Healer of Carthage (2 page)

The mother reluctantly released her hold. Lisbeth used this break in the woman’s defenses to better position herself to complete the exam. She palmed the child’s damp head and gently slid an otoscope tip inside each ear. Abra’s tympanic membranes appeared intact, non-bulging, no sign of infection. Clear rhinorrhea drained from each nostril. Dry mucus membranes in the mouth indicated dehydration.

Lisbeth returned the scope to a wall charger and ran her fingers along both sides of the infant’s chubby little neck. No lymphadenopathy.

“I need to listen to her heart. Let’s remove these strips of cloth.”

The woman shook her head. “Swaddling is her only comfort.”

“But she could be ob—”

“No.” The woman stayed Lisbeth’s hands. “She must remain bound.” The mother’s breaths quickened, and her eyes darted to the door as if she expected trouble to burst in should Lisbeth not comply with her wishes. “It is our way.”

Lisbeth realized she’d set off some kind of fear. Of what, she didn’t know.

Maybe this mother didn’t trust twenty-eight-year-old doctors. But then, who did? Lisbeth wasn’t sure she trusted herself. Maybe this woman didn’t trust that Lisbeth was part white, part Mediterranean. She couldn’t blame her. Since 9/11, the world had gone crazy with suspicion.

“Okay, calm down. I can work around it.”

Lisbeth maneuvered the engraved bell of her stethoscope under the crisscrossed folds of fabric. Abra’s heart raced, but Lisbeth heard no detectable murmurs. Lisbeth rolled the child to her side and pried down the swaddling across her back. Abra screamed
louder. Lisbeth did her best to listen for wheezing. Magnified screams but no crackly sounds of pneumonia during the fleeting pauses for inspiration.

“Let’s turn her on her back.”

The child bucked and wailed. Her tiny features screwed into angry wrinkles.

“This kid is wrapped to the hilt. I can’t tell what I’m dealing with,” Lisbeth spit out in English. She paged her attending.
Need you to see baby. Rm #1.

“I don’t understand.” The mother waited for an Arabic explanation.

“Never mind.” Lisbeth gently pressed the baby’s belly.

The baby’s tummy felt slightly distended. Hard to distinguish between what was child and what was layered fabric. Lisbeth listened for bowel sounds, but Abra’s piercing screams made it impossible to hear anything except the sizzle of her own rising temper.

Lisbeth checked her pager. No response. Where was her attending? Nelda wouldn’t let her dillydally in here all night, too afraid to make a decision. Lisbeth draped the stethoscope around her neck. “Looks like she has viral gastroenteritis.”

The woman’s face puzzled.

“A stomach bug,” Lisbeth explained. “She appears a little dehydrated from all the vomiting. She just needs fluids. We’ll get an IV started, and she’ll be good as new in no time. Any questions?”

The woman shook her head and scooped Abra into her arms. “Thank you, doctor.”

Doctor?
Assembly line worker suited her job description much better.

Lisbeth stepped into the hall. She scribbled an order, signed her name, and added the chart to Nelda’s stack. “Kid’s dehydrated.”

Nelda’s brows gathered to form a hairy caterpillar on her
forehead. “Dr. Sutton was supposed to be with that baby. Where is he?”

“Gunshot surgery.” Lisbeth played like she didn’t see Nelda’s displeasure. “Paged my attending, but he never came. If you see Dr. Redding, make sure he signs off on my diagnosis.” She turned and beelined it toward the elevator. “Need a restroom break. Be back in a few.”

“Whoa, little missy!” Nelda shouted. “What about the foot ulcer?”

Her threatening tone stopped Lisbeth in her tracks. As a first-year resident, she was years away from being able to control her schedule. “Right.” With an exhausted sigh, she spun and snatched the diabetic’s chart, ignoring Nelda’s smug smile. “Got it.” Lisbeth bit back the urge to shout, “Happy now?”

Once she had the rank ulcer irrigated, she tried to break away again, but Dr. Redding, her attending, finally appeared on the floor. If she didn’t take advantage of his presence, she’d have to track him down later to sign charts. She mentioned the baby, and he said he’d take a look before he left on a family ski trip. It would be years before she got the holidays off.

Just when Lisbeth thought the coast was clear, Nelda caught her again and insisted she check some labs on the computer . . . pronto . . . which Lisbeth managed to do while simultaneously standing on her irate tongue and aching feet.

