Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  “Neither are you. And then I started the day in a heatwave, lost my jacket …” Stop, stop, you’re babbling.

  And was it any wonder? Her eyes couldn’t tear themselves away from the sight of his clinging wet clothes showcasing the majesty of his chest, abdomen and thighs in distressing detail.

  God—she was ogling him. She’d never done that, never felt the painful urge, or any urge at all, to tear a man’s clothes off him. And for her to feel this way here, now. It was crazy!

  She busied herself with wringing her hair out as another crew member provided them with towels and waterproof, phosphorescent yellow uniforms like those everyone in the relief effort was wearing. She hurried into one of the still empty treatment compartments, dried herself and dressed, only then noticing that he’d ordered her a uniform indicating she was a doctor. “Tubeeb” was written in big letters above “Doctor”, front and back, plus the red crescent, indicating medical services.

  She rushed out to find one of Malek’s men, Saeed, a huge, intimidating-looking man, the one she was now certain was the top aide he’d bequeathed her when he’d intended to leave her behind, and who’d been the one who’d accompanied them on the flight, taking Malek aside for a short, tense tête-à-tête.

  Malek turned with a deep frown, reached out a silent hand to her. She rushed to take it.

  “We’re holding a strategy planning meeting,” he murmured as she hurried beside him to another compartment where there were five men and one woman. They were gathered around a table with maps spread on it.

  As soon as Malek entered they sprang up straight. The closest rushed over and kissed Malek’s shoulder.

  Was that a kiss on the cheek going astray, with the man being so much shorter than Malek?

  Malek cut through her musings. “No time for standing on ceremony.” Ceremony? This was the way to greet sheikhs here? Not that it was time to begin her education in the land’s customs. Malek’s taut admonition sent them all backing away. “A quick introduction is in order, though. Everyone, Dr Janaan Latimer is an emergency doctor who just this morning saved a citizen from a car crash. She’s an affiliate of GAO and she is generously volunteering even more services to our kingdom in its time of need.” Then he turned to her. “Janaan, let me introduce your colleagues in the relief effort. Dr Hessuh El-Etaibi.”

  The striking dark-haired woman, who to Jay’s surprise was unveiled and dressed like the men, came forward and shook her hand with a smile full of genuine charm and interest.

  She would have loved to have exchanged a more substantial greeting with her, but Malek swept her into a succession of lightning-quick introductions, giving her colleagues’ names but nothing about their functions.

  It was over in one minute flat then Malek said, “Reports?”

  “Those who escaped when the flashflood forged a new path down El Shamekh mountain,” Dr Essam said, “described it as a wall of water that came crashing down on them. They say their villages, which lie at its foot, here and here.” he pointed a baton on the map “ … have been wiped out.”

  “Our meteorologists estimate that over twenty centimeters of rain have fallen over the last twelve hours,” Khaled El-Mussri, who looked and acted like some military type, said. “They predict more over the next seventy-two hours. Even in the areas that weren’t hit as hard, the water choked arterial roads and blocked them with waist-high water.”

  “The timing, with night falling, proved a huge complication,” Hessuh said. “Then power lines went down and the blackout compounded the chaos. The local police and emergency services are paralyzed. The new mobile health units are either inundated by water or by people. We’re the first outside help to arrive.”

  Malek took in all the information and exhaled. “The army has been mobilized but with the roads inaccessible, soldiers must hike for hours then use inflatable boats to reach the disaster areas. Every helicopter in the kingdom is on its way, but right now we are the only chance the victims have for immediate help.”

  Essam shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do right now. The wind alone can bring the lighter helicopters down, and the zero visibility makes any rescue attempt before dawn futile.”

  Malek straightened. She felt everyone in the compartment shrinking. She shivered, but it wasn’t with cold.

  “Those people will not wait till dawn,” Malek snarled. “We’re repeating the drill we conducted in Ashgoon. Search-and-rescue teams will conduct continuous aerial surveys using the floodlights being fitted to the helicopters as we speak. They will pick up victims, deliver them to our medical team, then go back for more. When every single injured or stranded person has been rescued, we’ll continue the search for the missing and the dead. I am not leaving one person unaccounted for. Is that clear?”

