A Wife for the Surgeon Sheikh

by Meredith Webber

  My man? she’d have liked to say, but if this man had obviously sussed out the tie between her and Malik it would demean what they had had for her to deny it.

  ‘His problems are affairs of state,’ she said quietly. ‘He will do what is right.’

  As the boy spoke the man gave a bow of his head. The simple gesture was eloquent with understanding, and gave Lauren a warm feeling of support.

  She turned her attention back to the child, the lad translating rapidly so the conversation felt almost normal.

  ‘Has someone told you that the tests show no damage to the heart, and because of that she will be able to go home soon?’

  A different nod this time—all business.

  ‘But she must rest until she feels ready to play again, and you will have to give her penicillin injections every four weeks—every twenty-eight days—for many years so she doesn’t get it again.’

  ‘Malik has told me this, and my sister, who trained as a nurse, will come back to live with us for a few months until I feel confident of doing the injections myself.’

  Lauren smiled at him and waved her hands around the room where everyone, even the small children, was being very quiet.

  Trying not to draw attention to their presence when the place looked like a fairground?

  ‘Family is very special,’ she said to the man. ‘It is good your sister will help you for a while.’

  ‘Family is everything,’ the man said, and Lauren had to swallow hard and say a quick goodbye so she could escape before they saw her tears.

  ‘You’re stronger than this!’ she told herself as she drew deep breaths in a cubicle in the bathroom. ‘You have family, you have Nim. And Joe and Aunt Jane are as good as family—better even, considering all they have done for you.’

  And now silently chastising herself for giving in to tears of self-pity, she returned to work, checked on the other children in the ward, made arrangements for a little boy with a broken leg who was returning home, spoke sternly to a mother who was feeding her recently diagnosed diabetic daughter with nougat, and generally fell into the routine that was work.

  But as she talked with the aide who usually translated for her, and used some of the new words she was learning, she realised how much she’d grown to like this place—the hospital, the oasis, the country and its people.

  For some reason, it had begun to feel like home, and although she knew, if she stayed, she’d be living in one of the small hospital accommodation units or a rented house, not a mansion with a rose garden bigger than a football field, she also knew that didn’t matter. She could be happy here, she and Nim.

  Malik would be too busy putting all his plans into practice to be at the hospital very much, and not seeing him would make things easier for her to bear.

  Or maybe Malik would go ahead with his idea of the health outposts—and she could live in the desert with Nim—that would be wonderful.

  She shook her head.

  No, it wouldn’t—not for Nim. Not now she really thought about it. Even if he grew to love the desert as much as she did, he’d have no friends out there except when one of the nomadic tribes was camped there. But even those friends would move on.

  She had to smile at how far her thoughts had wandered in the time it took for the aide to write out instructions for the storage of penicillin. Smile?

  She’d actually smiled?

  Well, she damn well wasn’t going to not smile!

  This was how it had to be, for these people she was just getting to know and admire, and for the country that was unique and needed to be protected.

  And she was going to go about her work as if nothing had happened, no matter how hard that might be.

  And at night, instead of dreaming of the man who’d brought her such joy, she’d plan the future—hers and Nim’s.

  She was in the staffroom, and as Malik walked in her head was already into planning mode.

  Which was fortunate as it gave her a good defence against all her physical reactions to his presence and to the spasm of pain it caused in her heart.

  ‘I’ll need a house near his school and not too far from the hospital. I’m sure you’ll do whatever has to be done about keeping Nim safe, and as long as it’s not too expensive I can pay rent out of my hospital wages until I can organise to transfer money over here. And it would be good if we could move soon so there will be less chance of silly talk and scandal. And if we could keep Aneesha for Nim’s language lessons and to help me learn as well, that would be good.

  He stared at her as if she was an apparition, shook his head, then walked away, whatever he’d come to say forgotten in her torrent of words.

  But having said the words, and heard them in her own ears, the situation became far more real.

  She could do this. Hide her broken heart and explain to Nim they were moving, learn how and where to shop for food, pack their things—could she take the trouser suits she’d been wearing for work, and maybe the lovely blue one...?

  She sniffed hard, hoping to drain away the moisture collecting behind her eyes.

  She could do this—she would do this...

  * * *

  Malik walked through the hospital in a daze. Knowing she was in the hospital, he’d hoped to find her and put his idea of them leaving to her once again—persuade her with love. Surely love would change her mind?

  And he’d been met with a barrage of words that had stopped him in his tracks, and as he’d walked away, he’d realised she was deadly serious.

  She would remain here in Madan, so he could rule for Nimr until he came of age.

  Which left him where, exactly?

  He tried to block out the answer to that question because it came in Lauren’s voice.

  He had to find a Madani bride!

  How could he when he loved and wanted only Lauren?

  What could he offer to another woman?

  Certainly not love...

