Sheikh Surgeon

by Meredith Webber

  ‘Patrick and my husband are with Khalil so I came to speak to you,’ the woman said, her voice slightly hesitant but her English clear enough to be easily understood.

  Nell ushered the pair inside and waved her hand towards the couch.

  The two women sat, then Kal’s mother pulled some sheets of paper from a pocket in her robes.

  ‘We have one hundred and fourteen names on this already, and that is only what we have achieved today,’ the woman said, handing the sheets of paper to Nell. ‘I am sorry they are in Arabic but I do not write in English, but the names are there and already these ones have been registered, although the testing seems to take a little time.’

  Nell looked at the pages with the graceful curves of Arabic script across them. They told her nothing and, try as she may to make sense of the conversation, nothing clicked.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said softly, not wanting to offend this woman.

  ‘Khalil told us last night about the boy’s illness and the bone—bone marrow?—Patrick might need. He was disturbed he had not done something about it earlier and cursed his selfishness in wanting to get to know his son. He was so upset I assured him I would take care of it, so this is where we are now—the people on the list you have are all relatives, but by the end of the week my husband says we will have ten thousand more people on it, and more again the week after that. Khalil says he will get more specialists to do the tests so it does not take too long, and someone else to set up all the results on a computer. He says our country might become known as a donor bank—is “bank” the right word?—for all the world.’

  Nell looked at the sheets of paper in her hand and shook her head. Last night this small robed woman who, Nell had no doubt, rarely ventured from her home had first heard of Patrick’s plight, and now she was talking of a bank of thousands of would-be bone-marrow donors, all tested and listed there, ready to give something of themselves to save the life of a stranger.

  ‘Thank you.’ She said the words, but knew they were inadequate.

  The woman waved away her thanks, then added, ‘We pray that Patrick will not need it.’ Her light brown eyes, so familiar to Nell, were soft with understanding. ‘But I know why you had to come and ask us this thing, although it must have been a hard decision for you to make. Hard for you in your heart.’

  Nell nodded, for that’s where it had been hard—where it was hurting so much now.

  They sat for a little while, Nell aware she should offer hospitality but too torn apart by conflicting emotions to find the necessary energy. Then the women rose, Kal’s mother taking Nell’s hands between hers and pressing them together.

  ‘The road ahead might seem dark now, but it will lighten. I can see the glow of it ahead of you.’

  Nell thanked her again, rising to her feet and following the two women to the door. She doubted anyone could see into the future, but the image of some glow ahead of her was a comforting one—though maybe the glow was the hot summer sun back in Australia, and somehow the thought of that glow wasn’t nearly as enticing as it should be.

  Kal was released from hospital the following day, and predictably Patrick begged to be allowed to accompany his father to the house in the family compound where he would convalesce for a few days.

  ‘Well, I can hardly say no,’ Nell said, a trifle tetchily. ‘I can’t expect you to hang around here all day on your own.’

  Patrick ignored her mood, hugged and thanked her, then packed his bags and headed off, accompanied by a white-robed man who had been waiting in the corridor.

  ‘This is Ahmed, one of Kal’s men,’ Patrick told her by way of introduction, then they left, Nell watching from the door of the apartment, more and more aware of the growing affection between her son and his father, and the growing attraction to Patrick of the life his father—or his father’s family—led.

  ‘So I bring him up, fight for his life, then lose him, not to cancer but to his father?’

  The thought pained her so much she felt like crying, but she’d already shed her bucket of tears over Kal, and more than a bucket over the possibility of losing Patrick, so she refused to shed any more. She phoned home instead, speaking to both her parents, explaining why Patrick wasn’t there to talk to them, telling them about the donor register getting under way, hearing their delight.

  She had just hung up when the phone rang again.

  ‘You didn’t come to see me in hospital.’

  Just hearing Kal’s voice was enough to make her heart thud erratically, but the accusation in his voice steeled her against any weakness.

  ‘I came,’ she said. ‘You were asleep, and well protected against the wiles of casual women visitors.’

