Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  A long silence followed, punctuated with what she knew was the struck man’s efforts to pull himself up to his feet.

  Then Malek spoke again, and she wondered if they all fell to their knees as she wanted to. “Janaan is the reason you have a king today. You should pray in thanks for her.”

  Another voice, precise and tranquil with age and wisdom, rose. “Zayd was criminally slanderous. You were merciful in your decrees. But as your late father’s advisor, I urge you to consider our solution. If your beloved is the matchless woman you paint her, she’ll appreciate the magnitude of your duties, will help you carry them out. And then she will be honored, given a life of untold luxury. What woman can dream of more than that?”

  Malek let out an ugly laugh. “Offering Janaan luxury is like offering a perfect falcon extra wings. And how will I honor her without proclaiming her mine to the world?”

  Jay couldn’t hear more. Shouldn’t have heard it at all, hadn’t meant to hear it. She just couldn’t move.

  She had to.

  She forced her legs to move but she stumbled, bumped into a pillar with an urn on top of it. The crash sent her collapsing on the nearest divan, brought men rushing in from every direction. She only saw Malek, saw how his face contorted the moment he saw her.

  With one fierce order, he cleared the room. Then, wordlessly, he scooped her up in his arms, took her to the stateroom, closed the door securely behind them. He lowered her onto another divan, came down on his knees before her, clutching her hands, his face clenched in agitation and entreaty.

  Before he could say anything, she rasped out weakly, “Your problems—the uproar in the kingdom—they’re all over me, aren’t they?”

  “No, no.” He rose, kissed her all over her face. “I promised I’ll take care of it, and I will.”

  She shook her head and he brought an urgent hand to her face. A cry of horror tore out of her. She groped for his hand, slid shaking fingers over his swollen, discolored knuckles.

  His irreplaceable hands, his surgeon’s miraculous tools, injured in her defense. He could have impaired them forever. What more injuries and losses must he endure on her account?

  “What I would give for you not to have heard that, ya habibati.” He kissed her hand, a knuckle at a time.

  “I didn’t mean to, but I did, and I need you to please tell me the rest.”

  For a long moment he struggled with loathing to inflict more on her. Then he finally exhaled, heavy and resigned.

  “There’s no dispute that the house of Munsoor Aal-Hamdaan, my great-grandfather, is the rightful one. But there are other branches of the Aal-Hamdaan family, as well as ancient tribes who have always had a part of the rule through marriage into Munsoor’s line. I told the elders of the candidate houses that I won’t have sons of their blood, that when I’m dead they should decide who will rule after me.”

  “Th-that has only made the dispute over who will rule after you start right now, threatening a civil war.” He acknowledged the accuracy of her conclusion with a curt nod, his color now deep copper. “What is the solution?”

  He gritted his teeth. “They suggest I first take a wife the kingdom will accept, then, as our religion permits in extreme conditions, to invoke my right to take you as my second wife.”

  “And this is the only way, isn’t it?”

  This was a rhetorical question. He still answered it, vehement, final. “No, it isn’t. I haven’t accepted their solution. And I won’t. I will find another way.”

  Suddenly he crushed her in his arms. “I will find a way—just give me more time. La t’seebeeniya rohi—don’t leave me, don’t even think it. I can see you, feel you thinking it.” He crushed her harder into him, his hand burying her face in his neck, every convulsion of his Adam’s apple, every break in his ragged voice a shock wave of misery and desperation. Her heart bled, tears escaped down her face. He shook her, frantic to drag her back to him, to keep her there. “Promise me you won’t leave me. Give me your pledge, Janaan.”

  She only nodded, buried her face in his neck again.

  A harsh exhalation spilled from his lips, relief made audible, before he tilted her face up, poured love and dependence over her. “Ashkorek, ya mashoogati—thank you. I will never let you down.”

  “I will never do what you’re asking, ya doctorah!”

