Desert King, Doctor Daddy

by Meredith Webber

  Aisha was on her feet, cradling the swaddled baby in her arms, her husband proudly supporting his wife and child.

  ‘You are sure you don’t want to take her to the hospital so both of them can be checked out?’ Gemma asked the young man.

  ‘No hospital,’ he said, so firmly Gemma suspected they’d made the decision some time ago. ‘We go with Sahra, and Aisha’s mother will help Sahra’s mother care for the baby while Aisha rests.’

  Gemma led them out but couldn’t let them go without having one more look at the tiny infant, so perfect in every way, his ebony skin shining, his dark eyes gazing unfocusedly at the world into which he had been born. Aisha let go of the swaddled bundle long enough for Gemma to hold him, and her arms felt the familiar heavy ache, not of loss but of dreams unfulfilled…

  ‘Definitely miraculous,’ she admitted to the sheikh, who had appeared at the back of the hall to see the little family off.

  Yusef watched her as she handed back the baby, reluctantly it seemed to him, then opened the door to let the group out. What had made this woman, who could be earning big money as a specialist in a city practice, take on the frustrating and often, he imagined, impossible task, of providing medical care for immigrant women and their children?

  That she also went beyond straight medical care, he knew from the reports he had read. She had a part-time psychologist on staff, and ran various clubs and get-togethers for the women who visited the centre. She had dragooned a dentist into service once a fortnight and a paediatrician visited once a month to see the children of the women who used the centre.

  He studied her as she spoke to the nurse, seeing a profile with a high forehead beneath the red hair, a long thin nose, neatly curved lips and a chin with a small dimple that saved it from being downright stubborn. A handsome woman, not beautiful but attractive in the real sense of the word—attracting glances, he was sure, wherever she went.

  Yet she made nothing of herself, scraping the vibrant hair back into a tight knot and swathing it with a scarf, although he doubted it stayed tidy long, and wearing no make-up to hide the little golden freckles most women he knew would consider blemishes.

  She was back inside, shutting the door behind her, and she must have seen his visual check because she gave a shrug and said, ‘It is Sunday morning and I was in the centre, making sure all the paperwork was in order for your visit, and that the place was clean. I do have some decent clothes to change into if you’ve time to wait.’

  Yusef had to smile.

  ‘Of course you mustn’t change for me. Was my study of you so obvious?’ he asked, as she led the way back to the kitchen.

  ‘Not as obvious as the look on your face when you were wondering why on earth I do the job I do,’ she said, and Yusef, who, like all his people, prided himself on keeping all his thoughts and emotions hidden behind a bland face, felt affronted.

  And she read that emotion too, chuckling, more to herself than to him, then explaining.

  ‘I deal with women who are past masters at hiding their emotions behind the blankest of expressions. Reading their faces, the slightest changes in their expressions, helps me to know when I’ve pushed too far, or reached ground too delicate to tread.’

  It was the simple truth, for he too could read people, but the mystery remained.

  ‘And why do you do the job you do?’

  She slumped down in a chair and picked up her coffee, which by now must be lukewarm as well as revolting.

  ‘Because I love it?’

  ‘You make that a question. Are you not sure, or are you asking me if I’d believe that answer?’

  She glanced his way then shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘I do love it, but it wasn’t because I doubted you’d believe me. I think the question you were asking was more than that, because how could I possibly have known how much pleasure it would give me before I began the centre?’

  ‘Yet it gives you grief, as well,’ Yusef persisted, although he was coming close to personal ground—ground he rarely trod with either men or women, particularly not with women he didn’t know. ‘I saw your face as you examined Aisha.’

  Gemma studied him in silence and he could almost hear the debate going on inside her head. Would she answer him or brush him off? In the end, she did answer, but perhaps it was a brush-off as well.

  ‘Terrible things happen to innocent people, we all know that, our news broadcasts are full of it every day. A war here, a famine there, floods and earthquakes and tidal waves—these things we can’t control, but what we can do is help pick up the pieces. Some of those pieces wash up on the shores of my country, and it gives me more joy than grief if I can help them.’

  Yusef heard the truth of what she said in every word and although what he wanted back at home was not someone to pick up scraps left by disasters, well, not entirely, he did want someone with the empathy this woman felt and the understanding she had for marginalised people. His country was changing, and many tribal groups that had once roamed freely over all the desert before those lands had had borders and names were now having to live within the boundaries of a particular country—many of them in his country.

  These people saw the money flowing into his country, and the life it could provide, and wanted some of it for themselves, but their arrival was putting stresses on basic infrastructure like hospitals and clinics. This, in itself, was causing difficulties and unrest, something Yusef wanted to put a stop to as early as possible. He knew the tribal women made the decisions for the family, and that it would take someone special to help them settle comfortably in his land. He’d suspected, from the first time he’d heard of this women’s centre in Sydney that the woman who ran it might be the person he was seeking.

  ‘You are committed, but your staff? Do they also feel as you do?’

