Sheikh, Children's Doctor...Husband

by Meredith Webber

  What would it be like to be truly married to such a man? To feel his body held against hers? To know him intimately?

  Now the warmth she felt had nothing whatsoever to do with security. It burned along her nerves, awakening responses between her thighs, reminding her she was a woman and this was what all her friends would consider a very beddable man.

  A beddable man? Was she becoming addle-brained? How could she think such a thing?

  She stood up and slipped away from the sleeping children—and Azzam—moving to the next temporary shelter where the man who had stayed beside his daughter had attached the fluid sac to a stout stick he’d stuck in the ground, and he now lay sleeping, one hand on the little girl.

  Alex moved quietly on, into the shelter where the generator hummed, providing dim light for the people caring for the wounded adults. It was the first time Alex had seen them all lined up together, and she wondered how some of them had survived, so severe were their injuries. A woman moved between them, moistening lips with water, answering cries of pain.

  ‘I am nurse,’ she said to Alex. ‘I have a little English from school and university. I am doing the work of doctor in the village. Our new Highness, before he was the prince, organised health centres in all villages and I run the centre here.’

  Alex nodded her understanding and was impressed by the caring way the woman worked among her patients. They were in good hands and she could return to her children, for dawn was lightening the sky and she didn’t want them waking and not finding her there beside them.

  Her children?

  The unresponsive little girl had her father, the mother of the boy who’d died had carried her son away, and all the other children she’d rescued must be with their families. Leaving her with the three motherless ones.

  Her children…

  Azzam woke to the roar of an engine and the clatter of rotor blades, sounds that told him the sun was up and the helicopter had returned. He stirred and groaned as his muscles told him it was too long since he’d slept on bare earth.

  He looked around, aware of an emptiness he didn’t understand.

  Inner emptiness?

  No, that was surely hunger.

  But Alex was gone, the baby also, although the little girl remained steadfastly by her brother’s side.

  ‘I’ve been foraging for food.’

  Alex returned as he sat up, shaking his head to clear it of the fog that sleep had given it. Part of the fog was an image that had lingered, of this woman’s slim, pale limbs, but thankfully she was now fully covered again, except for her hair, which was so dirty she was no longer recognisable as a blonde.

  She had a slab of flat bread in one hand and a flask of what looked like milk. The baby, he noticed, was once again strapped against her chest. Was it instinct that she carried the baby as the local women carried their infants? Or practicality?

  Probably the latter, to keep her hands free, he was deciding when she spoke again.

  ‘I need most of this for the baby, but you need to drink something and I couldn’t find any water.’

  Couldn’t find any water? Last night, in all the confusion, he’d heard men talking about water—about the oasis in the wadi—but he’d taken little notice, intent on doing what had to be done.

  ‘There should be water,’ he told her. ‘It might be dirty from the debris but this is an oasis.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Well, this is all I could find.’

  He took the bread, his mind fully focussed now. Had the debris from the earthquake completely filled the oasis, or had the earthquake itself opened up the ground sufficiently for it to leak away? He’d need to set men digging further up the wadi—the survivors would need water, and soon.

  He took a gulp of the milk—camel milk, he’d forgotten the strange taste—and ate some bread, touched the baby on the head and left the shelter before he reached out and touched Alex as well. Maybe not on the head, but on the shoulder, although every instinct told him touching her was madness.

  He’d slept too soundly, that was the problem.

  Now, focus on the present.

  Focus on the next move.

  Focus!

  It sounded as if the helicopter had landed, so the most seriously wounded would have to be carried down the valley to it. So much to do, so many things to think about, but as he left Alex said his name.

  ‘Azzam!’

  He looked back at her, standing straight and tall in her dirty clothes, a baby that she didn’t own strapped to her chest.

  His wife, albeit a misyar one…

  ‘The unconscious little girl should go on one of the helicopter trips,’ she said to him, ‘but can they take her father as well? I don’t know for sure but it seems to me they are all that are left of their family for wouldn’t the mother be here if she was alive?’

  Azzam knew what she was saying and understood the father would not be separated from his daughter. Of course he would be clinging to the one remaining member of his family. Wasn’t this why he, Azzam, was building the special hospital?

  Yet the father would take up the space where one of the injured could be, and would add weight in an aircraft where weight had to be considered carefully.

  ‘I will try to arrange it,’ he told her.

  She nodded as if understanding all the permutations of his thinking, and returned to the next shelter to examine the child once again. He watched her sign to the man before leaving the little girl and moving on to help the nurse with the adult patients, the two women tending them as best they could while they waited for their turns to be carried down the valley to the helicopter.

  ‘That’s it for today but at least all the badly injured have been airlifted out.’

  Azzam appeared as night was closing in. Alex had seen him at various times during the day, although he’d spent most of his time helping carry the injured to the helicopter, remaining there with them until they were airlifted out.

  Alex had stayed at the village, helping move rubble, tending survivors who were still, miraculously, being found, and keeping an eye on the three children. As better tents, flown in by helicopter, were erected, to be used as housing until the village could be rebuilt, the local nurse tried to fit the children into other families. One woman offered to take the baby, another family was willing to care for the boy and girl, but the little girl stubbornly refused to have the family split up, remaining where she was, caring for the baby when Alex was busy elsewhere.

