Desert Doctor, Secret Sheikh

‘The fluid bag is nearly empty. What if we run my blood into it, a pint at a time, then transfer it across to Akbar? We could fill something else, but at least we know the bag is sterile. And we can time it, so we know how long it takes to fill a bag then do away with that middle stage when he needs more.’

Kam realised he should have thought of these things. Had he become too used to have everything he needed for his work right at his fingertips—too used to modern medical practices—to think laterally?

Setting the questions aside, he did as she’d advised, siting the cannula carefully into Jenny’s arm, feeling the slight resistance as he pushed the needle through her skin then withdrew it carefully from the cannula, leaving the tube in place. He let this fill with blood before closing off the fluid running into Akbar and replacing that tube with the one through which Jenny’s blood was running.

He switched the tubes again and began running the precious red liquid far more slowly into the patient. And he did watch for a reaction, feeling Akbar’s skin, already hot with the beginnings of a fever, probably caused by infection, seeking other signs of transfusion reaction like violent shivering. But Akbar’s body gave no indication that the stranger’s blood was upsetting him. He lay still and barely conscious and hopefully would remain that way for some time, below the level of pain, while antibiotics and the body’s natural defences began to heal his wounds.

‘As if such wounds could ever heal!’ Kam muttered to himself, but his second patient had heard him. ‘To be beaten must be the height of humiliation,’ he added, to explain his thoughts.

‘We can only do so much,’ Jen reminded him, as they sat and watched in case there was a delayed reaction. ‘We can get him physically well, then hope that love and support and his own determination will get him the rest of the way.’

This was too much altogether for Kam—the woman was too good to be true. There had to be a catch, some reason she’d hidden herself out here, hiding her body under all-enveloping clothes and her golden hair under a scarf.

Surely this was taking escape too far!

‘Why are you here?’

In this, his land, such a question was extremely rude, but Kam asked it anyway, wanting to know, although uncomfortable with his curiosity.

‘To run a TB eradication programme,’ she replied, a tiny smile flickering about her lips. ‘We’ve covered that.’

‘But why here? There must be people in your own land who need medical help. Your accent says you’re Australian—isn’t that right?’

She nodded, but her gold-brown eyes looked preoccupied, as if she’d never really thought about answers to his questions before that moment.

‘I do work in the outback at home as well,’ she finally told him. ‘One placement at home, then one overseas.’

She paused, studying him for a moment as if deciding whether she’d elaborate on this answer or not.

What had she seen that she spoke again?

‘I actually like the foreign placements better. At home, I feel a sense of helplessness that I will never be able to do enough, as if my efforts are nothing more than one grain of sand in a wide desert—scarcely seen or felt, and certainly of no significance. But here, and in other places I’ve been—in Africa, in Colombia—I feel whatever I do is helping, even if it’s only in a very small way. And I do particular projects, like this TB programme, that have a beginning and an end.’

This time her smile was wider, and her eyes gleamed as if in offering him a confidence she was conferring a present on him.

‘I look on these trips as my reward.’

Kam saw the smile but her eyes, not her lips, had caught, and held, his attention. Hadn’t someone once said that the eyes were the mirror of the soul? In this woman’s eyes he’d seen compassion, and pain for their patient, and now a gleam that suggested a sense of humour.

Which she’d certainly need out here.

But still he was intrigued. ‘So, working, moving on—that’s what you like. Is it the freedom? The lack of ties to one particular place or person?’

She studied him for a moment, then she nodded.

‘It’s what I like,’ she confirmed.

‘You are a very strange woman.’

Her smile broadened.

‘A very ordinary woman,’ she corrected him. ‘Some people see the things I do as noble or self-sacrificing but, in fact, it’s totally selfish, because I love doing it—love the adventure of going somewhere different, the challenge of meeting goals under sometimes trying circumstances, the fun of learning about another culture, meeting people I would never have met if I’d stayed at home, tucked safely away in a GP practice, seeing people a hundred other doctors could see and listen to and treat.’

Kam was checking Akbar’s pulse as Jenny explained this, but his disbelief registered in a quick shake of his head.

‘And is there no one left behind you who is harmed by your adventures? No one left to worry?’