Three hours later, she stumbled to the deserted doctor’s lounge in desperate need of coffee and a bathroom break. CNN played on the muted TV mounted to the wall.

Lisbeth emptied the last of the coffee dregs into a Styrofoam cup. Serious shots of caffeine made her jumpy, but what choice did she have? She’d promised Craig he wouldn’t have to spend Christmas Day watching her sleep.

The thick brew smelled like burnt camel dung and tasted
scorched, but Lisbeth was too hungry to care. Her last sustenance, a stale donut, had been gobbled down sixteen hours ago at the daily noon lecture. Were it not for her roommate Queenie’s secret stash of Pringles, residency would be a forced weight loss plan.

Lisbeth swiped Queenie’s chips from her locker and dropped into the nearest chair. She removed her smashed sandwich and Papa’s letter from her pocket. Surely it wasn’t a Christmas card. Mama was the one who had made a big deal about Christmas. After her mother’s strange disappearance, she and Papa had made a fairly happy life for themselves, but they never again made a big deal about the holidays.

Drawing the envelope to her nose, Lisbeth closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. The orange and lemony traces of her father’s Erinmore pipe tobacco lingered along the seal. Suddenly she was five years old and wondering if she’d caused the fight between her parents that dark and chilly night.

She pressed the guilt from her mind and studied the postmark on the envelope.
Carthage.
There was only one reason Papa would base from there. A chill ran up her spine. How long had Papa been in the desert? Sometimes he carried coffee-stained missives around in his shirt pocket for weeks waiting on Nigel’s supply plane to skirt the plateaus and land on the barren expanse of sand that always surrounded his archaeological excavation camp. How ironic that the lifestyle of a man devoted to accurately dating rare artifacts made it impossible to assign a valid shelf life to his news.

Lisbeth tore a clean slit along the envelope’s edge. She pulled out a single sheet of yellow paper. Bits of sand and dust left from the
ghibli
, a dry southern wind that rearranges the Sahara dunes every spring and fall, fell into her lap. Precious images whizzed through her mind: Papa sitting on an overturned bucket under the shade of a tattered tarp. His faded dungarees filthy from days of sifting through mountains of earth. A tablet perched upon his
long, sinewy legs. The lined pages aflutter as he struggled to write a message to her.

She smoothed the wrinkled page, running a trembling hand across his scribbled words.

Have found your mother at the Cave of the Swimmers. Come quickly.

Lisbeth’s breath caught. Her mother had died when she was five. At least that’s how Papa had explained Mama’s sudden disappearance. His crew had searched the area desperately, but when they never recovered a body, Papa had been forced to conclude that Mama had lost her way in the dark. Lisbeth had accepted his explanation—loved him too much not to—but deep down she’d always wondered what really happened after the argument she’d heard outside their tent. She’d probably never know, and neither would Papa.

The bigger question now was why her father had returned to the Cave of the Swimmers. When he came to the States for her med school graduation, he’d said his next project was a sarcophagus excavation in Cairo. Why risk the political dangers of returning to an obscure cave tucked away in the farthest region of the desert hinterlands? More important, why risk upsetting her? Hadn’t they agreed they would never go back?

“Touch my Pringles and die, Hastings.” Queenie stood in the doorway, hands on hips, her licorice eyes trained on the chip cylinder. “Swiping snacks is so ghetto.”

Lisbeth tossed her the can, hoping her best friend wouldn’t pick up on the fact that she was near tears. “So call security.”

“I’m too tired.” Queenie plopped down in an empty chair. “Besides, who has time for all the red tape? We don’t even have time to pee.”

“Nelda’s against bathroom breaks.” Lisbeth’s pager buzzed.

“Aren’t you going to answer that?”

“I just need five minutes off my feet.” Lisbeth reached into her pocket and clicked the device to vibrate. “Nurse Ratched has been hammer-paging me all night. I’m sure she has ten new homeless guys who can’t live without me.”

“It’s your funeral.” Queenie rattled the chip can, then dumped the last few remaining crumbs into Lisbeth’s palm. “Make your last meal count.”

Pager vibrations coincided with an alarming voice on the intercom.

Code Blue. ER. Code Blue.

Lisbeth leapt from her seat, crammed the letter into her pocket, and bolted out the door.

