Sheikh, Children's Doctor...Husband

by Meredith Webber

  Azzam walked what was left of the village with him, before radioing back to the hospital at Al Janeen, which he’d already established as the control point for all services. The first necessity was for a helicopter to drop bottled water and more medical supplies, also paramedics and the small group of trained army rescue specialists. Heavy equipment should be sent along the road to clear the landslide there, so ambulances and supply vehicles could get through. In the meantime, they’d airlift out the most seriously injured people, but night was closing in quickly in this deep valley, the darkness making it too dangerous for a helicopter to come in low, so no more help would be arriving tonight.

  The cries of the children beneath the rubble tore at Alex’s heart and she dug into it, working as fast as the men and women already there, tearing away the rocks but careful all the time that they didn’t cause any further collapse for the cries told them the children—at least some of them—were alive.

  ‘Aiyiyi!’

  The high-pitched wail startled her, but it had the quality of happiness rather than grief. She hurried to the man who was crying out, and saw him squat, pointing downward.

  ‘Doctor—I’m a doctor—medico,’ she said, hoping one of the words would ring a bell with someone in the group.

  It must have, for the man moved to squat a little farther away, passing Alex a torch so she could shine it into a gap that had appeared beneath a huge slab of wall.

  The torchlight picked up two shining eyes, a grubby face and lips twisted in pain or fear.

  ‘Talk to the child,’ she said to the man. ‘Do you understand me?’

  ‘I know little English. I talk. What more?’

  ‘Ask if there are other children there.’

  The man took the torch and moved into her place, and Alex mentally congratulated him as his voice was calm and soothing as he spoke into the darkness.

  ‘More children,’ he reported back to her, ‘but they can’t get out.’

  Alex studied the pile of stones and rubble they would need to shift, wondering just how stable it might be. Once they pulled more rocks off the top, might that not alter a precarious balance and cause the lot to collapse on the children?

  Tentatively she moved a rock that was beneath the slab but not supporting anything, then another, until she had a hole she knew she could slide into.

  ‘I will go down and pass the children up to you,’ she told the English-speaking man.

  He wailed in horror, throwing up his hands then passing on the information to the gathered men and women, who now clustered closer to Alex, speaking rapidly but whether in delight that she was going to rescue their children or warning her not to do it, she didn’t know. She only knew they accentuated the danger.

  ‘Tell them to keep right back—right off the rubble—and don’t move any more stones until I get the children out.’

  She wasn’t sure if his English was good enough, but the man not only understood but obeyed immediately—waving the people back onto firm ground, yelling at those who hesitated even momentarily, moving them all back to a safe distance.

  She removed her backpack and opened it, showing the man whom she’d appointed as her helper what was in it. She unwrapped the webbing from the pack, knowing the backstraps could be used as a rope, and indicated she would take one end down the hole as she went.

  ‘I’d prefer to pass the children up to you,’ she said. ‘The rope might help the older ones climb. When they come out, there are three things you must check, ABC, airways, breathing, circulation. Clear the mouth and nose of dust or debris, make sure the child is breathing, or breath for him or her.’

  Alex used a rock to demonstrate breathing into a child’s mouth and nose.

  ‘Then check the heartbeat and find any blood. If it’s pumping out—’ she used her hands to illustrate a spray of blood ‘—apply a tight pad and bandage over it.’

  The man nodded, repeating ‘ABC’ as if the concept was familiar to him.

  With the medical supplies set out and the agitated crowd safely out of the way—if there was a collapse she didn’t want anyone else injured—she had to figure out the easiest way into the space where the children were trapped. Feet first for sure, but on her back or on her belly?

  ‘Do not even think about it!’

  Azzam’s voice came from directly behind her, and she turned, sure he must be speaking to her because who else would speak such perfect English?

  ‘You cannot go down there.’

  ‘Of course I can,’ she told him, irritated by the waste of time an argument would cause and knowing from his voice that argument was looming. ‘Look at the hole— I’m the only one who will fit. Besides, you’ll be more useful up here tending the injured—you can ask questions and understand the answers the injured people give you, which is more than I can do.’

  She didn’t wait for his response, opting to slide in on her belly, thinking she could remove any impediments beneath her without compromising what was above. Tremors of fear vibrated along her nerves as she knotted the wide trousers around her ankles so they wouldn’t impede her. She reminded herself that one of the reasons she’d become involved in rescue work had been to overcome her fear of small, enclosed spaces—a fear she refused to acknowledge as claustrophobia.

  Wriggling down a short tunnel that seemed to have the dimensions of a rabbit burrow, she finally reached a place where most of her body was dangling in the air, only her head still in the hole, with her arms above it, braced against the sides so she wouldn’t plummet to the floor and injure some small child.

  Above her she could hear Azzam’s voice, still grumbling and growling, but her entire being was focussed now on what lay below.

  Were there older children in the space? Would they have the sense to keep the younger ones out of her way when she fell?

  She was still wondering about this when small hands grasped her leg and she found her feet guided onto something. A rock? Perhaps a desk?

