The Road to Bithynia: A Novel of Luke, the Beloved Physician

by Frank G. Slaughter

  Ananias smiled. “You are honest, Luke, and Jesus turns away no one who comes without evil in his heart.”

  “Then you will heal him?” Luke asked eagerly.

  “I will do what I can. Better still, I will go for one whose faith is greater than my own and through whose hands many have been healed.”

  Just then Apollonius began thrashing about in delirium and Luke missed the name of the other healer, if Ananias spoke it before he went out. Probus came into the room while Luke was quieting the sick man. “His breathing is more labored,” he observed. “Are you sure that you have done everything possible for him, Luke?”

  “Everything but draw blood.”

  “Why not that?”

  “Hippocrates says, ‘Bleed in the acute affections, if the disease appear strong, and the patients be in the vigor of life, and if they have strength.’ I am afraid Apollonius is not strong enough, and Ananias has already gone for a healer whose power he says is great. . . .”

  “Be sensible, Luke,” Probus urged. “You know that such cures are in the mind and not for serious cases like this. Would you let Apollonius die without bleeding him, while you wait for a healer, when drawing blood may be the thing that would turn the tide in his favor?”

  Luke looked down at the sick man. Already the bluish pallor of death was upon his lips, the rattle was in his throat, and a bloody froth bubbled faintly from his lips. When Luke felt the pulse it was full and bounding and the veins on the back of the sick man’s hands seemed ready to burst, so filled were they with blood. Noting all these signs, Luke’s mind began to work alertly once more. It appeared from the dilated veins that there was a plethora, an excess of blood in the veins, perhaps brought on by the congestion of the inflamed lungs. But if that were true, then bleeding was indicated, as Hippocrates had said and Probus urged. And there was no time to lose. “Hand me the basin on the table there in the corner, Probus,” he directed as he opened the small case of instruments which he always carried with him. “Then hold the arm while I incise a vein.”

  The sharp point of the scalpel penetrated the skin and the bluish swelling of the vein beneath. Blood, dark and unhealthy in color, spurted from the cut into the basin, while Luke held the wound open by turning the blade. He let the bleeding continue until he estimated that a full goblet had escaped before removing the scalpel and binding a pad of wool against the tiny puncture wound. The whole operation had taken only a few minutes.

  “See!” Probus cried. “He is better already.”

  There did seem to be a shade less rattling in Apollonius’s lungs when he breathed and perhaps a slight lessening of the unhealthy bluish tinge of his lips, but the delirium continued and the pulse still raced. Neither Luke nor Probus realized that anyone else had come into the room until Luke heard a faint cry and saw a slender feminine figure slump to the floor.

  It was Mariamne. He recognized the delicate beauty and the dark hair. Her body had filled out with the promise of maturity, and her beauty had blossomed in the five years since he had seen her last. She wore a tunic of lightest yellow that fell softly about her slender ankles, around which were bound the lacings of light golden sandals. And over the tunic was a peplum of pure white, in narrow light folds, as if pleated by one of the specially trained slaves the Romans called vestispicae. She wore no ornaments except a slender gold chain about her neck from which hung a tiny cross of gold.

  “By Diana!” Probus said. “A goddess has come to visit us.”

  Luke’s fingers sought Mariamne’s pulse and found it slow and strong, so he judged that she had merely fainted from the sight of blood. Just then she opened her eyes and stared at him dazedly.

  “It is Luke,” he said with a smile. “In the flesh.”

  “Luke!” she cried, sitting up. “How did you get here? And all that blood . . .” She stopped and shuddered.

  Luke explained his presence and that of Probus and Apollonius. Mariamne spoke pleasantly to Probus, then looked down at the sick man. “He is very handsome,” she said softly, as if to herself, and then blushed. “Is he very sick, Luke?”

  “Desperately. Nothing I have done seems to help.”

  “I—I am counted as having some skill in nursing. Can I help?”

  “I am afraid he is already beyond all help,” Luke warned her.

