow cone.” She produced a cone of shaved ice and two bottles of syrup. “Red or blue?”

“Blue!” Maisie said.

Richard leaned against the door, watching them. The bandage on Vielle’s arm had been taken off, though she still had the one on her hand, and the bruised, beaten look was gone from her eyes. Kit was in nearly as high spirits as Maisie. She was still very thin, but there was color in her cheeks. He remembered her standing in the lab, pale and determined, clutching the textbook, saying, “Joanna saved my life.”

She saved all our lives, Richard thought, and wondered if that was what Maisie had meant when she said he hadn’t been the one who saved her life, if she realized it had been Joanna’s last words that had saved her life.

“Rule Number Three, no Woody Allen movies,” Kit said.

“And no Kevin Costner,” Vielle said.

“And no Disney movies,” Maisie said vehemently.

Richard watched them, thinking about Joanna that first Dish Night, laughing, saying, “This is a Titanic-free zone.”

“There’s a reason I’m seeing the Titanic,” she’d told him, and she was right. The Titanic had been the perfect metaphor for the brain’s distress calls sent out frantically in all directions, by every method available, but he wondered, leaning against the door and looking at Maisie and Vielle and Kit, if that was the only connection. Because the Titanic wasn’t primarily about messages. It was about people who had, in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of the night, put forth a superhuman effort to save wives, sweethearts, friends, babies, children, dogs, and the first-class mail. To save something besides themselves.