  She smiled at him, and again it seemed as if a light had gone on behind the fine, pale skin of her face, illuminating all the tiny freckles so she shone like an oil lamp in the desert darkness. Something shifted in his chest, as if his heart had tugged at its moorings, but he knew such things didn’t happen—a momentary fibrillation, nothing more. Stress, no doubt, brought on by the task that lay ahead of him.

  ‘I could walk out of here tomorrow and nothing would change,’ she assured him proudly. ‘That is probably my greatest achievement. Although everyone likes to believe he or she is indispensable, it’s certainly not the case here. My staff believe, as I do, that we must treat the women who come here without judging them in any way, and that we must be sensitive to their cultural beliefs and customs and as far as possible always act in ways that won’t offend them.’

  She paused then gave a rueful laugh.

  ‘Oh, we make mistakes, and sometimes we let our feelings show—I must have today for you to have picked up on my anxiety when I examined Aisha. But generally we manage and the women have come to trust us.’

  ‘Except when it comes to a Caesarean birth?’

  She gave a little shrug.

  ‘You’re right. No matter how hard we try to convince them that they can have more children after a Caesarean, they don’t believe us.’

  She sighed.

  ‘There’s no perfect world.’

  Yusef took a deep breath, thinking about all she had covered in not so many words. He knew the trauma many women suffered in the refugee camps. Of course this woman—Gemma Murray—would feel their pain, yet she continued to do her job.

  He now reflected on the other thing she’d said. She could leave tomorrow and the centre’s work would continue.

  Was this true?

  What was he thinking now? Gemma wondered.

  Had she made a fool of herself talking about the centre the way she had?

  Been too emotional?

  Gemma watched the man across the table, his gaze fixed on some point beyond her shoulder, obviously thinking but about what she had no clue for his face was totally impassive now.

  ‘Would you leave tomorrow?’ he asked.

 
CHAPTER TWO

  THE question was so totally unexpected, Gemma could only stare at him, and before she could formulate a reply, he spoke again.

  ‘And your second house, would you be equally confident leaving it?’

  She could feel the frown deepening on her forehead but still couldn’t answer, although she knew she had to—knew there was something important going on here, even if she didn’t understand it.

  Think, brain, think!

  ‘None of your money has gone into the second house,’ she said, then realised she’d sounded far too defensive and tried to laugh it off. ‘Sorry, but I wasn’t sure you knew about it.’

  He had a stillness about him, this man who had virtually saved their service, and perhaps because he’d let emotion show earlier and had regretted it, his face was now impossible to read.

  ‘I know of its existence,’ her visitor said, ‘but not of how it came to be. It seems to me you had enough—is the expression “on your plate”?—without taking on more waifs and strays.’

  Was it his stillness that made her fidget with the sugar basin on the table? She wasn’t usually a fidget, but pushing it around and rearranging the salt and pepper grinders seemed to ease her tension as she tried to explain. Actually, anything was preferable to looking at him as she answered, because looking at him was causing really weird sensations in her body.

  She was finding him attractive?

  Surely not, although he was undeniably attractive…

  She moved the pepper grinder back to where it had been and concentrated on business.

  ‘The sign on our front door, although fairly discreet, does say Women’s Centre, and with our inner-city position, I suppose it was inevitable that some women who were not immigrants would turn up here. Not often, in the beginning, but one in particular, an insulin-dependent diabetic, began to come regularly, and sometimes bring a friend, or recommend us to another woman.’

  ‘These are women of the streets you talk of?’

  The pepper grinder was in the wrong place again and Gemma shifted it, then looked up at her questioner.

  ‘I don’t know about your country—or even what country you call home—but here a lot of people with mental health problems or addictions end up living on the streets. The government, church and charity organisations all do what they can, and homeless people have the same access to free hospital care at public hospitals, but…’

  What did she not want to say? Yusef watched her restless hands, moving things on the table, the tiny golden freckles on her long slim fingers fascinating him. Everything about this woman was fascinating him, which in itself should be a warning to find someone else. The last complication he needed in his life right now was to be attracted to a woman, particularly one he was intending to employ.

  Yet his eyes kept straying to her vivid hair, her freckled skin, the way her pale lips moved as she spoke—which she was doing now so he should concentrate.

  ‘Sometimes there is an element of judgement in the treatment of these women, or if not judgement then a genuine desire to help them, but to help them by changing their way of life.’

  She tucked her hands onto her lap where they couldn’t fiddle—and he could no longer see them—and looked directly at him.

  ‘I am not saying this is a bad thing. I am not saying that organisations dedicated to helping these people shouldn’t exist, it is just that sometimes all they want is a diagnosis of some small problem and, where necessary, a prescription. Sometimes they don’t want to be helped in other ways, or cured of an addiction, or to change their lives.’

  Was she so naïve? Could she not see that a lot of the organisations set up for these people were funded on the basis that they did attempt to change lives? It was their duty to at least try!

  ‘But surely a drug addict should be helped to fight his or her addiction?’ he asked, and watched her closely, trying to fathom where her totally non-judgemental attitude had come from. Trying to focus on the discussion they were having, not on the effect she was having on his body.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘and as I said there are plenty of places willing to help in that way. If someone asks for that kind of help we refer them on, but our—our charter, I suppose you could say, is purely medical. We are a medical centre for people who are intimidated by the public health system, or for some other reason do not wish to use it.’