  “You must, Saeed.” Jay heard the manic edge lacing her shrill voice. She was going crazy with fear that he’d refuse her. Run to Malek. That she wouldn’t be able to run away. “You must help me get out of Damhoor.”

  “But why?” Saeed’s desert-hardened face for once reflected his emotions. Confusion, agitation. Disappointment.

  “Because my presence is blinding Malek to the fact that he has far more important things than me to worry about—a whole nation’s peace and future.”

  Saeed obsidian eyes only hardened. “King Malek is convinced that he has your pledge to remain by his side until he reaches a solution that will allow him to take you, and only you, as his wife. You want to break your pledge?”

  “I must.” It was a cry so shrill it made him wince. She panted, continued, her voice wobbling. “There is no solution and he knows it. But right now he’s willing to risk anything to keep his pledge to me. I can’t let him do this to Damhoor, to himself. Without me in the picture, he’ll be the most powerful, most benevolent king who ever lived. With me he’ll be a ruler at war with his own country, finding no peace, ending up with strife on his conscience, even blood on his hands, and I’m—I’m not w-worth that, n-nothing is …”

  She wept. Until she felt she’d dissolve and solve everyone’s problems. Saeed watched her break down in utter helplessness.

  A long time later, still quaking, she struggled to talk through the hacking sobs. “By leaving I’ll remove the one reason this prosperous land might find itself in the throes of a civil war—like those tearing so many neighboring nations apart.”

  Saeed shook his salt-and-pepper head. “King Malek said he’ll find a way. And he will. Don’t you have faith in him?”

  “I have every faith in him,” she cried. “But he’s not thinking clearly now. Malek … his fortitude staggers me but even he has limits and he’s taken more blows in the last year than anyone should endure in ten lifetimes. Majd, his father, finding himself crowned king, being forced to relinquish his vocation, his freedom. And he’d already demanded too much of himself, drawing on his reserves constantly, pouring himself into his work. I hoped to be his biggest support but I’m now his greatest burden and I’ll remain that and I can’t …”

  “You can’t?” Saeed barked. “What about King Malek? I thought no man could love a woman like I loved my late wife. But his love for you makes what drove me to despair for years, what makes me unable to feel anything for another woman ever again, seem like nothing. Your desertion will kill him!”

  “No!” The paroxysm drove her to her knees, raining tears on the very ground Malek walked on. “Please—don’t. I’m leaving so he can live, be in peace, be happy—eventually. He’ll forget me. It’ll be difficult at first, but time and distance will—”

  “Nothing will make him forget.” Saeed’s harsh growl interrupted her torn words. “King Malek was born on my hands, as we say here. I never knew anyone more steadfast. He’s fastidious with his trust but, once won, his trust is for life, he’s wary to commit, but once he commits only death can make him break his commitments. With you he’s compounded total trust and commitment with what he’ll never give another woman—love.”

  “Don’t—I can’t take this …” she almost screamed. “If I stay, and all hell breaks loose, he’ll end up hating me. Or he’ll be forced to take a wife to stem the conflicts and I—I.”

  “You’re really thinking of yourself here, aren’t you?” Saeed lashed out. “You’re afraid he’ll come to hate you, so you want to save yourself possible future discomfort by breaking his heart now. You can’t bear the idea of sharing him with another woman even for the cause you claim to fi
nd so much bigger than yourself because you’re afraid he’ll find you wanting in contrast to his imposed wife. You want to save yourself the humiliation of a comparison you believe you’ll lose.”

  His words fell on her like scythes. But it wasn’t their merci-lessness that she felt—it was the razor sharpness of the images they evoked.

  Malek, in a royal ceremony, god-like, exchanging vows with the woman he’d settle on to appease his kingdom. Malek, running to her to make good on his pledge.

  Then time passed and the pressure for an heir grew, and he went to his first wife, a woman to fit a king, raised from birth to be a queen, favored by all, the instrument of peace and prosperity, his equal in beauty and refinement, sharing his background and culture, versed in all the nuances Jay could never learn, and in the arts of seducing and servicing her man.

