Healer of Carthage (43 page)

Keep reading for an excerpt from

Return to Exile
,

the second book in

The Carthage Chronicles!

1

Dallas, Texas

T
IME IS NOT THE
healer of all things.

Dr. Lisbeth Hastings grabbed her stethoscope and sprinted through a gurney gauntlet. The exceptionally high onslaught of feverish patients had increased her workload tenfold and kept her at the hospital long past her call shift. So much for spending Christmas Eve with her family. So much for believing that this time she had everything under control.

Lisbeth skidded around the corner, out of breath and in a cold sweat. Her patient’s worried husband paced outside the room where the code had been called. He jostled a crying toddler and pleaded for answers she didn’t have.

“I’ll get back to you soon as I can.” Lisbeth shot past him and burst into the crowded room. “What happened?”

Nelda, the charge nurse, shrugged. “Fine one minute. Convulsing the next.” She quietly started closing drawers on the red crash cart.

“Not another one!” Lisbeth plowed through the litter left by the team of airway specialists, nurses, and ICU attendings. She’d attended and assisted at hundreds of Code Blues. Heroic measures inflicted unavoidable trauma on crashing patients. Yet, when she reached the body lying on the bed, she gasped at the total loss of dignity.

Damp, blond strands stuck to the dead woman’s face. Red-rimmed eyes. Blue lips. Fiery pustules that made her look like some kind of distorted monster. Her hands were curled as if she’d tried to hang on to the last breath. Lines of all sorts tethered her rigid frame to silent machines.

Two days ago this woman and her beautiful two-year-old were enjoying Disney World. If this woman died of what Lisbeth feared, she was probably contagious the day her family flew home from Orlando, plus the three days they were in the theme park before her rash appeared, and probably even on the initial trip to their vacation destination. If Lisbeth let herself think about how many lives this woman had touched between Dallas and Florida in the past six days, she’d lose what was left of the sandwich she’d choked down ten hours ago.

Lisbeth pulled a penlight from her pocket and lifted the woman’s eyelid. Foolish, she knew, but she wanted a reaction. Needed this young wife to wake up and prove her theory wrong. She flicked a beam of light across each eye. Pupils blown beyond repair were nothing but large, black holes that pushed away any trace of the former color. Lisbeth clicked the pen off.

“Dr. Hastings?” Nelda sidled around the equipment and handed her the chart. “You want to tell the husband?”

“Tell him what? Merry Christmas, and oh, by the way, you’re a single father now.” Powerlessness shook her insides. “Hard enough to tell someone their spouse died, but when it could have been prevented, what do you say?” Two decades without a single case reported in Texas. Now there’d been three senseless deaths presenting similar symptoms in the past twenty-four hours. “I’m sorry, Nelda. It’s not your fault that more and more people insist on skipping their vaccinations.” She took a step back from the bed. “Drop your gown and gloves on the floor. Cordon off this room.”

“Do we need to quarantine the father and daughter?”

Lisbeth nodded. “And contact the CDC.” The tiled walls seemed to be closing in, squeezing the breath from her chest. This couldn’t be happening again. “We may have a pandemic on our hands.”

LISBETH WHIPPED
her old Toyota into the parking garage of her downtown loft apartment. She killed the engine and dropped her head onto the steering wheel. If she’d stomped out this disease when she had the chance, that mother would be home hugging her baby, not lying on a morgue slab.

In the tomblike darkness, fingers of cold snaked through the vehicle’s broken window seals. A guilty shudder ripped through Lisbeth’s exhausted body. The past had caught up with the future, and it was all her fault.

Lisbeth grabbed the sanitizer out of the console and scrubbed her hands. Even though she’d showered and disposed of her scrubs before she left the hospital, she reeked of failure. Thankfully, Papa and Maggie were current on their shots, but would their vaccinations be enough, especially if the virus was gaining the advantage over herd immunity?

She glanced at her cell phone: 3:00 a.m. If she was lucky, she’d have time to see Maggie before the CDC’s chartered jet arrived. The governmental investigators would expect every local infectious disease specialist to be front and center until they’d contained the danger. She yanked the phone from the charger and dragged herself from the car.

