“How many times have you done this?”
“A dozen times, maybe more. The first time I tried to treat a slave left at a temple in Rome. I had more money then, and private quarters. But the man died within a week. Still, at least he died in comfort. I lost four more after that and almost gave up.”
Her eyes had shone with compassion. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because part of my training involved a proper worship of the healing deities. I couldn’t walk by those people and pretend they weren’t there.” He had sighed, shaking his head. “I can’t say that my reasons were entirely altruistic. When a student of medicine loses a patient left on the steps of the Asklepion, no one cares. Lose a freeman of station and you can kiss your future good-bye.” A grimace had crossed his face. “My motives are both good and bad, Hadassah. I want to help, but I also want to learn.”
“Have any of these patients lived?”
“Three. One in Rome, a Greek every bit as stubborn as my father. And two in Alexandria.”
“Then what you did was worthwhile,” she had said with a quiet certainty.
Now, though, watching the look on her face, Alexander wondered if he was right to keep doing this . . . and if he should ever have brought Hadassah with him. Despite all he’d said the night before, he could see Hadassah was filled with horror at the sight of so many abandoned slaves on the temple steps.
“Oh,” she whispered, coming to a stop beside him, that single word piercing his heart with its wealth of compassion and sorrow.
Alexander looked away, his throat suddenly tight with emotion. After a moment, he spoke, his voice gruff. “Come on. We haven’t much time.”
He passed by an emaciated gray-haired man and bent down beside one younger. Hadassah followed him toward the marble steps of the Asklepion, but paused beside the man he had passed by. She went down on one knee and felt the old man’s fevered brow. He didn’t open his eyes.
“Leave him,” Alexander called to her as he strode across the courtyard to the steps of the Asklepion.
Hadassah glanced up and watched him quickly pass by two other abandoned slaves. Their masters had not even taken the time to place them on the uppermost temple steps where there was some shelter. This poor old man had been discarded barely a few feet inside the propylon. Others nearby lay unconscious, devastated by unknown illnesses.
“We’ll find one that might be cured and do what we can,” Alexander had told her several times last night, adding a warning. “You’ll see many who have fatal illnesses or are simply old and worn out. You must harden yourself to pass by them, Hadassah. We can only bring one back with us, a man with a chance of survival.”
She looked toward the glistening marble steps of the pagan temple and counted more than twenty men and women lying on them. Discarded humanity. She looked down at the old man again. He had been abandoned here in the night without even a blanket to cover him.
“Leave him,” Alexander called to her sternly.
“We might—”
“Look at the color of his skin, Hadassah. He won’t make it through the day. Besides, he’s old. One younger has a better chance.”
Hadassah saw the old slave’s eyes flicker and felt a grief past reasoning. “There is one who loves you,” she said to him. “His name is Jesus.” The old man was too weak and sick to speak, but as he looked up at her with fever-glazed eyes, she told him the Good News of Christ. She didn’t know if he understood or received consolation, but she took his thin hand between hers. “Believe and be saved,” she said. “Be comforted.”
Alexander looked around grimly at the selection of abandoned slaves before him. Most were too close to death to warrant attention. Glancing back, he saw Hadassah still bent over the dying old man. “Hadassah!” he shouted, commanding this time. “Come away from him.” He motioned for her to follow. “See about the others.”
She pressed the old man’s limp hand against her veiled cheek and prayed, “Father, have mercy on this man.” She removed her shawl and laid it over him, her eyes blurred with tears as he gave her a weak smile. “Please, Yeshua, take him up that he be with you in paradise.” She rose painfully, helpless to do anything more for him.
Leaning heavily on her walking stick, she crossed the courtyard and went up the steps after Alexander. She started to bend down to another man, but the young physician called out to her not to waste her time with that one either. “He’s dead. Look at those others over there.”
As she moved laboriously up the steps, she looked at each abandoned man or woman on the white gleaming steps of the Asklepion. She wanted to cry out in anger. More than twenty sick and dying slaves had been left here by their callous masters. Some had already died and would soon be carted away by temple attendants. Others, like the old man, lay half-conscious, without hope or comfort, awaiting death. A few moaned in pain and delirium.