by Jerry Dubs
“You are Imhotep’s hemet,” Meryt said, her voice a weak whisper.
Akila, her hand on Meryt’s thin wrist as she measured her pulse, finished counting to herself. Then, her face masking the anxiety she felt at the weakness of Meryt’s heartbeat, Akila smiled at her patient. “I don’t know that word,” she said uncertainly in the language of the Two Lands.
“It means wife,” Imhotep said from behind her in English. “But not exactly. The idea of possession that often colors the word wife doesn’t apply. Relationships here are less legal and more direct. And women have surprising standing. Unlike most other ancient societies ... ”
He was interrupted by a soft laugh from Meryt.
Akila and Imhotep turned their attention back to their patient.
“My husband likes to hear his voice, doesn’t he?” Meryt asked Akila.
Despite the heavy anxiety that filled the bedroom of Imhotep’s home in Ineb-Hedj, Akila startled herself by laughing aloud. She softly squeezed Meryt’s hand.
Imhotep turned his back on the women, a hopeful smile working its way onto his tired face.
He had been awake all night and he was exhausted – by the lack of sleep, by his worries about Meryt’s waning health, by his anxiety that Akila, living almost five thousand years in his future, wouldn’t find or wouldn’t answer his plea for help – and he had worried how the two women he loved would react when they saw each other for the first time.
Akila felt Meryt return her squeeze. Seeing her draw in a small breath she leaned down to hear her soft whisper.
“I am very tired.”
Akila nodded her understanding. Meryt’s side had been slashed open and she had bled heavily. Now, a week after the attack, she lay on her wooden bed, covered with three thin linen blankets despite the afternoon heat of ancient Egypt. Her wound had been crudely but effectively stitched together. Akila had examined it when she changed the dressing, and, although it was swollen and tender, she had been pleased to see that it was not filled with pus beneath the dark scab.
“But I am not afraid,” Meryt whispered again. She raised her eyes to look at Imhotep. Then, looking back at Akila she said, “You will take care of him.”
Akila nodded, fighting to keep her lips from trembling and her eyes from welling with tears.
***
“She’s dying, isn’t she?” Imhotep asked Akila a few minutes later as they conferred on the flat roof of his mudbrick house.
Below them Meryt lay asleep. Bata, a friend who had lived with Imhotep and Meryt since Imhotep had saved him from an unjust accusation twenty-three years earlier, was sitting with her.
“The wound isn’t infected, which is a miracle,” Akila said as she looked over the low wall that bordered the roof. Beyond the wall, palm tree leaves rustled, the sharp edges of the flat leaves looking like bright, flashing blades backed with harsh shadows.
“I put honey on it. I remember having read that it fights infections,” Imhotep explained. He sighed and said, “But she had already lost so much blood.”
He shook his head as he looked down at his feet. He blamed himself for her injury; he hadn’t been able to protect Meryt from Merneith, outlaw priestess of the war god Neith.
A week ago, just after Imhotep had found a way to return to ancient Egypt, Merneith had taken them hostage and forced them into the Tomb of Ipy where she had demanded that Imhotep paint the secret hieroglyphs that would change a false doorway into a time portal. An outlaw in the Two Lands, she had planned to pass through it to flee the ancient world.
Blind Paneb, Imhotep’s oldest friend, had distracted Merneith and then Meryt, small and fearless, had attacked her. Together the three of them had pushed Merneith through the portal and then sealed it, sending her to a distant time where she would slowly starve in the dark, undiscovered tomb. During the fight Merneith had lashed out with her knife, slashing Meryt’s side open.
When Akila didn’t answer him now, Imhotep turned to her, hoping she would contradict his fears.
“Do you know your blood type?” she asked him after a moment.
He shook his head. Although willingly self-exiled in ancient Egypt, Imhotep had once lived in modern America, land of the world’s most expensive medical care. However he had never held a job that provided health insurance and so he had avoided doctors.
He had no idea what blood type he had.