  Mariamne touched the pale hand of Apollonius on the bed, and her slender fingers curled about his, as if she would transmit to him some of her own blooming health and strength. “No one is beyond help, Luke,” she said in gentle reproof, “if God wills that he shall live. Jesus Christ raised the very dead from their graves.”

  Luke saw Probus lift his eyebrows, but when the apothecary spoke it was only to say, “The operation Luke has just performed is sure to help Apollonius, Mariamne. Luke has not slept for three nights, and naturally he is much concerned about his brother.”

  There was the sound of voices in the other part of the house, and Ananias came in, his face concerned. “I was delayed,” he said anxiously. “Is he—?”

  “Apollonius still lives,” Luke told him. “I have drawn some blood.”

  “Then there is still time; we must pray for him.”

  From the background Probus said, “Theophilus, the boy’s father, is rich. Perhaps if we made a suitable sacrifice to your God—”

  “The Lord Jesus Christ was a living sacrifice for us all,” Ananias replied calmly. “Nothing is needed save His blood.” Then he turned back to the door and held the curtain aside.

  A short man came into the room. His body was not remarkable in stature, but his head was of noble pro-portions, and his deep-set eyes glowed with a compelling fire. Luke stared at him unbelievingly, and a feeling akin to terror began to surge up within him, a sense of fear and respect for something, a will or a purpose, which transcended his own. A flash of memory took him back to a hilltop beyond Damascus when a man named Saul of Tarsus had said, “We are a part of a larger plan, Luke, something we can only obey but not yet understand.”

  This same Saul of Tarsus stood before him now, smiling warmly, his hand held out in the strange but friendly greeting of those who followed Jesus of Nazareth. “We meet once more, Luke,” Saul said. “I told you on the road from Damascus, it was God’s will that our paths shall cross again.”

  Luke had been so startled by the unexpected appearance of Saul that for the moment he could not speak. Sensing his emotion, Saul said kindly, “Ananias tells me that your foster brother is very sick.”

  “He is near to death,” Luke admitted. “I can do no more to help him.”

  “Then it is time for prayer.” Saul dropped to his knees beside the bed, and the others followed suit. Luke found himself on his knees, too, but Probus stepped back into the shadows near the curtained doorway and stood watching. Saul’s voice was low and vibrant, an oddly compelling tone, not of supplication, but almost of comradeship and trust. “God of our fathers,” he prayed, “who has sent Jesus Christ, Your Son, to save men from their sins, and who brings to us all good things and punishes us for our sins, look down, I pray, upon the young man who lies upon this couch. Search his heart, O God, and make him know the grace and strength of Thy Son to forgive sins and give new life. If it be Thy will, grant to him Thy healing power that he may be well and, rising from this couch, praise Thee and speak the power and grace of Your Son, Jesus Christ.”

  The prayer went on, with now Ananias and now the bearded preacher taking up the flow of words. Luke had seen the followers of Jesus engage in their custom of continuous prayer in the house of Judas, the cobbler, in Damascus when this same Saul had been blind. Now, kneeling while the others prayed, he experienced a strange feeling, as if some other presence had entered the room and pushed him aside while this new agency took control of Apollonius and his fate. When Probus touched him on the shoulder, Luke got up from his knees and followed the scribe into the other room. Food and wine had been set o
ut for them and, realizing for the first time that he was hungry, he joined Probus in eating.

  “Do you realize that these so-called healers have pushed you entirely out of the picture in there, Luke?” Probus asked severely.

  Luke did not tell his friend of the strange feeling he had experienced of being pushed gently aside by some unseen but reassuring hand. Probus, he sensed, would not understand. Instead, he said, “I had already done everything I could, and it was all worthless.”

  “Your perceptions are dulled by worry and fatigue,” Probus insisted doggedly. “There was distinct improvement after you drew the blood. If anything saves Apollonius, it will be your medical skill and not this business of mumbling prayers to a provincial deity.”

  “So long as he is healed, I care not who gets the credit.”

  “This fellow Saul will claim it, then. I can see that he is not one to step aside and let others take rewards which are rightfully his. By the way,” Probus continued, “is he the same fellow you mentioned to me once, the one who was stricken blind on the road to Damascus?”