2

Tunis, Tunisia

F
AILURE TO PRACTICE SOUND
medicine” echoed in Lisbeth’s head as she exited the customs queue in the Tunisian airport. Her residency coordinator had said she should consider her probation a lucky break, an opportunity for all concerned to apply the rehabilitative properties of time. He claimed two weeks off would help her regroup and refocus . . . the lie doctors have to tell themselves to beat back the shame of screwing up.

One lapse in judgment had killed a baby. In her mind, the mistake would never be history. If she’d failed once, she could fail again. The past was a wicked taskmaster that shaped the future with no regard to time.

Lisbeth pushed from her mind the peers that had avoided her, as if monumental mistakes were contagious. She hoisted the strap of her bag over her shoulder and strode into the oppressive humidity of the Mediterranean coast.

Across the street, sooty exhaust huffed from the tailpipe of a dilapidated bus pulling away from a hand-lettered cardboard sign.
BUS STOP
.

“Wait!” Arms waving, she raced across the street, dodging men on bicycles and speeding cars. “I can’t miss my connection!”

Breathless, she pounded the slow-moving vehicle’s door. The driver reluctantly flipped the lever, the door creaked open, and she
hopped aboard. Heat-ripened bodies sucked every ounce of oxygen from the sticky air. Lisbeth dumped a few dinars in a tin can nailed to the dash. Behind the bus driver, she spotted a woman holding a basket of salted sea mullet. Next to her a small boy wrestled a scrawny chicken. No wonder the vehicle reeked of the same earthy scents that fouled the county hospital’s waiting room on Christmas Eve. The native woman made no effort to share her seat, so Lisbeth discreetly offered a coin.

The young mother snatched the money without a word and drew the boy with ebony eyes tight against her slight frame. Lisbeth perched on the wooden bench. Careful to stay clear of the chicken, she swung her bag into her lap.

The bus swerved through narrow streets lined with whitewashed houses trimmed in the cobalt blue of the sea. After they passed the amphitheater ruins, Lisbeth fished Papa’s letter from her bag.

Cave of the Swimmers.
Had Papa lost his mind going back there? According to recent news reports, this part of the world had become a keg of dynamite with a short fuse. She was only a child when the Egyptian government shut down exploration of the mysterious chamber the first time, but she remembered enough to know she had to get her father out of there. Lucky for both of them, she just happened to be free . . . maybe permanently.

Lisbeth stuffed the envelope next to the stethoscope in the pocket of her cargo pants. It was stupid carrying such a cherished possession around. She wasn’t fit to use medical equipment anymore, and having it with her wouldn’t bring Mama back. But she couldn’t bring herself to leave the last piece of her mother behind. Lisbeth buttoned the pocket flap and gave the bus driver a quick tap. “This is my stop.” She slung the strap over her shoulder and stepped from the bus.

When the dust cleared, she stood alone on the end of a short, single-lane runway. In the opposite direction, a potbellied man kicked the tires of a prehistoric bush plane. A minute to gather her courage would have been nice, but her pilot was on time . . . a rarity for this part of the world. Lisbeth took a deep breath, plastered a smile on, then trudged toward the Cessna.

“I thought I hired a pilot, not an old buzzard,” she shouted over the whir of the propeller.

The sun-weathered man eyed her oversize bag as he wiped his ham-size paws on a bandanna. “You said nary a word about stayin’. ” Although Nigel’s hair had thinned considerably, he still had those keen blues eyes and a hint of Irish brogue that refused to succumb to the native languages he’d taught her around the campfire. “I ain’t lettin’ a wee lass linger at your da’s haunted cave.”

“Good to see you again, too.” Lisbeth’s extended hand went unshaken. “I’m not exactly a kid anymore.”

He shifted the tobacco bulge in his cheek. “I don’t care if you’ve become the bloody queen of England; the desert’s no place for you now.”

“You’ve carted me all over the Sahara.”

“And the last time I hauled your bony backside out, it was so you could make a life for yourself amongst the living. Become one of those fancy doctors like your ma. Marry some nice boy, and settle in one spot for more than a diggin’ season.”

“Plans change.” Her hand slid to the stethoscope in her pocket. “Besides, this isn’t your call, Nigel.”

“No.” He spit a brown stream, barely missing Lisbeth’s boot. “But it’s me plane.”

“Not really. My father’s grant money pays your bills.” Lisbeth pushed past him, his sturdy frame a comfort she’d missed. She opened the cockpit door, stowed her duffel behind the seat, and
climbed in. “Don’t stand there gawking like an offended leprechaun. We’ve got a thousand miles to cover before dark.”