Akila nodded. She had assumed that he wouldn’t know, few people did. She closed her eyes as she worked out the only way to save Meryt’s life.
Finally she said, “I’ll need a reliable assistant and a pig.”
“How about a goat?” Imhotep answered.
***
Hapu was twenty-five years old. Her childhood friends were married and had children; two of them had daughters who were pregnant.
Hapu was unmarried and childless.
She had been a child when Imhotep, then known as Tim Hope, had appeared in ancient Egypt. Hapu’s father, Paneb, had brought the mysterious outlander to their home where her first view of him had been through a veil of tears. She had been stung by a scorpion and her brother Ahmes had found her sitting in the dirt crying and quickly taken her to their home.
She remembered crying, more in fear of the knife she knew her father would use to cut open the puffy, red wound and let the poison out, as from the burning of the sting.
Imhotep had saved her from that.
He had covered her arm with what seemed to be a magical cloth that was colder than flowing water. It had stilled the pain. Then he had told Paneb that there was no need for the knife.
No one had believed him, but Imhotep had insisted.
Believing that the stranger was a god, arriving in the Two Lands during a period of unrest – ma’at disturbed by seven years of meager floods, and, perhaps by King Djoser himself – her father had persuaded her suspicious mother to accede to the stranger’s command.
Now Hapu wanted that same knowledge and confidence.
And so she had devoted her life to studying with Imhotep, learning about invisible germs and how to kill them with boiling water. Imhotep had explained how the heart pumped blood throughout the body and how that blood carried small pieces of food and air throughout the body. He had told her that the heat of a patient’s foreheads meant that their body was locked in a battle against illness and he had told her that a person’s own belief in the doctor was as powerful as any heka that the doctor possessed.
Standing on the rooftop now with Imhotep and Akila, Hapu felt a bond with the strange woman, another outlander from the future. Tall and beautiful, Akila carried herself with the dignity and assurance of a queen. Yet her eyes were kind and her mouth quick to smile.
Although Hapu worshipped Imhotep, as did many others who thought that the strange man was a god, the son of Ptah himself, she knew immediately that she wanted to be Akila.
She waited while they conferred in a different language, not the English that Imhotep had taught her over the years, but another language, one that had the staccato of the language of the Two Lands, but also a glissando that seemed to link the words.
“Hello, Hapu,” Akila said at last, turning her attention to her. Her eyes slid over Hapu, assessing and accepting. “Forgive us for speaking in the language of my home,” she said now in the ancient tongue of the Two Lands, her accent strange, the words hesitant as they stumbled from her beautiful mouth, the teeth so even and white, the lips full and smooth. A delicate silver ring in her bottom lip moved like starlight dancing on the river Iteru.
“I need your help to save Meryt.”
Squaring her shoulders, proud to be thought worthy of working with this strange goddess, summoned by Imhotep to save his wife, Hapu smiled. “I will do all that I can.”
As the words left Hapu’s mouth, Imhotep nodded and quickly left the roof. He moved with energy and purpose, the powerful architect who had created the pyramid of King Djoser, the seer who saw a future beyond the span of the Two Lands.
Two bla
ck goats were collected and brought to the roof, a small clay pot was filled with water and set to heat on a fire on the far corner of the roof. While Imhotep oversaw the preparations, Akila and Hapu huddled over the small medical kit Akila had brought with her from the twenty-first century.
Akila pulled a syringe from the kit, held it up in the light and looked closely at the needle. Far in the future, during her own time, she had been a doctor and, for three of the past five years, when Imhotep had thought that he was exiled forever from his wife in ancient Egypt, Akila had been his lover.
Then he had found a way to return to ancient Egypt and he had promised to try to send her a message by hiding a papyrus note in the alabaster sarcophagus of the Buried Pyramid. The note she found turned out to be a mysterious invitation for her to come to him in ancient Egypt. She had packed a field kit with the most versatile medical equipment she could find in the supply closets of Helwan University and followed his instructions.
