Desert Doctor, Secret Sheikh Read online

  CHAPTER FOUR

  JEN settled back against the bedrolls, once again wishing Aisha or Marij had been here to take the blood, but Aisha had gone to her own quarters earlier, and when Jen had returned to the tent, she’d sent Marij off to bed, telling the nurse she would watch Akbar overnight.

  So she had Kam, kneeling so close to her she could feel the heat of his body, and a tiny flare of inner heat she didn’t want to think about…

  ‘It is best it goes more slowly into him than it comes out of you,’ he said. ‘So we will fill the bag again, then you, too, will go to bed. He will be my patient for the night.’

  ‘I can watch him for a couple of hours,’ Jen replied. ‘I have to check the TB samples and also put out the medications for tomorrow.’

  ‘Now?’ Kam asked, surprised by the woman’s complacency when faced with another few hours’ work after she’d given a second pint of blood.

  He started the blood feeding into the empty bag, resting it on a mat on the floor so the flow wasn’t compromised.

  ‘Of course now,’ she said. ‘Well, as soon as this is finished. It’s why we’re here. For testing we take samples on three consecutive mornings then, if they’re found to be positive, we start the patients on the drug regime. Because we can only test about thirty people a day, the camp is divided into sections. In Section One, all those with active TB have been on medication for a couple of months, while we’re still testing people in Section Seven, which is where new refugees come in.’

  Kam considered the logistics of this. The camp, from what he’d learned, had close to a thousand people in it.

  ‘How many are you treating? How prevalent is it?’

  ‘About two hundred and eighty at the moment. Some are at the beginning of their treatment, when we give them streptomycin for two months as well as the three drugs usually used for treatment, while others are four months in and only have another two months to go.’

  ‘You use isoniazid, rifampicin and pyrazinamide?’

  Jen nodded.

  ‘We give them the lot daily for two months then cut back to twice-weekly doses of isoniazid and rifampicin for another four months. It’s more expensive than just giving the isoniazid and rifampicin for nine months, but it cuts the time of the treatment to six months and it’s easier to monitor the drugs over six months.’

  ‘Because you have fewer people dropping out of the treatment over the shorter period of time?’

  ‘That’s the theory, but we still get dropouts.’ Was he really interested or just making conversation?

  And why did it matter?

  Jen couldn’t answer that one but she knew it did matter.

  Was it because of that tiny niggle of suspicion she felt towards him, or because she was attracted to him?

  She didn’t think she’d like the answer to either question.

  ‘Dropouts?’ the attractive but suspicious man prompted.

  ‘I’m sorry, I was thinking of something else. What did you ask?’

  ‘I wondered if the dropouts remained in the camp or if you have people going back across the border.’

  ‘I think some go back, although maybe what’s happened to Akbar today will put a stop to that for a while. But some join up with the traders and go down to the city on this side of the border.’ She hesitated then added, ‘Oh, dear, I suppose that makes them illegal immigrants. I shouldn’t have betrayed them like that.’

  Kam smiled at her.

  ‘In these parts, the lines that make this our country and the other side someone else’s were drawn on maps made of paper, but it’s far harder to draw a line in sand. I would think the locals recognise boundaries for business purposes, but people are people and should be able to travel freely wherever they wish, especially the real nomads of the desert.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Jen said, liking him again, seeing his deep and genuine regard for the desert people and his common-sense approach to boundaries. ‘And now the bag’s full, isn’t it? I’d better get to work.’

  He detached the tubing and reattached the drip to Akbar while Jenny stretched and climbed back to her feet.

  She walked across to the far side of the tent where another small gas light was shining on the wide bench where she’d examine that morning’s slides, then make patient notes and write out the drug list for the following day. Marij and Aisha distributed the drugs, using a group of young boys to run around the camp to find anyone who failed to come in.

  ‘What about contagion?’

  She turned to see Kam had followed her.

  ‘In crowded situations like this, is it not spreading faster than you can cure it?’

