by Lynne Gentry
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1
MAGDALENA KADER PRESSED HER way through the medical staff clustered around the emergency room’s fuzzy television. “What? Did Tunisia declare a national holiday or something?”
“Shhh. Princess Diana is about to get out of the carriage,” gushed Kaifah, a cow-eyed nurse’s aide engaged to a rug salesman and leaving her position in less than a month to set up a proper household. “Don’t you want to see her dress?”
“I have work to do, and so do all of you.”
Magdalena had been too busy working toward becoming a doctor to daydream about wedding dresses. She did, however, occasionally allow herself the luxury of imagining a happily married life raising a family. But the man would have to be someone special, someone who would not expect her to give up medicine and be a traditional housewife. Her work mattered, and she would apologize to no one for loving the opportunity to make a difference.
She shuffled through a stack of charts, her blood pressure rising at the sour pout Kaifah hurled in her direction. It had taken centuries for women in her male-dominated culture to obtain the right to pursue careers outside of the home. Yet, nearly every one of them she came across would have thrown it all away to marry a prince.
Magdalena quickly separated the charts into three stacks, based on triage. The first was a teenager with a sprained ankle. The ice pack would keep the swelling down until X-ray could work him in. She set the boy’s file in the third stack, which was for cases of lower priority, along with the files of a souk vendor covered in a fiery allergic rash and a tourist with what appeared to be a bad sinus infection. The second pile consisted of an elderly gentleman with stomach pain and a toddler with a bad cough. The first stack was reserved for the woman who had sliced an eggplant in two, along with her thumb. The bleeding had slowed when the nurse wrapped the injured digit with tight gauze, but the wound would require stitches.
A hand clasped her shoulder. “Dr. Kader.”
Magdalena’s heart jumped. “Father, you startled me.”
He smelled of surgical Betadine, a testament to the long hours and the deep level of commitment that made him such an excellent doctor. The kind of doctor she hoped to become.
“Sorry, Doctor.” He glanced over his shoulder, cleared his throat, and all those gathered around the television scattered. No one wanted to be caught loitering by the chief of cardiothoracic surgery. “You’d think the blasted Brits owned the world.” He peered over her shoulder. “What have we got today?”
Magdalena gave him a rundown on the cases. “No cardiac. At least not yet,” she reported.
“Just as well; I already have an aortic aneurysm repair on the board.”
While everyone in the hospital feared Omar Kader, Magdalena’s earliest memories of her father were of him coming to gently wake her for school. He would set a tray before her. A hard-boiled egg and weak tea heavily creamed and sweetened with honey from the valley. While she ate, he would choose her socks, taking extra care to match the blue in her school uniform. He worked the hairbrush as deftly as he worked a suture needle, and her tangles would soon fall into a neat, thick braid that snaked down her back. She’d watch him slip into his white coat before they got into the backseat of the limo together, her hand in his, as he quizzed her on medical vocabulary.
And then there was the year she turned twelve, the age when Tunisian mothers begin to seriously groom their daughters for marriage. Magdalena had suffered a broken heart at the hand of Jabir Abduallah.
The gangly soccer player had knocked on her door, soccer ball twirling upon his long, slender fingers. “You’re still in your uniform?” He gave the ball another spin. “Change and come watch the game.”
With clammy hands, she pressed the pleats of her woolen skirt, her heart beating wildly at the thought of the most handsome boy in the neighborhood scuffing his shoes on her welcome mat. “I really can’t go. I need to finish my homework,” she explained, part of her envious of his freedom, the other part of her determined to please her father.
“Homework? It’s Friday.” His smile cut a bright sideways comma in his olive complexion. “All the other girls will be there.”
“Maybe after I finish a few more chemistry problems.”
Disappointment narrowed his eyes. “Why would a girl need to be so smart anyway?”
She’d slammed the door in his face. Two days later, when she and Father were walking home from the library with a stack of anatomy books, they ran into Jabir in the park. His black hair was wet with sweat. He was twirling his soccer ball and talking to Badra, a girl with long, flowing hair. She cut her moon-shaped eyes at Magdalena, then boldly placed her hand in Jabir’s to signal her claim on this trophy.
Magdalena’s father had put his arm around her and said, “Infatuation is not love. When I married your mother, I thought her beautiful enough on the outside, but it was what was inside that eventually caught my heart.” He lightly tapped her chest where her heart was. “You have something special inside: a compassion that seeks to bring relief to those who are hurting and the growing know-how to do something about it. True love will appreciate this treasure.”
His words had been a salve to her wound and a reminder that Father considered her best interests in all things.
“Magdalena?” Father’s tug on her elbow pulled her into the present. “You’re not on call tonight, right?”
“No. Why?”
“I’ve invited Mutfi Zaman for dinner.”
“The proctologist with the lazy eye?” Something wasn’t right about the sheepish expression on her father’s face. “Why Dr. Zaman?”
“We’re having merguez. I hear the good doctor loves a fine sausage.” He pinched her cheek, proud of his joking reference to intestines. “Wear something nice, eh?” His sensible shoes squeaked along the shiny linoleum. “It will be fun.”