  There were unanimous nods, hers the most vigorous.

  She knew that with him in charge, every life would be fought for and if not salvaged then honored, with everything humanly possible.

  She ran after him as he distributed assignments to his team leaders.

  “On which team will you be?” she gasped.

  Malek looked down on her. “My helicopter is the only one equipped for both rescue and critical care. I’ll be on both.”

  She speeded up to keep up with him. “And since I’m to be kept within three feet of you, so will I.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  MEJBEL WAS A collection of small towns and villages, one of the few places in Damhoor where the modern world hadn’t taken over. Right now it was water that had.

  Jay looked down from her window, failed again to imagine what the people had felt when water had invaded their homes, swept away their lives as they’d known it. Her heart seemed to be in a state of perpetual contraction as she saw nothing but roofs jutting out of the water, with higher areas in the path of the torrent becoming instant burial grounds. They’d rescued people who’d wept about how they’d failed to dig out their loved ones from the landslides with nothing to use but their bare hands.

  It had been nine hours of unceasing flying between the most affected areas and the relief operation site. Their helicopter alone had rescued six hundred and eighty-two stranded and injured people. The rest of the chopper fleet had contributed a total flying time of six hundred hours, each rescuing over three hundred people. They’d rescued people from everywhere they’d escaped to—rooftops, trees, upper floors of makeshift shelters in schools, public buildings and mosques. At six a.m. their camp and field hospital had been filled beyond capacity with around forty thousand people vying for shelter and treatment.

  On the way to the camp they’d treated those whose condition had been critical. With another doctor, whose specialty she didn’t catch, and four trauma nurses along, they treated everything from concussion to severe crush injuries to near-drownings. They resuscitated dozens, stabilized more, lost three casualties, two to drowning and one to electrocution. Malek had flitted between his medical and co-ordinating roles, making her head spin just watching his sheer energy and efficiency.

  The local police informed them that they’d issued warnings to two hundred thousand people in the areas predicted to be hit hardest to evacuate their residences. Most hadn’t complied.

  And who could blame them? Leave everything they had behind and go where?

  She knew all had a tragedy to relate but in the deluge of faces it was one family, whose father spoke good English, who gave her a close-up look at the heart-wrenching losses suffered. And they were one of the lucky families who hadn’t lost a member or been separated in the chaos.

  The woman, Samira, clutched her three children to her as she sobbed into her husband’s chest. He clutched her in turn while Jay tended the severe gash he’d sustained down his back as he’d struggled to save his family.

  “We worked for ten years for our house and shop and they were gone in ten minutes,” Jaaber lamented. “We lost the car, the clothes, the children’s paintings—our pictures—our memories. We lost everything. This has to be a p
unishment from Ullah.”

  Jay insisted it wasn’t, that tragedies just happened, that you bounced back as long as you had breath left in you.

  When she had used up all her arguments, she said, “Well, Jaaber, you have your family. Look around and see how many people don’t have theirs and count your blessings.”

  This seemed to calm him down. From then on he and his wife were of great help, tending other victims’ needs.

  GAO had arrived on their heels in more helicopters provided by Malek, and he co-ordinated with them about the transfer of fresh water and more food and medicine for the survivors. And more body bags for the dead.

  It was dawn now. At least, her watch said so. The sky was weeping solid sheets of water from an impenetrable barrier of clouds. They were now returning to the affected areas after depositing their last helicopter load of refugees at the camp. It was by now doubtful they’d find more. Alive, that was.

  “Pilot—three o’clock, from my position,” she heard Malek barking into his walkie-talkie over the clamor of the chopper and the downpour. “A half-submerged red car beneath a palm.” He turned to Saeed. “We’ll lift the car, see if there are any survivors once it’s back on dry land.”

  Saeed nodded and ran to fulfill his boss’s directives.

