Her baby was growing up...
And perhaps that was a good thing, she decided as she faced the world again, finishing her watermelon and turning to wash her hands in the clear waters of the fountain.
As dusk fell, the queues didn’t seem to have diminished.
‘You’ve done enough,’ she told Aneesha. ‘Have a break, I’ll manage, but when you’re ready, would you round up Nim and get him fed and into bed?’
‘I shall not have to round him up, as you say,’ Aneesha told her, ‘for here he is.’
Two equally grubby boys had appeared from the garden, Nim beaming as he led his new, and apparently very shy, friend towards Lauren.
‘Mum, this is my friend Najeeb, and he’s four but he goes to school. Can I go to school too—please, Mum, please.’
His eyes were big with entreaty—this member of the ruling family wasn’t afraid to beg.
‘I’ll find out about it,’ she promised him. ‘But now you’re too dirty to be here where people are having their injections, so around the back with you. Aneesha will give you a bath and your dinner. I’ll be in to say goodnight but these people need me right now.’
‘That’s okay, Mum. Najeeb’s little sister is sick, and I know you’re trying to stop other people getting it. Najeeb had his injection yesterday, that’s when I met him.’
‘And his mother or father? Who is with him?’
‘His big sister. She’s still in the queue.’
‘Then let us find her,’ Aneesha said. ‘I will tell her I’ll take you both for a bath and where she can come to eat with us.’
‘Maybe find her and send her to me,’ Lauren said. ‘A little queue-jumping doesn’t hurt once in a while, and I wouldn’t want her becoming anxious for her brother.’
But the sister, when produced, was far from worried.
‘I speak good English so I can help while Aneesha takes the boys,’ she said. ‘I want to be a nurse, and when I finish school I hope to start at the hospital for some training.’
Aware that many of the nurses she’d met had been abroad for training, Lauren, in between patients, asked if that had been an option.
She shook her head.
‘My father left and my mother has died. I must care for Najeeb until he comes of age.’
Lauren nodded. These things happened everywhere, she knew, but her heart ached for the girl who’d taken on such a burden.
By ten that night, they’d cleared the palace grounds of people wanting vaccinations and those who, Lauren suspected, simply came to look around. The girl and Najeeb had both been fed and sent home in a car, and as the servants cleaned up the debris of the day, Lauren took herself wearily to her rooms to shower and clamber into bed, ignoring the plate of pastries Keema brought for her, and the coffee, although she had to admit it had kept her going through the day.
The following day was not as bad, and two days later they could shut the gates, anyone still wanting vaccination told to report to the hospital.
Lauren was up and aware that she, too, should be heading to the hospital, wanting to be heading to the hospital, if only to see Malik.
Silly, really, how much she’d been missing him—how much her body had been missing him—and this after just one brief sexual encounter, a kiss or two, and touches that sent fire along her nerves.
She should be thinking about Nim, not Malik.
He was fixated on the school idea, and although she knew she’d have to discuss it with Malik, Lauren decided she could at least take a look.
‘Is it far?’ she asked Aneesha, who had offered her services again as translator, while Keema played with Nim.
‘Not far,’ was the reply, so they set out on foot, walking for what seemed like miles to Lauren, with the sun growing perceptibly hotter as they went.
‘I thought you said not far,’ she complained to Aneesha. ‘I thought that meant it was just around the corner. We should have brought water—no, we should have called a car.’
She knew she sounded cross and apologised, trudging on in the oppressive heat.
Malik picked them up as Lauren was certain she was about to die in the dry, desert heat, helping her into the soft leather seat in the front, where the air-conditioning washed around her like a cold shower.
‘Why didn’t you call for a car?’ he demanded crossly. ‘Only total idiots walk around in this heat! And where the hell did you think you were going?’
Lauren breathed in a little more cool air before answering.
‘To a school, to check it out for Nim, but I think it will be too far for him to walk at his age, and I was only going to look, so I could talk to you about it.’
He’d handed her a bottle of cold water, and she stopped her explanations to drink thirstily.
‘He has wanted to go to school for so long and it will be better for him to be with other children, instead of hanging around being spoilt by the servants.’
And having explained this, Lauren lay back in the, oh, so comfortable seat, then turned to check that Aneesha was still with her and had some water.
But Malik had also turned to Aneesha, who was now answering his questions.
‘Forget that school, there are better ones, and I will sort one out for Nimr. Right now, I’ll take you home,’ he muttered to Lauren when the conversation finished. In spite of Aneesha’s explanations, or perhaps because of them, he was still obviously angry.
‘But his friend is at that school, we should at least look at it,’ Lauren argued.
‘Not when you’re exhausted. Walking in the sun was madness, especially when you need to rest. You’ve been working practically non-stop for days, and I can’t be there right now to keep an eye on you—there is just too much going on. I’ll drive you straight home!’
