by Lynne Gentry
Lisbeth started forward, but Ruth’s grip tightened on her arm. Ruth gave her another firm glare, released her, and advanced the pull cart to the counter.
“I’ve got to ask what she knows of Magdalena.” Lisbeth wheeled. Bolting from the shop at full speed, she ran smack into a man waiting on the other side of the threshold. They tumbled onto the pavement in a tangle of arms and legs.
“Watch where you’re going!” He wiggled to get free of her.
Lisbeth pushed herself off the surprised man. “Are you hurt?” Breathing hard, she offered her hand. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t see—”
The man scrambled to his feet. “I must find the healer.” Without taking the time to dust his filthy hands, he gripped her shoulders. “Is she here? I saw Aspasius’s slave girl and took a chance that she accompanied the healer.” Hope floated atop the terror spilling from his eyes. “I know you. You’re the one who raised Laurentius from the dead.”
Lisbeth checked the street for signs of Tabari, but she’d disappeared. “Look, I’m just—”
His dirty fingers dug into her flesh. “I need a healer.” His breath reeked of a very empty stomach. “When my wife got the fever, I spent all we had on a physician. Now my daughter is very ill. Since I can’t pay, the Roman dog won’t come. What am I to do?”
Lisbeth suddenly remembered this man, the one the old bishop called Numidicus, the one who’d jumped from a second-story balcony to plead his concerns. She remembered the fear in his voice as he begged the bishop to reconsider staying behind. “How old is your daughter?”
“Four.”
Don’t get sucked in raced through Lisbeth’s head as the next question spewed from her mouth. “Does she have a fever?”
He nodded. “And coughing.” He released her and wiped at the tears streaking a path over sharp crags. “I’m afraid she has the same thing that made my wife sick.”
She glanced over her shoulder. Ruth had been detained by the laundress. “Take me to her now.”
Relief sparked his full-on sprint down the uneven pavers. Lisbeth tightened her grip on the bag of herbs she’d purchased, her common sense flying well beyond her grasp. She hiked her tunic and trailed the man into the bowels of the city.
19
NUMIDICUS PROVED HIMSELF QUITE fleet-footed for one so malnourished. He threaded Lisbeth through a network of alleys, bypassing the fine houses and the red-cloaked legionnaires that patrolled the right-angled streets.
Shallow stone steps took them deeper and deeper into a series of run-down buildings crammed little more than an arm’s-width apart. An air of neglect hung over this rough part of town that hadn’t received much in the way of Roman upgrades. Apparently the 1 percent short-changing the less desirables of society was nothing new. The fingers of poverty reached far in every direction.
Lisbeth shooed a rail-thin dog blocking her path, silently debating whether she should have at least told Ruth where she was going. But, then again, why would she? The decision was already made. She would not spend her life as Cyprian’s slave. Accompanying this man to his daughter’s sickbed wasn’t a long-term commitment. She’d do what she could; then she’d disappear into the maze of the slum district, free at last to search for Mama and the way home.
Lost in her plans, Lisbeth ran smack into Numidicus, who stood huffing in front of a door slightly ajar.
“I seem determined to mow you down.” She surveyed rows of warped doors running the length of the bottom floor of a six-story, multifamily apartment building. “Is this where you live?” If his home waited behind the sun-faded planks, why didn’t he go in? She followed his distracted gaze to a neighboring stoop.
Three dirty children sat with their hands clasped in their laps, sad eyes begging for relief. On the balcony above these frail stick-figures, a crying woman rocked back and forth, clasping her swollen belly.
“Her husband died last night.” Numidicus tore his eyes from the spectacle. “Her youngest passed the day before.” He nodded toward two lumpy bundles stacked neatly on the shaded side of the alley.
Lisbeth’s gaze darted between the bodies, the woman, and the hopeless children.
He grabbed her arm. “You must not leave us.” Fear raised his pitch. “Please.” His agitation resembled that of every parent who paced outside the ICU, praying for the best yet anticipating the worst. “You’re all we have.”
“If that’s true, you’re in trouble, mister.”
