Authors: Lynne Gentry
What Lisbeth wanted was a bite of the tuna sandwich she’d just purchased from a vending machine, ten minutes off her feet, and a chance to read the letter burning a hole in the pocket of her white coat. But if she had any hope of catching a break in the next fifteen hours, tonight was not the time to spout off to the snarling brick house who had the power to make a thirty-hour call seem like sixty.
Frigid temperatures, combined with the loneliness of the holidays, had driven the uninsured of every age, sex, nationality, and state of mental duress into the county hospital. Regurgitated Jack Daniels, exhaust fumes, and too many nights on the streets fouled the emergency room air. Vagrants slumped in the upholstered chairs or lay sprawled across every inch of shiny floor tiles. Bearded men and frazzled women scrapped for an inch of real estate and clamored for the attention of a doctor.
The desperate begged for someone like her.
Lisbeth’s eyes flitted from the stale sandwich she clutched to the occupied gurneys lining both sides of the hall. A grizzled man wearing a filthy, oversize army jacket and combat boots without laces sat up, flashed a toothless grin, then coughed blood into a tissue.
So much for her appetite. Lisbeth slid her sandwich on top of the letter in her pocket.
“I haven’t got all night, Dr. Hastings.” Nelda waved a chart under Lisbeth’s nose. “Choose!”
Choices.
Decisions she’d made that she could never undo. When she chose to go into medicine, Papa said he could see how she might enjoy saving the living after spending her childhood watching him resurrect the dead. He’d been supportive of her choice, even tried to share all he remembered of her mother’s medical career: First-year medical residents lived in a constant state of sleep deprivation. Days off were rare. And scariest of all . . . what kept her awake at night even when she wasn’t on call, the possibility that she’d screw up and kill someone.
“Which one?” Nelda barked in the voice that had earned her the nickname of Nurse Ratched.
Something about the desperation oozing from the old man’s yellowed eyes pumped a new round of adrenaline into Lisbeth’s sagging system. She snatched the chart in Nelda’s left hand. “TB it is.”
Thirty minutes later Lisbeth exited the old man’s exam room fully aware that her lecture on the importance of taking the medication tablets regularly had fallen upon deaf ears. To rule out TB, she called medical service to admit him, then dropped the signed chart on the stack at the nurses’ station. Thankfully, there was no sign of Nelda. With any luck, she could disappear long enough to choke down her sandwich before Nurse Ratched cornered her again.
Strong arms circled Lisbeth from behind, and she jumped with a start. “Hey, beautiful.” A male voice whispered in her ear, “I need an examination.”
“Knock it off, Craig.” Lisbeth wiggled free before Nelda appeared and caught her making out with her fiancé, a handsome first-year surgery resident on an ER rotation. “Nurse Ratched has spies everywhere.”
“You speak Arabic, right?” Craig Sutton’s dark eyes were too darn dreamy for a surgeon. Every time he came around she melted like one of his many drooling fans.
“Yeah.” Her aptitude for languages had been a leg up when she interviewed for this residency, but whenever the attendings needed a translator stat, she felt it a curse. “So?”
“A triple gunshot just came in.” He cranked up the charm. “You know I want in on this surgery, love. But Nelda dumped an Arabic lady and her baby on me. Projectile vomiting.” Nose wrinkled, Craig thrust a triage chart into Lisbeth’s hands. “Women are better at this kid stuff than men.”
“What?”
He held up his hands to block the possibility of her slapping him, which she was seriously considering. “You know what I mean: more nurturing.”
“A baby?” Pediatrics wasn’t her specialty. In fact, she didn’t do kids. She liked the idea of them, even wanted a couple someday, but she’d been too busy climbing sand dunes and charting stars with Papa to develop her nurturing skills. What would her future husband think if she confessed babies made her squeamish?
Craig kissed her hard on the lips. “You’re an angel. No wonder I love you.” He spun on his heels and plowed through the congested hall. “Got her vitals, but no history,” he shouted over his shoulder.
“You owe me.” Lisbeth’s protest got lost in his hasty retreat. “A baby? What was I thinking?” She gave a quick tug to her sagging ponytail and stepped inside exam room 1.
An anxious woman dressed in a black silk
abaya
, a dark veil covering all but her face, perched on the edge of a straight-backed chair. She rocked a crying infant wrapped neck to toe in a blanket. Inky ringlets capped the child’s scrunched features and stuck to its olive skin.
Shouting to be heard over the piercing wails, Lisbeth introduced herself in Arabic.
The mother’s almond eyes brightened. She obviously understood the Carthaginian dialect Lisbeth had chosen. “My Abra cannot keep anything down. Help, please.”
“How old is—” In midyawn, Lisbeth realized the action must have seemed rude, because the mother’s confidence level dropped dramatically. Lisbeth covered her mouth, applying extra pressure to her cheeks in the hopes of jump-starting blood flow to the few remaining brain cells she had left. “How old is your”—she glanced at the chart—“daughter, right?”
The woman nodded. “Eight months.”
Lisbeth skimmed the vitals recorded on the chart. Numbers and letters blurred together. She blinked in an effort to fight back the fog of exhaustion. Low-grade fever at 100.4 degrees F. Slightly tachycardic for an eight-month-old. Decent blood pressure and good O2 sats on room air.
“How long has she been vomiting?”
“Two days.” Worry weighted the mother’s voice.
Lisbeth set the chart on one end of the exam table. “May I take a look?”
Abra’s mother nodded consent, then carefully placed the screaming infant on the crinkly white paper. Keeping a firm grip on her child, she looked to Lisbeth, expecting a magical end to the little one’s suffering. Four years of med school had not prepared Lisbeth for the unspoken pressure patients and families heaped upon doctors to perform miracles.
Lisbeth fished a pair of glasses out of her pocket, hoping the sturdy brown frames made her appear a little more experienced. “I’m not going to hurt her.”
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?