Maurice Mandrake, a persistent and almost omnipresent charlatan "researcher" who publishes best-selling books about near-death experiences and convinces patients that their experiences happened exactly the way his books describe NDEs, such as learning cosmic secrets from angels: Dr. Richard Wright, who has discovered a way to induce artificial NDEs in patients and monitor their brain activity throughout, contacts Joanna and asks if she will join his research study and interview his patients after he induces NDEs. She agrees. They are intellectually compatible and have a budding, mutual romantic interest. Mandrake considers the pair his competitors, and he sabotages their efforts by approaching revived patients before they can. Mandrake's method is to ask mellifluous leading questions of the patients and thereby taint their self-reported NDEs; this causes Joanna and Richard hardship in finding un-interviewed volunteers for their own study. The reader later learns that two of their volunteers are liars, which also corrupts their conjectures. Lacking enough volunteers for proper methodology, Joanna elects to undergo the process. She gets the help of Tish, a nurse, to help with the prep; Tish is happy to, because she thinks Richard Wright is "cute" and can flirt with him while Joanna is "under". Joanna finds herself in a dark passage that, through further NDEs, she realizes is part of a dream-like version of the RMS Titanic, on which she encounters passengers of the real Titanic as well as someone symbolically near death, a high school teacher whom she had studied with a decade or so earlier, Mr. Pat Briarley. Between NDE sessions, Joanna struggles to figure out why she sees the Titanic, and she eventually tracks down Mr. Briarley, who spoke often of the Titanic in class. Joanna discovers that Mr. Briarley, once a highly animated and keen teacher, now suffers from Alzheimer's disease. This is crushing to Joanna, who was certain that Mr. Briarley could give her "the key" to clarify why she sees the Titanic. However, Mr. Briarley's niece, Kit, promises to help. Joanna also consults with Maisie Nellis, a nine-year-old girl who suffers from a heart defect, "V-fib", because Maisie, a born rationalist, gives only accurate information about her NDEs. Maisie also gives Joanna important information about the Titanic. Through talking with her patients and undergoing more NDEs, Lander realizes that the near-death experience is a mechanism that the brain uses to create a scenario symbolic of what the brain attempts