  ‘I don’t have any scientific proof, but it doesn’t seem to spread once treatment’s under way. We are inoculating people we know for certain don’t have it as we go, so eventually it should be wiped out, in this community at least.’

  ‘Eventually? Will you stay that long? Will you see this happen?’

  Jen shook her head.

  ‘I’ll stay through all the testing and initiation of treatment, checking for adverse drug reactions in people starting treatment and finding other drugs for them if it proves necessary, but once everyone’s been tested and checked, probably in another month, I’ll leave Aisha and Marij to oversee the distribution of the drugs and move on to something else—somewhere else.’

  ‘Always moving? You are running from something perhaps? A broken heart? A failed marriage?’

  Jen turned to face him, angry that he should accuse her of such things.

  Even if they might, in part, be true…

  Surely not, not after all this time. It had been five years since the accident, five years since she’d lost David and their unborn child and she’d thought her world had ended…

  ‘No. I’m running towards something,’ she said firmly. ‘This is work I love, work I do well, and while I can I will continue to do it. It gives me all I need, with adventure, challenge and fun, not to mention satisfaction. Later, as I grow older, I might become less effective and that will be the time to reconsider this lifestyle.’

  She tilted her chin in case he hadn’t heard the defiance in her voice. He was shaking his head, as if he didn’t believe her, but which bit didn’t he believe—that she loved the work, the challenge, the adventure, or that she would continue to do it?

  Deciding she’d never know, and it was best to ignore him anyway, she worked her way through the slides and set out lists of drugs to be dispensed the following morning. Because the drug regimen changed after two months and also because the patients were at different levels of treatment, the lists were important.

  She felt, rather than saw, Kam move closer, leaning over her shoulder as she checked and re-checked the lists.

  ‘You number the patients?’

  Was he criticising this method? She swung around to look at him.

  ‘Aisha and Marij give out the medication, and they use the person’s name, but it is too easy for someone like me, who doesn’t understand the subtleties of the language to make a mistake, calling a man Mahmoud when his name is Mahood, or something else that to me seems similar. It could lead to disaster. We have another list of names and numbers for the nurses, but after a few weeks they know all the names.’

  Jenny considered this a rational explanation, so why didn’t the man move away? Surely he couldn’t be fascinated by sputum slides?

  But whatever was keeping him so close didn’t matter—what mattered was how his presence was making her feel. Out on the ledge above the desert, she’d blamed the air—the cooling breeze—for the discomfort she had felt in his presence, but here, in the tent, there was no breeze.

  ‘You do this every night? Write down the medication lists?’

  ‘Of course. I’m responsible so it’s right I should do it. The numbers make it easy for me as well, because we started with one so the patients who have early numbers are well into their treatment. By the time I leave, these early numbered patients will be finished, and t
hat in itself is a reward.’

  Now surely he would move away.

  He did, but not very far, pulling a stool over to the desk and settling next to her.

  ‘I’ll do the slides,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for acid-fast bacilli, am I?’

  Jen turned towards him.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t take me long.’

  ‘And you don’t trust me enough that you won’t check them after me? Isn’t that what you’re saying?’

  He was sitting so close she could see the shadow of his beard beneath his skin, so close she could smell the desert and the wind on his clothes.

  ‘I will check them again,’ she said, ‘not because I don’t trust you, but because it’s the way I work. We take three specimens because one doesn’t always show bacilli, and I compare all three. If there are three clear slides we cross that person off, inoculate them against TB and that’s the last we see of them. When we find infection the person gets a number and the drug regimen begins. So tonight I have to take these slides and compare them against the ones from previous specimens and although this table might not look as if it’s organised, it is.’

  She reached over in front of him and lifted a slide that had a dab of yellow paint on one corner.

  ‘Yellow is the third day, so I find this patient’s first and second day slides—red and blue—and put them all together. Once all three have been checked they get tossed into a drum of antiseptic and later will be boiled up to be reused.’