  Kal laughed.

  ‘Too well protected,’ he said. ‘I felt like a child again, living among the women. My father shooed them all out when he and Patrick visited.’

  ‘Where’s Patrick now?’ Nell asked.

  ‘He’s out at the stables. Some of my younger cousins and their friends were playing soccer with him for a while, and now they’re going riding. The trails are well lit and they know to keep a watch on him without him knowing it. They won’t let him get too tired.’

  Playing soccer, going riding, driving cars—what wasn’t on offer for Patrick in his father’s life?

  There was a pause, then Kal said, ‘It is ironic, isn’t it, Nell, that you came here looking for insurance in the form of bone marrow in case it was needed to save Patrick’s life, and it turns out he saved mine. Without prompt drug treatment, the encephalitis could have caused brain damage and even death.’

  ‘Encephalitis?’ Nell breathed, her grouchiness over Patrick’s fun forgotten. ‘You had encephalitis? No one mentioned that to me.’

  ‘They didn’t tell you?’ Kal sounded puzzled. ‘I thought my father—’

  ‘Your father said it was a recurrence of something—I thought some minor virus—nasty and fast-acting, but encephalitis?’

  ‘You should be careful, Nell.’ His voice almost purred down the phone. ‘You’re sounding as if you care.’

  ‘Of course I care,’ Nell snapped at him. ‘I’ve always cared. I love you, Kal. You’re angry that I didn’t tell you about Patrick. You feel denied and cheated. Well, I’ve done my penance for whatever wrong I might have done you—loving you has been my penance, and now look where that has led me.’

  She slammed down the phone.

  It rang again and, although she knew she shouldn’t, she answered it.

  ‘Where has it led you, Nell?’ Kal asked, as if they hadn’t been interrupted.

  ‘It’s led me to the point where we are now—the point you threatened me with—the point where Patrick gets to choose whether he stays with your fabulously wealthy and important family, where he gets to ride horses and probably camels and drive cars and go camping in the desert, or to go back home with dull old Mum. You’ve even got what will probably end up being the biggest bone-marrow donor register in the world happening, so you can use his health as an added enticement for him to stay. That’s one that will play well in court.’

  ‘Nell, stop! It needn’t be like this. You must know I still have feelings for you, feelings that could well be love.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know love if it got up and bit you on the backside!’

  She slammed the phone down again and left the apartment, not certain she’d be strong enough not to answer it a third time. She headed for the ward, then decided she hadn’t the will to be as cheerful and positive as she needed to be for the patients she would see, so went down to the lobby instead. She’d been outside the hospital only once—the evening Kal had taken her and Patrick to dinner. She’d go for a walk. From what she remembered of the drive to the hotel, there were parks spread through the city like emerald-green oases.

  ‘Taxi?’

  The cab edged up behind her as she came out the front doors, and suddenly she had a better idea.

  ‘Could you drive me out to the desert?’ she asked.

/>   The driver looked puzzled. Maybe he didn’t understand English.

  ‘To the desert? You want to drive out to the desert?’

  His English was OK, he just didn’t understand the request.

  Nell smiled at him.

  ‘I’ve been here for nearly two weeks and I keep hearing about the desert, but I haven’t seen it. Would you drive me out there—it needn’t be too far—then wait for me while I look at it for a while?’

  ‘It is night-time, lady,’ the driver said, no doubt sure she was mad.

  ‘But there’s a moon,’ she pointed out. Then she opened her handbag and counted out how much she had in local currency. Patrick had got her some from an automatic teller machine on his first day in town when he’d asked for some change and she’d realised she hadn’t any money. Now she offered the man her collection of notes.

  ‘Would this be enough?’

  ‘To drive you to the desert and wait there for you? It is far too much.’

  He named a sum and, although he continued to shake his head, he allowed her to climb into the back of the cab, and he took off slowly out of the hospital grounds, speeding up as they reached the main road, but still driving carefully, as if he needed to be fully alert should his passenger show further signs of derangement.