He dropped to one knee and lifted clasped hands. “I beg you.”
How many times had she taken a few extra minutes with a patient because she was their only shot at getting well? Not enough. Maybe never. She’d spent the first few months of her residency so tired, so stressed out, and so pressed for time that patients received only a fraction of the attention she’d sworn to give every human life.
How many people had fallen through the cracks in the medical system because Dr. Lisbeth Hastings couldn’t or wouldn’t stop long enough to help? Maybe Abra would still be alive if … “Where’s your daughter?”
Numidicus jumped to his feet and opened the apartment door. Fecal-tainted air blasted Lisbeth’s nostrils. She recognized the odor of bodily fluids released in death. What horror awaited her attention? Numidicus dragged her inside the sweltering little room and shut the door.
It took a moment for Lisbeth’s eyes to adjust to the dim light of a single oil lamp flickering on a stone ledge. Drab, stucco-covered walls and a low ceiling formed a space no bigger than her bedroom back in Texas. She and Papa had excavated bigger burial vaults.
Numidicus seemed unwilling to step away from the door but graciously waved an offer of the only seat in the house, a crude contraption of sticks and cloth held together with strips of leather. The raspy wheeze of labored breathing drew Lisbeth’s attention to the single bed at the far end of the tiny room.
“I’ll need more light, Numidicus.” Despite the closed door and the room’s obvious lack of windows, she could still hear the cries of the distraught neighbor. “You’re going to have to open that door. I can’t breathe.”
He shook his head. “The god of the dead must kick his way into the hovels of the poor. I’ll not hold the door open for him.”
Like a good Roman, Numidicus had not uttered Mor’s name, but she didn’t have time for foolish superstitions or nonexistent gods. “Fresh air and light. Please.” As he reluctantly complied, she lifted the hem of her tunic and ripped off two strips of cloth. “Tie this over your mouth like I’m doing.”
Is this what Mama would do? Magdalena Hastings wasn’t around to share her expertise. She hadn’t been in Lisbeth’s life for the past twenty-three years, and there was a good chance she wouldn’t be there for the next twenty-three. Unlike the other night, when they’d worked side by side, handling this emergency was on her.
Lisbeth picked up the lamp and headed toward the still lump in the single bed.
Not one, but two people occupied the sagging mattress. A child. And the child’s obviously dead mother.
“Hold the light closer.” She set her bundle of herbs on the floor and knelt beside the girl sleeping with her mouth open, each inhale creating a coarse, musical wheeze. “What’s your daughter’s name?”
Numidicus did not move. “Junia.”
“Pretty name”—the child’s olive skin sizzled beneath Lisbeth’s touch—“for a pretty little girl.” Junia’s eyes fluttered open. The child began an uncomfortable fuss and tried to wiggle out from under the stiff arm wrapped around her. “Easy, sweetie. I’m a … I’m here to help you. Let’s get these covers off of you.” Lisbeth gently freed the child from the mother’s gray limb, and that’s when she noticed an angry red rash on the dead woman’s arm. “What in the world?”
Junia’s father stood immobile, his eyes blank screens. Was he in shock?
“When did your wife start feeling bad?” Lisbeth reached across the child and closed the mother’s eyelids, taking care to avoid contact with the fiery pustules that marred her face. He
didn’t answer. “Numidicus, when did you notice your wife’s rash?”
“Several days ago.”
What kind of ancient scourge was she dealing with? Plague? Smallpox? If whatever killed this woman was contagious, Junia and Numidicus were at risk. And so was she. Why hadn’t she paid better attention to Papa’s lectures?
Wishing for a squirt of antibacterial soap and some gloves, Lisbeth wiped her hands on her tunic and forced herself to gather as many objective vitals as she could on Junia. Dry, deep cough. Red-rimmed, watery eyes. Runny nose. Lisbeth clasped the child’s wrist and palpated a radial pulse, noting an increase in Junia’s panting respirations.
“Please bring the lamp as close as possible.” She snapped her fingers. “Numidicus, you have to help me. I need to take a quick peek at your daughter’s throat.”
