Sheikh Surgeon

by Meredith Webber

  Tomorrow she’d find out more about Yasmeen. No, tomorrow had already become today and today Patrick would arrive, flown in by his father in a private jet. Damn Kal! What thirteen-year-old kid could fail to be impressed by such a display of wealth and power?

  Nell’s patient stirred, saving her further anguish as she concentrated on the readouts on the monitor. The increased oxygen flow wasn’t helping and the drugs she’d given him to raise his blood pressure had lifted it slightly, but not enough to give her hope that he was improving. The young nurse who was specialling the man said something, and Nell, looking at her, realised the girl was praying. She had taken the man’s hand, carefully holding it so she didn’t touch the burn wounds on his wrist, and now her head was bent towards it and soft, liquid words slipped from her lips.

  Nell remembered Kal telling her that his people had always used prayer as a part of the healing process. They had remedies for illnesses, but every cure, even in these days of modern medicine, was offered along with prayer, for was it not God’s will that the patient lived or died?

  Could prayer do what medicine couldn’t? Nell wondered, turning her attention back to the monitor.

  No change, but the young nurse’s faith touched Nell, and she sank down in the chair on the other side of the bed and added her own quiet prayer for the man’s recovery.

  Together they watched over him through the remainder of the night, and by morning, Nell was pleased to see, he had picked up slightly, so when the consultant returned, Yasmeen was able to report that the patient was well enough for him to do the cardiac catheterisation and, if it looked possible, even to try a balloon valvuplasty to close the defective septum.

  ‘If there is a defective septum,’ Nell muttered to herself, certain the solution to her patient’s problems couldn’t be that easy.

  But it was, and the surgeon emerged from the small operating theatre so triumphant he forgot he’d been pretending not to speak English. He gave her an inch-by-inch description of his masterful catheterisation, then detailed the skill he’d shown in fixing the defective wall, finishing with the intimation that if the patient didn’t improve now, it would be Nell’s fault, not his.

  Nell thanked him and followed the wardsmen wheeling the patient back to the unit. Tiredness was swamping her now, dragging at her feet so she felt as if she walked through mud, but her mind was on the man—wondering what changes she should now make to his treatment, considering possible reactions between the drugs the heart consultant had prescribed and the antibiotic and pain-relief regime he was on for his burns.

  ‘Nell!’

  The sound of her name, spoken as if it was being repeated, made her turn, and there, ten metres behind her in the corridor, was Kal.

  Kal!

  Patrick!

  ‘Where’s Patrick?’ she demanded, too tired and confused to even begin to say all the other things she wanted to say to this man.

  ‘He’s in your apartment. I left him there and came to find you. I’d have thought you would have been waiting for him.’

  The slight hint of reproof in Kal’s voice was enough. Nell took off down the corridor, fury blotting out her surroundings and making her want to strike out at this man who was turning her life upside down.

  ‘How dare you speak to me like that?’ she raged, lifting her fists to pound them on his chest, only to have him seize them in his hands. ‘And how dare you sneak off and take my child? Of all the underhanded, horrible things to do, and while I’m here working at your hospital!’

  ‘He’s my child, too,’ Kal reminded her, his voice as hard and smooth as steel, his hands imprisoning her struggling fists with effortless ease. ‘And if we’re talking underhanded or horrible, wouldn’t keeping him from me for thirteen years fit that description?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you!’ Nell snapped. ‘Do you think I didn’t want to? Wouldn’t have given anything to have you back? But at least I acted from honour! Something you pretended to uphold. Honour! Ha!’ she scoffed. ‘Was this honourable behaviour, Sheik Kalada, sneaking off behind my back? Taking my child?’

  ‘Our child!’

  And at that moment she hated him. Hated him as much as she had loved him. Because he was right! Patrick was their child.

  ‘It was still the wrong thing to do!’ she muttered, hanging onto the anger as this proximity to Kal, his grip, less tight now on her fists, was turning wrath to attraction.