  But Lauren was removing herself from the equation—and doing it deliberately because she was thinking of this woman—because without Lauren around he could least give his wife respect.

  He groaned—aloud, it seemed, as several nurses passing by turned to stare at him.

  Were they pretty?

  Should he start to look?

  He groaned again but kept it inside this time...

  * * *

  Nothing happened.

  No new place of residence suddenly appeared, and Lauren had no idea where or how to start looking for something.

  She could ask Keema for help, but it seemed disloyal to Malik to be discussing their personal lives, although everyone in the big house must know what was going on.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A FIRE IN a market on the edge of town brought in enough patients to keep all the staff busy for the next week, and although she didn’t see him, Lauren knew Malik had been working every night because she saw his writing on the charts.

  Well, she looked for it, and often looked just a little too long and touched it with her fingers when she did see it, as if somehow his written words could connect her to him again.

  If you’re going to stay here for ever you’d better get over this, she told herself one morning, but next morning looked again.

  ‘Take some time off,’ Graeme said to her, as she went off duty early the following week. ‘The crisis is over—the children who need more care have been air-lifted out—and we’re down to the ones who still need fluid replacement and their dressings changed.’

  Lauren knew he was right. They were nearly back to normal, and she knew she was probably too exhausted to go on without a break.

  She could look for somewhere new to live.

  She needed sleep first, then she would look.

  Her financial future wouldn’t be a problem. She’d bought the duplex back home with money from
her share of the sale of her parents’ house but there was more. It was simply a matter of organising the sale of some shares and transferring some capital to a bank here.

  At least Malik wouldn’t have to pay her rent or, worse, buy her a house. How would his wife feel about that?

  The word ‘wife’ still hurt, but she refused to not think about the unknown woman. It was for Nim, and the country he would one day rule, that she, Lauren, had made her decision, and she had every intention of sticking to it.

  She was in the rose garden—could she plant roses in her new home, she wondered—when Keema found her. A Keema more excited than Lauren had ever seen her.

  ‘Come, come, you must look and listen,’ Keema said, taking Lauren’s hand and practically dragging her into the house.

  The television was on in the small salon, the screen showing a man in snowy white robes and white headdress on a platform in front of a large crowd.

  ‘It is Malik,’ Keema pointed out, although a glimpse of his shadowed face, and a flip of Lauren’s heart had already told her that.

  ‘He is speaking to the people—I will tell you his words,’ Keema added, so Lauren stood and watched as Malik raised his hands and the excited crowd grew silent.

  He began to speak, and while she didn’t know the meaning of the words, Lauren heard a quiet determination in his voice.

  ‘He talks of the new law,’ Keema said. ‘Talks of it being a bad law, for do we not live in a great wide world and should we not mix with the people of the whole world, whether for business, or pleasure—even marriage?’

  Keema paused, and Lauren moved closer to the television, peering at the screen as if that would help her understand what was going on.

  ‘He says the law tells him he must take a Madani bride, but is that the right thing to do, the good thing to do, if he loves another? He says he wants to marry and rule the country for his nephew, so Nimr will inherit a country that has good education—a university—and good care for sick people. I get the words muddled—’

  Keema stopped, apologising for the delay. Listened again, then continued.

  ‘He says that if it were not for the woman he loves, Nimr might not be alive, for the people who killed his father had been looking for him, although he was still only a tiny baby.’

  Another pause, this time because the crowd had started shouting and Malik had to raise his hands to silence them again.

  ‘He says the people who killed his brother also killed the family of the woman he loves—the brave woman who became a nomad to protect Nimr.’

  Keema stopped again, turning to Lauren to ask, ‘Did you do that?”

  But Lauren was beyond speech. She had no idea where this was going, but tears were rolling down her cheeks as the man she loved with all her heart and soul spoke of his love for her...

  ‘He says he wishes to do what is right for the country, but the new law says he cannot rule if he marries the woman he loves,’ Keema whispered, tears running down her cheeks now.

  On the television screen, Malik had stopped speaking for the noise from the crowd had grown so loud he could no longer be heard.

  ‘What are they yelling?’ Lauren asked, as the crowd waved their arms in the air and chanted a slogan or something else—the same words over and over again.

  ‘They are crying out, “Marry her.” They will not listen any more, they only cry marry her, marry her, marry her, all the time.’

  And Lauren gave a rueful smile. Maybe if Malik became ruler and slowly brought in some form of democratic government, then the people would have some say in matters such as this—but for now, she knew, they had no power to alter the law passed by the council of elders.

  But the words of the people warmed her heart and confirmed her decision to stay in this very different country—to stay and hopefully contribute to its future, to stay and make a difference if she could...

