Date with a Surgeon Prince

by Meredith Webber

  And why.

  If you’re finding it hard to make a decision, write a list, Pop had always said. That was how she’d decided which university to attend, which course to take, even, one slightly embarrassing time, which of two young men would take her to the hospital ball.

  So, mentally, she made her list.

  For going along with Gaz—Ghazi—on this betrothal thing was that she would be doing him a favour, and it was never a bad thing to have a favour owed.

  Besides, Nelson had said he’d been a nice little boy who’d been very kind to her at a time when she’d been desperately alone and confused, so maybe she owed him one.

  Then there was Pop, who’d be delighted, and by the time the betrothal ended, however they were to manage that, he’d be over the operation so could handle the news without too much of a problem.

  And…

  She couldn’t think of an and!

  Well, she could, but she’d already decided he probably wouldn’t seduce her while they were betrothed.

  Against—well, that was easy. The disruption in her life for a start, the hassle of whatever the betrothal would entail in the way of public appearances, the interruption to her work, having to get new clothes—

  She smiled to herself and wondered if that should go on the ‘for’ list…

  Then there was Gaz.

  Was he a for or against?

  A bit of both really, because as Gaz she liked him and more than liked his kisses, but as Ghazi, wasn’t there something wrong with kissing him if their betrothal was only pretend?

  Fayyad would be wondering what had become of her, but still she sat, looking down at her watch as she tried to work out what time it would be at home.

  If she phoned Nelson, she could ask him what he thought, ask him what she should do, as she’d always asked him what to do, relying on his common sense and good judgement.

  But Nelson had enough on his plate right now, looking after Pop, so she was on her own.

  She stood up, grabbed her suitcase and made her way down to the foyer and out to the door, where Fayyad waited patiently in the car, climbing out when he saw her to open the back door for her.

  ‘I need to stop at the hospital to see a patient,’ she told him, feeling guilty because with all the ‘will I, won’t I’ that had gone on in her head about attending the citizens’ meeting she hadn’t seen Safi for two days. ‘I’ll be half an hour, maybe a little more. Do you have to wait in the car, or can you go into the canteen and have a cool drink or a coffee?’

  Fayyad smiled at her then lifted a Thermos and a book to show her.

  ‘I am never bored while waiting,’ he said, ‘but thank you for your consideration.’

  His English was so good she wanted to ask where he’d learned it but remembered that personal conversations seemed not actually forbidden but perhaps impolite. She must ask Gaz.

  Ask Gaz?

  Just because he’d kissed her it didn’t mean…

  Didn’t mean what?

  And surely the kisses hadn’t made her feel more at ease with him than she did with Jawa, for instance?

  Totally muddled, she watched as Fayyad pulled up in front of the hospital.

  ‘I will be watching for you,’ he said, as he opened the door for her, making her feel a total fool. She thanked him and hurried inside, hoping none of the nurses she knew had seen her stately arrival. But the staff entrance was around the back so she should be safe.

  These niggling worries hung around her like a cloud of summer midges as she walked towards Safi’s room, but vanished as soon as she entered. She’d vaguely been aware of intense activity in one of the rooms she’d passed, and a lot of scurrying further down the passageway, but surely whatever was going on, someone would have checked on Safi recently.

  His face was pale but red spots of fever burned in his cheeks and his thin fingers plucked at the dressing on his lip while his body turned and twisted on the bed.

  ‘Safi!’ she said, coming to take the hand that worried at his dressing, feeling the heat of it.

  She found the bell and pressed it, then grabbed a towel and ran water over it in the little attached bathroom, wringing it out then bringing it back to sponge his face and chest, his arms and legs, desperate to cool him down before the spike in his temperature could cause a seizure.

  No one had answered the bell.

  She pressed it again, talking soothingly to the little boy, careful not to touch the dressing as his wound was obviously causing him discomfort, or more likely, pain.

  He was staring up at her, wide-eyed, panic and pain in equal measure in his face.

