Return to Exile (3 page)

Cyprian read the widow’s words one more time, praying he’d missed something in his haste the first time through, then shook his head. “Not one word.”

2

Dallas, Texas

T
IME IS NOT THE
healer of all things.

Dr. Lisbeth Hastings did not need this latest lab report to confirm what she already feared. Measles.

How had the thirty-five-year-old she’d just moved to intensive care circumvented routine vaccinations? Almost every child born during the immunization initiative of the late seventies had gone to school with their shot records current.

The hospital’s intercom crackled. “Code Blue. ICU. Room six
.
”

Lisbeth dropped the chart, grabbed her stethoscope, and sprinted through the halls. The patient in room six was her patient, and she wasn’t leaving until she had taken care of her.

Out of breath and in a cold sweat, Lisbeth skidded around the corner. Her patient’s worried husband paced outside the room from which medical personnel silently filed out. He jostled a crying toddler. “Dr. Hastings, what’s going on?”

“I promise I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.” Lisbeth shot past him and burst into the silence that consumes a room where death is the victor. “What happened, Nelda?”

“Convulsions.” The charge nurse handed Lisbeth fresh gloves, then quietly started closing drawers on the red crash cart.

Lisbeth plowed through the litter left by the team of airway
specialists, nurses, and ICU attendings. During her residency, she’d assisted on hundreds of Code Blues. Heroic measures to prolong a life always inflicted unavoidable trauma on the crashing patient. Yet, when she reached the still body lying on the bed, she couldn’t help but gasp at her patient’s total loss of dignity.

Damp, blond strands stuck to the woman’s face. Red-rimmed eyes. Blue lips. Fiery pustules that made her look like some kind of distorted monster. Her hands limp as if life had slipped through her fingers. Lines of all sorts tethered her rigid frame to silent machines. And most disconcerting of all: she reeked of an odor similar to plucked chicken feathers.

Two days ago, this perfectly healthy woman, her beautiful two-year-old, and her handsome husband were enjoying Disney World when she suddenly spiked a fever. A measles diagnosis meant this young mother was contagious the day her family flew home from Orlando, the three days they were in the theme park before her rash appeared, and on the initial trip to their vacation destination. Lisbeth could not let herself think about how many lives this woman had touched between Dallas and Florida in the past six days or she’d lose what was left of the sandwich she’d choked down ten hours ago.

Lisbeth brushed a strand of hair from the woman’s forehead. Body still warm but slowly cooling. She pulled a penlight from her pocket and flicked the beam across glassy eyes. Foolish, she knew, but she wanted a reaction, needed this young wife and mother to wake up and prove her theory wrong. Any trace of the former eye color had been pushed away by the large, black holes of pupils blown beyond repair. Lisbeth clicked off the pen.

“Dr. Hastings?” Nelda maneuvered 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. “It’s hard
enough to tell someone their spouse died, but when it might have been prevented, what do you say?”

Two decades without a single case of measles reported in Texas. Now this was the third death presenting similar symptoms in the past twenty-four hours. The first two had been kids. Their deaths she could attribute to the increasing fear surrounding the safety of vaccinations or the possibility they had medical conditions that prevented inoculations. But how had this woman slipped through the immunization cracks?

“I’m sorry, Nelda. It’s not your fault.” 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 get their shot records, including those of the deceased.” Her mind double-timed a new plan. “And contact the CDC.” The tiled walls seemed to be closing in, squeezing the breath from her chest. She would not let this happen again. “We could have an outbreak on our hands.”

*   *   *

LISBETH WHIPPED
her rusty, old Toyota into the parking garage of her downtown loft apartment. She killed the engine, but its usual hiss and bang continued. She dropped her head onto the steering wheel. She was only a year younger than the mother who’d died, but failing to prevent these senseless deaths made her feel fifty. Six years ago, she believed she’d been sent back to the twenty-first century for a reason. At least that was the pep talk she gave herself late at night when her longing for the man she’d left in the third century made it impossible to breathe. But now she was painfully aware that if she had stayed in Carthage and seen this virus put to bed, that mother on the morgue slab would be home hugging her baby tonight.

In the tomblike darkness, fingers of cold snaked through the vehicle’s broken window seals. A guilty shudder ripped through Lisbeth’s exhausted body. Despite her best efforts, the past had caught up with the future.

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.

Determined not to be undone by the pain, she squirted an extra glob of sanitizer into her hand and 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. Prompt action by public health officials was essential in addressing emerging outbreaks. The governmental investigators would expect every local infectious disease specialist to be front and center until they’d contained the danger.

Lisbeth yanked the phone from the charger and dragged herself from the car.

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

Dear Santa,

I want my daddy.

Maggie

Beneath her five-year-old daughter’s signature were three red stick figures. A mom. A dad. And, in between them, a child with outstretched arms.

Yearning clenched Lisbeth’s empty belly. She and Papa had done their best to piece together a family for Maggie. Grateful as she was for Papa’s help, returning to this century meant Maggie would never know her own incredible father. Santa could more easily give her daughter the moon.

Lisbeth folded the paper and stuffed it, along with her regret, into her pocket. She scooped up the cookies, drank the milk, then slid the key into the front door lock.

Inside the quiet apartment, oatmeal and cinnamon lingered in the air. Lisbeth inhaled deeply, letting the sweet scent carry her back to the makeshift ICU she’d thrown together in Cyprian’s third-century villa and what it’d been like awakening to Cyprian standing over her, a steaming mug of warm wine laced with spices in his outstretched hand. She’d begun falling in love that morning, and nothing had been the same since.