The elevator dinged. Lisbeth trudged the apartment corridor. A glass of milk and a plate of homemade cookies waited on the welcome mat outside her home. She bent to read a note written in red crayon.

Dear Santa,

I want my daddy.

Maggie

Santa could easier give her five-year-old daughter the moon. Lisbeth scooped up the cookies, drank the milk, then slid the key into the front-door lock. She slipped inside the quiet apartment.

Oatmeal and cinnamon lingered in the air. Papa snored on the couch, an afghan snugged up tightly beneath his chin. White lights twinkled on the spindly spruce leaning against the TV. Under the tree was Maggie’s new Ashton Drake doll. Her father had remembered her instructions to get the doll out of the closet. This bit of progress was a surprisingly bright spot in a very dark day.

“Papa?” Lisbeth pressed her fingers into his sinewy shoulders.

He roused with a start and opened one eye. “Home already?”

Life with her father had been like growing up with Indiana Jones. She’d been just five years old when Mama disappeared at the Cave of the Swimmers. For the next thirteen years, she and Papa took on the world, leapfrogging from one archaeological dig after another. They’d probably still be digging together if Papa hadn’t sent her to the States to become a doctor . . . to be more like Mama. Their years apart had made Lisbeth hard and determined, but the separation almost killed Papa.

“Got to go back when the CDC calls.”

“So it’s measles?”

“Yes. Maybe worse.”

Papa pushed himself upright, his white hair as wild and restless as a desert wind. He eyed her carefully. “What do you mean?”

“A virus must mutate to survive. Epidemic is its ultimate goal.”

Papa wrestled his lanky frame from the afghan. “How about I fix you something hot and solid?”

“Not hungry.” It took everything she had not to throw herself into his arms. “Thanks for making Santa cookies with Maggie.”

“A real corker, that one. Got your beauty and my brains.” Papa swung his legs off the couch. “We had to put Santa’s setup by the front door. In Miss Magdalena’s opinion, the man in the red suit’s way too fat and way too smart to try comin’ in through this fake gas fireplace.” Papa’s refusal to call Maggie by anything other than her proper name was a battle Lisbeth would have continued if she hadn’t been so tired. “That girl won’t be put off much longer. You’re going to have to tell her about her daddy.”

“I saw her note.”

“Anyone smart enough to write notes to Santa is smart enough to ask why he didn’t deliver.”

“She’s not ready.”

“Neither were you, but we managed.”

“This is different. You didn’t know what happened to Mama.”

“And you know where her father is.”

“Going there’s too risky. What good would it do to tell her about a father she can never meet?”

Papa raked his hands through his hair. He’d lost this round, but she felt certain they’d have this fight again. “Should we wake her now? Let her have her Christmas before you get called out.”

Lisbeth shook her head. “They’re sending a team from Atlanta. That gives me a few hours before I have to disappoint my daughter again.”

“You could use a little shut-eye.”

“I can’t let measles win this time.”

Papa drew her into his arms. Six years since he’d last poked through the ruins of some ancient civilization and he still smelled of the desert right before the rain. He could read ancient signs in the sand better than anyone in the world, but unlocking this virus wasn’t the same as piecing together shards of pottery. “I ordered
some old articles from the National Library of Medicine.” He kissed the top of her head, his scraggly beard sanding a few of the splinters from her ragged thoughts. “Maybe there’s something in the archives we’ve missed.”

“I’ve turned over every rock.” Lisbeth pulled back, checking his eyes for clarity, a habit she couldn’t seem to break since she’d brought him back to the States. “Go on to bed, Papa.”

“It’s already Christmas in the Middle East. Think I’ll catch CNN. See if Santa left
me
a little present.” Unlike her, he hadn’t given up on the hope that one day he would be allowed access to the cave that had changed everything.

Lisbeth patted his shoulder. “You think Santa has any pull in Egypt?”

“No.” He grinned. “But God does.”