  ‘It will be all right,’ she said, and although she knew he wouldn’t understand her words she hoped her voice would soothe him. Her voice and the cool, wet towel…

  Wrapping the towel around his head like a turban so it pressed on his temples and the back of his neck and could cool surface blood vessels in both places, she grabbed his chart. Thankfully all charts were written in English because of the imported staff, and although she couldn’t read exactly what he’d been given at the last check, she could tell that it had been at ten in the morning.

  Had no one seen the child since then, apart from ward cleaners and the maid who’d carried in the meal that was uneaten on his table?

  Giving up on the bell, she carried the chart out into the corridor, heading for the nurses’ station, needing urgent attention for Safi and ready to demand answers.

  The place was deserted, although she could tell there was still a major commotion in one of the rooms she’d passed earlier and a fair level of noise coming from a room further up the corridor.

  There had to be a nurse in one of those rooms.

  Three nurses and two doctors, in fact, and a crash cart pushed to one side.

  ‘She just went flat,’ the nurse Marni hauled into the corridor explained, ‘about two hours ago. The doctors thought we’d lost her but she’s coming round now.’

  Marni accepted it had been an emergency but that only accounted for three of the nursing staff.

  Not that she had time to complain! She hurried the nurse towards Safi’s room.

  ‘I came to visit, and there he was, burning with fever.’

  ‘Oh, not Safi!’ the nurse wailed. ‘I’ll have to page Gaz—he insists on knowing any change in Safi’s condition—and get a ward doctor in as well. Can you go back and sit with Safi for a few minutes?’

  She looked about her and frowned as if she’d just become aware of the emptiness of the corridor and nurses’ station.

  ‘I’ve no idea where the others are,’ she added, peering vaguely around.

  ‘I don’t care where they are,’ Marni snapped. ‘I just need someone to see Safi and see him now.’

  She might have raised her voice just slightly, but she was pretty sure she’d kept it below a shout, which was what she’d really wanted to do.

  Hurrying back to Safi’s room, she wet the now warm towel and bathed him again, pressing the cold cloth on his wrists and in his elbow joints, below his knees and against his neck and head, talking all the time, wishing she knew his language, wishing she would somehow conjure up his mother for him, for his little body was now slack, his eyes closed—the fight gone out of him.

  The nurse came in and Marni stepped back while the woman checked his pulse, temperature and blood pressure, then a young doctor appeared, looked at the figures and fiddled with the drip, checking the catheter in the back of Sufi’s thin hand, making sure the tape was in place.

  ‘I’ve been off duty for a few days but I know that since the wound in his hip where they took the bone from has healed quite well, he’s been walking around the hospital, even going outside at times. He must have picked up an infection,’ the nurse suggested as the doctor drew blood for testing.

  An infection that could cause such a rapid response?

  Marni wondered about it but said nothing—in this room she was a visitor.

  And she was still angry that the rise
in his temperature hadn’t been picked up earlier, before he’d become so distressed.

  Gaz’s arrival provided answers. He must have been on the phone during his journey from the palace to the hospital, telling her, as he examined Safi, that apart from the child who’d needed resuscitation, an accident to a school bus had brought a rush of, thankfully, minor injuries to the hospital, diverting staff to the ER, then to top it off the mother of another patient in the post-op ward had gone into labour and actually given birth in her daughter’s hospital room.

  ‘Still no excuse,’ Marni thought she heard him mutter, but the barely heard words were followed by a rush of orders, arranging for Safi to go straight to Theatre.

  ‘But with his fever—with the infection still so active?’ Marni protested.

  Gaz shrugged.

  ‘Unfortunately yes. His temperature rose the day before yesterday and we’ve had him on vancomycin, which is usually the most effective drug for multi-resistant bacteria, but it obviously isn’t working. I need to remove the grafted bone before the infection spreads into good bone.’

  He paused for a moment, then said, ‘There are still staff problems. Will you scrub?’

