Pandora's Key by Nancy Richardson Fischer

pulled an image up on the screen. The Google Earth photograph showed a city. He narrowed the parameters to a large neighborhood, then to a single street, and, finally, to a small, solitary pale-yellow house.
    “Where
is
it?” Malledy asked the screen, and then, overcome by sudden fury, he slammed the laptop shut.
Stop it.
Shaking with rage, he picked up the laptop, readying to throw it against the wall.
STOP IT!
Malledy forced himself to put the laptop down.
The disease is violent, not me. Not me.
But that wasn’t exactly true.
    For a moment Malledy felt a profound sense of loss for all that he could’ve been—should’ve been. If he hadn’t been abandoned as an infant; if he hadn’t been forced to become an Archivist or die; if he hadn’t been used as a pawn in the Archivists’ game of acquisition and mastery over powerful men and governments, who and what would he have become?
I can’t change the past so why does it still bother me?
    Shaking his head violently, Malledy forced himself to refocus. He opened the laptop to study the photograph of the yellow bungalow.

Chapter Eight

    Evangeline perched on the windowsill in a stark hospital room that smelled sharply like medicine and bleach. An empty bed with white sheets and a flat pillow jutted from the wall and the blue linoleum tiles were marred with gray wheel-marks. A plump nurse in peach scrubs and a matching headband entered the room, her clogs squeaking. She replaced the IV bag, filled the plastic mug by the bed with water, and then poked a straw into the cup. Evangeline cleared her throat so she didn’t scare the nurse.
    “Oh, hello, there,” the nurse said, only slightly startled. “Who are you?”
    “E—Evangeline.”
    “I’m Stacy.”
    “Hi. Um, please, can you tell me where my mom is? Her name’s Olivia Theopolis.”
    “She’s getting a few more tests and then she’ll be brought up here.” Moments later a muscular man in green scrubs pushed a narrow bed feet-first into the room. Evangeline’s mom looked really pale, with dark purple smudges beneath her eyes, but she was awake.
    “Mom!” Evangeline said, leaping off the windowsill. Stacy and the orderly helped her mother slide from the gurney onto the bed while Evangeline hovered at their side. Stacey covered her with a white cotton blanket.
    “Are you feeling better?” Her mom nodded.
    “I told you that you needed to eat more, Mom! I told her,” Evangeline said to Stacy, wincing at the slightly hysterical sound of her voice. “Mom, are you really okay now?”
    Before her mother could answer, a group of doctors appeared in the doorway. The man in front had
Dr. Tim Sullivan
stitched on the pocket of his white lab coat. He was about six-foot-three and wore frameless circular glasses. His receding dark-blonde hair was brush-cut and just starting to gray at the temples. Dr. Sullivan stepped into the room and slid a multi-colored scan out of the folder at the foot of the bed. He placed it on the light-board hanging on the wall, his gold wedding band clinking against the board’s metal frame.
    “Mrs. Theopolis? I’m Dr. Sullivan.”
    “Hi. This is my daughter, Evangeline,” Olivia said.
    “Hello,” Dr. Sullivan said, reaching out to shake Evangeline’s hand. “Mrs. Theopolis—”
    “Olivia, please.”
    “Okay, then,
Olivia
, this is a teaching hospital and residents learn by working with me and discussing each case. Do you mind if they join us?”
    “Um, okay.”
    The residents quickly shuffled into the room, crowding around the light board. They all studied the scan. “Olivia, I think it’s best if we discuss this in private.”
    Olivia shook her head, then grimaced. “Evangeline should be here. I want her here.”
    “Ah…well, alright then,” Dr. Sullivan said. “Who can tell me what they’re seeing here?” he asked the residents.
    “An abnormal growth in the frontal lobe,” a young Asian resident responded. “Malignant tumor.”
    Evangeline’s pulse sped up. She