  ‘There are still injured people being found beneath the rubble,’ Alex reminded him, using the bottom of her tunic to wipe her face.

  ‘The helicopter will return tomorrow and keep returning as long as it is needed,’ Azzam replied. He slumped onto the ground beside where she was sitting, outside the small shelter that she thought of as ‘hers’.

  Theirs?

  ‘This village is at the border of my country,’ Azzam continued, tiredness making his words sound gruff and strained. ‘Our neighbours in the big town further down this old trade route have been affected as well. The town is not as badly damaged but because it had a bigger population there have been more injuries. Their rescue services are at full stretch so we couldn’t ask them for help, but by tomorrow evening our road to the village should be clear and we can bring in heavy machinery not only to clear the rubble but to dig a new well for the village.’

  ‘The rescue people who’ve already flown in have made a difference,’ Alex told him. ‘They’ve given all the villagers a break from the digging and rubble shifting, and brought optimism as well as their strength.’

  ‘Not to mention food and water,’ Azzam said, swinging the backpack he’d been carrying onto the ground and delving into it. ‘Abracadabra—isn’t that what your magicians say?’

  ‘Your magicians too, surely? Or was it “Open sesame”?’

  She was more disturbed by his presence at the moment than she’d been since she’d first met him, finding herself uneasy and a little at a loss because she c
ouldn’t understand her uncertainty. Not that he appeared to notice for he was delving into the backpack.

  ‘Aha! Just for you!’ He produced a pack of wet tissues, handing them to Alex.

  ‘Can you manage a bath with just these?’ he asked her. ‘I’d have liked to ask someone to pack clean clothes for you but necessities like food and water seemed more important.’

  ‘These will do just fine,’ she managed, then, clutching the treasures to her chest, she retreated into the tent. The little girl was sitting by her brother, apparently telling him a story, the baby asleep on her knees.

  ‘Look,’ she said to the girl. Talking to the child had become a habit, although Alex knew she couldn’t understand. ‘Wet wipes.’

  She knelt beside the children, pulled out a wipe, and wiped the boy’s face, then with a clean cloth wiped the baby, finally handing three wet tissues to the little girl, who looked at them with delight before using them to scrub her face, hands and arms.

  Deciding to keep the wipes for the children, Alex retreated further into the small tent, where she used the waterless cleanser from her emergency pack to wash her hands, arms and face. Then, aware of how grubby she was, she slipped off her clothes and, once again using her bra as a washer, washed the rest of her body as best she could.

  Her clothes might be filthy but at least now she was kind of clean underneath. Her hair, hanging in a dirty braid down her back, didn’t bear thinking about, but, deciding this was as good as it was going to get, she dressed and went back out to find that Azzam had, miracle of miracles, produced a packet of disposable nappies for the baby.

  ‘Are you more delighted by those than by the food I’m preparing?’ he asked, and she realised he was heating something in a small pot over a tiny gas stove.

  ‘Definitely more interested in the nappies,’ she told him. ‘I was running out of things to use to keep him dry. As for food, I found bread and milk for the children earlier, so they’re okay, but now I can smell whatever it is you’re cooking there, my stomach is more than interested in the food.’

  She squatted beside him and Azzam looked at her face, pale but clean, although rimmed with dirt around her hairline. A truly remarkable woman, he realised, uncaring of her own needs as she helped the strangers among whom she found herself.

  Why?

  She was a doctor, it was natural she should respond by helping, but surely going down that hole to rescue the children had been beyond the call of duty?

  He switched his mind from the mystery of this woman to practical matters.

  ‘When all the injured have been airlifted out, we will be able to leave, probably some time tomorrow,’ he told her. ‘A paramedic will come in on the first flight in the morning and he and the nurse should be able to cope with the less severely injured, who are staying here. Most of the personnel we’ll fly in next will be people to continue digging and others to get services set up so the village can function while it’s rebuilt.’

  ‘And the children?’ she asked, nodding her head towards the inside of the tent.

  The children? He found himself frowning at her question.

  ‘I thought the headman was arranging for other villagers to take them.’

  ‘The boy is feverish, probably with an infection, and the girl won’t leave him, or the baby, and no one in the village can manage all three.’ She hesitated, then frowned as she asked, ‘Do you know what has happened to the father? I know you said they were from a different tribe but there’s something more. The nurse couldn’t explain when I asked her, but it seems to me as if these children are—well, some kind of outcasts? Could that be? Does that happen? Could their father have done something bad? And if so, would that mean that if the children remain here, they might not be treated as kindly as they should be?’

  ‘I will ask,’ Azzam told her, ‘but for now forget the children and eat.’

  He tipped half the rations into a bowl and handed it to her, offering a plastic spoon he’d scavenged from the helicopter, thinking she’d find it easier than using flat bread to scoop up food.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to think they’d be unhappy—unhappier than they must already be with the loss of their mother. And it seems strange that they are so alone when your mother said it was a long-held tradition to welcome others to the camp. So there must be some definite reason they weren’t welcome.’