Now she found herself in a world that she had known only from restored temples, dusty artifacts and fantastic stories of pyramids and pharaohs, gods and goddesses.
Refocusing, Akila touched the familiar syringe, the latest in nanotechnology. Made of sliding Buckytubes, the gauge of the needle could be adjusted by rotating a dial at the base of the syringe. She opened the needle to the widest gauge to give passing blood a wide channel, one that was less likely to encourage clotting.
She adjusted a second needle and then picked up a length of nanotubing. The tubing diameter could be enlarged by squeezing the tube, the pressure clicked through a series of gauges. She also could lengthen the tube, at the expense of thinning the wall of it, by wrapping her hand around it and simply sliding her fist down the length of the tube. She stretched it to a meter length and then attached a syringe to one end, refamiliarizing herself with the process. Satisfied that she could explain it, she glanced at Hapu who had been watching her every movement.
“I’ll explain what we need to do,” she said to Hapu, who was squatting beside her. “If you don’t understand, tell me.” Searching Hapu’s eyes for hesitation or embarrassment she saw only focus and eagerness.
Taking Hapu’s hand, she pressed two of the younger woman’s fingers against her own wrist. Hapu nodded and smiled. “Pulse,” she said in English – Imhotep had known no word in the ancient language to use when he had taught her.
“She understands circulation and blood,” Imhotep called from the other side of the roof where he was helping to hold down a bleating, angry goat that was being restrained on its side, its right foreleg immobilized as much as possible.
Akila nodded to Hapu. “Meryt has lost too much blood. Imhotep has given her water to replenish it, but her body is weak, so I am going to give her some of my blood.”
“I can give her my blood,” Hapu said immediately.
Akila shook her head. Putting her hand on Hapu’s arm she said, “No, there are different kinds of blood. If your blood and hers do not match then she could become very ill.”
“But how do you know that yours will match?” Hapu asked.
“My blood is a special kind that can be given to all people.”
She watched Hapu. Instead of questioning Akila, the girl nodded as she processed the information. “How do we do it?” she asked.
Akila smiled at Hapu’s trust.
***
They practiced on the goat for two hours, Akila teaching Hapu how to insert the needles, how to measure the blood flow with a small meter she attached to the nanotubing, how to withdraw the needle and how to staunch the blood flow.
“You will be able to help?” Hapu asked.
Akila nodded. “I believe so, I hope so,” she said. “But I have never given blood in this way. I might fall sleep,” she closed her eyes and let her head hang limp to demonstrate, “then you’ll need to be able to do this on your own.”
Hapu twisted to look at Imhotep.
“I’ve never done this either, Hapu,” he said with a sad smile. “I think that, especially in this case, that your hands will be more steady than mine.”
“Are you in danger?” Hapu asked Akila.
“No,” Akila said, ignoring thoughts of possible infection and her underlying fear that she herself could lose too much blood and there would be no donor for her.
Hapu lowered her eyes for a moment and then nodded. When she looked up, Akila saw that her eyes were guarded, the trust shaded now with disappointment.
“I’m sorry,” Akila said. “Yes, Hapu, there is a danger to me. You are right, we must be honest when we talk with each other.”
Imhotep knelt between them. He draped an arm around Hapu’s bare shoulders, she wore only a wide linen belt in the afternoon heat, and said, “Hapu, we asked you to do this because I believe that you are able to do it. Akila doesn’t know what you have seen or done with me so her trust in you is based on my trust in you. And I tell you, Hapu, that I trust you with my life. And now,” he nodded at the transfusion equipment, “I am trusting you with Meryt’s life and with Akila’s life.”
Hapu frowned. “I understand, Lord Imhotep. I am afraid, but,” she looked at Akila, her eyes once more open and honest, “I want you to know that I accept this. I understand the weight of it. I will do it well.”
***
They closed off Imhotep’s bedroom with linen sheets, moved a second bed into the room beside the wide bed that Meryt and Imhotep shared and elevated it so that gravity would draw Akila’s blood to Meryt.