  ‘It was wrong, but would you have agreed without a lengthy argument?’ he asked quietly. ‘It turned out a friend had taken my surgery list so I had time to go and come back. Your mother seemed relieved that Patrick would be out of the way while your father convalesced, and it’s not as if you were in some other country. I flew out to Australia to bring Patrick to back to be with his mother.’

  The effrontery of this bald-faced lie pushed attraction aside.

  ‘You brought him back for your own reasons,’ Nell stormed, ‘so don’t make out like it was some Scout good deed for the day.’

  She snatched her hands out of his and stormed away, intending to go straight to the apartment but aware she’d have to hide the anger she was feeling. Patrick would be excited by his adventure and think it was the greatest fun for all of them to be together. She couldn’t dash that excitement or throw a dark cloud of gloom over his delight.

  ‘Nell, Nell!’

  Yasmeen’s voice followed her up the corridor, and she turned back to see the other woman explaining something to Kal, her hands moving swiftly as if demonstrating what was happening, her face, even at a distance, anguished.

  Nell hurried back.

  ‘It’s your man,’ Yasmeen told her. ‘His BP’s dropped again—dropped drastically.’

  ‘Damn!’ Nell muttered, and headed off with swift strides back towards the ward. She sensed Kal following, and was reminded of where things stood. She stopped and turned.

  ‘Kal, I have to go to this patient. Could you explain to Patrick?’

  Kal looked at her and for the first time saw the grey tinge of exhaustion in her usually clear skin and the dark circles under her eyes.

  ‘Have you slept at all?’ he demanded, and she found a small smile to offer him. The kind of valiant smile that made his heart ache.

  ‘Not recently,’ she said, then she touched him on the arm. ‘But I have to go and I can’t leave Patrick on his own.’

  Her fingers tightened on his muscle, and she looked into his eyes as she added, ‘Please?’

  Of course he’d go to the boy! So why was he hesitating? Why was he making this woman almost beg?

  Guilt, compunction and an overwhelming sense of emotion he was sure couldn’t possibly be love swept over him. He leant forward and, ignoring Yasmeen, who’d been standing beside Nell, obviously fascinated by the byplay, kissed Nell gently on the cheek.

  ‘I’ll take care of Patrick,’ he promised. Then he walked away before he could hug her and apologise for all the things that had gone wrong between them since they’d met again, and tell her how wonderful their son was and congratulate her…

  She’d disappeared from view by the time he got that far in the list of things he wanted to say, and he hauled his mind back, reminding it that what she’d done had been wrong—that he was the injured party here, and she the one who should be apologising.

  He went back to Nell’s apartment, ready to explain the emergency. As a doctor’s son, Patrick would surely understand. But he didn’t have to explain anything. The lad was stretched out the couch, sound asleep, although the television was on, blaring out some rock video.

  Kal studied him, seeing resemblances to himself and to his brother’s children. Not much of Nell. Had it worried her that her son was so much his child in looks? She’d obviously been at such pains to ensure Patrick never thought badly of the father who’d deserted them, he doubted she’d have worried much about his looks.

  Kal went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of cold water. He should go to work—check out what was happening, not o
nly on the ward but in the hospital as a whole. But he wouldn’t leave Patrick on his own. Even had he wanted to, he’d promised Nell, so he picked up the phone and called his secretary, explained where he was and checked on what was happening.

  ‘We can survive without you for a few hours—or even days,’ she reminded him. ‘That’s why you chose good deputies. You’ve just never believed they could run things as well as you do. Have faith.’

  Kal smiled at her admonishments, but he’d been brought up to take responsibility, not only for his own actions but for his people. It was a hard habit to break.

  He noticed the pile of books Patrick had unpacked and stacked on Nell’s dining-room table. A few more piles and the apartment would look like his. He picked out the one on falconry and sat down to read, smiling when he saw the fine marks Patrick had made beside some passages and the star he’d put against Kal’s grandfather’s name. Yes, the boy’s great-grandfather had been a master in training birds, and this had obviously appealed to the lad.

