learn the true nature of near-death experiences through interviews with patients. She is kind, often absent-minded, but as dogged as Sherlock Holmes when she is after a clue to her investigations. Joanna, unmarried and childless, loves Maisie Nellis, calling her "one of the world's great kids." Richard Wright - A neurologist who wants to discover a way to revive patients after clinical death. Described as blond and cute, he is considered aloof by Amelia Tanaka and by Nurse Tish, who want to date him, and a great catch by Vielle, who wants Joanna to date him. He is a nurturer: Joanna never thinks to bring lunch for herself, although an ongoing joke in the novel is that the hospital cafeteria is never open; Richard often feeds Joanna the oranges, crackers, candy bars and sodas in his coat pockets which he brought from home. Vielle Howard - A nurse who works in the ER, and Joanna Lander's best friend. They regularly get together to watch movies. Vielle has a crush on a police officer who looks like Denzel Washington; but she is pursued by a morgue employee. Maurice Mandrake - A charlatan researcher who interviews patients who have had NDEs, convincing them that their experiences were exactly as he describes in his best-selling books. Amelia Tanaka - A pre-med college student who volunteers for the NDE study because she thinks Richard Wright is cute. She reports that her NDEs make her feel warm and loved, but very late in the book it is revealed that she lied, having told Wright what she thought he wanted to hear. In fact, her NDEs took place in her college's department of chemistry and frightened her, to the point that she quits the project. Ed Wojakowski - A gregarious elderly man who volunteers for the NDE study and claims to be a World War II veteran in the United States Navy, but is discovered to borrow other people's experiences and possibly just to lie about all the rest. After many meandering and irrelevant stories, avoiding what he has actually experienced in an NDE, he tells Joanna after she nails him with a direct question that his NDE happened aboard a ship. She assumes it is the Titanic. Maisie Nellis - A nine-year-old suffering from cardiomyopathy and occasional ventricular fibrillation and atrial fibrillation; often in the hospital, she is put on the list for a heart