  And he joined his body to hers, took his pleasure inside her, spilled his seed and came to covet her, even love her, with the bond of children cementing her hold over him.

  While Jay became the woman he looked on in disappointment and confusion, wondering how he’d once contemplated risking so much for her, concluding that his emotional turmoil at the time and the ordeals they’d shared had deluded him, had coated her blandness with magic, a magic that drained away with each layer of stability his new family brought to his life, every encounter of true passion he shared with his rightful wife.

  But though he no longer felt anything for her but pity for her dependence, regret for his unintentional exploitation, even revulsion for her continued hunger, he’d show her mercy.

  And she finally understood what her mother had suffered. How she’d come to end her own life.

  Not that she ever would. But she felt them now. The depths of desperation that could make a slow, painful death a release.

  She rose to suddenly steady feet, her voice unwavering as she heard herself say, “You’re right.”

  Saeed jerked as if she’d slapped him. He’d been goading her to rage against his accusations, to prove their falseness by staying near his master and forgetting her moment of weakness.

  For a long moment he searched her now dry eyes. She knew he’d find nothing there. He’d shown her the future and everything she was had died just getting a glimpse at it.

  “I always believed my master’s judgment unerring,” he finally drawled. “His belief in your worth formed a great part of my regard for you. But if you won’t lay down your life for a man of his greatness, let alone weather some hardships and uncertainties, it seems both of us have been wrong this time.”

  It was another attempt to rouse her to self-defense. It had no effect. Neither did the contemptuous if still pleading accusation in his eyes.

  So this was what her mother had sought in death. The anesthesia. The cessation. The nothingness.

  She wiped the last of the wetness from her cheeks. “Then you should be glad that your master will be rid of such a fickle weakling so unfit of his passion and faith. Will you help me get out of Damhoor now? He assigned a dozen of his best men to my protection and service now he’s scared for my safety. I won’t be able to go anywhere without him knowing about it. And as he’s still under the spell of his misguided affections, he’ll come after me.”

  Saeed still hesitated, unable to shake his own affection and faith that easily. Any minute now he’d conclude she was in the grip of understandable turmoil, would do her the merciful courtesy of forgetting her temporary lapse. Then she’d be trapped here. She’d end up destroying Malek, and Damhoor.

  She lashed out in a last desperate attempt with the most vicious thing she could think of. “If you don’t help me out of here, I’ll call the American embassy and accuse Malek of holding me here against my will.”

  And if she still had a life, she would have feared for it at that moment.

  As it was, the flare of murderous fury in Saeed’s eyes only told her she’d be out of there before she knew what hit her.

  She’d won.

  And she’d lost. Everything.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “I’M LOSING HER!” Jay shouted at her scrabbling team in the chaotic ER as she checked their car-crash casualty’s plummeting vitals. She turned to one of her three nurses. “Heather, get me an echocardiogram. Then I’m going for a pericardiocentesis under echocardiographic guidance.”

  Mrs. Dobbs had all signs of cardiac tamponade. Engorged neck veins, absent heart sounds, plummeting blood pressure not responsive to treatment. Blood was pumping out of a tear in one of the heart’s chambers, filling the pericardium, compressing the ventricles to a standstill.

  Jay had to introduce a needle through the chest, enter the pericardial sac and drain all she could of the blood.

  “Sally, 20-gauge cardiac needle,” Jay ordered. “Fifty-mil syringe. Josh, ready the defibrillator. Then elevate bed to 45 degrees.”

  She snatched the echocardiogram from Heather, found the tamponade. Massive. Rapidly fatal if left to accumulate further.

  She dragged the echocardiogram machine nearer, looked at the images on the monitor, advanced the needle towards the shoulder, injected air. She detected the bubbles on the monitor within the pericardial sac. She was in!

  She aspirated and blood gushed, filling the syringe.