  “Yes. He is the same.”

  “Do you believe what he says about it being God’s will that your paths should cross again?”

  “I don’t know,” Luke admitted thoughtfully. “How else could you explain it?”

  “How else but that Saul, being a native of Tarsus, would naturally return to his own city to live?”

  “Can you explain why Apollonius became ill on the road just before we got to Tarsus, where Saul is now living?”

  “The road now called the Via Augusta has run from Pisidian Antioch to Tarsus for a thousand years, Luke. Naturally we traveled it on our way to Antioch. And since strong men get pneumonia, as you saw the soldiers doing at the front, why shouldn’t it happen to one who was weakened by illness as Apollonius was?”

  “You may be right.” Luke rested his head in his hands. “I am too tired to know. But I will rebuff no power which might help Apollonius, merely to build my own self-pride.”

  Before Probus could answer, Saul came into the room. He was smiling, and Luke started up eagerly. “Is Apollonius better?” he asked.

  Saul put his hand upon Luke’s arm in a comforting gesture. “We have prayed to Jesus Christ that He will save your brother from death, Luke. No one can do more. Go to him now and give him the benefit of your skill as a physician.”

  “B-but—” It was on the tip of Luke’s tongue to say that the case was out of his hands, but he stopped, for Saul had been kind enough to try to help, and he did not wish to appear ungrateful.

  “Christ Himself told His disciples, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick,’ Luke. He came to the earth as a living proof that God will work side by side with us in all our labors if we but let Him.” With a final squeeze of Luke’s arm, he was gone.

  Ananias and the bearded preacher came out of the room where Apollonius lay. “We go to gather the followers of Jesus to the house of God to pray for your brother, Luke,” the weaver said. “Be not dismayed. Victory will be ours.”

  When Luke entered the sickroom Mariamne was sitting beside the couch, still holding Apollonius’s hand in her own. The pulse still raced under his finger when Luke examined his foster brother, the bluish pallor of his lips had not lessened, and his breathing was still labored.

  There was no real change, he knew, nothing from which to take hope. Mariamne saw the despair in his face and touched his hand reassuringly. “Do not give up hope, Luke,” she said. “In my heart I feel that he is going to live. Remember, the servant of your friend, the centurion, had been given up for dead, yet he was healed by Jesus.”

  The thought brought Luke little comfort, for he had seen too many men die of pneumonia in the Roman camp in just this manner. But there was nothing to do now but wait for the end, and he pulled up a cushion and sat beside the couch, leaning his head in his hands. Apollonius had quieted as soon as Mariamne took his hand, as if somehow her presence had penetrated even into his delirium. Now there was no sound except the sick man’s stertorous breathing, and soon Luke dropped off to sleep sitting upright, so near to complete exhaustion was he from the long vigil in the wagon.

  He had been dozing about an hour when a cry from Mariamne brought him wide awake. His first thought was that the end had come, but then he saw that Mariamne was standing beside the bed with tears of joy pouring down her face. “Luke!” she cried. “It is a miracle! Look! The disease is leaving his body.”

  There was indeed a startling change in Apollonius. Perspiration covered his skin, which had been dry and hot with fever a short time before. His breathing was deeper and less labored, and the bluish color of the lips and earlobes was already fading into a more nearly normal pink tint. When Luke fumbled for the pulse he found that it, too, had slowed and become stronger.

  Probus had been dozing in the adjoining room. Roused by Mariamne’s cry, he came through the doorway and stopped, gripped by the picture that met his eyes. Mariamne, her face radiant, still held the sick man’s hand; Luke stood looking down at his foster brother as if he could not believe the evidence of his own eyes, and Apollonius was perceptibly stronger now that the raging fever had broken so dramatically. A frown wrinkled the forehead of the apothecary, and he moved closer to the couch in order to see more clearly what was happening.

