by Cat Shinier
He places me down in front of the toilet while he lifts the lid. In the meantime, I drop slowly to my knees and while I hug the ceramic bottom. Shamar is holding my hair away from my face while I throw up. Oh God, how embarrassing. And here I thought the depths of embarrassment had already been reached. But the situation obviously was now far worse.
“Please, let me be alone, this is all so embarrassing,” I moan.
“Do you really think that something like that could scare me off? No, my angel, you’ll get better soon.”
He holds me the whole time and rubs his hand over my back to calm me down. When I am done, he helps me to my feet and sets me down on the rim of the bathtub.
“Just sit here, Luna. I will go and get some washrags and a towel.” In a second, he has returned and is rinsing the washcloth with warm water. He uses it to clean my face gently, and afterward he uses the towel to dry me.
He repeats the procedure once more with both my hands. While he does, I can watch Shamar without his noticing it. He’s not wearing a robe but a pair of pants and a polo shirt. His hair is dark black and short, but long in the back. His neck is smooth and shaven, and I can see his ears. I like it when hair looks tousled the way his does now. I lift my hand and tousle his hair before I even realize.
“Nice,” I sigh.
The look he gives me is serious. His eyebrows look like they are chiseled, and they are simply delightful. His eyelashes are long and silky. I know women who would kill for lashes like that. His eyes are dark but neither brown nor black. They look like dark coal with a hint of labradorite and are reflecting a whole range of emotions. Now he appears really serious and almost sad.
“Are you finished looking at me?” he says, ending the stroll my eyes have just taken.
I am embarrassed again, and I blush, at least that is what it feels like on my pale skin.
“Sure, for the moment, yes. I think so,” I mumble.
“You should get back in bed, my angel. Come on, no use resisting.” He grabs me around my back and under my legs. He is so strong that I feel like I am gliding above the ground.
I am covered with sweat when I lie down in the bed and hear a knock at the door. A butler in uniform peeks in and speaks to Shamar.
“Dr. Aziz has arrived, Sir.”
Shamar nods. “Tell him to come in.”
He has had a doctor come? Here? For me? Oh no, I want to have Susan heal me and not a doctor I don’t know.
“Does he have to be here?” My voice is small and quivery.
“If you were feeling better, you would not really ask me. Please let him examine you and help you so that you may soon feel healthy again. Okay?”
“Okay,” I answer quietly.
In no time I am alone with Dr. Aziz. He is a small thin man with short gray hair and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. He checks me carefully. Listens to my stomach, pokes it with a little hammer, has me show him my tongue, he pinches the skin on my forearm and measures my blood pressure and pulse. Finally, he asks me what I ate and when the last time was that I had some water. Then he looks at me and says that I am completely dehydrated and that an infusion would be the best thing to balance out the electrolytes in my system, which have also dropped dramatically.
He also wants to give me a shot. He asks me if that is okay with me. I am not happy about it, but I as I want to get healthy really fast and return to my room again. He says he has to go get something and will be back in a second. I hear him talking to Shamar in front of the room, but of course I don’t understand what they are saying. Then the door opens and both men come back into the room. The doctor walks towards the case he’s brought along and placed on the little table next to the bed, and Shamar steps up to the bed and sits down on the edge beside me.
“Do you mind if I stay?”
His presence is a comfort to me. He takes my left hand with both his hands and strokes it gently. His hands are warm and strong. Everything in him exudes vitality and energy.
“No, that’s fine,” I mumble and am happy that I am not alone. I cannot get enough of looking at him and immerse myself in his eyes that have a dark and mysterious aura to them.
“I thought your eyes were blue,” he interrupts my reveries.
“Now they look dark green.”
“That is what they are,” I mumble.
“Are your eyes blue or green, my angel?”
I look up at the doctor who is getting the shot ready. “My eyes are blue, but when I don’t feel well or when I feel agitated, they become darker and look green.”
“A veritable little moon goddess.” He looks amused and smiles. “I’m sure you’ll be feeling better soon.” He smiles at me and pushes a few strands of hair out of my face, and is just so nice to me. Not arrogant at all, just really sweet and caring. That was not my impression of the man when I met him.
“I am sorry for causing so much trouble. I must have eaten something bad.” I am really ashamed of being so stupid as to eat something outside of the hotel restaurant. And especially since I should have known better.
“Ssshhhh, my angel, don’t worry. You are here with me, and everything is going to be alright.” He runs his fingers through my hair and I have to admit, I love feeling him so close to me.
I close my eyes, because I seem to have such a hard time keeping them open. When the butler enters the room with a clothes rack on wheels, I am wide awake again. Why on earth are they bringing that thing in here? Shamar seems to be reading my thoughts because he explains, “We need something to hang the infusion drip on, Luna.”
And that very moment Dr. Aziz comes in with a plastic bag of transparent fluid and hangs it over a hook. Then he fastens the infusion instruments to the bag that he fills with the solution.
