Sheikh Surgeon

by Meredith Webber

  ‘We’ll still get married!’

  The words echoed down the corridor and she spun back towards him, forgetting she didn’t want to look at him.

  He was standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, a look of implacable determination on his face.

  ‘You’ve got to be joking!’ she snapped.

  ‘Not for one minute,’ he said. ‘Patrick’s my son, you will be my wife!’

  ‘Just what century are you living in, Kal?’ Nell demanded, coming back towards him so he couldn’t fail to see how serious she was. ‘“You will be my wife,” indeed? What will you do next? Fling me over a camel and ride off with me into the desert?’

  ‘No, but I’ll fight you for my son. I’ll fight you in any court in any land, and I’ll prove I can give him a better life. More than that, he’s nearly fourteen. The judge will ask his opinion. And you’ve given me the task of looking after him while you work. Do you think he will want to go back to a tame life in Australia when he sees what I can offer?’

  Pain so great she wondered if she was having a heart attack squeezed Nell’s chest and she reached out to the wall for support.

  ‘You’d do that? You’d do that to me?’ The words sounded like a pitiful mew, even to her own ears, but Kal wasn’t moved. If anything, he looked more fiercely unyielding.

  ‘You’ve kept him from me for all these years,’ he reminded her in the cold, remote voice she found so unsettling. ‘Yes, I’d do it.’

  Nell turned and walked away. She’d have liked to have kept a hand on the corridor wall for support but she was damned if she was going to let him see—again—just how devastated she was. She reached the elevators and leant against the wall for a moment, wondering what to do next, too upset to think straight.

  She couldn’t go back to the apartment—if Patrick was still up, he’d guess she was upset. There’d be coffee in the canteen, although she wasn’t certain it operated twenty-four hours a day, and coffee might make her more uptight.

  The ward! She needed to see the autopsy report some time. She’d go down to the ward, sit quietly in the doctor’s office and read it.

  Or pretend to read it while she sorted out her head.

  All was quiet on the ward, although several of the patients, as she went from bed to bed, unable to be there without checking on them, were awake, their injuries making sleep difficult.

  She picked out the three new post-op patients because the limbs that had received skin grafts were splinted and swathed in bandages to prevent movement. The young girl with the facial wounds was sleeping, but a woman all but covered in the now-familiar black veils sat by her side, the rubber gloves and medical face mask she wore looking out of place with her traditional dress.

  Nell smiled at her, and the woman’s eyes smiled back above the mask.

  ‘Her skin is healing,’ Nell said quietly, peering at the girl’s cheek. The woman nodded, then touched the girl lightly on the arm.

  ‘Her heart will take longer,’ she said, her English clear and understandable. ‘I am her aunt, but an aunt can’t replace a mother and a father, though I will try.’

  Nell felt tears well in her eyes and though she knew they were probably to do with her own emotional trauma, she touched the woman on the arm.

  ‘I am sure you will do a wonderful job,’ she whispered, then she left the ward, afraid that if she encountered any more emotionally fraught situations she’d end up crying like a baby.

  The autopsy report—had Kal had it translated into English for her?—was on her desk, and she slumped into the chair and looked at it, not really reading the words.

  Until she came to ‘gross internal bleeding’ and had to start at the beginning again. The heart consultant had inserted the catheter into the man’s femoral artery and through it to the left ventricle, where he’d closed a slight hole in the ventricular septum. But somewhere along the line, maybe as he’d withdrawn the instrument on the end of the catheter, he’d nicked the wall of the artery, so small a hole it had gone unnoticed both by him and the radiographer.

  Blood had begun to seep from the artery, then, as less blood had reached the man’s leg and his brain had told the heart to pump harder, more blood had escaped, enlarging the hole until the volume of it in the chest cavity had constricted the lungs until it virtually squeezed the heart to death.

  Accidents happened in medicine, Nell reminded herself, but that didn’t stop her anger building at the consultant who’d been so pleased with himself. Not that anything would happen to him. With no relations to fight for his rights, the patient’s death would be recorded, the autopsy report filed, and that would be that.

  Unless she sued on his behalf!

  And bring trouble on the hospital? Yasmeen would be involved. Did the friendship she’d offered Nell deserve to be repaid that way?

  Kal, too?

  Was she thinking of this as some kind of payback to Kal?

  Nell shook her head. She didn’t have a vindictive bone in her body—though she did feel anger towards the consultant.

  But realistically she didn’t know much about medico-legal law in her own country, let alone in this one, so how would she go about getting justice for her patient?

  And what would it achieve?

  She was pondering all these questions and getting absolutely nowhere when the door of the office opened and Kal appeared.

  ‘I thought I might find you here,’ he said, waving what was apparently his copy of the autopsy report towards her. ‘I’ll need legal opinion, of course, but the consultant is definitely responsible. I’ll suspend him from working in this hospital immediately and find out what other course we should take against him. The patient not having a family makes it difficult, but his death shouldn’t just be pushed aside as an unfortunate accident.’

  ‘But if you take legal action, the hospital will also be included in the responsibility for the man’s death,’ she reminded him.

  ‘So?’