He inched forward, his hands trembling. In the faint yellow glow, Lisbeth could make out the girl’s swollen tonsils, but it was the red lesions with blue-white centers salting the inside mucous membranes of Junia’s cheek that drew her up short.
“Koplik spots?” Lisbeth muttered under her breath, her mind racing. “Measles?”
From what she remembered from med school, measles had been eradicated, wiped from the face of the earth with the 1960s discovery of effective vaccines and massive immunization campaigns. But that medical progress had been made in her time … almost eighteen hundred years in the future. This third-century mother had died from a virus Lisbeth could prevent with two simple, twentieth-century inoculations … vaccinations she’d had as a child … medicine she didn’t have with her now. If she didn’t do something, and quickly, measles would kill this little girl.
What if she was wrong, and the wife’s rash was something far worse? She checked Junia’s limbs and torso for signs of the rash. Clear. Relieved, Lisbeth gently pried Junia’s parched lips apart and peered inside again. If these lesions were Koplik spots, Junia’s body would soon be consumed by the same ugly rash that covered her dead mother. She needed to check the body of the man and baby from upstairs. They may have died of measles. And if they did, who knew how many people these four people had infected? Maybe the whole housing block? If these infected carriers coughed in the communal bathrooms or sneezed while sharing a water gourd, many more neighbors could die … including every person who’d come in contact with Numidicus and his family at the last church gathering in Cyprian’s home.
She’d never actually seen a case of measles. Without her cell phone she couldn’t Google pictures, symptoms, or possible treatments to confirm. Was guessing on the exact protocol better than doing nothing? “I know what to do.” She wished her voice sounded a bit more confident.
Numidicus’s eyes brightened. “You can heal my daughter?”
“No. We’ve got to let the sickness run its course.” Lisbeth hated the blow her news dealt this expectant father. “But, with your help, we can keep her alive. Understand?”
Skepticism wrinkled his brow, but he nodded.
“You must do everything I tell you.” Lisbeth dug through her parcel, mentally cataloging supplies and tallying shortages. The minuses far outweighed the positives. “Fetch more water, lots of it. We’ve got to get Junia’s fever down. Plus, she’s very contagious.”
“Contagious?”
“Don’t touch Junia or anything else in this room once I scrub it clean. Understand? And you must wash your hands with soap every time you enter or leave.”
“We can’t afford soap.”
“Hot water then. As hot as you can stand.” She noticed a small bowl of untouched mush beside the bed. “Get rid of that. I’m sure she’s lost her appetite, but we must keep her hydrated. I’ll need honey, sea salt, and all the lemons or oranges you can find.”
His head cocked to one side. “Lemons?” The unfamiliar word tangled his tongue.
“Right, not available here yet,” she mumbled. She rubbed her temples. “Think, Lisbeth. What fruits were available in the third century?” The breakfast tray Cyprian had brought her that first morning, his dreamy eyes filled with compassion, popped into memory. “How about pomegranates? Think you can get your hands on a couple of those?”
“Perhaps.”
“Oh, and I’m going to try and rig up some kind of vaporizer to help her breathe. But first, we must remove her mother.” The man wasn’t moving. “Numidicus?”
Tears trickled down his cheeks, his watery eyes fixed on the pocked face of his wife. “She was so beautiful.”
“I can see that.” What was one more lie? She was making things up as she went along. What did it matter if the flat, overlapping blotches had disfigured the woman’s face? Truth wouldn’t make this woman less dead. “If you’ll help me drag that rug over here, we’ll do what has to be done.” She removed her cloak and draped it over the chair.
Thirty minutes later Lisbeth had finished washing the dead woman’s face and tidied her dingy, threadbare tunic as best she could.
Numidicus fished a coin from a crock hidden beneath the bed. He pressed the money into his wife’s clenched fist. “To pay the ferryman god, Charon.” He would hear none of Lisbeth’s arguments that the money might be better spent on fresh fruit and soap.