Lauren straightened in her seat, fastened her seatbelt and said, ‘After we’ve seen the school. Nim is my child and I don’t need you “sorting” his school!’
She was aware they shouldn’t be having this argument in front of Aneesha but right now she was too tired to care.
‘Anyway,’ she continued, giving him no time for another objection, ‘this is so much better, seeing it together. We’ll be able to discuss it properly.’
Malik spoke to Aneesha again and with a sound that just might have been his teeth grinding took off along the road they’d been following.
The school was everything Lauren could have hoped for—a mix of local and expat children, most lessons in the native language, although English was also taught.
‘He won’t understand his lessons,’ Malik grumbled.
‘He’s four—they’re hardly doing algebra. It’s more play learning, socialising, interaction with each other at that age. These things are important, Malik. Important to him, and important to me.’
To her astonishment, he looked at her and smiled, his anger gone.
Because she’d said it was important to her?
And although she could see he was exhausted, the smile he gave her as he agreed was warm enough to lift her spirits, to the extent that when they returned to the house she suggested they drop Aneesha off.
‘I’ll come back to the hospital with you. There’ll be something I can do.’
He hesitated, then shook his head.
‘I suppose if I don’t take you, you’ll set off on foot again.’
Lauren laughed.
‘Oh, no, that’s one lesson I have learned. I won’t walk anywhere on these hot days.’
And just like that camaraderie between them returned, and beneath it, even in their less than upbeat state, hummed the attraction...
CHAPTER EIGHT
NEW CASES OF measles continued to come in to the hospital, the vaccinations taking time to work, and the airborne virus seemingly able to strike at will. But now Nim was going happily off to school each day, being at work where she wa
s needed was a kind of antidote to this new stage of his life.
‘Keema tells me there’s a huge market not far from the hotels,’ Lauren said, catching up with Malik in the hospital where she was still spending most mornings.
He’d looked surprised to see her, yet his tired face had softened into a smile.
‘So?’
‘I’m thinking those people might not have access to radio or television and aren’t aware of the risks in crowds of people. Can we close it?’ she asked.
‘That market is the hub of the city. Closing it would be unthinkable.’
‘So more people will get sick,’ Lauren said. ‘How fair is that? And look at you—when did you last sleep? You can’t go on like this, you’ll be ill yourself. I know the hospital is still coping with all the usual cases as well as the measles outbreak, but you need a break.’
His smile grew wider, glinting in his eyes.
‘And is this the nagging wife I’ll have if we marry?” he teased, and she laughed, that glint in his eyes bringing her body to life with the usual rush of sensations just being near him could produce.
‘I’ll be far worse than this!’ she told him. ‘Now go and rest!’
But as he walked away she added, ‘And close the market!’
But later, back in the children’s hospital where the little girl had had the diagnosis of encephalitis confirmed, she paused by the child’s bed, checking the fluid bag, the cannula, reading through the chart and thinking, in another corner of her mind, about the word Malik had dropped into their earlier conversation.
That tiny but, oh, so powerful word: if...
He’s tired, it just sounded wrong, she assured herself, but still it jangled.
Was it a warning bell?
Maybe, but why was it worrying her? She hadn’t been keen on the marriage idea from the start—and had told Malik he needn’t promise marriage to act on their shared attraction.
So why worry now over one little if?
Because you’re falling for him, that’s why, she told herself. The attraction was there from that first meeting, you know that, and in your head you’ve really grown to like the idea of marrying him...
* * *
The medical situation eventually eased, although Malik was caught up with ensuring a regular vaccination program was set up, covering all the preventable diseases.
He’d call in at dinnertime to say hello to Nim, but as many of the people he had to speak to were in different time zones, he rarely stayed.
‘I need vaccines but also places to store them safely,’ he said to Lauren, when they met in the staffroom at the children’s hospital one morning. ‘And staff to look after the storage facilities as well as trained staff to administer the drugs.’
‘And no doubt another level of administrators at the top, to work out programmes and see they are carried out.’
He nodded grimly.
‘Not to mention a committee of community leaders to advise people to take up the service for their own, and their children’s, safety.
‘All the things a health department does,’ Lauren teased, and he agreed.
‘We have gone past the time when a group of elders could handle all aspects of our people’s private lives. We need to find some form of government acceptable to our people. Up until now, we’ve had the elders each tasked with a different job—one overlooking road construction, one liaising with the oil people, another in charge of schools, health and welfare, and so on. But with the nation growing at an unprecedented rate, these things must be formalised, and administrations put in place.’
‘And you’re the one who has to do it? Organise all this?’
She’d made coffee and found honey cake as he talked, and now she poured him a cup and eased him into a chair.
‘Here, forget it all for a few minutes, just relax.’
She set the coffee beside him on a small table, and as she turned to get the cake, he caught her hand, held it, the look on his face telling her he had needed that touch as much as she had.
