Texas Monthly; Getty
One snowy winter day in Vienna, Bonnie Pitman inhaled the breath that transformed her life. She had just completed negotiations to bring a collection of Egyptian treasures to the Dallas Museum of Art, of which she was the director. The exhibit, “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” would open later that year, in the fall of 2008. Now as she waited at the airport to make her way home, she started to cough. By the time she reached Dallas, she thought she had the flu. By the end of spring, she could speak only a single word before falling into a coughing fit. A doctor confirmed the worst: she had some sort of unidentified respiratory virus, likely incurable.