“Your temperature is a hundred and two point five. That’s not just heat.” Dr. Akkhad continues her examination, professional and thorough. She checks Lois’s lymph nodes, looks in her throat, asks questions about symptoms.
I kneel beside them, taking Lois’s hand. It’s clammy and hot at the same time.
“I’m sorry,” Lois whispers. “I didn’t want to be trouble.”
“You’re not trouble. You’re never trouble. Just rest.”
My throat is tight. At this point, Lois is closer to me than my own parents, who raised me to succeed but aren’t exactly what you’d called warm people. And she’s become more of a friend than any of the girls I was close to in New York. At this point, she might be myonlyfriend.
And I’m the one who brought her here, to this scorching desert that just made her faint.
Dr. Akkhad sits back on her heels, her expression serious. “I suspect it’s some kind of viral infection. Could be a flu strain. Could be something she picked up during travel. Either way, she needs proper medical care and rest. This environment—” she gestures at the desert around us “—is not conducive to recovery.”
“What are you saying?” I ask, though I already know.
“She needs to go back to the city. To a hospital, or at least a proper clinic with air conditioning and monitoring.”
My stomach drops. “When?”
“Today. As soon as we can arrange transport.”
“I’ll have someone drive here there,” Calvin says immediately.
I look down at Lois, who’s trying to sit up despite Dr. Akkhad’s restraining hand.
“No, I can stay. Georgia needs me.”
“Georgia needs you healthy,” Dr. Akkhad says firmly. “And you won’t get healthy here. I’m sorry, but this isn’t negotiable.”
Ella’s crying has escalated, and I can see Fatima trying to comfort her near the tent, but Ella wants me. She always wants me when she’s scared.
“Go,” Dr. Akkhad says, reading my face. “We’ll take care of Lois. Your daughter needs you.”
I squeeze Lois’s hand one more time and rush to Ella.
She lunges into my arms the moment I reach her, her small body shaking with sobs. “Mama, Mama, Mama.”
Did she see Lois fall down? At the least, she saw us all clustered around the older woman, could probably feel our panic.
“I’m here. I’ve got you. Ms. Lois had a little tumble, but she’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
But it’s not okay. Nothing about this is okay.
I walk her away from the commotion, bouncing and soothing, singing softly until her crying subsides into hiccups. By the time I return to the dining tent, arrangements are being made.
“Ahmed will drive her back,” Khalid is saying. “He can stay with her in the city, make sure she gets proper care, then return in a few days.”
“We’ll pay for everything,” Calvin adds. “Private doctor, hotel, whatever she needs. Dr. Akkhad said that she’ll be okay. She just needs a good bed, medicine, and to rest somewhere with air conditioning.”
“Thank you,” I manage, though my mind is racing ahead to the obvious problem.
Lois is leaving. Today. Which means I won’t have anyone to watch Ella.
I can’t work if I’m constantly watching a toddler. But I also can’t bring someone else in here to watch her. I can’t leave Ella with strangers. I won’t. She’s fourteen months old, in a foreign country, in the middle of the desert. She needs me or Lois, the only two people she trusts.
But I’m also the lead archaeologist on the project of a lifetime. I’m not heading back home. What I am is trapped between a rock and a hard place.
“How long until Ahmed can leave?” Dr. Akkhad asks.