  She was talking too much, explaining things that didn’t need explaining and really were nothing to do with him, but the uneasiness she’d felt since the man had first appeared was growing and her body was turning wayward on her yet again, responding to something he was giving out—unconsciously, Jen was sure.

  She kept explaining.

  Kam listened to her talk, not because the testing and treatment of TB patients held an irresistible attraction for him but because he found he enjoyed listening to her voice.

  Was he, as his American friends would say, losing the plot here?

  He’d come to check out what was happening on the far edge of his country and to see what could be done to help.

  He’d also come because he had been inexplicably angry and not a little ashamed to find out a foreign aid organisation was at work out here, when surely his people should be looking after the refugees in the way desert tribes had cared for each other right down through the centuries.

  Now, when there was so much to be done—and not only here—he was distracted…

  By a woman…

  He shifted back a little so as not to be so close—not to feel her warmth and smell the woman smell of her.

  Which gave her room to move!

  ‘Well, that’s done. I’m off to bed.’

  She stood up and turned towards him.

  ‘Are you sure you want to watch our patient overnight? I can share the duty—with two of us, we won’t have to do long shifts.’

  ‘No, I will watch him,’ Kam assured her. ‘I sleep lightly so I can doze beside him. I think his wife, too, will wish to be close. Between us we will ensure he continues to be stable. But before that, can I do anything for you? The camp is quiet so I assume all your helpers have retired to their beds. Do you need water for washing? Can I fetch it for you?’

  She turned towards him, a frown pleating her forehead.

  ‘You don’t have to do that, neither do my helpers. I know my skin’s a different colour to that of the people I treat, but I do try to respect their customs of dress and behaviour so that they don’t think of me as too different or outlandish. Women here are the water-carriers. I’m a woman and I fetch my own water.’

  She paused then smiled.

  ‘Although now and then a small boy will do it for me—or maybe not for me but for the lollies I give him as a reward.’

  Kam didn’t like the smile. Not the smile as such, for it was a very charming smile. What he didn’t like was the effect it had on him. It made him feel warm, and stirred more longing in his blood, only this longing was not for the desert sands…

  He should walk away—swiftly—but instead found himself speaking once again.

  ‘Just this once, can you not think of me as a small boy? I won’t even ask for lollies. You have a bucket or a drum? And the water…’

  She smiled again, her lips twisting upward in a teasing kind of delight.

  ‘I doubt even the most vivid of imaginations could put you into the small-boy category. We’ll go together,’ she suggested. ‘Maybe that way my reputation as a woman won’t be totally destroyed by having a man fetch my water.’

  She slipped away, returning with a plastic container so big he wondered how she—or small boys—ever carried it.

  He took it from her, his fingers brushing hers, and knew this was probably the most stupid thing he had ever done in his entire life. This woman, foreign, argumentative and stubborn as she was, had already cast some kind of spell over him but as yet it wasn’t strong enough to hold him captive. Now every instinct told him that to walk out of the tent with her, to stand in the moonlight once again, would tighten the invisible bounds, perhaps inescapably.

  Something had happened back there in the tent. Jenny wasn’t sure what it was, but she could feel it in every cell in her body. It was as if their conversation about TB and drug regimens had only floated on the surface of their minds while beneath it some unspoken dialogue had been going on.

  But what?

  She didn’t have a clue.

  She suspected that it had to do with the flutters she didn’t want to admit to, and the butterflies in her stomach, and the shivery sensation that kept running up and down her spine, although it was far too scary to admit that, even to herself.

  But as they ducked out the entrance to the tent and stood again in the moonlight, she could feel—what? Magic? Hardly, but something in-definable in the air, as if this man’s presence in the camp—and right now by her side—was changing the very essence of her life.

  ‘How ridiculous!’

  ‘Ridiculous?’ he echoed, and she realised, to her embarrassment, that the words had burst from her uncensored.