  Eventually they left the city and drove along a wide highway, lined on either side with what Nell assumed were date palms. She was reasonably sure the darkness beyond the palms was desert, but the driver seemed to understand she needed something more. Eventually he turned off the highway, drove a little way, then stopped.

  ‘My car is not made to cross the sand,’ he said, turning in his seat to look at her. ‘But up ahead is the first of the sandhills that run east-west across the country. If you walk up there, you will see them ranging into the distance, though not as well, of course, as if you’d come during the day.’

  ‘Night is fine,’ Nell told him, but didn’t add that night was what she needed, because night would hide the tears she knew she’d probably shed.

  ‘I will leave the headlights on so you can see the way and find the way back, and, lady, please, do not go beyond my headlights, or I will get very worried about you.’

  ‘I won’t leave the lights, and thank you,’ Nell said, then she opened the car door and got out, slipping off her shoes so she could feel the texture of the sand beneath her feet, her mind a muddle of so many things that for a while she was content not to think at all.

  The warm night air wrapped around her, a slight breeze lifting her hair and brushing against her skin. After that first time, she and Kal had often camped at South Stradbroke, walking across to the dunes at night, finding a special magic in the sand and sea and moonlight.

  And if ever she’d needed magic, it was now. Kal’s mother saw a glow in her future—a glow from the fiery conflagration that would be her fight with Kal, because no way would she let her son go easily.

  Even if life here would be better for him? Not only financially, but in every way? Not even if he chose to live with his father?

  Nell crossed her arms across her chest as if the action might stop her heart from bursting. Who was she kidding? As if she could ever put Patrick through the emotional agony of making a choice between her and Kal.

  Knowing Patrick, she knew he wouldn’t stay without her blessing, but his choice, given one, would be to have her stay, too. And being Patrick, he’d make sure Nell’s parents were included in whatever arrangements were made—Kal would probably send the jet over to bring them to visit whenever they wished!

  The bitterness of that last thought made her shiver. She’d think about Patrick’s likely first choice—her staying on.

  She’d reached the top of the dune and sat down, not so much to look out over the desert as to consider her future.

  She’d have a job—Yasmeen had said they’d been advertising for a specialist to head the burns unit, without success.

  But there’d be Kal…

  ‘Nell.’

  No wonder the taxi driver thought I was mad. Now I’m hearing voices.

  ‘Nell, I’m coming up the sand hill now. I didn’t want to startle you.’

  Nell turned in disbelief.

  ‘Are you having me followed?’ she demanded. ‘And what do you think you’re doing here when you’re just out of hospital? Have you no sense at all? How do you think Patrick would feel to find his father, then have him drop dead because he didn’t look after himself?’

  Kal reached her side and dropped to sit beside her.

  ‘Stupid, I know, but I didn’t drive. Ahmed brought me. Well, he took me to the hospital and I saw you getting into a cab and I did that “follow that car” thing for the first time in my life, then when we stopped beside the cab, the driver seemed prepared to defend you to the death until Ahmed and I managed to persuade him it was a lovers’ tryst. I told him who I was, and eventually he agreed to drive back to town.’

  ‘You sent my cab away?’ Nell knew this wasn’t the point she should be arguing but it seemed a stable point she could latch onto in the morass of her emotions.

  ‘But I hadn’t paid him.’

  Kal laughed and moved a little closer, putting his arm around her shoulders and giving her a little hug.

  ‘I paid him,’ he assured her, but although that issue was settled, something else had occurred to Nell. She moved away from Kal’s arm so she could make the point more decisively.

  ‘And it’s definitely not a lovers’ tryst!’

  ‘It could be,’ Kal murmured, but he didn’t touch her again. Instead, he drew up his knees and rested his chin on them, looking out over the rolling sands of the desert.

  ‘Did you think of the island when you came here?’ he asked.

  Nell nodded, unable to lie about memories that were so precious to her.