  Nell returned to the ward, where the registrar and a junior doctor were already by the bed.

  ‘Has the heart consultant been called?’ she asked Yasmeen, taking in the grey, depleted look of her patient.

  ‘He’s on his way,’ the registrar replied, and Nell nodded at him. He was always happy to try out his English on her.

  The first place Nell checked was the area of the groin where the catheter had been inserted, but though the dressing showed some blood, there wasn’t enough to explain the man’s condition.

  ‘Internal bleeding seems the most likely scenario for such a sudden collapse,’ she said. ‘We need a scan. Will the registrar have to order it or—’

  But at that stage, with not even a sigh or murmur of protest, the man stopped breathing while the monitor showed his heart had stopped.

  ‘Resuscitation?’ the young doctor asked, and Nell considered it—thought about the shock paddles, the man’s injured body leaping on the bed—and rejected the option with regret. Even when he had seemed conscious, the man had shown no will to live, and though she’d fought for him and urged him to fight, it had been plain he hadn’t wanted to undertake the battle.

  Sheer stubbornness on her part had kept him alive, but now she wasn’t going to push him further.

  Her explanations for this decision, however, should be medical, not emotional, and she said quietly, ‘If we shock his heart and the leak is in there, or in the vessel the specialist used in the catheterisation, all we’re doing is pumping more blood into his body cavity, giving the lungs even less room to expand. Instead of saving him, we’d be killing him again.’

  The others nodded, seemingly satisfied with her theory, but her heart ached with the loss of this man she didn’t know, and she stayed in the room when the others left, helping the nurse prepare him for his move to the mortuary. She’d like him autopsied but didn’t know if that would be done as a matter of routine for all deaths in hospitals in this country. She’d have to ask—

  Kal. She no longer had an excuse not to go to Patrick, but Kal would be there, and the thought of seeing the two of them together—father and son—was almost too much for her to contemplate.

  She found Yasmeen instead and asked her about autopsies.

  ‘It should be done,’ Yasmeen said worriedly, ‘but—’

  The heart consultant appeared out of the doctor’s office and Nell understood the ‘but’.

  ‘I’ve signed the death certificate. Given the seriousness of his burns, it’s no wonder he died. It really was a waste of time my operating. No need for us to do an autopsy.’

  He was so certain—and so obnoxious—Nell dug in her heels.

  ‘His family might want details. They might ask for a full report.’

  ‘He has no family,’ the consultant told her.

  ‘Of course he has—we just haven’t found them yet.’

  Yasmeen was tugging nervously at Nell’s arm but Nell found it was good to be getting rid of a bit of accumulated ire on this man.

  ‘And when we do, how do we explain?’

  ‘He died of burn injuries,’ the man snapped, then he strode away.

  ‘Can we go above his head?’ Nell was aware she was being stubborn but she still asked Yasmeen the question.

  ‘Only to Kal. The man’s a consultant so he’s not a hospital employee, but Kal still decides what does and doesn’t happen in the hospital. You could phone his office.’

  Nell nodded, although she knew, unless Patrick was being inducted into the running of a hospital, the CEO wouldn’t be in his office but in her apartment.

  ‘I’ll track him down but, in the meantime, can we hold the man’s body somewhere? I don’t want action being taken on the death certificate just yet.’

  ‘We have to hold him anyway and keep trying to find his family,’ Yasmeen reminded her, ‘although if he’s of our faith he should be buried within twenty-four hours.’

  She was frowning, as if the complications were too much for her, and Nell put her arm around her.

  ‘Kal will sort it out,’ she said, and though she was still so angry she could spit over Kal’s behaviour, she had faith that he would indeed sort it out.

  She gave Yasmeen a hug and departed, assuming Kal would still be with Patrick in her apartment. But the skip of excitement her heart gave at the thought of seeing her son was soon damped down by memories of her patient’s death.