Together, they gently lifted Numidicus’s wife from the bed, wrapped her in the carpet, lugged the sour bundle outside, and deposited her body next to the two corpses from upstairs. Lisbeth avoided the baby swaddled tight as an Egyptian mummy and knelt beside the man’s body. She peeled back the blanket enshrouding his head. His splotchy face was frozen in horror. She quickly covered him, certain his rash matched that of the woman she’d just laid beside him.
Discarding the young mother on the curb, left to rot in the elements like trash dumped along the highway, felt criminal. But neither Numidicus nor she had the strength or time to figure out another option. Even without a proper funeral, Numidicus mourned his beloved wife, sobbing uncontrollably as he knelt by her body.
For a dangerous instant, Lisbeth allowed herself to wonder what it would feel like to have a man miss her that much. Craig was a busy doctor; he probably hadn’t even noticed she was gone. Papa may or may not have the mental capacity to miss more than his memories. And Cyprian … what did it matter what that man thought?
Lisbeth swiped at the tears burning her cheeks; the stink of sickness and death remained on her hands. “Numidicus,” she whispered. “Junia needs us.”
The distraught husband pulled himself away from his wife with admirable courage and set out in search of supplies. Lisbeth returned to Junia’s sickbed.
Cracked lips framed the child’s heart-shaped mouth. Without a thermometer, she could only guess at Junia’s temperature, but from the heat radiating off her skin it was high. Unchecked fevers quickly sapped a child’s body fluids. Plain water wouldn’t replenish lost electrolytes. Junia needed an IV, or at the very least, an oral rehydration solution. She could mix one, but only if the child’s father had success in finding the ingredients.
Lisbeth set to work doing what she could to disinfect the apartment without bleach. She scrubbed the walls and floor with tepid water and a generous slug from the wineskin she found hanging on the wall. Once the floor dried, she spread her cloak, lifted Junia’s frail body from the soiled bed, and laid her on the pallet.
A dark red stain outlined the place where Junia’s mother had lain. Numidicus’s Roman physician must have used a bloodletting technique of some sort on the poor, dying woman. The only thing this barbaric treatment could have possibly accomplished was traumatizing the innocent child in bed with her. She set the bloody blanket outside the door and remade the straw tick. She gathered Junia into her arms, careful not to wake her.
After the child was settled on fresh bedding, Lisbeth watched helplessly as the girl’s racking cough nearly turned her little body inside out.
Better get started on that homemade vaporizer. But with what?
Mama’s word “improvise” rattled in her head. She scanned the room. Bed. Chair. Small trunk. Not much to w
ork with. Searching the trunk, Lisbeth discovered a piece of tightly woven fabric Junia’s mother was probably saving for a special occasion. Building a vaporizer so her daughter could breathe was probably not the occasion she’d had in mind. Lisbeth laid the cloth on the bed and worked to dismantle the family’s only chair.
An hour later, Junia rested under a wobbly canopy of twigs and fabric. To create the needed steam for her contraption, Lisbeth filled a pot with water and went in search of the community cooking fire and possible signs of others suffering the same symptoms.
She found an open courtyard where two gaunt women eyed her suspiciously but made room for her pot on the coals. Lisbeth fanned the embers into a weak flame. A couple of tablespoons of salt dumped into the water would speed the boiling process, but without even the barest of essentials she could make nothing happen any faster in this century. Worried Junia might awaken to an empty house, she paced as she waited for the water to heat.
As soon as steam started to rise, Lisbeth hurriedly transported the pot back to Numidicus’s apartment, holding the scalding slosh away from her body, and placed it beside the girl’s bed. She draped a corner of the tenting fabric over the pot. Cool mist would have been better, but hopefully, captured steam would increase the moisture inside the tent and help loosen the phlegm buildup in Junia’s lungs. Lisbeth stood back and surveyed her work with a surprising sense of … pride.
Now for the hard part. Waiting on Junia’s condition to improve.
An insistent rap on the door startled her. “Numidicus?”
“No,” a woman’s voice whispered.
“Don’t come in.” Lisbeth shot to the door and cracked the plank just enough to speak. “We’re under quarantine in here. Stay away.”