  After a drastic improvement in blood pressure and pulse, blood re-accumulated, and they aspirated again. On the fourth aspiration the woman fibrillated.

  She snatched the charged defibrillator from Josh, shouted, “Clear.”

  The woman responded with the first jolt, sinus rhythm resuming. But in minutes she fibrillated again.

  After the second defibrillation, Jay knew what had to do done. Something she’d only done once. The patient had died then.

  “She needs an emergency thoracotomy.”

  It was Jay’s heart that stopped this time. And wouldn’t start again.

  It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. Not here. Not him. Malek.

  She swung around, breathless, mindless, found him a foot behind her, his eyes flaring amber even in the ER’s fluorescent light.

  Malek. Her soul made flesh, made man, the man who’d once been hers, the soul she’d resigned herself to existing without.

  His hand took her arm and she almost wailed with the wrench of longing.

  “Let’s do this,” he whispered as he snapped on gloves, turned to the nurses who were gaping at him, knowing they were in the presence of a higher medical authority. “We’ll need a scalpel with a 10 blade, curved scissors, rib spreader, Gigli saw. And a full hemostatic set.”

  Everyone turned to Jay, asking her permission to follow this unknown person’s orders. Jay only nodded, not knowing what she was nodding for, and stared up at him. Malek, Malek, Malek, here, here, here were the only things she heard, saw, knew. He pressed her arm again and it was only her paralysis that stopped her from launching herself into his arms.

  “I’m really here, so make use of me, hmm?” He gave her a strange smile, tight and unnatural then turned to the nurses. “Prep the field.” He looked down at her. “Shall I do it?”

  She nodded again, and he immediately made an incision from the sternum to the mid-axillary line then murmured, “Rib spreader.” She automatically handed it to him. He inserted it between the ribs, opened them. “Gigli saw.” She handed it to him too. He divided the sternum, moved the rib spreader to the midline. He made a small incision in the pericardium then tore it open with a finger, evacuating blood and clots.

  The sight of the cardiac wounds oozing blood brought her out of her stupor. She jumped forward, provided hemorrhage control to the largest one with direct finger pressure while he sutured lesser wounds. In under two minutes he’d performed a meticulous repair of two wounds in the ascending aorta and one in the left atrium. And the woman arrested again.

  “You do internal cardiac massage,” he murmured. “Your hands are the perfect size for it.”

  She nodded, did a two-handed technique for a better cardiac output and to avoid the risk of cardiac perfor
ation. The heart restarted, and this time didn’t stop again.

  It was a blur as they concluded the procedure.

  As orderlies took their patient to IC, all she wanted to do was collapse. To weep her heart out at the shock and disbelief of his sudden reappearance.

  Malek, here in Seattle, after six months of self-imposed exile in the hell of a life without him, working with her like they’d done before, more needed than her hands and eyes, saving the patient she would have lost on her own or with lesser help.

  She staggered to the doctors’ room, not looking back, praying he was a figment of her tortured imagination. Once inside, hands grabbed her shoulders. They were his.

  He turned her, and she almost doubled over at the sight of the silver that had invaded his temples, at the reflection of her own unremitting longing on his haggard face.

  She’d give anything to always see him whole and happy, not with the signs of aging anguish robbing his hair of its raven vividness, his eyes and face of their indomitable vitality.

  Those signs said he was real. Real. And he was there to plunge himself into more torment, unable to let her go, as she hadn’t been able to let him go.

  But nothing had changed, as he’d once told her before she’d done him the ultimate injury and dragged him deeper into their addiction. Yet no one but her paid the price of hers. A whole country paid for his. She didn’t matter. He did.

  And she had to help him let go.

  Mustering the last of her will, she stepped out of his almost-embrace, feigned lightness as she said, “This is one hell of a surprise, Malek. And one hell of a favor. I would have lost Mrs. Dobbs without your help.”

  He only nodded, his eyes darkening, wary, watching her every breath, as if he was trying to read her thoughts and feelings.