Fun? In the absence of her mother, it was Father who’d held her through the night when infected tonsils sent her temperature into the stratosphere. It was Father who had planned her birthday parties. Low-key, quiet affairs. Classical music. Dinner at her favorite seaside restaurant. Just the two of them. It was Father who’d always been there for her, never once blaming Magdalena for her mother’s death from childbirth complications. After inflicting such a great sadness upon him, the least she could have done was to have been born the son he deserved.
She owed him. More than she could ever repay. No matter how much her dedication to be just like him cost her. While girls like Kaifah went on boat rides with rug salesmen, Magdalena kept her nose in the medical books. Friends and fun were the luxuries of those destined for a different path. And yet she couldn’t seem to dismiss the uneasy irritation churning in her gut. Why would her father think it fun to entertain a man who smelled of Preparation H and bowel resections? Surely he didn’t think it time for her to marry.
“We need a doctor!” An Irishman’s brogue boomed through the ER, and the nurses scattered.
Magdalena glanced toward the door, where two men waited. The bear-sized man shouting orders had the arm of a lanky fellow dusted in limestone draped around his neck.
“Quick, lass. Don’t stand there gawkin’ like a leprechaun.” The Irishman dragged his friend toward her. “Do something before he bleeds to death.” A blood trail snaked behind the man, whose hea
d was hanging down.
Magdalena raced around the counter. “What happened?” she asked in her best English.
The injured man waved her off. “Just got the wind knocked out of me.” His deep voice resonated through her, an American accent that reminded her of the elderly couple from Texas who’d suffered a bad case of food poisoning aboard one of the cruise ships that strangled their beautiful port. “Nigel here overreacted. He’s handy in a bar fight, but he doesn’t do blood.” He lifted his chin. Chalky powder ringed his pristine blue eyes.
“Sir, where are you hurt?” Magdalena’s visual exam started at his head. She was usually quite good at guessing height, weight, even injuries, but the thick layer of dust made the task difficult. The injured man was obviously tall, and from his sharp, well-defined features, possibly somewhat handsome. She’d guess him to be no older than thirty, and since he lacked a ring on his finger, not married. She quickly scrubbed that last ridiculous thought from her mind.
“My injury is kinda personal, pretty lady.” The dusty man winked. “No offense, but I think I’ll wait and tell the doc.”
“I am the doctor.” Technically, she was only a first-year intern who happened to be assigned to a four-week ER rotation, which she would never disclose, especially to a tourist.
“You?” His surprise skipped from the dark strands escaping her tidy bun to her white coat. “If I’d known the doctors in Carthage looked like Roman goddesses, I would have jumped down that funerary hole the moment I set foot in your ancient city.” He shook his head, and dust drifted to the floor. “Nigel, my friend, we’ve got to climb out of the lonely trenches more often.”
Lonely. “I don’t have time for your games, sir.” This was not the first time an American had acted far too familiar for Tunisian customs. Even though she was curious to know if his loneliness was anything like hers, inappropriate flirtations with outsiders were not only foolish but dangerous. “Either you tell me your injury or I strip you down and find it myself.”
“That could be fun.”
Magdalena pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and snapped one on. “Not for you.”
“Okay, doc. You win.” He pointed to his backside. “I’ve got a potsherd stuck in my . . . derrière.” He chuckled at the flush of heat in her cheeks.
She craned her neck. “In this town we don’t patch up antiquities smugglers.” The back of the man’s filthy dungarees was dark and wet with blood. “We stone them.”
Nigel squared off. “Doc Hastings is an archaeologist, not a thief!”
“That’s what they all say once they’re caught with their pants down.” She snapped on another glove. “Put him facedown on that gurney.”
“I’ve got this, Nigel.” Dr. Hastings limped to the small bed and belly-flopped onto the clean sheet. “Do unto me what you must, fair maiden. All I ask is that you handle my posterior with the same gentle care I lavish upon each and every one of your national treasures.”
“If you mean you want me to leave your hillsides pocked with holes, I’m only too happy to accommodate.”
“There’s a little clinic down the road. Want me to cart you there, boss?” Nigel asked.
“And leave this fair lady in the white coat?” Her patient eyed her as best he could with one side of his face scrunched into the mattress. “Naw. I think we can come to some sort of compromise. Right, Doc?”
Magdalena shooed Nigel toward an empty chair, then picked up a fresh chart and clicked her pen. “Name.”
“Dr. Lawrence Hastings.” When he maneuvered his head for a better look at her, he winced. Maybe she should have stabilized his spine. “Now tell me yours, beautiful.”
Before she could answer she heard, “Dr. Kader.”
Magdalena turned to see her father’s long, practiced stride eating up the hall. She straightened her shoulders, determined that he see her as a doctor rather than a woman in need of a husband. “Sir?”
“What have we here?” Her father surveyed her patient’s bloodied trousers and the six inches of potsherd protruding from the left butt cheek. “Young man, this is the very reason frolicking upon the ruins is prohibited.” He took the chart from Magdalena and scribbled his name. “I doubt you’ll have any trouble with his sutures, Dr. Kader, but if you do, have me paged.” He eyed the potsherd again. “Tourists.”