He steps up to my bed and wraps a rubber tube around my right arm and tightens it. When my veins swell up, he applies a generous amount of disinfectant to the back of my hand and takes out a needle with little green things that look like wings. He quickly stabs the vein and attaches a few strips of bandages to the cannula, which he then connects with the tube on the needle. Quickly the drops of the infusion start dripping into my body. He pulls out an ampoule and fills a syringe. Warily I am observing this whole process.
“What is that for?” I ask the doctor.
Dr. Aziz smiles at me. “It is to help with the stomach cramps and nausea. I am going to have them bring some tea, which you should drink slowly in little sips. And then it won’t take long until you start feeling much, much better.” With these words, he injects the content of the ampoule into the infusion bag and starts to clear up his utensils and the little packages, and stores it all in his case. Then he turns to me again.
“I will come to see you again tomorrow morning. The infusion will be completed. Afterwards, you can remove the needle. I will leave you some cotton swabs and bandages. And if something should happen, please feel free to get in touch with me.” He nods in our direction turns around and leaves the room, passing the butler who is entering with a glass of tea, placing it next to my bed on the night table.
“Are you able to sit up?” Shamar looks at me questioningly.
I don’t want to seem weak and nod my head. “Yes.”
“Okay, let me help you. Okay, sit up first, and watch out, don’t use that right hand.” He pulls me up so that I am sitting upright in the large bed. Afterwards he places a few pillows at the head of the bed and helps me lean against them. When I am sitting comfortably and have the blankets wrapped around me, he hands me the glass of tea. The tea has a beautiful aroma, like herbs and I carefully take a few tiny sips. The tea is hot and flows down through my throat and into my stomach, which feels pretty good.
“So what does your stomach say? Will you be able to hold the tea?” He asks, looking at me.
And the tea is really doing the trick. My stomach is not reacting at all.
I look up, surprised. “It’s a miracle, I think I am going to be able to keep the tea down.” I close my eyes and sip some mo
re tea while the infusion and the medication quickly drips into my system.
“Thank you so much for looking after me,” I mumble between the sips I am taking.
“Oh, sweetheart, when you didn’t react to my messages yesterday and hadn’t left your room all day, I should have known that something happened. If I had known how bad you felt, I would have come much earlier.” He is sitting next to me and again pushes some wisps of hair from my face.
“And when you opened the door – as pale as a ghost – and collapsed in front of me I really regretted that I had not checked on you that morning already.”
“Oh,” is all I can say. I did not know that he was observing me that closely. I remembered the guy with the dark clothes who followed Lutz and myself when we were at the bazaar. Why would he have otherwise known that we were back at the hotel?
“Did you send someone to follow me? Why else would you know when I returned? But why?” That was a both a question and a statement.
He smiles at me sheepishly, which somehow makes him look endearing. I register that I am absolutely incapable of being mad at him.
“Room service told me that you were so happy to get my flowers but declined my invitation. They told me that you said you had a prior engagement. So I wanted to know who was getting in my way. I saw you and a group of the participants get in the bus and so I sent one of my security people to follow you.” He does not seem to have the slightest bit of a guilty conscience but smiles with a kind of implicitness that he seems to have been born with.
“I saw him at the bazaar and thought I was experiencing the onset of acute paranoia.”
He shakes his head. “Believe me, not many people turn me down and having you turn me down was not something that I was expecting. I wanted to know who it was you preferred.”
Lutz emerges before my inner eye, and there was nothing he had to be worried about. Because I am beginning to feel better I become more courageous.
“What was it that you had in mind?” I ask quietly, trying to break through his reserve.
Shamar appears surprised that I am asking him such a direct question. He breathes deeply, leans back a bit and has a grave look on his face.
“I wanted to see you and talk to you. Our meeting yesterday was brief, and you disappeared so quickly. Now that you are here I want to get to know you better and learn more about you. Ever since I saw your picture I have anticipated finally meeting you in person.”
“You saw a picture of me? Where did you see that?” I am confused, because I am certain that I don’t have a public profile anywhere. Maybe there was one in a newspaper?
“Do you remember the application you sent the company two months ago?”
I nod and continue to sip my tea.
“The personnel department got in touch with me because you were so different from everyone else who had applied. The subjects you had studied and your excellent grades, including the fact that you had skipped two semesters, even though you were a woman in a men’s domain really impressed the head of personnel. So she came to me and said she thought you were someone who should be included in our assessment program.”
He takes the empty tea glass from me. “Would you like some more tea?”
“Yes, please, it’s absolutely delicious.” And it really is, and it sits well with me, more to the point. Shamar presses a button on the switch next to the bed. Almost immediately there is a knock at the door, which is then opened. A butler enters the room and looks at us.
“What would you like?”
Shamar hands the tea glass and the little plate to the butler.
“Matthew, please bring Miss Buchholz some more tea.” Matthew bows, says “of course, sir” and retreats.