Lisbeth headed toward Maggie’s room, contemplating the changes in Papa since he’d hauled her from the secret shaft at the Cave of the Swimmers. Not only had his mind cleared, his sole reliance upon science had shifted to a strong conviction in a higher power. According to Papa’s new way of thinking, the same God who’d created the unknown dimensions of time had also created scientific minds determined to unravel the mysteries. Maggie’s birth had given him hope that he would see Mama again. Bile burned Lisbeth’s throat. Papa still believed there was a chance she was still alive. He refused to accept the probability that her sacrificial decision to protect Lisbeth from the Roman proconsul had probably ended Mama’s life.

Light from the Little Mermaid lamp plugged in next to Maggie’s twin-size bed cast a blue glow over the Mediterranean wall mural she’d commissioned. A splurge on a hospitalist’s salary, especially since they were living in an apartment, but it wasn’t Maggie’s fault Lisbeth was not ready to put down roots. Maggie deserved a normal life . . . if anything about birthing a child conceived from a time-travel marriage could ever be considered normal.

Maggie’s pale legs sprawled atop the covers were cool to the touch. Maggie had inherited her silky blond tresses from her aristocratic father, but her fear of tight spaces came directly from her mother. No matter what they tried, Maggie refused anything that could pin her arms and legs. Lisbeth found it easier to wait until her daughter was sound asleep before attempting a proper tucking in.

Lisbeth kicked off her shoes and lifted the covers. She slid in next to the perfect little body.

Maggie roused and snuggled into the crook of her arm. “Mommy?” Her hand found Lisbeth’s face. “Did he come?” she asked without opening her eyes.

“Who?”

“My daddy.”

Lisbeth brought Maggie’s hand to her lips. She kissed every chubby finger. Her daughter’s vaccinations might be enough to fend off a large-scale virus transmission, but she knew for certain the shot had not been invented that would protect her daughter from a broken heart. “Not yet, baby.”

“Santa will bring him, right?” Maggie nuzzled her nose deeper into Lisbeth’s neck.

Inhaling the scent of tear-free shampoo, Lisbeth wished she could seal her baby inside a sterile bubble. A place where nothing bad ever happened to mothers or their children. A place where little girls didn’t wish for parents who couldn’t return. A place where families were never separated. No such place existed.

She pulled Maggie close. Her fist-size heartbeat steady beneath her thin Little Mermaid gown.

Maggie’s question reminded her of another Christmas Eve, one she’d never allow herself to forget, even if it had been six years ago, when she was an intern. Exhausted and distracted, she’d nearly made a tragic mistake with a child—no, she had made the
mistake. Remembered every guilty second that ensued. But by some strange twist of fate, she had been granted an opportunity to right the wrong. To redo those tragic minutes. She might not get a second chance with her own child.

Lisbeth swallowed the lump in her throat. “If you believe, my love, your father will come to you. Somehow. Some way. I promise.”

Maggie wriggled free. “Too tight, Mommy.”

“Sorry.” Lisbeth eased her grip, and Maggie’s tiny body relaxed. “Night, baby.” Maybe her worry was out of proportion. Papa was right. Maggie was a smart kid. They had time to work through Maggie’s need for a father, and when she was old enough to understand the whole crazy story, they would.

Maggie drifted back to sleep. Lisbeth tucked little arms and legs inside the blanket, relishing the feeling that, for this minute, her baby was safe. She’d never understood how much her mother loved her until she became a mother herself. The moment the nurse placed Maggie in her arms, she knew why small animals fought predators twice their size. She could do it. Fight to save her young. Much as she hated violence, she would kill anyone who tried to hurt her daughter. Even a virus. But how could she permanently take out something she couldn’t see? Something that didn’t fight fair? Something that had the potential to come at her again and again?

Lisbeth snuggled in beside Maggie, breathing in the scent of her like someone who’d just surfaced from being underwater too long. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

For now, she’d focus on getting this measles outbreak under control. There had to be a simple explanation for the patients she’d lost in the past few days. Compromised immune systems. Weakened hearts. Something. Until she had full autopsies, speculating
that the virus had morphed into a superbug was borrowing trouble and wasting valuable time and energy.

Lisbeth gave in to the exhaustion, allowing her heavy eyelids to close and shut off the nagging feeling that she’d missed something important. Gradually her own respirations synced with the peaceful in and out of Maggie’s slumber.