‘I could not have done this without you,’ he said, and, embarrassed at the rush of feeling she’d experienced, she laughed.
‘Of course you could. You might have ended up even more tired than you are, though I doubt that’s possible, but I’ve done nothing more than any nurse would do. And we’ve got through it, haven’t we?’
She eased her hand from his for all she’d have liked to leave it there—warm and safe. ‘And as for all this admin stuff, that will get done in time—it doesn’t need to be done tomorrow, you know.’
He looked at her now, shadows in his dark eyes.
Was it tiredness?
Or something else?
She had no idea, but she had to drink her coffee and leave this room before she sat down on his knee and put her arms around him and told him everything would be all right.
Even though, since that little ‘if’ had entered her life she wasn’t sure it would be.
And now it was at work she mostly saw him. With Nim happy at his school, she was working regular shifts, and although Graeme and a young registrar handled the doctors’ duties, Malik appeared from time to time, usually inveigling her away to the staffroom so he could sit and spend a few minutes with her.
But this seeing and not touching grew harder with every visit, and her uncertainty about the future threw a shadow on the happiness that being with him here in Madan had so unexpectedly brought her.
Nim was happy, friends coming to play, chattering away in both languages with almost equal fluency. And her? Well, she certainly enjoyed her work in the fairy castle, enjoyed seeing children’s faces light up as she came in, and loved the shy greetings from the mothers and aunts and grandmas usually in attendance on the sick children.
Even the fathers, and other male visitors, were accepting of her—perhaps seeing her uniform of loose trousers, tunic and cap as the armour she’d once fancied her uniform at home had been.
Not that it had worked against Malik.
And as if thinking his name had conjured his presence, suddenly he was there, in front of her.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘I have caught up on my sleep, have begged Graeme to spare you to me, and I am taking you up the mountains. I have been a most remiss host, showing you nothing of my country, just setting you to work practically from the time you arrived.’
‘And Nim, is he coming?’
‘Not today, for this afternoon his class is coming to see the leopard cubs and his excitement—well, he will tell you.’
He paused, then added, ‘He will be quite safe, you must believe that.’
And Lauren did, for she knew there were trusted men posted at the school to keep an eye on him, and within the walls of the big estate he would be carefully but unobtrusively watched. Had known too about the class visit to their house but had forgotten, as she did most things, when Malik had appeared.
She smiled at this man who had taken so much worry off her shoulders and brought her to this magical place. Yes, things had been hectic, and marriage seemed no closer, but the rare time they did spend together was—precious?
Certainly, it was drawing them closer, and as far as Lauren was concerned, yes, precious was the right word.
Forget the ‘if’ and live for the moment—go see the mountains.
‘I’ll just have a wash and be right with you,’ she said, and darted off, wishing she’d had the forethought to bring a prettier outfit to the hospital just in case an occasion like this should arise.
But she washed her face and brushed her hair, noticing the curly mop longer now, framing her face more, tickling her neck.
I must ask Keema about getting it cut, she thought as she walked back to Malik, because thinking about mundane things was steadying the dizzy feeling of excitement in her chest.
* * *
She was
so lovely, Malik thought, glancing at her when he could while she looked out the window, delighting in all she saw. Goats and camels mostly, until they left the fertile land around the oasis and began to climb the mountains.
‘All our land was mountains once,’ he told her, ‘until wind and rain over thousands of years reduced the stone to sand. Only the strongest rock remained, but it too will one day disappear.’
The road wound upwards, Lauren still intent on the scenery, until he pulled up in the parking area at the top and she could look around, mostly at the vast sky above them and...
‘An ocean of desert, the dunes the waves, stretching for ever...’ she murmured.
The wonder in her voice touched something in his heart, but rather than bring him joy it caused an ache deep inside him.
How could he not have guessed that whoever it was who’d wanted Tariq dead would not also plot to thwart his plans for marriage?
Because that was what was happening. The whole ‘marrying a Madani woman’ thing the elders were debating hadn’t just arisen out of nowhere. Their rulers had been marrying people from other tribes and nations right down through the generations, yet now when he wanted—really wanted—to marry Lauren, they were bringing in the new law.
He opened the car door and helped her out, putting his arm around her shoulders, leading her to the low wall surrounding the lookout.
‘Oh, there’s the oasis right beneath us,’ she said, delight in her voice. ‘And the hospital—the fairy castle, too—and way over there, glinting in the sun, all the big hotels waiting for their tourists.’
He laughed and pulled her closer, his body reacting to her closeness, wanting her, all of her, but this was hardly the place to be starting something they couldn’t finish—hardly the place to be caught kissing in public should someone else arrive to see the view. Madan might be crawling towards modernisation, but public displays of affection?
A Wife for the Surgeon Sheikh Page 10