  ‘I should have thought of heart problems,’ she said, talking in a low but anguished tone to Kal. They were in the kitchen of her apartment and, having feasted her eyes on her sleeping son and assured herself he had good colour in his cheeks, she’d drawn Kal into the kitchen to explain the problem. ‘But even so, once we realised it, we should have been able to save him.’

  The anger she felt towards him had softened when he’d taken her hand then put his arm around her shoulders as he’d told her how sorry he was that the man who meant so much to her had died.

  ‘There was no reason for you to think of heart problems,’ Kal now assured her. ‘Look, the man had a pad on which to write. He was conscious enough some of the time to have responded to questions, and we’d asked him in—what?—a dozen languages if he had any underlying health problems. And he heard the questions because he looked away when we asked them—ignoring us.’

  Kal turned her to face him, and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

  ‘No one could have done more for him. Remember, if you hadn’t stopped to check him, he’d have been delivered to the mortuary that first day.’

  Disturbed by Kal’s gentleness and also by the abatement of her anger, Nell backed away.

  ‘Can we have him autopsied?’

  Kal thought for a minute.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t think he died of his burns. I think he haemorrhaged internally, possibly as a result of the operation.’

  ‘As a result of the consultant’s carelessness? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘No. The man is probably a very competent surgeon, but if it was a mistake, shouldn’t we know about it? Doesn’t the patient deserve that much from us?’

  Kal shrugged, but his reply was less casual.

  ‘Yes, he does. We’ll autopsy him. If nothing else, finding the cause of death might save the hospital problems later should some family member turn up.’

  Nell was pleased but knew someone who wouldn’t be so excited. For a moment she considered not saying anything, but knew it wouldn’t be fair to embroil Kal unknowingly in a problem.

  ‘The heart consultant is against it.’

  Kal raised an eyebrow as if to say, So? and Nell had to smile. The arrogant Kal was back.

  But her smile faded as she remembered it was the arrogant man she needed to fight—the Kal who’d gone out to Australia and, without her permission, taken her son out of the country. She was reasonably certain there were illegalities involved, although she had no intention of pursuing them.

  No, it was the principle of the t
hing that was bothering her.

  ‘The boy’s awake.’

  From the warning note in Kal’s voice he’d guessed what she was thinking, and frustration with the situation meant she had to force a smile as she turned towards her son. But the pretence didn’t last long. Seeing him, hearing his happy shout of ‘Mum’ and feeling his long, thin body in her arms as he hugged her fiercely brushed away all her anger.

  ‘This is a surprise,’ she said finally, holding him at arm’s length so she could look at him. ‘Did you remember your tablets? Did you think to phone the hospital to get them to send your records?’

  She saw the happiness in his face fade slightly and gave him another hug.

  ‘Of course you didn’t. How could you think of everything with Gramps in hospital and with your…with Kal whisking you away in his plane? It’s OK. I can email them to send the files direct to me and I’ll print them out for whichever doctor your…Kal chooses for you while you’re here.’

  Beyond Patrick’s shoulder she saw Kal’s scowl. Was he annoyed because she couldn’t bring herself to say the word ‘father’ or because she’d intimated this was only a short visit?

  But of course it was—so he’d better not be thinking any different.

  She scowled right back at him, then wondered if she’d guessed wrongly when he said to Patrick, ‘I think it’s time you tasted local food. Your mother’s been up all night but I doubt if she’s eaten, so how about you go off and forage?’ He dug in his pocket and drew out a roll of notes, peeled off several and handed them to Patrick. ‘If you go down to the ground floor in the elevator and turn right, you can’t miss the canteen. It’s self-service so choose a few plates of whatever looks good, put them on a tray, bring them back up and we’ll share it.’

  Patrick looked as if Kal had given him a gift rather than a job to get him out of the way.

  ‘Will they have felafel? And hummus? And shish kebabs? And Mum does a fruity kind of rice as well, but I forget its name.’

  ‘Go check it out,’ Kal said to him, leading the way to the door then standing there while Patrick strode towards the elevator.