  Then Mariamne dropped to her knees and began to pray, pulling at Luke’s hand until he knelt beside her. To the confused jumble of sobbing and hysterical laughing in which she poured out her prayer of thanksgiving, Luke could only add a mute paean of thanks of his own, “God, or gods, if such there be, I thank you for the life of my brother Apollonius.”

  IX

  By morning Apollonius was definitely out of danger. Mariamne had remained beside him throughout the night while Luke, exhausted completely, slept in the adjoining room. It was Mariamne’s face that Apollonius saw when he opened his eyes with a clear vision shortly after daybreak. “I am Mariamne,” she said, smiling. “We are all so happy that you are better.”

  “Then you are not an angel?” he whispered.

  “I am real.” She laughed. “Here, pinch me.”

  Obediently he pinched her firm round arm, then managed to smile. “I don’t seem to remember much since we left Pisidian Antioch.”

  “You have been very sick, but Jesus has made you better in answer to our prayers.”

  “Your prayers?”

  She blushed then, but when he reached for her fingers again she did not draw them away. “The prayers of all of us,” she explained, “including your brother Luke.” Then she drew her fingers away. “I will get you some broth. Luke will want to know that you are conscious.”

  When Luke came in, rubbing his eyes from sleep, the tribune’s first words were, “Who is that girl?”

  “She is Mariamne, the daughter of a weaver named Ananias. I met them in Damascus five years ago.”

  “Are you—are you sweethearts?”

  Luke shook his head. “We are friends.” Then he smiled. “I think she has fallen in love with you, though. She hasn’t left you since we reached this house.”

  Apollonius flushed with pleasure, and when Mariamne came in with a bowl of broth, he followed her around the room with his eyes. Nor could Luke blame him for being smitten with the girl. She had been lovely enough, as a mere girl five years ago. Now she had bloomed into an extraordinarily beautiful young woman, slight of figure but innately graceful, her skin smooth and unblemished, her dark hair richly alive, and the small head on the slender neck as symmetrically perfect as the work of any classic sculptor. Seeing that the two of them were quite engrossed with each other, Luke tiptoed from the room.

  Probus was gone all day but returned in time for the evening meal, a look of quiet satisfaction on his face. “How is Apollonius?” he asked.

  “Improving steadily,” Luke told him. “There is no fe
ver today and he is taking food.”

  “Would you say that he is out of danger?”

  “The crisis is past, I am sure of that.”

  “Hah! Then you admit there was a crisis?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “If the disease improved by a true crisis,” Probus said triumphantly, “then the cure was a natural phenomenon.”

  Luke had been asking himself the same question, but he was still not sure of the answer. “I don’t know, Probus,” he admitted candidly. “I never saw such a dramatic recovery before.”

  “Zut!” The scribe spat out a date pit explosively. “Just because this sect makes a ceremony of what they call healing and a beautiful girl looks at you, must you forget all your medical science?”

  Luke started to protest, but Probus paid no attention to him. “I have just come from the library of the university here,” he continued, “where I took the trouble of copying on a wax tablet—as best I could with this broken arm—something I want you to hear. Listen:

  In Abdera, Anaxion, who was lodged near the Thracian Gates, was seized with an acute fever; continued pain of the right side; dry cough, without expectoration during the first day, thirst, insomnolency. On the sixth, delirious; no relief from the warm applications. On the seventh in a painful state, for the fever increased, while the pains did not abate, and the cough was troublesome and attended with dyspnoea. On the eighth I opened a vein at the elbow and much blood, of a proper character, flowed; the pains were abated, but the dry coughs continued. On the eleventh the fever diminished; slight sweats about the head; coughs with more liquid sputa; he was relieved. On the twentieth, sweat, apyrexia, and a crisis, with recovery.

  Probus looked up from the wax tablet. “What do you think of that?”

  “It could be a history of Apollonius’s illness,” Luke admitted.

  “It could. But it is the history of a case of pneumonia treated by Hippocrates several hundred years ago. You will note that there was a crisis and that it followed bleeding. I tell you, Luke,” the scribe insisted, “Apollonius was saved by your hands when you drew blood to relieve the plethora, and not by prayers and incantations.”