  ‘Of course!’

  An orderly appeared to wheel Safi to Theatre and Marni backed out of his room so he could be moved, waiting until he was wheeled out then falling in behind the little procession.

  Gaz was walking beside the gurney and turned to glance back at the woman who’d erupted into his life, spinning it in a direction he’d never expected it to take—well, not right now.

  She’d come from what must have been a fairly momentous day, given the job he was thrusting her into, to see a child she barely knew, and now was quite happy to spend however many hours it would take in Theatre for Gaz to remove the bone graft because there was no way the infection could be anywhere else.

  She’d stripped off the abaya and was wearing jeans and a loose shirt, and just the sight of her stirred thoughts he shouldn’t be having right now.

  ‘I suppose the infection can’t be anywhere but in the graft?’

  Marni had caught up and was walking beside him, but apparently her mind was still firmly fixed on Safi. Gaz swung his mind back that way, determined to concentrate no matter how distracting he found his colleague.

  ‘The site’s red and swollen and obviously painful. The nurse who changed his dressing this morning should have noticed and alerted someone.’

  ‘I wondered,’ Marni said, ‘but I didn’t like to touch it.’

  ‘You did enough, cooling him down and alerting the staff. Without you—’

  He stopped, so angry, so upset for the little boy he needed his own language—and bad words from it—to release his rage.

  But not at Marni!

  ‘Thank you for being there—for caring enough to call in to see him,’ he said, and lifted his hand to touch her on the shoulder. ‘From me and from Safi!’

  She didn’t move away from his touch but turned towards him, the slight frown he’d seen before creasing the smooth creamy skin of her brow—and even a frown caused inappropriate reactions.

  ‘But he’s been on antibiotics since the operation—I saw that on his chart—and you’ve started stronger antibiotics—would they not work in time?’

  Gaz shrugged.

  ‘I daren’t take the risk. Yes, there’s risk involved operating when he’s harbouring something bad, but…’

  He sighed, before adding, ‘I thought because our hospital is so new we’d avoid things like this for a few more years. The problem is that so many of the bad ones target bone, and the grafted bone is likely to be badly compromised.’

  The crease in his companion’s forehead deepened.

  ‘So you’ll take the graft out, then how long before you could do another one? You’d have to clear the infection first, and where could you harvest the bone? His other hip?’

  Her mind was obviously more focussed than his had been—no inappropriate reactions for Marni!

  ‘I’ll take it out, that’s enough for Safi today. Later, when we know he’s clear of infection, yes, I’ll have to harvest some new bone and, yes, probably from his other hip. Poor lad. He’s been through so much and bears it all so bravely. I’d have done anything to have saved him from this.’

  They’d stopped in the corridor outside the theatre changing rooms; the orderly and nurse pushing Sufi’s gurney moved on and through the theatre’s swing doors.

  ‘Will he be able to go home to his family before the next op?’

  Gaz studied her for a moment, so aware of her as a woman it was hard to concentrate on the question she was asking.

  ‘And why do you wish to know?’

  A faint colour rose in her cheeks.

  ‘Well, if you must know, although I genuinely care about Safi and want what’s best for him, I’m so darned confused about all that’s happened today, and then walking along beside you as if nothing had happened, well, it seemed best just to keep talking about practical things rather than have a fit of hysterics in the hospital corridor.’

  Her cheeks grew pinker and her eyes dropped to study the floor between their feet, and he felt an overwhelming urge to give her a hug—a big hug, a warm hug, a non-sexy hug, although how long the non-sexy part would last was a moot point.

  ‘Me too,’ he said, ignoring the urge. He touched her lightly on the elbow and waved her through the door into the changing rooms.

  He’d obviously made good use of his time during his trip from the palace to the hospital, for an anaesthetist Marni had worked with before was already attending to Sufi, talking quietly to him as he set his drip on a stand and prepared to give him a pre-op sedative.

  Jawa was also there and greeted Marni warmly, although she did raise her eyebrows.