  Moving the huge palm off the car took over thirty minutes, and it took as long to secure the car for the aerial ride.

  Once they’d landed the car, Malek, Saeed, Dr Rafeeq, the navigator and the flight engineer jumped out to unhook the cables so the chopper could land.

  She jumped down and raced to Malek’s side. He scowled down at her, his face frightening in the harsh floodlights from the helicopter. “Get back in there, Janaan.”

  “I’m here to do my job.”

  “Do it inside.”

  “I have nothing to do inside—no patients, remember?”

  He clamped his teeth on an expletive then turned and ordered his men away from the car. It looked like crumpled foil around the victims. He reached for the driver through the compressed space of the pulverized window and Jay ran to the passenger seat to examine the woman. A palpation of her carotid artery gave her an instant verdict. The woman was dead. Long dead.

  Hope bled out of her in booming heartbeats as she raised stinging eyes to Malek. He raised his eyes at the same moment, the same bleak diagnosis in his. Dead.

  Then she noticed something in the backseat. Was this …?

  “Malek,” she cried out. “There’s someone in the back seat.”

  Malek raced around to her side, bent to peer into the crack where the tree had flattened the top of the car into the back seat. “You’re right. Let’s hope it’s a child.” Her eyes swung up in shock. He elaborated. “An adult would have been crushed. Being smaller might prove the casualty’s only chance.”

  “But the car had been submerged!”

  “Half-submerged. The man and woman didn’t drown. The impact of the tree killed them.” Then he bellowed for a crowbar.

  It was in his hands in seconds and he pried the compressed space widely enough for Jay’s smaller arm to reach inside and feel for the passenger.

  After a minute she pulled back, gasping, her eyes filling. “It is a child. A boy. He’s alive. Barely. God, Malek, please, get him out of there. We have to save him.”

  Malek squeezed her arm, his orders bringing his men with chainsaws. Then the nightmare of extracting the boy from the car began. An hour-long nightmare.

  As minutes ticked by Jay felt like she would burst with frustration, feeling the boy’s life ebbing with every passing second and unable to do anything about it. If not for Malek’s steadying grip and presence, she would have screamed.

  Then the top of the car was torn off and she and Malek pounced on the boy, a little angel of around seven, with silky black hair and fine features, the olive of his skin fading along with his life force.

  Trembling, she fitted him with a cervical collar and Malek an oxygen mask. With a shared nod they carried him to the gurney. In the periphery of her vision she saw Malek’s men extracting the dead man and woman from their death trap. Her insides twisted.

  They took the boy inside and Malek barked, “Rafeeq, ready OR, Alyaa, prepare CT, Lobna, expose the patient as we work.”

  His eyes slammed into Jay, who’d just snapped on gloves, and without words each took a chore.

  Just as she finished intubating the boy and started positive pressure ventilation, she heard Saeed’s subdued words in Malek’s ear.

  Malek nodded as he finished hooking the boy to the cardiac monitor and oximeter, reported his findings. “Pulse 45, BP 70 over 30, oxygen 80 percent.”

  Lobna finished cutting the boy’s clothes off and Jay pounced on him for a quick survey.

  “No gross injuries,” she muttered. “God, Malek, his coma and vital signs depression are probably due to brain injury.”

  Malek gave a grim nod, then let out a heavy exhalation. “They were his mother and father, Shabaan Abul-Hamd and Kareemah El-Swaifi. He is Adham.”

  Adham. Black. Like his silken hair and lashes.

  She compressed her lips against pity, calling on the hard-earned distancing techniques she’d developed through years of discipline so she’d be of use to her patients, to her mother, letting herself feel devastation only when they no longer needed her. But they’d never stopped needing her and she’d had her distance program perpetually on.

  Then she’d met Malek, then all this had happened and she could now barely locate it, let alone turn it on.

  She gritted her teeth, swung her gaze up, groping for Malek’s support.