  Praying that it would take her weight, she released the pressure of her arms against the rock tunnel and eased herself out, turning on the torch she’d thrust into her pocket before starting her journey. She was standing on what must have been the teacher’s table, a solid wooden piece of furniture that right now seemed like an enormous piece of luck.

  Shining the torch around, she saw dark eyes, most red with tears, peering at her out of dusty, blood-streaked faces. She dropped down off the desk and held out her arms. The little bodies crowded against her, so, for a few seconds, they could feel the safety of an adult hug.

  ‘English?’ she asked, but there was no response, so she eased herself away from them and lined them up, running the torch over each child, checking for serious injury. She had reached the end of the line of nine when she saw the others on the floor, some sitting, some lying down, perhaps unconscious.

  She was drawn towards these children that needed help, perhaps immediately, but instinct yelled at her to get the others out. Perhaps she could do both.

  Checking the line-up, she chose the smallest child and, lifting the little girl onto the table, she climbed up, tied the webbing around her, and lifted her higher into the hole. Alex tugged the rope and felt an answering tug. The little one would suffer scrapes being hauled up the short but rough tunnel, but at least they were fixable.

  Next she chose a sturdy-looking boy and, as soon as the feet of the small girl disappeared from view, she pointed to the tunnel and made climbing motions with her hands. The boy understood and as soon as she held him up, he grasped at stones on the sides of the escape route and climbed nimbly out of sight.

  The children, realising what was happening, began to clamour, no doubt about who would be next. Another big child climbed onto the table as the rope slithered back down. He gesticulated to the hole and to the children then pointed at Alex and at the patients in the corner.

  Without words Alex understood he would do her job of lifting the children while she tended the injured, so she climbed down, passed him a
small child, and, not wanting him to think she didn’t trust him to save his friends, turned her attention to the children on the floor.

  Not all of them were children, she realised, for a man in a long, dark robe lay there as well, his body curled protectively around the smallest of the injured. He was dead, Alex saw at once, but the child beneath him was alive. He’d saved that child!

  She’d left her torch on the desk so all the children had some light to lift their fears, and couldn’t see what injuries these—four, she counted—had suffered. Not wanting to deprive the children of the light, she’d have to go by feel, and trust her hands to do the basic diagnosis. Chest first to check on breathing and heartbeat—rapid movement. This child was alive. Her hands felt their way to the head, seeking a tell-tale shift in the bony skull, feeling for blood spurting or seeping. No head wound but further exploration revealed this first child had an open fracture of the humerus, no doubt the pain of that contributing to the child’s lack of consciousness.

  Aware there could be spinal damage but more concerned about further injury should an aftershock bring down the wall above where they lay, she lifted the child and carried him across the small space, placing him beneath the table in the hope—possibly false—that its solidity might provide some protection.

  One of the children waiting to be lifted out began to cry and knelt beside the child. No doubt a sibling, a bond so strong the able child was obviously insisting she stay too, settling beneath the table to hold the little boy’s hand.

  No time to argue! Alex shrugged at her helper on the table and passed another child up to him. Five to go, then him, then the injured ones. She’d need to work out how best to get them out.

  The next child was conscious, anxious eyes peering at her in the dim light, lips moving as he tried to tell Alex something. His breathing was okay, heart rate rapid but not dangerously so, no sign of bleeding, but when Alex pricked the small foot with a sharp shard of plaster she’d found on the floor, the little boy didn’t flinch. Spinal injury. How was she supposed to handle that?

  She crossed to the table again and took the torch.

  ‘Sorry, kids,’ she said, although she knew they wouldn’t understand, and she swept the torchlight around the small space, searching for anything that might do to stabilise the injured boy’s neck and spine. A tall stick stood in one corner. With these steep hills, maybe the teacher had used it as a walking aid. She grabbed it and returned the torch to the table so the evacuation could continue, but before she could break the stick, she heard a voice yelling down the tunnel.

  ‘That was an aftershock! Are you all right? Come up out of there—we’ll extend the hole.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AZZAM held his breath. How could he have been so stupid as to leave Alex on her own? Although he could hardly have known she’d decide to go down through an impossibly small hole into the ground below. She was either incredibly brave or incredibly foolish, but he could no longer hover here above her while she risked her life in an unstable hole beneath the ground.

  Surely they could enlarge the hole.

  ‘Nothing shifted,’ she called up to him, sounding so calm and composed he regretted the momentary panic he’d felt as the ground had shuddered once more. ‘But there is something you could do. There are no children in the tunnel right now so could you drop down some bandages, and a small neck collar if there’s one in the pack, a couple of splints if you have them. Most of those men are wearing intricate turbans—could you drop a few of them down too so I can use them as bindings to protect the injured children as you pull them out?’

  Calm and composed? She was more than that. Thinking ahead and thinking clearly—thinking medically.

  ‘And another torch,’ she called. ‘That should provide weight for the other things as you drop them.’

  ‘Get out and let me come down,’ he ordered.

  ‘As if you’d fit,’ she retorted. ‘Just get that stuff down here so I can get the rest of these kids out. This space could disappear if there’s another aftershock.’

