The Highlander's Touch
Page 107

* * *
“What’s next?” Adam asked, rubbing his hands.
Circenn shot him a dark look. “You seem to be enjoying this.”
Adam shrugged. “I have never before manipulated in such fine detail. It’s quite fascinating.”
“Cancer. She said her mother was dying of cancer,” Circenn said. “We doona even know what kind. I suspect this is not going to be as simple as making two machines disappear. We must find a way to prevent her from catching this disease, and from what I’ve read, they doona seem to know what causes it. I’ve been flipping through these books all night.” He gestured to the medical books scattered across his desk in the study at Castle Brodie.
Adam picked up several and scanned them, THE CINCINNATI PUBLIC LIBRARY was stamped on the spine. “You pilfered from the library?” Adam said with mock dismay.
“I had to. I tried to borrow them but they wanted papers I didn’t have. So I went back when they were closed, and a security guard—they protect their books even in the future—nearly attacked me before I’d finished finding what I wanted.” He sighed. “But I’m no closer to discovering how to prevent the disease. I must know what type of cancer she had.”
Adam thought for a moment. “Are you up to some more nocturnal raiding? I believe there are no more than a half-dozen hospitals in her city.”
“Hospitals?” Circenn’s brow furrowed.
“You really are a medieval brute. Hospitals are where they treat the ill. We will go to her time and steal her records. Come. Sift time, and I will be your faithful guide.”
* * *
“She has cervical cancer,” Circenn said softly, glancing over his shoulder at Adam, who was reclining on the desk in a private office at Good Samaritan Hospital. “Listen to this: The diagnosis was severe dysplasia. Over time it became advanced invasive cancer. They refer to something called cervical intraepithelial neoplasia.” His tongue felt thick over the strange words, and he pronounced them very slowly. “The notes indicate Catherine might have been diagnosed in time to prevent the cancer had she had something called a Pap test. The notes indicate that Catherine told the doctor her last Pap test was eight years before they diagnosed the cancer. It seems cervical cancer is caused by a type of virus that is easily treated in the early stages.”
Adam fanned rapidly through the textbook he had plucked off the desk. Locating an applicable entry, he read aloud: “‘Pap screening test: a cancer screening test developed in 1943 by Dr. George Papanicolaou. The Pap test examines cells from the cervix, or the mouth of the womb, located at the top of the vagina.’” Adam was silent for a long moment. “It says a woman should have a Pap test annually. Why didn’t she?”
Circenn shrugged. “I doona know. But it sounds as if we go back a few years, we should be able to prevent it.”
Adam arched a brow. “How can we fix this? Just how do you intend to get a woman who obviously hates to go to the doctor to go see the doctor?”
Circenn grinned. “A little gentle persuasion.”
* * *
Catherine thumbed through the mail, hunting for a letter from her friend Sarah, who was in England for the summer. She tossed aside two fliers, snorting indelicately. Recently she’d been receiving a rash of junk mail dealing with one thing—gynecologists and cervical cancer.
Have you had your Pap smear this year? one banner screamed.
Cervical Cancer is preventable! a bright pink flier exclaimed.
They were all from a nonprofit organization she’d never heard of. Apparently some do-gooder who had money to burn. She tossed them in the wastebasket and resumed flipping through the mail.
But something nagged at her, so she retrieved the last flier. She must have received fifty of those things over the past month, and each time she threw one away, she felt a peculiar sense of déjà vu. She’d even received a call from a doctor’s office this week, offering a free exam. She had never heard of any doctor offering free Pap tests before.
When was my last checkup? she wondered, fingering the flier. At nearly sixteen, Lisa was ready to start having annual checkups. It might be a bit difficult to persuade her daughter to have her first visit when Catherine wasn’t faithful about making and keeping her own appointments. She regarded the pamphlet thoughtfully. It said that cancer of the cervix was preventable—that a routine Pap smear could detect many abnormalities. And that women in all age groups were at risk.
Decisively, she plunked down the pamphlet and called her gynecologist to schedule appointments for herself and Lisa. Sometimes she and Jack tended to be irresponsible about things like checkups and life insurance and servicing the cars. She’d not seen her gynecologist because she felt perfectly fine. But that was like saying the car didn’t need service because it was running perfectly fine. Maintenance was different from repairs. Preventive medicine can save your life, the pamphlet said.