  ‘I, too, think about it whenever I am in the desert. Maybe that’s why I spend all my days off out here, usually alone, though sometimes with my birds for company.’

  He was silent for a long time, then he spoke again.

  ‘Do you think that’s love, Nell? Fourteen years of coming to the desert to sit on a dune like this and think about the island? To think about you?’

  Nell couldn’t speak. Her throat had closed up so tightly she felt she might never speak again. And Kal didn’t seem to need an answer, though he moved slightly and rested one hand lightly on her shoulder.

  ‘I can hear your laugh when I’m out here,’ he continued quietly. ‘In the city there’s too much noise to hear it, but out here I see you running down the sand hills, laughing at the sky, and I can hear the joyous sound of it. Is that love, Nell?’

  Nell shrugged, not to move his hand but in answer to his question. She had never been able to return to the island, afraid memories would overwhelm her there, but if Kal really did come out here and think of her—was it love?

  ‘I thought it was obsession.’ His words hovered in the air. ‘A kind of madness I should be able to shake off. “Physician, cure thyself”—that’s what I used to quote, but there was no cure, and that was bad. I am not a man who should have obsessions. Then one day you were there, bent over a dead man in a disaster zone, calmly taking charge, turning to me and saying, “Hello, Kal,” as if we’d parted yesterday.’

  His hand grew heavy on her shoulder, but Nell knew he hadn’t finished, while in herself she wanted to be sure she was more than an obsession.

  Would he get to that?

  ‘So that was bad enough, then you sprang Patrick on me, and although I knew in some part of my mind you’d acted in what you saw as my best interests at the time, I was angry, Nell, so angry, yet bereft as well, with grief that I had lost all those years of my son’s life. Can you understand that?’

  This time Nell nodded, although Kal was still looking out across the desert, not at her.

  ‘But even though I blamed you, I needed you. I looked for you and sought you out and felt better being near you, even when we were fighting all the time.’


  He turned towards her now, and lifted his hand to move her chin so she was facing him.

  ‘Is that love, Nell? Does love hurt when you are arguing with the object of that love? Does it make us lash out to hurt the loved one in return? I can’t believe it can be, Nell. I can’t believe if I really loved you I would threaten to take away your son. Is love so irrational? Is it so confusing we do wrong in its name?’

  Nell stared at him, seeing his familiar face, made young by moonlight, in this unfamiliar setting.

  ‘I don’t think love’s about hurting people, Kal, but neither can it protect anyone from hurt. Love’s about being there for each other when hurt happens—that’s when love is needed, sharing the hurt as well as the joy. It’s like the desert, stretching endlessly to the horizon—limitless. As hard to quantify as the grains of sand we’re sitting on.’

  She turned away, looking out over the play of moonlight on the rolling sand hills.

  ‘Can I apply for the job as head of the burns unit?’

  ‘You’ll stay?’

  The joy in his voice was unmistakable.

  Pity she had to kill it…

  ‘If Patrick decides he’d like to live here then, yes, I’d like to get a job so I can be near him. That’s what I came out to the desert to decide. What would be best for Patrick. I won’t fight you over him, Kal, or have him made to choose between us. He’s been through enough lately and doesn’t need that kind of pressure from people who supposedly love him.’

  ‘But you’d stay with me! We’d be a family! Of course you can work if you want to. We couldn’t hope for a more qualified surgeon to head the unit, but you talk as if—’

  ‘As if we’d be apart? Wouldn’t we, Kal? Even if we shared a house, for form’s sake or for Patrick’s or your family’s, wouldn’t we still be apart?’

  ‘You don’t believe I love you.’

  The statement fell between them, flat and somehow ugly.

  ‘How can I, Kal, when you’re still not sure yourself? When you still think of me as an obsession, and look hopefully for a cure. We could share a house, even share a bed, and, yes, that part would be good, but inside I’d be dying, Kal. If that sounds dramatic, I’m sorry. But love can’t live in a vacuum. It needs to be nurtured, not with gifts and promises but with love returned.’