Healer of Carthage (17 page)

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 work 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.”

“Lisbeth?” Mama pushed her way in, the large basket draped over her arm knocking Lisbeth aside. “What are you doing here?” Two steps in, she stopped, eyes fixed on the steam escaping a small slit in Junia’s tepee. A fresh bruise darkened her right eye, and she seemed to be favoring her right side. “Pneumonia?”

“What are
you
doing here, Mama?” In truth, knowing her mother was alive was remarkably comforting, but no way was she admitting anything so infuriating.

“Whatever I can for these people.” Mama fished inside the basket on her arm and produced a loaf of bread.

“No, I mean, how did you get away?”

“Aspasius is preoccupied with the Senate, trying to shore up the votes he needs to keep Cyprian from office.” She smiled. “Women are not allowed in the Senate chambers.” She offered the bread to Lisbeth. “The neighbor children told me Numidicus’s wife was ill—”

“Dead.” Lisbeth rubbed the dull ache climbing the back of her neck. “His wife is dead. She couldn’t have been twenty years old.”

Mama’s gaze skimmed the room, sweeping Lisbeth along in her assessment. She set the bread on a small table. “And Junia’s lungs?”

“If I had my stethoscope, I’d know.”

“I heard what you did for Laurentius.” Mama’s touch on her arm sparked Lisbeth’s immediate recoil. Saving her mother from an abuser was one thing. Forgiving her for never coming home was another.

Unsure of what to do with the clear message of rejection,
Mama let her hand fall to her side. “What else do you need, Dr. Hastings?”

Lisbeth snatched the basket from her. “Nothing.”

“You did become a physician, right?”

“I’m
not
a doctor.”

“Really?” Mama’s eyes narrowed like they once did when Papa declared he’d have her returned to civilization in less than a week. “You didn’t learn how to perform a needle decompression digging in your father’s sand dunes.”

Part of Lisbeth wanted to scream that a mother who disappeared for twenty-three years had no right to ask about what her daughter had or had not become. Another part of her, the raw, secret part she kept buried as deep as Papa’s archaeological trinkets, wanted to fall into Mama’s arms and pour out every failing, every fear, every ugly need. “I—”

Junia cut Lisbeth off with another agonizing round of unproductive coughing. Lisbeth could feel Mama’s eyes on her as she did her best to comfort the child.

“Raising the foot of her bed will help accomplish the postural drainage she needs,” Mama said after Lisbeth’s efforts failed.