  ‘And for that you bought a house?’

  Defiance flashed in the pale eyes. Would desire heat them in the same way?

  Yusef groaned, but inwardly. It had to be because he’d been so busy these last six months, too busy for anything but the briefest social encounters with women, that his body was behaving the way it was. Not only his body, but his mind, it seemed.

  ‘I live in that house,’ she said, the words carrying an icy edge. ‘It is my home. And if I choose to turn the upstairs into a flat and the downstairs into a surgery, then that is my business.’

  Ah, so she had the fire that supposedly accompanied the colour of her hair—fire and ice…

  ‘I am not criticising. I think it is admirable, and that brings me back to my original question. Could you walk away from these services you have set up?’

  Gemma studied him, suspicion coiling in her stomach, keeping company with the other stuff that was happening there every time she looked at this man. It couldn’t be attraction, for all that he was the best looking man she’d ever seen. She didn’t do attraction any more. Attraction led to such chaos it was easier to avoid it.

  ‘Why are you asking that?’ she demanded, probably too demandingly but he had her rattled. ‘Are you implying that if I left, the staff I’ve trained, the staff who work here because they hold the same beliefs I do, would turn the services into something else? And if so, would you withdraw your funding? Is that where your questions are leading?’

  Fire! It was sparking from her now, but he had to concentrate—had to think whether now was the time to talk of the new venture. Probably not. She was too suspicious of him.

  ‘You may be sure of my contributions to your service continuing, even increasing,’ he said. ‘Though perhaps now would be a good time for me to look at more of the facilities than the treatment room you used for Aisha. Perhaps you can tell me what else is needed.’ He stood up, relieved to get off the uncomfortable and not totally, he suspected, clean chair. ‘Apart,’ he added with a smile, ‘from some new kitchen furniture.’

  Gemma was sorry he’d smiled. She’d been okay denying the attraction right up until then, but the smile sneaked through a crack in her defences and weakened not only her resistance but the muscles in her chest so she found it hard to breathe normally and had to remind herself—in, out, in, out!

  ‘A tour, good,’ she said, standing up and all but running out of the kitchen—anything to escape the man’s presence. Although he’d still be with her, but surely explaining the use to which they put the various rooms would take her mind off the attraction.

  She led him through the ground-floor rooms first, then up the stairs to where she’d had two small bedrooms altered to make a larger meeting room.

  ‘We have playgroups for the children here,’ she said. ‘It’s wonderful to see them all singing nursery rhymes in English, and chattering to each other in a medley of languages that they all seem to understand. In the beginning the mothers usually come along as well, but as they grow in confidence themselves, they will leave the children and go off for a coffee. And as they get to know each other, they make arrangements to meet at places other than the centre, in a park at weekends, with their extended families. The centre has become a kind of cultural crossroads, and that pleases me enormously.’

  Talking about the centre was good—Gemma was so wholehearted about what the place had achieved that she didn’t have to pretend enthusiasm. Neither did she have to look at her visitor—well, not more than an occasional glance.

  ‘And the other rooms on this floor?’

  ‘A bedroom and bathroom for on-duty staff
. I was on-duty last night and although I only live next door I do a night shift here once a month.’

  Now she did look at him.

  ‘We need a doctor on hand for obstetric emergencies. It doesn’t seem to matter how careful we are in our antenatal clinics and how often we take pregnant women to the hospital and show them the birthing suites, nurseries and maternity wards, some, like Aisha, will not go to a hospital.’

  He nodded as if he understood, and the haunted look was back on his face, as if he’d seen things in hospitals in other places that he’d rather not remember.

  She wanted to reach out and touch his arm, to offer comfort, though for what she didn’t know, but she shrugged off the silly notion as he evidently shrugged off his memories, asking, ‘And is there someone on duty in the other house?’

  Gemma shook her head.

  ‘The other house is strictly week-days, day and evening appointments although most of the patients who attend don’t bother with appointments. From time to time, someone turns up here late at night or on a weekend, but it’s rare. I think the women who use the service consider it a bit special so they are reluctant to abuse it.’

  She had no sooner finished speaking than the doorbell peeled, echoing through the empty rooms downstairs.

  ‘Surely not another emergency birth,’ she muttered as she headed down the steps. She could hear her visitor coming down behind her but her focus was on the door, beyond which she could hear shrill wails.

  Gemma flung open the door to find two women grappling on the doorstep. The air smelt of old wet wool and blood, which was liberally splattered over both of them. As Gemma moved closer she thought she saw the flash of a knife, then she was thrust aside by a powerful arm and the man who’d followed her stepped past her, putting his arms around one of the women and lifting her cleanly off the step.

  ‘Drop the knife,’ he ordered, not loudly but with such authority the woman in his arms obeyed instantly, a battered, rusty carving knife falling to the ground.

  Gemma scooped it up and shoved it behind the umbrella stand in the foyer, temporarily out of harm’s way, then she turned her attention to the woman who had had collapsed onto the floor just inside the door—Jackie, one of the older women who used the medical services at the house next door.