Akila watched Hapu prepare Meryt’s arm, restricting the arm and cleaning the inside of her elbow with a wipe from the medical kit.
“Excellent,” Akila said, sitting on the smaller bed and extending her left arm, the underside turned outward.
Hapu knelt before her and tied off Akila’s upper arm.
“I don’t know if I have the tube diameter exactly right, Hapu, so I’m not sure how long this will take. You’ll need to watch the gauge closely.”
Hapu nodded.
“Two liters, I remember,” Hapu said as she uncoiled the tubing and laid it on a clean linen cloth beside Akila. “If you pass out before two liters of blood have passed to Meryt then I can allow two hundred milliliters more,” she said, stumbling over the strange words.
She tilted her head to the dirt floor and the brown rectangle of papyrus. “I have the signs that you drew, Akila. I will do this well.”
Behind Akila, Imhotep closed his eyes. He had decided that if Akila lost consciousness he would stop the transfusion immediately. Although he loved Meryt with all of his heart, he couldn’t allow Akila to sacrifice herself to save Meryt.
Five years ago he had been stranded in the modern world, cast through a time portal by his friends in ancient Egypt in a desperate attempt to save his life. He had survived, brought back from near death by Akila. As time passed he had resigned himself to never seeing Meryt again. He and Akila had fallen in love.
They had been happy, rediscovering love and finding comfort with each other.
When he had found a way to return to ancient Egypt, Akila had helped him, recognizing his yearning for the life and love that had been taken from him. Accepting that their relationship would change when he was reunited with his wife, Akila had still offered to go with him; she would rather live in the ancient world with Imhotep as a friend than stay in modern Egypt, without him.
But Imhotep had insisted that she stay in the modern world because she needed to be there when he would return in her future with his ill daughter. As he left he had told her that once his daughter was saved he would try to send her a message.
He had, and now she was here, risking her life to save Meryt.
Imhotep’s heart ached when he thought of Akila's generous love and her willingness to put herself in danger to save Meryt.
Guessing his thoughts, Akila looked up from her arm. “Tim,” she said sternly, using his American name and speaking in English, “Do not interfere with this. We are not using half measures. I have not come he
re to hesitate.”
Hapu froze, shocked to hear anyone address Imhotep so fiercely. He had been chief physician to the great King Djoser, he had built the mountainous tomb for the king, he was chief of all scribes. No one spoke to Imhotep in such a fashion.
She looked from Akila’s blazing eyes to Imhotep’s half-lowered eyes. There was more here than a debate over the care of Meryt, she realized. There was history and love and unspoken anger.
Turning back to Hapu, Akila said sternly, “Promise me that you will do as we decided.”
Hapu looked into Akila’s insistent eyes and nodded. As she turned her attention back to Akila’s arm, she felt Akila’s hand come to rest softly on her shaved head.
“Hapu, you are now my physician and also Meryt’s physician. Her life and my life are in your hands now. You know what to do. You know the measures. Imhotep cannot make a clear decision, his heart will cloud his mind. You must be sure handed and your thoughts unclouded. I am trusting in you.”
She turned back to Imhotep.
“I think you should leave us, Tim,” she said gently.
Imhotep came to her and bent over her face. Kissing her softly, he said, “I love you, Akila. I don’t want to lose you.” Then he knelt by Meryt, her eyes closed as she drifted inexorably toward death. Leaning over her, he kissed her and said, “Return to me, beloved.”
Rising, he walked to the doorway, pulled the draped linen aside and stepped out into the gathering darkness.
Hapu watched Akila’s eyes follow Imhotep. Then, picking up the makeshift transfusion tube, needles dangling from its ends, she gripped Akila’s arm. “You said you would lie down,” she said, giving the words all the confidence she could.
Akila started to review the procedure once more, then caught herself. Instead she smiled and nodded. Lying back on the elevated bed, she extended her arm and watched as Hapu cleanly inserted the needle. Blood filled the clear tube of the syringe. The nanotube filled and soon the far syringe turned red.