Valley of Decision Read Online Free

through a secret passage in the library wall.
    The law required the torture of any slave suspected of a crime.She feared the blows to her face were just the beginning. Who knew what tortures awaited their arrival at the holding cells beneath the Hippodrome. She’d tended prisoners who’d been beaten with glass-studded whips and kicked with hobnailed soldier boots. If prisoners didn’t bleed to death or die from punctured lungs, starvation and poor sanitary conditions would often kill them before their case ever went before the judge. Thank goodness she’d managed to grab her medical bag. Whether she’d be allowed to carry it with her inside the prison remained to be seen.
    How have things come to this?
    As Magdalena stumbled along, her mind slogged through the blur of the past two days. She’d been hiding out and secretly working at the little hospital Lisbeth had created in Cyprian’s home when Aspasius’s soldiers found her and dragged her back to her bedridden master. The stench of his bedchamber tipped her off to the putrefaction of his leg. She’d sent Tabari to Cyprian’s home to fetch Lisbeth’s modern tools, never intending her fellow slave to return with Lisbeth. But she shouldn’t have been surprised that her stubborn daughter had insisted on bringing the tools personally and staying to assist.
    Lisbeth had argued against the surgery, citing the many risk factors: unsanitary operating conditions; lack of intravenous antibiotics; and, most important, Aspasius’s overall poor health due to diabetes and his compromised immune system. In the end, Magdalena had convinced her that doing nothing would guarantee the proconsul’s demise. Magdalena had felt she had no choice but to take the gamble, and if she had it to do all over, she’d make the same decision.
    Removing the rotten limb had required a great deal of her physical strength. Secretly, she’d been grateful Lisbeth had been there.
    But before the proconsul awakened, Magdalena had insistedthat Lisbeth slip through the library’s secret door and escape through the underground tunnels. As Aspasius became more and more restless upon the mahogany operating table, Magdalena knew forcing her daughter to go had been the right choice. Aspasius was experiencing complications. The odds of saving him were not in her favor. She’d placed a calming hand upon his chest. Heart palpitations thumped beneath his cool, clammy skin. “Try to breathe deeply, Aspasius. Hyperventilating won’t help.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with him?” Pytros, the scrawny, troublemaking scribe, had demanded.
    â€œSeptic shock.” She’d tried to hide her alarm. “He’s been through a lot, Pytros. Why don’t you step out and let him rest?”
    Aspasius started thrashing uncontrollably, mumbling senseless things. The raw end of his new stump hit the makeshift operating table with so much force that his neatly tied sutures burst open. Blood spurted everywhere. In an instant, a minor crisis turned into a major medical emergency.
    Pytros ran from the library, screaming, “Help! She’s killing my master!”
    Magdalena remembered ripping a strip of cloth and was in the process of securing a second tourniquet just above the knee when she noticed her patient’s chest. His sternum rose and fell in the short, labored movements of a man in respiratory distress. Within seconds, Aspasius’s eyes rolled back into his head, and his shaking stilled.
    When soldiers burst into the room, they’d found Magdalena covered in blood and frantically performing CPR on a lifeless man. Strong arms pulled her away from Aspasius’s blue-tinged body. It didn’t take but a second for the young soldier in charge to figure out that the proconsul was dead. “What happened?” he’d demanded.
    What had happened? It could have been a number of things.Blood clot. Heart attack. Her