  Nell stared at him, unable to believe what she was hearing. This was the Kal she’d once known, the man to whom truth and honour had been so important—important enough to be pursued even at the risk of hurting the hospital. So maybe it was truth that had made him hurt her by denying love. Maybe he really did believe the emotion she called love was nothing but a destructive force.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ he demanded, and she shook her head.

  ‘Not really,’ she admitted. ‘I got lost after you said we shouldn’t push his death aside as an unfortunate accident. I was thinking the same thing when you came in, but didn’t know what to do about it, or even if there was anything we could do.’

  ‘I’ll do something,’ he promised, then his gaze moved over her, and for the first time since things had fallen apart in the restaurant his face softened.

  ‘You spent your first few days here telling me to go to bed. I’m telling you that now, Nell. You look exhausted.’

  He paused, then allowed a rueful smile to flick across his lips.

  ‘Beautiful, but exhausted.’

  He held out his hand towards her.

  ‘Come, I’ll take you up to the apartment. Your apartment, not mine, though that discussion isn’t finished!’

  Nell took his hand and let him pull her to her feet, then found herself glad of his supporting arm as they made their way back to the apartments. Emotional as well as physical exhaustion was dogging her footsteps now.

  And weakening her resolve…

  Having someone to lean on, literally as well as figuratively, was a very seductive thought…

  Chapter 9

  Kal glanced at the boy who sat by his side, looking out of the window, asking questions about the buildings they were passing. He tried to see something of Nell in the profile or in the face when Patrick turned towards him, but all he saw was his own young self.

  Then the city slipped away behind them and the long straight road stretched out into the desert.

  ‘Wow! It really is desert,’ Patrick said,
and Kal smiled.

  ‘Wait until we turn off this road—you won’t believe civilisation can be so close.’

  He drove swiftly, Patrick talking and asking questions, constantly surprising Kal with his perception and intelligence, then the small marker came in sight and Kal pointed it out.

  ‘Can you make out tyre tracks running away from the main road?’ he asked Patrick, who peered obediently through the window.

  ‘Only just,’ he said. ‘In fact, they seem so faint I might be imagining them.’

  ‘It’s because the sand shifts all the time,’ Kal told him. ‘Desert sands are like the sea, always on the move. We’ll get out.’

  They walked around to the front of the car where he showed Patrick how to feel for the hardness of a much-used track beneath the soft top layer of sand, then pointed out how the ‘road’ ahead could be seen as slight indentations in the sand.

  ‘But that’s for those who don’t know the desert,’ he explained when they were back in the car. ‘Those of us who have lived here know always where we are. Do you know how to find compass points from the sun?’

  ‘I’ve a vague idea—something about pointing your watch towards the sun? But my watch is digital, so that wouldn’t work.’

  Kal stopped the car again and, using his watch, showed Patrick how to do it.

  ‘So, in this desert,’ he added, when they were driving again, ‘all you need to do is to remember the main road runs directly east-west, and we went south off it, so as long as you keep driving north, you’ll hit it again somewhere.’

  It was basic desert lore and the first of many things he taught his son, although later, when Patrick asked what he’d do to find the north at night, Kal laughed and showed him the compass in the front of the car.

  ‘And this is a GPS—a global positioning system—which gives you the co-ordinates of where you are at all times. It has some locations set into it. See, go to menu—you’ve got town, oasis, beach and camp. We’re going to camp so choose that one.’

  Kal drove on while Patrick worked out how to follow the GPS direction, and shouted with delight when they came to where a black tent had been erected.

  ‘The camp?’

  ‘It is,’ Kal assured him, feeling so much pleasure and delight in his son’s company it was almost painful.

  But not as painful as his head, which was throbbing with unrelenting persistence. He knew it was from lack of sleep. He’d spent the night in his office, dictating letters and messages for his secretary, leaving notes for the various unit managers at the hospital and more lengthy notes for the legal people.

  Fortunately his men had set up the tent and the cook had prepared food and put it in the refrigerator in the car, so all Kal would have to do was forage in it for lunch and light a fire to cook the meat for the main meal this evening. Not camping out the way Patrick might have expected, but Kal had wanted to spend as much time as he could with the boy.

  He walked into the dark coolness of the tent and saw the carpets spread across the floor and a pile of white clothes in a corner.

  Patrick had followed him in and was looking around, marvelling at carpets spread on sand.

  ‘Out here, I shed my western clothes,’ Kal said to him. ‘Will it bother you if I put on a kandora—the long dress—and suffra—our headdress?’

  ‘Great. Can I wear one, too? Or do I have to be a full sheik or something special like you are to get to wear one?’

  Kal laughed and went to the pile of clothes.

  ‘You could wear the kandora and, if you like, a coloured suffra—red and white, or black and white check—but I have only white here because that’s what I wear. So let’s see you as a sheik.’

  It was the start of a busy but exhausting day, Patrick wanting to know so much about how Kal’s people had lived before oil had changed their lives, wanting to learn to drive, then tearing up and down the sand hills in the big, safe, automatic vehicle, wanting to cook the dinner over an open fire, assuring Kal he was a barbecue expert.

