Death on Tour - Janice Hamrick [100]
We found Alan in the emergency room, on a bed in a room with several others, hidden behind a white curtain. He looked very pale, his eyelashes dark against his white skin. An IV dripped steadily into his veins, and a white bandage covered his forehead. Somehow, he looked young and vulnerable. I reached out to stroke the hand that lay on the sheets.
A doctor wearing a white coat joined us. To my surprise, he was a sandy-haired young man with prominent front teeth and freckles. He didn’t look old enough to have graduated high school, much less medical school, but he was cheerfully competent. His accent marked him as American immediately.
“He was lucky, that’s for sure. Another couple of cc of morphine, and he’d be dead. As it is, we’ve got him on fluids to flush it from his system. He’ll sleep it off and probably start coming around in the morning.”
“He’s going to be all right then?”
“Oh yeah. He’ll be completely fine in a day or two. And on the bright side, with all that morphine, he didn’t even feel the stitches.”
“Stitches?” I asked hesitantly.
“Yeah, right there above his eyebrow. Eight of ’em. I did a great job,” he said enthusiastically. “It looks bad now, with the sutures and the swelling, but take my word—he’ll only have a tiny white line to show for it. Looks like he was hit with a rock or something else pretty jagged. Must have hurt like hell.”
“I’m pretty sure he was already under the morphine when he got hit. Would he have felt much?”
The doctor shook his head. “Nope, he wouldn’t have felt a thing in the condition he’s in. He’ll have a hell of a headache in the morning, though.”
I looked down at Alan’s unconscious form.
“Those bastards,” I said, with only a small pang of guilt. After all, I wouldn’t have thrown the rock if it hadn’t been for Mohammad and Flora and Fiona. It wasn’t really my fault.
“You got that right,” he agreed. “Looks like they were trying to kill him. Why in the hell would they have banged him with a rock if he was already doped up?”
I decided to change the subject. “You sound like you’re a long way from home.”
He grinned. “Baltimore and Luxor are sister cities. We’ve got a program where our medical folks can come and help out and do some training for a few weeks every year. We get to see the sights, get some of the local flavor in a way you can’t as an ordinary tourist. It’s pretty cool.”
Anni returned. “The best thing will be to return to the ship. WorldPal is sending another agent who will arrive the first thing in the morning and who will look after Alan. I will escort the rest of the group to Cairo as originally scheduled.”
I swallowed hard. I knew she was right, that the best thing to do was to continue on with the tour. There was nothing I could do, here in a strange country, knowing nothing of the language, with no influence and very little money. And after all, what was Alan to me? A man I’d known for only a few days, shared a few jokes and a dance with. A man who probably wouldn’t even remember my name in a month. The thought was unbearably painful.
Anni caught my stricken look and patted my arm. “Don’t worry. He’ll be fine. You saved his life, you know. I think that you will see him again.”
Saturday and Beyond
Return to Cairo for your final night. Take an optional afternoon excursion to the Khan el-Khalili, Egypt’s most famous bazaar, before saying good-bye to your traveling companions and catching your flight home.
—WorldPal pamphlet
Chapter 15
RESOLUTIONS AND REUNIONS
We flew to Cairo on the earliest