  He turned towards her.

  ‘Are you always this persistent?’

  She smiled and once again he felt something move inside him, although he knew it couldn’t be attraction.

  Gratitude, perhaps, that she’d done so much for his people.

  ‘Only when it concerns the welfare of small children,’ she said, ‘and possibly patients who aren’t very good at standing up for themselves.’

  ‘And elderly women who are against a management plan for their asthma,’ he added. ‘I read the way you worded my mother’s plan, making it simple for her yet emphasising the importance of prevention rather than cure. I know she is unwilling to take drugs unless it’s absolutely necessary. That is why you were concerned for her?’

  She glanced up from her meal but as night had fallen and he’d turned off the stove he couldn’t read the expression on her face.

  ‘I liked her,’ she said, and he believed her, though it brought into his mind once again the disparity that kept niggling at him about this woman. Here he saw unselfishness of spirit as she gave generously of herself in the devastated village, so why did he still see the faint shadow of Clarice behind her, the shadow of a woman who’d come to his country to get as much as she could out of it?

  He knew, instinctively, that Alex was different, so why couldn’t he get Clarice out of his mind?

  And suddenly it came to him—the answer so simple he could have laughed out loud. The betrayal he’d felt hadn’t been heartbreak at all—pique maybe but nothing irretrievable. His pain had come from the physical side of things, from the fact that Clarice had been able, without a second’s hesitation, to go from his bed to Bahir’s. That, to him, who had believed in fidelity, had been the ultimate betrayal.

  He was shaking his head at the fact that he’d let it poison his life for so long, all because he hadn’t seen his own reaction clearly, when Alex’s voice recalled him to where he was.

  ‘That meal was delicious,’ she said, setting down the empty bowl. ‘Thank you.’

  Then she chuckled, a warm, rich sound that seemed to fill the night with smiles.

  ‘A meal cooked by a prince,’ she teased. ‘Not everyone can boast of such a thing.’

  But the laughter didn’t linger, her voice serious as she added, ‘You haven’t answered me about the children. I wouldn’t like to leave here not knowing what will happen to them.’

  ‘Arrangements will be made,’ he said, speaking firmly so the subject could be dropped and he could go back to considering where such a fancy as a night filling with smiles could have come from. He was a practical man, always had been. Bahir, now, he might have thought such a thing, for at heart he’d always been a romantic dreamer. Yes, his brother was still with him—just a little…

  Alex moved, standing up, thanking him again for the meal and the things he’d brought, saying good night…

  More unsettled than ever by Azzam’s presence, Alex escaped into the tent. He would stand a watch, surely, and she could be asleep before he came in to sleep, and if that was regret she was feeling, she needed her head read!

  Proximity, that’s all it was, and being alone in a strange place—of course she’d feel drawn to a man who wanted only to protect her.

  Protect her body and her reputation, she thought, smiling to herself, although the nurse had told her of leopard sightings during the previous night and protection of her body wasn’t such a joke.

  Yet, remembering how it had felt the previous night, the warmth she’d drawn from his body, she felt a shiver of apprehension, admitting to herself how easy it would be for his body to seduce hers.

  Not that he
’d have the slightest interest in her that way, which made her reactions even more shaming.

  Except that humans were designed that way for the continuation of the species. Without attraction between men and women, the race would have died out centuries ago.

  Having thus excused herself for her wayward thoughts and feelings, she lay down, curled around the children, her arm across them once again.

  The children!

  Thinking about them would take her mind off her other wandering thoughts.

  If she was married, could she adopt the children?

  Though how could she work the hours she did and bring up a family?

  If Azzam would agree, perhaps, to provide enough money to keep the children, she could take them home with her. No, it wouldn’t work. Bad enough for them to lose their parents, but to lose their country? How could she consider bringing them up in a strange land, she who didn’t even understand them when they spoke?

  Her arm brushed against the lamp she’d found earlier in the rubble, a beautifully shaped brass lamp that the little girl had claimed as hers.

  Now it reminded Alex once again of the fairytales that kept recurring to her throughout this whole adventure and she had to wonder whether, if she rubbed the lamp, a genie might appear. A fantasy, of course, but there was no harm in dreaming. She could ask the genie for a home for all of them. A second wish would be for money—not a lot, just enough to cover the debt—and she’d keep the third for when it might be needed. With Rob’s debt paid, she could stay here, in this strange and fascinating land, and bring up the children with their friends…

  She chuckled as she held the lamp, laughing at herself because she couldn’t bring herself to rub it. The whole experience she was going through was so unbelievable a genie might just appear.

  ‘You are laughing again? Surely not still at our marriage?’

  Azzam had entered the tent as silently as he always appeared, and she rolled over and looked at the dark shadow that was him, hunkered on the floor beside her.

  ‘No, now I’m laughing at my own silly fancies,’ she said. ‘Working out what three wishes I would ask for should a genie emerge when I polish my Aladdin lamp.’