Desert Doctor, Secret Sheikh

by Meredith Webber

  She saw him smile but he didn’t answer for a moment, and when he turned towards her the smile was gone.

  ‘So maybe the ways of the people here are wise, in that a bride is chosen based on suitability, not attraction. In olden times a bridegroom rarely met his bride before the wedding day—or days as it used to be—although he may have known her as a child, because marriages were made within the tribes and clans so she could have been a cousin he’d played with when he was young.’

  Jen knew he was explaining more of the local customs and history for her benefit, yet she heard a note of…sadness, or perhaps inevitability in his voice.

  ‘You speak as if you’re not sure if you approve or disapprove of that particular custom,’ she said, hoping for another smile, but all she got in answer was a shrug of broad shoulders before he turned back towards the desert stretched out in front of them.

  Discomfited by the silence, Jen turned the conversation back to their patient.

  ‘Getting right off love for the moment, if Akbar has internal bleeding, what’s it most likely to be? Spleen?’

  Kam looked at her and nodded as if agreeing with the change of conversation, or at least accepting it.

  ‘I would think that’s the most likely. It’s easily damaged and will bleed a lot but on the good side it will often cure itself or, worst case scenario, he can live without it.’

  Jen couldn’t hold back her gasp of horror.

  ‘You’d operate on him here? Remove his spleen? Under these conditions?’

  Once again she had his attention and once again he was smiling.

  ‘Wasn’t it you who pointed out that doctors in days that are not so distant managed all these things without all the modern equipment we have on hand today.’

  ‘They patched people up and hoped they’d live,’ Jen protested.

  ‘Which is what we’ll do if we have to,’ Kam said, his voice brooking no argument. ‘What do you know about him?’ he added, just in case she intended disobeying the warning in his voice. ‘Did he go to commit robbery that he was so severely beaten?’

  ‘I’m guessing he went to find his son, although he may not have told his captors that, fearing for the safety of the child,’ Jen explained. ‘I know Lia has been distraught about the loss of their little boy. Apparently he was playing at a friend’s house when they fled and they thought their friends would also flee and bring young Hamid, but when they arrived neither the boy nor their neighbours appeared.’

  ‘They could all have been killed in the first raid,’ Kam murmured.

  Jen shook her head.

  ‘Apparently not. The neighbour’s wife was from a different tribe—from the tribe that is now in control of that area—so custom suggests she’d be spared and no doubt the boy is still with her.’

  ‘Women and children have always been spared,’ Kam told her.

  ‘Or so men say,’ Jen reminded him. ‘But are they spared, left at home while their husbands and sons go out to fight? What are they spared? Physical injury, which is all very well, but line that up against mental anguish. I don’t think they’re spared much.’

  Kam Rahman turned towards her, something like a scowl marring the stern symmetry of his features.

  ‘You are the most argumentative woman I have ever met,’ he said, and she had to laugh.

  ‘That’s not arguing,’ Jen protested. ‘That’s nothing more than not agreeing with you! Have you reached such lofty heights in your career that lesser minions in the hospital bow and scrape to you? People often do to surgeons.’

  But if he was a top surgeon, or even a middle-ranking one, what was he doing here?

  Suspicion once again seeped beneath Jen’s skin and she studied the man who sat looking out at the desert.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, surprising her by agreeing. ‘The women do suffer. I wonder if that’s why they are more superstitious than men, believing in amulets and written words that can ward off the evil eye.’

  ‘Ah!’ Jen said. ‘I’ve wondered about that. Some of the women ask Marij or Aisha to write a word or words on a piece of paper and it is then tucked into a leather bag they wear around their necks. I thought they must be prayers.’

  ‘They are,’ Kam said, ‘because who better to protect them than their God, whatever name he uses?’

  But he wasn’t thinking about amulets or prayers but that the women in the camp could not write. For whatever reason they were here, on the edge of his country, they should be being helped, and taught, a school set up for the children and perhaps informal lessons for the women.

  Could he achieve all that was needed? How much could one man—two if he counted Arun—do to right perhaps not wrongs but certainly neglect? And how quickly could he set things up? The urgency of the situation struck him and with it came the knowledge that he couldn’t afford to be distracted by his attraction to this chance-met stranger.

  ‘I can understand their prayers, when they have so little,’ Jenny said, breaking into his thoughts of what might lie ahead. ‘Yet they do seem to have hope. I can’t explain it in words but it seems to me that all these people hold hope in their hearts. Hope that soon they can return to the lands they know—to their summer camp in the wadi where the dates grow, or their winter camp where the cliffs are honeycombed with caves carved out by their ancestors over centuries. Those with English talk about it all the time and you don’t have to be here long before you begin to feel this longing, or hunger, or need, all around you.’

  But Kam already understood. Deep in his own Bedouin blood were the urges of migration, the need to feel the desert sands beneath his feet and to roam the lands his ancestors had called their own.

  He frowned at his companion. His family had been settled for many generations now, and in spite of his father’s intransigence about moving into the modern world, all his children and his brothers’ children had been sent overseas to study, to become modern men and women.