Lisbeth quietly dropped her keys on the kitchen table and draped her white coat over a chair.

Papa snored on the couch, an afghan snugged tightly beneath his chin. White lights twinkled on the spindly spruce leaning against the TV. Under the tree was Maggie’s new Little Mermaid doll. Lisbeth was relieved her father had remembered her instructions to get the red-headed mermaid out of the closet.

“Papa?” She pressed two 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 was only five years old when Mama fell through the time portal at the Cave of the Swimmers and disappeared from their lives. For the next thirteen years, she and Papa traveled the world, leapfrogging from one archaeological dig to another. Roman baths in England. A long-buried, first-century villa in Artena. A crumbling, midempire amphitheater in northern Libya. They’d probably still be digging together if Papa hadn’t insisted she go to school in the States and become a doctor . . . to be more like Mama. The four years she spent in college had been her first experience of staying in one place longer than a digging season. That’s when she realized that while Papa loved every moment of their vagabond travels, she longed for a more controlled environ
ment. Stability. A normal life of school, ballet lessons, and friends.

She patted her father’s hand. “Got to go back when the CDC calls.”

“So it’s measles?”

“Yes,” she hesitated. “Can’t let it get worse.”

“Worse?” Papa pushed himself upright, his white hair wild and restless as a desert wind. He eyed her carefully. “How can it get worse?”

“A virus must mutate to survive. Epidemic is its ultimate goal. This is a virus that could easily gallop out of control.”

“Sounds like you’re going to need your strength to fight this one.” Papa wrestled his lanky frame from the afghan. “How about I fix you something hot and solid to eat?”

“How about some more of those cookies you made?” It took everything she had not to throw herself into his arms and tell him just how frightened she was. What if she couldn’t keep this virus in check before someone else died? “Thanks for taking such good care of Maggie.”

“A real corker, that one. Got your beauty and my brains.” Papa winked and swung his legs off the couch. “We had to set up Santa’s snack 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 refused to call Maggie by anything other than her proper name, the name that had belonged to Mama. It kept the extraordinary woman alive for both of them. “That girl won’t be put off much longer. You’re going to have to let me teach her more than her daddy’s language.”

“Learning Latin won’t hurt her.” Lisbeth pulled Maggie’s note out of her pocket. “But finding out about the cave before she’s old enough to understand could. I thought I made it clear that I would decide when to tell her about what happened in the desert.”

He held up his palms. “Haven’t said a word.”

“Then why did she draw this?”

Papa fished his glasses from his pocket. “It’s a family. Every kid wants one, right?” He lightly tapped her forehead. “Anyone smart enough to write notes to Santa is smart enough to ask why he didn’t deliver.”

“She’s not ready to hear that her father is never coming here.”

“You were five when I had to tell you your mother wasn’t coming back. We managed.”

Managed? Yes. But she’d had to deal with the hurt her whole life. “This is different. You didn’t know what happened to Mama.”

“And you know where to find your little girl’s father.”

“Going there’s too risky.”

“Keeping her from him is a bigger risk.”

“I turned out okay.”

He nodded. “As long as you’re in control.”

“What’s wrong with being able to take care of yourself?”

“Nothin’. But sooner or later the day will come when something bigger than you can handle will come along, and you just might have to let go and trust someone again.”

“Don’t preach.” Except for Papa, it felt like everyone she’d ever trusted had abandoned her. Including Cyprian. Some days she found it hard to trust the God she’d come to love not to do the same. “What good will it do to tell Maggie about a father she can never meet?”

“I don’t have all the answers, Beetle Bug. Just make sure your plans line up with God’s.” From his expression she could tell he knew he’d lost this battle, but the set of his jaw told her they would have this discussion again. “Should we wake Magdalena now? Give her a good Christmas before you get called out?”

“Let her sleep a little longer. The CDC team has to come from Atlanta. That gives me a few hours before I have to go back.”

“You could also use a little shut-eye.”

“I can’t let measles win this time.”

“The future’s a heavy burden when you can’t let go of the past. I know.” Papa drew her into his arms, forcing her to relax a little. Six years since their return to Dallas and he still smelled of the desert right before the rain. He kissed the top of her head, his scraggly beard sanding a few of the splinters from her ragged thoughts.

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 Egyptian government granting 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 and Nigel do. And Magdalena would get her Christmas wish.”

“I’m not letting that bald Irishman smuggle my daughter into Egypt.”

“Well, you sure couldn’t leave her with Queenie. I know she’s the only friend you’ve got, but her call schedule keeps her at the hospital sixty to eighty hours a week. Plus, I took
you
all over the world.”

“I’m not you.”

Papa paused. “Who is it you’re really protecting, Beetle Bug?”

“I don’t know why we’re arguing about this. It’s a moot point. Even if I wanted to go back, which I don’t, the cave is closed to archaeological exploration.”

“Why do you think I’ve been praying?” He winked. “Now go check on our girl.”

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 Papa’s mind cleared, his sole reliance upon science had shifted to a strong conviction in a higher power. According to her father’s new way of thinking, the same God who’d created the unknown dimensions of time had also created scientific minds determined to unravel its mysteries. He was convinced God would provide a way for him to fling himself down the time portal and bring Mama home.