“Intermittent?” Mrs. Davenport said, confused.

“Did it stop and start? Like someone buzzing to get into an apartment? Or was it a steady sound like the buzzing of a bee?”

Mrs. Davenport stared at her IV stand some more. “A bee,” she said finally.

“Was the buzzing loud or soft?”

“Loud,” she said, but uncertainly. “It stopped.”

I’m not going to be able to use any of this, Joanna thought. “What happened after it stopped?”

“It was dark,” Mrs. Davenport said, “and then I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, and—”

Joanna’s pager began to beep. Wonderful, she thought, fumbling to switch it off. This is all I need. She should have turned it off before she started, in spite of Mercy General’s rule about keeping it on at all times. The only people who ever paged her were Vielle and Mr. Mandrake, and it had ruined more than one NDE interview.

“Do you have to go?” Mrs. Davenport asked.

“No. You saw a light—”

“If you have to go…”

“I don’t,” Joanna said firmly, sticking the pager back in her pocket without looking at it. “It’s nothing. You saw a light. Can you describe it?”

“It was golden,” Mrs. Davenport said promptly. Too promptly. And she looked smugly pleased, like a child who knows the answer.

“Golden,” Joanna said.

“Yes, and brighter than any light I’d ever seen, but it didn’t hurt my eyes. It was warm and comforting, and as I looked into it I could see it was a being, an Angel of Light.”

“An Angel of Light,” Joanna said with a sinking feeling.

“Yes, and all around the angel were people I’d known who had died. My mother and my poor dear father and my uncle Alvin. He was in the navy in World War II. He was killed at Guadalcanal, and the Angel of Light said—”