  Look at him—a doctor, a specialist surgeon!

  So how could this woman stir a longing for the desert in his blood? How could she make him wonder if he needed an amulet or a word written on paper in a bag around his neck to protect him from her wiles?

  Yet they weren’t feminine wiles she practised…

  Or were they?

  He studied her, sitting so still on the rock, the child cradled in her arms. Just so had men and women sat all through the ages, he imagined, in this place—on this rock—but they would be a family, man, woman, child, so this was nothing but an illusion.

  Yet it was an illusion he found unsettling…

  As he found the woman unsettling.

  He thought back to the list he’d given his mother—a list of the attributes she would look for in his wife—quiet, gentle, amiable, supportive, home-loving, a good housekeeper, equable and attractive had headed the list, and although he’d added intelligent and educated, both he and his mother had wondered if such additions were necessary. This woman would qualify for the last two, and was more than attractive, even when coated in desert dust, but as for the rest…

  He shook his head in answer to his own question. This was a woman with wanderlust in her blood and a longing to keep moving on.

  The silence didn’t bother Jen for she loved looking out over the desert sands, but the peace she usually found at these times eluded her. Tonight the cool air brought tension with it, brushing new sensations against her skin and making her feel edgy, twitchy, uptight…

  She tried to analyse these feelings, hoping that naming them might make them go away. But dissatisfaction was the closest she could come and she knew that must be wrong. She was in a magical place, doing a job she loved, so where would dissatisfaction come in?

  Rosana grew heavy in her arms, and Jen shifted.

  ‘I must take her in and put her to bed, then check our patient,’ she said, and was surprised when Kam rose first, stepping towards her and lifting the sleeping child out of her arms.

  ‘Sit there a while. It will do you
good. I’ll give the child to Marij or Aisha to put to bed and check our patient for you.’

  Jen stared at him, trying to read whatever thoughts his face might reveal in the clear light of the moon. But as she hadn’t been able to read it by daylight, trying now was futile, though as he bent to lift Rosana from her arms he was close enough for her to see the strong bones in his cheeks and the high dome of his forehead—the dark eyebrows above the unexpected eyes, and the smooth, tanned skin that was wrinkled at the corners of his eyes. From smiles and laughter, or from growing up in the strong sunlight of this country, squinting in the desert sun?

  He took the child and Jenny watched him walk away. She’d seen little evidence of smiles and not heard laughter from him, so maybe they were sun-squints!

  She propped her back against a rock and looked out at the rolling dunes, trying to think of things she needed for the camp that this man might provide, but his image kept rising up in her mind and she couldn’t push it far enough to one side for her brain to work on practical problems.

  Although she had written a wish list not long after she’d arrived. She’d concentrate on that—picture the words on paper. A well—that was the first item on her list. She knew from her reading that many wells had been drilled in the desert—water wells to provide a permanent water supply for the Bedouin who still roamed the land.

  But would an Aid for All worker know influential enough people to have a well drilled at the camp?

  He was walking back towards her, so now would be a good time to find out. Better to talk about wells and a new clinic than to sit in silence, surrounded by the magic of the desert, and allow this man’s presence to move towards her on the breeze and stroke her skin and send shivers down her spine

  ‘Do you think it would be possible to get someone, the government maybe, to drill a well to provide a permanent supply of water for the camp? At present we get big bladders of water trucked in and we ration it, but we’re not always sure where it comes from and some bladders seem to be less clean than others. Everyone knows they should boil it before using it, but whether they do…’

  He frowned down at her, then sank down in one easy motion to sit, cross-legged, on the rock.

  The silence chafed Jenny’s nerves, forcing her into more conversation.

  ‘Of course, there mightn’t be underground water so drilling a well could be useless.’

  A deeper frown, clearly visible in the moonlight.

  ‘There should be water,’ he finally replied. ‘Underground rivers run from the mountains—the wadis where the dates grow are fed by them. In the wadis the water is closer to the surface and easier to get to.’

  There ended the conversation, no agreement or otherwise to asking someone to drill for a well. In fact, it seemed to Jenny that he’d moved far away from the fairly trivial conversation and was now lost in contemplation of things she couldn’t guess at.

  She studied his face as he looked out over the desert. She read sadness in it, but resolve as well, then she shook her head. Who did she think she was, judging a man’s feelings from his facial expression—especially a man she didn’t know and whose expression was verging on impassive?

  But her thoughts had broken the magic of the evening so she broke the silence, pushing him on the subject they’d been discussing.

  ‘Well?’ she prompted, then had to smile that she’d used the word in another sense, but if he saw anything amusing in it he certainly wasn’t showing it, still frowning at her.

  ‘You are sitting here with so much beauty all around you and thinking of wells?’

  ‘We were talking earlier of what was needed in the camp,’ she reminded him, although she couldn’t remember if they had been talking about it or if she’d introduced the topic to distract herself from personal thoughts and feelings.

  He waved a hand in her direction.

  ‘The well is negligible—it will be done.’

