“Before you went into the tunnel,” Joanna interrupted, “did you have an out-of-body experience?”

“No,” she said, just as promptly. “Mr. Mandrake said people sometimes do, but all I had was the tunnel and the light.”

Mr. Mandrake. Of course. She should have known. “He interviewed me last night,” Mrs. Davenport said. “Do you know him?”

Oh, yes, Joanna thought.

“He’s a famous author,” Mrs. Davenport said. “He wrote The Light at the End of the Tunnel. It was a best-seller, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Joanna said.

“He’s working on a new one,” Mrs. Davenport said. “Messages from the Other Side. You know, you’d never know he was famous. He’s so nice. He has a wonderful way of asking questions.”

He certainly does, Joanna thought. She’d heard him: “When you went through the tunnel, you heard a buzzing sound, didn’t you? Would you describe the light you saw at the end of the tunnel as golden? Even though it was brighter than anything you’d ever seen, it didn’t hurt your eyes, did it? When did you meet the Angel of Light?” Leading wasn’t even the word.

And smiling, nodding encouragingly at the answers he wanted. Pursing his lips, asking, “Are you sure it wasn’t more of a buzzing than a ringing?” Frowning, asking concernedly, “And you don’t remember hovering above the operating table? You’re sure?”

They remembered it all for him, leaving their body and entering the tunnel and meeting Jesus, remembered the Light and the Life Review and the Meetings with Deceased Loved Ones. Conveniently forgetting the sights and sounds that didn’t fit and conjuring up ones that did. And completely obliterating whatever had actually occurred.

It was bad enough having Moody’s books out there and Embraced by the Light and all the other near-death-experience books and TV specials and magazine articles telling people what they should expect to see without having someone right here in Mercy General putting ideas in her subjects’ heads.