“I’m an archaeologist.” Her patient’s words came out as tight and compacted as his face. “Your Ministry of Human Development, Antiquities, and Tourism flew me in to investigate some graves found after a water main break near the Tophet.”
“Even worse,” Father growled. “Carthaginian history is best left buried.” He strode away muttering, “Blasted Americans.”
“If he’s your boss, I feel for you, honey,” her patient mumbled.
“My boss . . . and my father.”
The man’s lopsided smile slid from his face. “While you’re yanking that potsherd out of my hind end, just cut off my foot and stick it in my mouth.”
“Don’t tempt me, Mr. Hastings.” She wheeled her patient to the first empty exam room, flicked on the operating light, then fished surgical scissors from the drawer.
“Whoa! What are you going to do with those?”
“Remove your pants.” She started snipping from the frayed hem.
“Really? Can’t you just yank out the shard? I can darn a hole easier than I can take time to shop for pants.”
“A treasure seeker and a seamstress. You are quite accomplished, Mr. Hastings.”
“Doctor.”
She laid the scissors upon the counter and retrieved a syringe. “I think you’ll be more comfortable if I give you a little something to relax before I yank, as you say.”
“A needle?” He squirmed and pushed himself up. “I don’t do needles.”
“Mr. Hastings, please try to relax.”
“It’s Dr. Hastings, and I don’t do nee—owwww!” He cast a surprised glare in her direction, then slumped onto the table.
She chucked the needle into the proper bin and resumed cutting toward the shard. “Mind telling me how this happened?”
“I was cataloging bones. All of a sudden the ground beneath the grave gave way. . . . I fell through.” His eyelids were beginning to droop. “Landed on a pile of infant burial urns . . . and . . .”
His words were a bit slurred, but she understood him enough to hear, “must have been twenty thousand of them in that pit.”
Everyone knew of the legend of the human sacrifices made at the Tophet. No one had ever assigned such a horrific number to the atrocity. While Magdalena waited for his respiration to slow, she summoned Kaifah from the television, where the nurses had once again gathered.
Removing the embedded shard required a bit of digging. Kaifah was so distracted by trying to hear the muffled commentary of the television that she wasn’t much help. Once Magdalena finally freed the bloody object, she placed the shard in her palm for a careful examination.
Earthenware. Jagged edges. Partial image of a foot showing.
She squinted at the image and swiped at the blood. Heat instantly seared her thumb. She dropped the pottery onto a stainless steel tray. “Ouch.”
“What is it?” Kaifah snapped back to attention. “Were you cut?”
“No.” Magdalena stared at the strange black figure.
“What is that marking?”
“I don’t know.”
“Want me to clean it up?” the nurse asked.
“Don’t touch it.” Magdalena couldn’t take her eyes off the silhouette image of a wasp-waisted body with tapered arms and legs and a round blob for a head. Danger flashed hot into her mind. She closed her eyes against the pain.
“Dr. Kader?” Kaifah’s irritation penetrated the fog. “Are we about done?”
Magdalena opened her eyes quickly—maybe a little too quickly, because the room
was swimming.
The nurse reached across Mr. Hastings’s bloody gash and steadied her. “Should I get your father to close?”
“No.” Hands trembling, she threaded the suture needle. “I can do this.”
2
LAWRENCE AWOKE THICK TONGUED, thirsty, and flat on his back. The last thing he remembered was a gorgeous, white-coated Mediterranean woman with eyes the color of a mermaid’s tail stabbing him in the arm with a needle. He hated needles.
“There you are.” His lady in white, the sadistic one from his foggy memory, eyed him smugly. “Need a drink?” She held a paper cup and offered him a straw.
The water eased his parched throat, proof he was not dreaming.
The woman assessing him reminded him of his first crush, Miss Clubine, the Arkansas librarian who smelled of vanilla and guarded the books in the musty red brick building with a steely gaze. The summer he turned ten, Miss Clubine had marched him toward the adventure section and introduced him to the likes of Robinson Crusoe and The Three Musketeers, the perfect escape from the doldrums of his family’s poultry farm. Miss Clubine’s knowledge had been so beautiful, so attractive, that he had to punch Billy Smith in the nose when he called her Four Eyes.
Now, as he studied the lady in the white coat, he couldn’t help but wonder what treasure existed beneath her guarded layers. “What’s your name, Doc?”
“Dr. Kader.”
“No, your first name.”
She set the cup on the window ledge. “I don’t divulge personal information, Mr. Hastings.”
“Lady, you’ve seen parts of me no one has laid eyes on since I was a diapered babe in my mother’s arms. I think that puts us on a first-name basis, don’t you?”
She hesitated, her eyes darting to the open door as if she didn’t want to be overheard. “Magdalena.”
“Magdalena.” He liked how her name swirled in his mouth, cool and refreshing as an Ozark mountain spring. Every letter from his mother hounded him to find a good girl and settle down. He’d pushed her pleas aside. Not forever, but for now. Before he tied himself down like his four older brothers, who’d stayed on the chicken farm, he wanted to see the world.