  He shrugged as if he could have a team of well-drillers here by morning, so insignificant he considered it, but it made Jenny even more suspicious of him. There was something going on here that she didn’t like, but she couldn’t work out what was bothering her.

  Apart, of course, from the attraction she was feeling for this man—attraction she’d thought she’d never feel again.

  ‘And if you wish to spoil the beauty of the evening with practicalities, I have been thinking we could ask for a couple of portable buildings—the ones that look like shipping containers. The oil companies use them for the workers living on site when new oil wells are being drilled. The buildings are shifted on trucks. We could ask one of the companies to give us one to use as a clinic-hospital.’

  ‘Just like that?’ she said, stunned by the size of the project he was suggesting. ‘Aid for All practically had to beg to be allowed in to the country to do the TB programme with the refugees, and now you’re confident enough of local support to produce a mobile clinic?’

  She stared at him, again trying to read what he was thinking in his face, although she knew she was only guessing.

  But he did look sad—it had to be sadness, making the corners of his well-shaped mouth droop slightly at the corners and the skin between his eyebrows deepen into a black frown.

  ‘The old ruler has died,’ he said. ‘Things are changing.’

  ‘Well. I’m glad to hear that, but will they change fast enough for us to get a well and the clinic?’

  ‘They will change,’ he repeated, and it seemed to Jenny that the words were a vow of some kind.

  But, then again, it could be the magic of the moonlight on the desert creating fancies in her head, or the spell of the man to whom she felt attraction, weaving words about her, snaring her, though unaware of the disruption his arrival had caused in her usually placid life.

  She had to get away—from him and the beauty and the moonlight—had to collect herself and her thoughts and get back to being sensible, practical Jenny Stapleton, doctor and aid worker…

  ‘I’ll check on Akbar,’ she said, standing up and walking away before Kam could argue. She ducked into the tent, which seemed very dim after the moonlight, although it was lit by a couple of bright gas lanterns. Kneeling beside the patient, Jen nodded to Lia who sat so patiently by his side, wiping his brow and face with a damp cloth and whispering little prayers or words of love.

  And as she examined him, Jen told Lia what she was doing, although she knew the other woman would understand very few of the words. But how else to communicate? She usually managed through hand signs and smiles, often leading to laughter, but with Akbar so badly injured only the most reassuring of smiles had any place in the strange conversation.

  He seemed feverish, and tossed uneasily in his sleep, but with pain relief and antibiotics flowing into him, there was nothing more they could do. Except refill his bag of blood, which was nearly empty.

  She took his blood pressure and found it had dropped further. There had to be internal bleeding, although his pulse was good. Low blood pressure from internal bleeding was usually accompanied by tachycardia, a rapid pulse, which made the two signs she was reading contradictory.

  Would they have to have a look?

  Jen shuddered as she imagined even attempting to operate under these conditions. And if they had to, would it be better to do it now, before he lost more blood?

  A sound behind her made her turn to see Kam had followed her in. Jenny stood up and spoke her thoughts out loud, glad she had someone with whom to share her worries.

  But Kam was having none of it, turning it back on her.

  ‘If I wasn’t here, what would you do?’ he asked, and she tried to think, although thinking was hard when he was so distractingly close.

  ‘I doubt I’d operate, not right now, and that’s not entirely because I’m not proficient at surgery or that it seems ridiculous to even attempt it in these circumstances, but because sometimes waiting and watching is better than rushing in. Maybe whatever it is will fix itself. There’s no distension of his a
bdomen, although I know he’d have to lose a lot of blood for that to happen, but there seems to be little tenderness either. I pressed my hands against each quadrant and though he murmured when I touched where deep wounds were, he didn’t flinch away at any stage.’

  Kam nodded his agreement. He’d like to examine the man himself but if he did it would look as if he didn’t trust Jenny’s judgement and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

  ‘I’d like to give him more blood, though,’ she said, ‘and see if that helps his BP.’

  She paused, then smiled at him.

  ‘And your fingers are itching to examine him, aren’t they?’ Her smile broadened, making Kam think of things far removed from medicine. ‘Go right ahead, I’ve always believed in getting second opinions. Also, you can examine bits of him I wouldn’t like to, not out of any prudishness but for fear of upsetting Lia, and Akbar himself if he became aware of it.’

  He took her at her word and repeated the examination he was sure she’d done quite competently, in the end agreeing with her decision to do nothing yet. If Akbar’s condition deteriorated further during the night, then they could and would operate, but the old medical adage of ‘First do no harm’ kept ringing in his head.

  Was she pleased he agreed with her? He couldn’t tell, maybe because she was fussing with the bedrolls and organising herself to give more blood.

  So practical for such a beautiful woman, or was that a sexist thought?

  But as Kam bent over her to uncap the cannula he’d inserted earlier and fit a tube to it, he couldn’t help but wonder again what had brought her here.

  Wonder also if she felt any of the attraction he could feel simmering in the air between them, or if it was all one-way—she attracting him.

  If she knew that, or felt anything, then she was hiding it well, treating him with polite consideration, tinged with just a hint of suspicion, as if his explanation for his sudden arrival at the refugee camp didn’t sit well with her.