  He gave it, his voice when he spoke, his words, their intensity and import, almost breaking her control. “He won’t share their fate. Not if we have anything to say about it.”

  A cold fist in her chest melted, scalded her. Yes. Please.

  He turned to Adham and she jumped to join him in a thorough exam. They found no signs of internal injuries. That supported the head-trauma scenario.

  Raising his blood pressure to raise his cerebral perfusion took on a new urgency. She announced her intervention method as she implemented it. “I’m giving Adham a 250 c.c. saline bolus. Will continue with a rapid drip for two more liters.”

  Malek nodded, making her heart bob in her chest with the approval in his eyes. Then he rose as soon as Rafeeq walked back to them. “Rafeeq, give me vitals every five minutes. I’ll check preparations.”

  “I’ll get a GCS,” she called out after him, gliding her hands over the boy, translating his reflexes. Soon she called out her bleak assessment to Malek. “It’s six. One-three-two.”

  Malek strode back to them, frowning. “Status?”

  “BP 80 over 40, pulse 50, oxygen at 85 percent,” Rafeeq said.

  Malek’s huff was eloquent. “Let’s see what’s keeping our measures from working properly.”

  He pushed the trolley to the CT machine. In seconds he had Adham inside it, with both Jay and Rafeeq making sure his oxygen and fluid supplies weren’t interrupted.

  As Malek put the machine in motion, a terrible realization gripped her.

  “Malek—he also has a unilaterally dilated right pupil, with ipsilateral third cranial nerve paralysis. Do you think …?”

  Malek grimaced. “His brain is herniating.”

  Jay jerked at his corroboration of her new-formed fear.

  Her own brain felt about to burst. Adham might have to have a craniotomy to relieve the building pressure inside his skull and if they didn’t have a surgeon qualified for such hazardous surgery, they would have to reduce Adham’s intracranial pressure long enough to reach someone qualified to operate on him.

  With unspoken co-operation they applied the measures to do just that, with Jay administering mannitol and Malek hyperventilating him.

  She finished as he did and muttered, “If it doesn’t work …”

  He sighed. “We have to give him a chance to stabilize without surgical intervention. He may not need a cranioto
my.”

  His words failed to bolster her. The doubt tingeing them made her heart itch, constrict. C’mon Adham, please.

  Malek turned those potent eyes on her, intent on absorbing her agitation. “If he doesn’t respond, we’ll operate.”

  “Wh-who’ll operate?” she croaked.

  “I will,” he said simply.

  He was a surgeon?

  And he claimed she was “of the ceaseless surprises”?

  She couldn’t believe she hadn’t realized he had to be a surgeon when he’d asked Rafeeq to prepare OR! Soggy cotton had replaced her brain. And if he talked about performing a craniotomy in their circumstances with such assurance, he wasn’t just any surgeon but a superior one.

  And she believed he was. Believed he could do anything, was delirious with gratitude he was there to do it.

  She only hoped he’d let her assist him. She’d trained for six months in trauma surgery before changing her direction for a predictable specialty, shift-wise, for her mother’s needs.

  The need to lean on him was overwhelming. As if he felt her need, he drew her back against him as they watched CT images forming on the monitor. She breathed in his scent, absorbed his steadying power, her mind racing to process the opacities pinpointing hemorrhage and diffuse tissue swelling.

  Then his voice broke over her, filled with compassion and somberness as he discussed diagnosis and possibilities.

  The CT machine whirred to a stop and Malek reversed the gliding table. As he saved and printed out the results, Jay examined Adham, reassessing.

  A minute later she raised her eyes to Malek’s and choked, “The deficit’s increased. Malek, you have to operate.”

  Malek held her gaze, her hand. “We will.” He searched her eyes. “You do want to assist me, don’t you?”

  Malek moved the suction probe to and fro over the subdural hematoma. “A bit more irrigation here, Janaan.”

  But she was already gently irrigating in conjunction with his suction to loosen the clot.

  By now he knew he didn’t need to give her directions. She was a flawless, intuitive assistant. The best he’d ever had.