  * * *

  With Keema beside her, she was driven around the area—would it be called a suburb?—between Nim’s school and the hospital. The houses were small, and of mud-brick construction, covered with earth-coloured plaster of some kind so they looked as if they’d been part of the landscape for thousands of years.

  But inside many of them were new and modern, with two small bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom, living room and laundry, and, best of all, a large back garden, hidden from the front, but many of them already planted with fruit trees and roses.

  ‘I live with my parents,’ Keema explained, ‘but I will ask my father about how you can buy one.’

  ‘Could I rent one for a while?’ Lauren asked, and Keema shook her head.

  ‘I do not know that word but I will ask my father.’

  And true to her word, she appeared the next afternoon with her father, a polite, middle-aged man in a business suit.

  He bowed over Lauren’s hand, and spoke to her in impeccable English.

  ‘How can I help you?’ he said.

  ‘I need somewhere to live. Sheikh Abdul-Malik was kind enough to let me stay here while I found my feet, but now Nimr is settled in school and I am happy with my work at the hospital, I would like my own home.’

  He bowed his head again, although she knew he must know there was more to her decision than she’d told him. After Malik’s speech the entire country knew. Knew, also, that the law was the law.

  She explained to her visitor that she must arrange money transfers from Australia before she would have the money to buy a property here but for now would like to rent one.

  ‘And the Sheikh is not willing to make these arrangements for you.’

  The implication of the words shocked Lauren. Keema’s father was seeing her as a discarded mistress, believing it was Malik’s duty to provide for her.

  Well, in one way she was, she supposed, but...

  How to explain?

  ‘It is my decision to leave Abdul-Malik’s house—mine, and mine alone. I wish to be independent, as I was back in Australia, but already I love your country and would be happy to remain working here. And I must think of Nimr, this is his heritage.’

  And although inside she was a quivering mess, she managed to roll the ‘r’ on the end of Nim’s official name quite well.

  Then remembered Malik correcting her when first they’d met, and felt pain slice into her heart.

  ‘You can lease our houses—this is something we have learned since the oil men came,’ Keema’s father was explaining. ‘And more houses have been built for this purpose. But Keema tells me where you are looking—that is not a suitable place for you. There is an area where the ex-pats live—the houses there are better, more like Western houses.’

  Which wasn’t at all what Lauren wanted.

  ‘Nimr is already at school here, and I would like to live close to his school. I believe he should grow up among his peers, the people he will one day rule—not among foreigners, no matter how convenient that might be.’

  Keema’s father bowed his head again.

  ‘I shall find out what is available in the area where you wish to live,’ he said, but Lauren had a feeling there was something behind his giving in without further argument.

  * * *

  She was proven correct when Malik arrived late that afternoon, a Malik she had never seen—coldly radiating anger.

  ‘You have spoken to an outsider of our affairs,’ he said, the words carrying the harshness of ground glass.

  ‘Only Keema’s father,’ Lauren said. ‘No one else. And it wasn’t about you and I but about me finding somewhere to live.’

  ‘And you did not think I would provide for you? Did you believe I would cast you both out of my home like so much unwanted rubbish?’

  He stormed up and down the colonnade for a few minutes, perhaps so he wouldn’t strangle her he was so angry.

  Returned to stand in front of her.

  �
��I have already had this house made over to you. It is your home—you will live here, not sneak off to some tiny house near the school.’

  Maybe it was the ‘sneak off’ phrase that annoyed Lauren, but her temper was certainly rising when she said, ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Malik, have some sense. How’s your wife going to feel if I’m still living in your home—living like a queen or, worse, a mistress? Will she believe you don’t visit me, don’t see me when you should be with her? I said I wouldn’t harm your marriage in any way—and staying here would do that.’

  The sudden flare of anger had burnt out quickly, and all Lauren felt was exhaustion.

  So much had happened and she was tired and miserable. Heartbroken, in fact, but no way would she let Malik see that.

  She turned away from him and wandered down into the garden, but even the abundant roses failed to give her solace.

  * * *

  Malik subsided into a chair and watched her in the garden, aware she was hurting as much as he was, regretting his anger, although he still felt it was justified.

  Did she not really love him that she could just walk away like that?

  Especially now things might change.

  It was that he’d come to tell her.

  He still could...

  He stood up and followed her into the garden.

  Stopped in front her, by a bush of pale lilac roses—his mother’s favourite.

  ‘I am sorry I was angry,’ he said when she looked up at him, eyes blank of all emotion. ‘I came to tell you the law might change—will change, I think. Or simply be deleted so the right to marry whomever one wishes will stand.’

  He waited for a reaction, but none came.

  ‘If that happens, we can marry,’ he said, anxious now about her lack of response. ‘I love you, Lauren, will you marry me?’

  Her lips had moved, but as smiles went it barely fitted the description.

  She walked away from him, pausing only to remove a dead rose here and there.

  Then stopped and turned to him.