  ‘Well, not ridiculous.’ She struggled to cover up. ‘More unimaginable. Here I am on the edge of a desert country, surrounded by Bedouin tents, and goats and sheep, walking to fetch water with a stranger by my side. It’s like all the fairy-tales I read as a child rolled into one. Weird!’

  ‘Until we reach the waterhole and instead of it being a lovely oasis in which you can see your fair reflection, or a well from which pure spring water gushes, it’s a black balloon that’s dusty and leaking and probably full of bacteria. The well will come before long. I promise you.’

  He sounded angry and she wondered if she’d upset him with her silly talk of fairy-tales, but as he filled the drum with water she sensed his anger was dissipating and as they walked back to the big tent he pointed out the constellations, naming the groups of stars that were foreign to her, here in the northern skies.

  Kam carried the water back to the tent, following her behind the hanging rug into the area where she apparently lived. He was appalled by the poverty of it—not poverty in a monetary sense but the lack of facilities for a woman such as she.

  ‘You don’t have a bed, a table, or a chair?’

  The words burst from his lips and, as she lit a small lamp and hung it on a long metal hook that dangled from the centre of the space, she smiled at him.

  ‘Neither do the refugees in their tents,’ she reminded him. ‘But I have my bedroll…’ she waved her hand towards the larger of the bedrolls which she’d used as pillows earlier ‘…my suitcase full of clothes, a box of books, a basin to wash in and my drums for water. What else would I need?’

  Kam thought of his brother’s women, and some women he himself had enjoyed in the past—considered their sumptuous, scented bedrooms and racks of clothes and shelves of beauty products. Even his mother, who was old
-fashioned in many ways, had an ensuite bathroom off her room and a fantastic array of perfume bottles ranged along its shelves.

  ‘You can live so simply?’

  His voice betrayed his thoughts and the woman smiled.

  ‘I’ve learned to,’ she said. ‘And learned to appreciate the simplicity of a life with few encumbrances, although,’ she added, and he heard a trace of wistfulness in her voice, ‘I sometimes hanker for a real bath—to lie back in the hot water, preferably with lots of bubbles breaking against my skin. In fact, it’s the first thing I do when I get back to civilisation—I insist my hotel bathroom has a proper bath, not just a shower, and I indulge myself.’

  To Kam’s dismay an image of this woman in a bath popped up in his head and although he’d never seen her naked, he could picture her quite clearly, tall, lithe and lean, the bubbles she spoke of rising from the water, adding luminescence to her pale skin…

  ‘Thanks!’ she said, and he stared at her, sure she couldn’t be thanking him for thinking of her naked. ‘For the water,’ she said patiently, reaching out to take the drum from his hand.

  He dropped it to the ground, unwilling to let her fingers brush against his yet again, and left the room, if it could be called a room. But he couldn’t escape the tent altogether for Lia was sleeping by her husband’s side, and he, Kam, had promised to keep watch over the patient. So he settled himself on the mat beside the injured man and tried not to listen to the sounds of water being poured into the basin, or the soft, sloughing noises that suggested clothes being removed.

  A scent, so subtle he didn’t at first register it as something different, mixed with the smell of antiseptic. Did she have enough vanity to bring perfume with her after all? he wondered.

  He glanced towards the hanging rug and saw her silhouette, as tall, slim and lithe as he’d expected, then shame crashed down on him and he turned away, unable to believe he’d betrayed her trust in such a way, but at the same time wondering how to suggest she change the place she hung the lamp. She might have other men in the hospital some time…

  Jen pulled on the long, silky, dark blue, all-enveloping shift she wore to bed and unrolled her bedroll, then she sat on the mat beside it and unplaited her hair. She covered it with a scarf by day partly out of deference to the custom of the land but also because it was so difficult to wash it, out here in the desert, with the limited water supply. So, to keep some of the dust out and also to hide it when it badly needed washing, she was happy to cover it. But every night she brushed it, dragging out the tangles, getting rid of a lot of the sand it had collected during the day.