  The image she’d offered him stopped his heart for a moment, but he organised what she needed, grumbling to himself all the time, frustrated that this stranger was doing so much for his people—that she should be the one risking her life. She was a visitor to his country—a guest—and she had put her life in danger.

  It wasn’t right!

  And yet it was. As she’d said, she’d trained for it—it was what she did—but the courage it must have taken for her to slide down that hole…

  ‘Some time soon,’ she prompted, and he bundled up the things he’d been putting together as his mind raced with worry. Thinking ahead, as she had, he realised she might need more than a few turbans. He slid off his gown and wrapped that around the bundle, and dropped it down.

  Alex heard a lot of grumbling from above but eventually a bundle came down the hole, wrapped not in black turban material but in dirty white cloth which she suspected had once been Azzam’s pristinely perfect gown. An image of the man ungowned—broad chest, toned abs—flashed into her head but was quickly banished. For all she knew, he could have a pigeon chest and a beer gut.

  Obviously her brain was using these irrelevancies to stop her worrying about the situation. She lifted a little girl who had become hysterical and was flailing in her arms, making it obvious she had no intention of being thrust up into the hole above their temporary shelter. Using the dark turbans, Alex wrapped the little limbs so the child’s arms were close to her body and her legs bound together, not too tightly but not loosely enough for the child to kick or hit out and injure herself against the tunnel wall.

  Using the webbing, she tied her bundle securely then called up to Azzam.

  ‘As far as I can tell, this child is uninjured but she’s panicking so I’ve wrapped her in a bundle. Can you haul her gently? Are the children’s parents out there? Is there someone who can soothe the poor wee thing?’

  Azzam felt the tug on the webbing rope and pulled gently, finding, indeed, a bundle on the end of it. Alex had managed to swaddle the little girl so completely that even her face was covered with a thin layer of cloth through which loud shrieks of fear and anger could still be heard.

  Anxious hands took the bundle from him, the child passed back from man to man until it reached the parents waiting on the solid ground at the base of the wadi. The loud wailing cry of a woman told him the child had found her mother, but again his attention was drawn back to the hole.

  The work continued, bigger children scrambling out on their own, smaller ones wrapped and tied to the webbing.

  ‘The boy coming up next is a hero,’ Alex called to him. ‘It is he who looked after the other children and then passed them up to the hole so they could get out. But I think he’s close to exhaustion so if you could reach in to help him out, I would be grateful.’

  ‘You would be grateful!’ Azzam muttered, but mostly to himself as he flattened himself on the rough ground and eased his head and arms into the hole, hoping to feel for the boy’s hands and haul him out.

  The hands were smaller than he’d expected, a child still, this lad.

  ‘You are all right. You have been very brave to help the others. You are only a boy but the doctor says you did a man’s job down there.’ He urged the boy upward, drew him out then held him close, soothing him as he spoke, because now he was out of danger the scared child inside the lad had begun to shake and cry.

  ‘But I need more help from you,’ he added as the boy calmed down.

  Hearing the conversation, a woman called from the wadi.

  ‘Help the man, Dirar. He is your prince.’

  The boy looked up at him.

  ‘You are the prince?’

  There was so much wonder in the boy’s face, Azzam had to smile.

  ‘But I am only a man,’ he said, ‘and once I was a boy like you, but I doubt I was as brave. Now, tell me, Dirar, how many people are still trapped and what is the doctor doing down there?’


  ‘Our teacher is there but I think he is dead,’ Dirar whispered, tears sliding down his cheeks again. ‘And Tasnim will not come because her brother is hurt. He is under the table. The woman put him there.’

  Great! Just wonderful! Azzam thought to himself. The mountain could collapse and that insane female thought a school table might provide protection.

  Yet inside the anger he acknowledged respect, for she was doing the best she could under incredible and horrific circumstances. It was frustration that he couldn’t be down there himself that made him want to snarl like a wild leopard.

  Leopards!

  Night was coming and the leopards would smell the blood of the dead and injured…

  He’d think of that later. Now he had to concentrate on what the boy was telling him. Four injured children and a loyal sister. Would he and Bahir have been less foolish over women—over Clarice—if they’d grown up with sisters?

  ‘So you must get them out now,’ the boy was telling him, easing out of Azzam’s arms and running nimbly over the debris of the buildings towards the waiting arms of his mother.

  A tug on the rope reinforced his decision to concentrate on one thing at a time.

  ‘I’ve splinted this one’s arm as best I could. I notice you sent morphine down but not knowing if the child has head injuries I didn’t want to use it. He’s unconscious anyway. Perhaps when he comes up, you should get my English-speaking helper back there and do some doctoring.’

  Did she not want him here? Azzam wondered as he gently pulled the rope. He felt so drawn to stay—so held in place by the fear he had for her—he doubted he could move, although what she’d said made sense.

  The child, again bundled like a mummy, emerged, and after the bundle a small girl scrambled out, glaring at Azzam as he unwrapped the turban from the injured child’s face so he could breathe more easily.

  ‘My brother!’ she said, in such a possessive voice Azzam put out his arms and drew her into a hug.