  ‘But you’re off duty,’ she murmured.

  ‘And doing me a favour.’

  It was Gaz who answered for her, coming into the theatre behind her.

  ‘It is Marni who found Safi so ill,’ Gaz added, causing Jawa to look from him to Marni, so many questions in her beautiful dark eyes Marni knew she’d have some explaining to do later.

  Personal explaining, for all it might go against the local custom!

  Three hours later, Safi was wheeled away to Recovery, the open wound where the graft having been cleaned out and left with a drain in it to leach out any more of the poison. Marni felt tears prick at her eyelids and knew it was tiredness—well, tiredness and the stress of the totally bizarre day, and her heartache for little Safi, who had already suffered so much, and underlying it all her worry over Pop…

  Gaz caught her arm as she was about to follow Jawa out of Theatre. He’d pulled his mask down so it hung loosely below his chin, and the fine line of beard was a little ragged. His eyes, however, still held her gaze, drawing her into the darkness…

  ‘You are exhausted,’ he said gently. ‘I would suggest you go back to your flat here at the hospital but Fayyad tells me all your things are in the car. Let me drive you to Tasnim’s. She is expecting you and will have waited up for you.’

  Marni dragged her attention back from his eyes and nodded, too tired to argue, and anyway he was right, all her belongings were in the car. She slipped into the changing room, and again saw the questions in Jawa’s eyes.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said to her friend. ‘I’ll return your abaya and explain tomorrow. I’ll meet you at the canteen at ten.’

  But could she explain?

  Explain it all?

  And how would a local woman feel about her ruler’s betrothal to a foreigner?

  Not to mention if she said it was a pretence.

  So many questions to which she had no answers…

  The ruler in question was waiting for her in the corridor.

  ‘Is it going to cause you problems with your people, this betrothal?’ she asked as soon as she was close to him. ‘I know it seemed like a good idea at the time to get your sisters off your back, but what about the local population? Might t
hey not be offended in some way? Feel I’ve cheated you, or you them?’

  Gaz—he was definitely Gaz at the hospital—stared at her for a moment then shook his head.

  ‘Do you worry over everybody?’ he asked, the smile in his eyes, and somehow in his voice as well, making her stomach curl.

  ‘Of course not, but Jawa must be wondering what’s going on and I wouldn’t like—well, she’s been so kind to me, I really have to try to explain to her before you do this breaking me to the public gradually business, and then I thought—’

  He brushed his knuckles across her cheek and her mind went blank.

  ‘That I might be lynched, or deposed, for getting betrothed to a foreigner?’

  Marni managed to nod, but with Gaz so close and the sensation of that touch lingering on her cheek, she found it impossible to speak.

  Or think.

  And only just possible to breathe.

  ‘Stop fretting,’ he told her, ‘and that’s an order!’

  He then put his hand gently on the small of her back—again—and propelled her down the corridor, into the car and out again only minutes later, in front of the low open patio of a house the size of a hotel.

  Tasnim was a short, glowing, heavily pregnant woman wearing designer jeans—who knew designers made pregnancy jeans?—and a tight purple top stretched across her swollen abdomen.

  She greeted Marni with a warm hug and made no secret of her delight.

  ‘This will be such fun!’ she said. ‘I was bored out of my brain. I did keep working but got so fat I couldn’t sit behind the desk any more and Yusef—Ghazi’s told you he’s my husband, hasn’t he?—said to stop, then the wretched man took off to Europe for some round of international monetary fund talks and just left me stranded here.’

  Marni could only stare at the beautiful, bubbly, excited woman.

  ‘She can talk,’ Gaz said, giving his sister a kiss on the cheek and asking where Fayyad should put Marni’s luggage.

  ‘Oh, Ahmed will take it.’

  Tasnim waved her hand towards a white-clad figure and the luggage disappeared.

  ‘But are you sure this is okay?’ Marni finally managed to ask. ‘Me being here, I mean?’