  And Kal let him cook, for the headache, which had persisted all day, was now joined by some kind of fever, and though he hid the tremors he was feeling from the boy, he knew they should drive back to town.

  Maybe after dinner, although he knew Patrick would be disappointed…

  Patrick carried the plate of meat and vegetables he’d cooked on the heavy grill over the fire towards the carpet Kal had spread in front of the tent. Kal had explained that this would be where they ate—cross-legged on the carpet, using their fingers instead of cutlery, an initiation into the Bedouin way. But though Kal was there, he was lying down, and when Patrick spoke to him, he didn’t answer.

  ‘Kal!’

  Frantic, Patrick shook his father’s shoulder, then common sense returned and with it the basic teachings of first aid he’d learned at school. He pressed his fingers against the vein in his father’s jaw—and almost cried with relief to feel the throb of a pulse. Kal’s chest was rising and falling, too, so he was breathing.

  Patrick left him there and ran to the car, remembering the easy steps of starting it, then putting it into gear. He drove it towards his father, praying he wouldn’t do something stupid and run over him.

  Then, with the back door open, he heaved the man’s heavy body up, surprising himself with his own strength, his heart pounding with exertion and fear, a little ‘Please, don’t die’ prayer fluttering continuously on his lips.

  Somehow he got Kal in. He looked at the fire and kicked some sand on it, though he doubted it could set light to anything out here, then he ran back to the car and turned it, praying again—this time that he was heading in the right direction to meet the main road back to town.

  As he crested the first sand hill he saw a glow on the horizon. Relief flooded through him. All he had to do was drive towards those lights, for that was surely the city.

  He hit the main road twenty minutes later. From time to time Kal had mumbled something, but he’d not responded when Patrick had spoken to him so, determined to save his father, Patrick drove on.

  The city drew closer and, aware he wasn’t very good at steering yet and knowing he’d never handle the big vehicle in traffic, he began to work on a contingency plan. At the first of the big roundabouts on the approach to the city he stopped the car on the verge, turned on the hazard lights and got out, taking off the white robe he’d been wearing so he could wave it to attract attention.

  A huge semi-trailer pulled up in front of him, and the driver ran back towards Patrick. He spoke far too quickly for Patrick to understand him, so he grabbed the man’s arm and led him to the car, pointing to where his father lay, his breathing now so loud and raspy Patrick was terrified Kal might be dying.

  Fortunately the man seemed to understand for he hurried back to his truck then returned a few minutes later, saying the English word ‘ambulance’ over and over so Patrick would understand.

  And an ambulance it was, siren blaring, lights flashing, pulling up beside the truck within very few minutes, paramedics tumbling out.

  ‘It’s my father,’ Patrick said, relief making his voice tremble and building a huge lump in his throat.

  But the men had obviously recognised Kal as an al Kalada, for the name was whispered reverently and the attention became even more urgent.

  ‘Come,’ one of the attendants said to Patrick as Kal was loaded into the back of the ambulance. ‘Come with us.’

  Abandoning the car, Patrick climbed in, only too pleased to have other people in charge—and doing the driving. Besides, the ambulance would take Kal to the hospital and Mum was at the hospital. Everything would be all right.

  Not wanting to go back to an empty apartment, Nell had stayed on in the burns unit office, checking on test results of all the patients, changing dietary orders where needed, working out which patients might be able to take food by mouth. The office had a wide window in one wall, and some change in the flow of staff traffic past the window made her look up. Staff were gathering in small
groups and clusters, talking excitedly and waving their hands.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked when a young ward aide came in with some supper for her.

  The girl started to explain in Arabic, then stifled her words with her hands, thought for a few minutes then spoke slowly, as if translating every word she needed into the English she would have learned as a second language at school.

  ‘The sheik, he sick in desert. A boy drive him to town, now ambulance bring him here.’

  In this hospital there was only one sheik.

  But Kal sick and a boy drove him to town?

  Patrick?

  But Patrick couldn’t drive!

  ‘Where are they now? Where’s the boy? What’s wrong with Kal—the sheik? What kind of sick?’

  The young girl shrugged, Nell’s barrage of questions obviously beyond her limited English.

  Nell got up, determined to find someone who would understand, but no one she spoke to knew any more than she’d already heard.

  Ambulances took people straight to A and E, she reminded herself, and with only a few wrong turns she made her way back to where she’d spent so many hours on the night of her arrival.

  Patrick was sitting on a bench by the wall, looking so lost and alone she thought her heart would break.

  ‘Oh, Mum!’ he cried as she came towards him, then he stood up and put his arms around her, holding her close while his whole body shook with the release of tension. ‘I tried to get someone to phone you, but they didn’t seem to understand your name or didn’t know what apartment you were in, and I couldn’t leave Kal here on his own and go and find you.’

  He broke off with the choke of a sob, and Nell held his long, thin body against her own while anger that Kal would put him in this situation gathered in her belly.

  Although Kal hadn’t done it deliberately.

  He was sick?

  She patted Patrick’s shoulder and held him a little away from her.

  ‘What kind of sick is Kal? What happened, Patrick?’