This is the first butler I have ever seen. I’ve only ever seen butlers in movies. I would have liked to ask Shamar if a butler is part of the package deal when you have such an elegant apartment in the Burj Al Arab, but I don’t want to change the subject.
“So the invitation to come here was not a result of my achievements? And not even a draw? You decided to invite me here yourself?”
He shakes his head twice and nods once. That is my answer. “You are here because of your accomplishments, which was apparent even before you graduated best in your class of fifty people. The part about a draw is not true. It was deliberate. And the invitation for you to come here was deliberate, too.”
“Do you always ambush women you are interested in?” I ask him, frowning.
He smiles and looks amused.
“Until now I have never been as interested in anyone as much as I am in you. I just had to get to know you. Of course, I could not foresee that you would be wearing a bikini the first time we came in contact. That really had me rattled.
“Oh, and so that is why you made a pass at me that evening?” The words leave my mouth before I can stop myself.
“Well, yes, that really was not very diplomatic of me, Luna, but it does not change anything about what I want. And I want you.”
There is a knock at the door again, and the butler brings in a glass of tea that he places carefully on the left bedside table.
“Thank you very much, that is very nice of you,” I say to him, gratefully.
He looks at me in a friendly manner and says, “My pleasure, Miss Buchholz. If you should need anything else, please don’t hesitate to ring the bell.”
Then he turns around and leaves the room as silently as he entered it. Shamar reaches for the tea glass and hands it to me. I take it and start drinking the tea again in small sips.
“What kind of tea is it?” I ask.
“It is something they make locally. It is one of our best therapies for upset stomachs. Generally, it is good to solve health problems with remedies that are also local. The tea is a mixture of various herbs and licorice. Do you like it?”
This time it is me who nods. I blow at the steaming surface of the tea to cool it down a bit. And I am feeling much better already. After those hours of seeming endless diarrhea and vomiting this is pure relief. The mood between us is strangely tingling. I am sitting in a huge bed in the luxury suite of a man I have just met. The tension between us is almost palpable, even though I probably look a mess. Shamar is completely reserved, does not make any advances or insinuate anything. Apparently Shamar has two sides, and I very much prefer the one he is showing me right now. My stomach is relaxing, and as it relaxes, I am more at ease. Shamar’s warm hands are holding my left arm and sometimes he even caresses my skin. That calms me down, too. “So then I won’t be having an interview with you? I ask him. Because ultimately I have come here to compete against others to secure a job.”
“Would you like to have an interview?”
“Would you give me a job? Or am I here for purely personal motives?”
Shamar does not seem to be very impressed by my question. “So what job would you like to have in my company?”
If I am honest, I don’t really know myself. I don’t even know if it is a good idea to work in his company. Because if something were to happen – and Shamar really impresses me as being the kind of person where that will soon be a fact – then it would probably not be very intelligent to be having an affair with my boss.
“How am I supposed to know what I can do with you?” He smiles at me mischievously, and his facial expression becomes that of a boy who is having hellish fun.
“Sweetie, I know any number of things that I could do to you, you could do to me and we could do together. But you should get well first.”
I realize that I am blushing again. “That is not what I meant.” I protest.
“Drink your tea, Luna,” he says, ignoring my objection. A slight noise coming from the direction of the infusion bag makes us both look in the same direction. The bag is empty.
“Time for some fun, honey,” he says and grins when he sees the shocked expression on my face.
“You don’t really mean that, do you?” I croak and am hardly able to hide my dismay.
&n
bsp; “Do you want me to free you of the needle or do you want to spend the night with it in your hand, my angel?”
Sleeping with a needle sticking to the back of my hand is definitely not my idea of fun.
“So since you have now gained experience as a nurse you can feel free to pull the needle out,” I say, generously.
Shamar gets up and walks around the bed. It’s strange, but the second he gets up I miss the warmth he was exuding.
He rotates the little wheel on the infusion tube so that it is shut. Then he gets the little cotton swab the doctor has placed on the bedside table and sits back down on the right side of the bed.
“Are you ready, Miss Buchholz?”
Now it is my turn to grin.
“Ready if you are, Mr. Shalazar.”
That is his cue, and Shamar starts the process by slowly peeling off the bandage strip. He goes about his work so gently that I feel nothing. The skin doesn’t pinch or pull. When he is done, he takes the cotton swab and holds it over the injection site. He uses his other hand to pull out the needle and press the cotton swab firmly over the back of my hand.
I have not been idle and try to use my left hand to take over pressing on the cotton swab. We touch again. And when we do it is as if an electric jolt is passing between us. I almost expect little tiny bolts of lightning to appear. Obviously, Shamar feels the same way. He sounds almost hoarse when he starts to talk.
“That’s it, sweetheart. Didn’t hurt, right?”
I have to clear my throat, too because my voice is husky, too. What on earth was that? Shamar gets up and wraps the tube around the clothes rack. Then he grabs a Band-Aid, checks that I have stopped bleeding and covers the injection site.