He turned to look at her, certain she would tell the truth but wanting to watch her face where, he was sure, he’d read hesitation if she chose to avoid his question.

‘My parents are both GPs, in a safe practice, one I might one day join, but although they wouldn’t choose to do what I have done, they live vicariously through my travels. They support me and scrounge equipment and drugs for me, and take in strangers I send to them, people from distant lands who need more medical attention than I can provide. They had a Guatemalan family live with them for six months while local reconstructive surgeons fixed their daughter’s face. She’d been born with a double hare lip and cleft palate.’

Kam shook his head again, unable to find the words to express his surprise, although his own people would take in those in trouble just as easily. But he’d always considered that the way of the desert, born out of need when the support of others might make a difference between life and death.

‘Let’s see if the blood is doing any good. I’ll check his blood pressure.’

The woman’s practical suggestion jolted him as his mind had wandered far from his patient.

‘I keep forgetting we don’t have monitors doing these things for us all the time,’ he admitted

Jenny smiled and shook her head.

‘No such luck. But before they had all these fancy things, doctors managed and so will we.’

Kam returned her smile.

‘Of course we will.’

He watched as she inflated the blood-pressure cuff and they both watched the readout on the small screen of the machine. Akbar’s blood pressure hadn’t dropped any further, but neither had it risen.

‘Let’s give it an hour,’ Kam suggested. ‘Are you feeling all right? Would you like a break from this tent before you give the second pint? A walk or, better still, a cup of tea? What eating arrangements do you have? It seems a long time since I had breakfast at my campsite.’

‘A cup of tea and something to eat is easily fixed,’ Jen said as he put out a hand to help her to her feet.

She took the offered hand reluctantly, no doubt because of the uneasiness and flutters, but she was grateful for it as he steadied her.

‘This way.’

Telling Aisha where she’d be, she led Kam towards the food tent, squaring her shoulders and walking straighter as she recalled his upright posture and the slightly arrogant tilt of his head, wondering again about the blood of desert warriors…

The food tent was set up by a different volunteer aid organisation and stocked with tinned and dried foodstuffs. Most of the refugees collected food from the canteen but cooked and ate within their family groups, but those who had no families now ran the tent as a kind of cafeteria, providing hot water for tea and coffee and meals three times a day.

‘Smells good,’ Kam said as he entered.

‘Stew,’ Jenny explained. ‘Not made with goat but with canned corned beef and dried vegetables. It tastes much better than it sounds.’

‘Or you get very hungry out here in the desert and would eat anything,’ her companion said, and Jen suspected he was teasing her. But would he tease, this stranger with the profile that could have been used as a model for an artist to etch an emperor’s face on an ancient coin?

She had no idea and was slightly concerned that she’d even considered it because teasing, even gentle teasing, felt like personal attention…

The women tending the big kettles and stew pots handed them small glasses of tea and indicated they should sit while the bowls were filled with food.

Jenny lowered herself easily, used by now to this custom of sitting on one leg while the other was propped in front of her to use as an arm rest as she ate.

‘You adapt quickly to local customs?’ Kam said, half-teasing again as he nodded at the position she’d taken up.

‘These people have had thousands of years to work out the best way to sit while eating—why would I want to do otherwise?’

She sipped her strong, sweet tea—the sugar was added as the water boiled—and watched the shadow of a smile pass across his face, then he too sipped at the steaming liquid, raising his head to speak in another tongue to the woman who was putting food in front of him. Jenny knew they were words of thanks and praise because, rather than the guttural sounds of everyday talk, they had the soft, musical notes that, to Jen, always sounded more like spoken poetry than day-to-day language.

‘I may be able to sit properly,’ Jen told him, ‘but no matter how hard I try, I can’t get my “Thank you” to sound like you make it sound. I think it would take a lifetime to learn the Arabic language.’

‘And another lifetime, or two or three, to learn different tribal variations of it,’ Kam told her. ‘I can probably make myself understood to the people of the camp, but every tribe has words that are common only to it. Do you know that in Arabic there are eight hundred words for sword, three hundred for camel and two hundred for snake?’

‘Putting the sword—an instrument of death—at the top of the most useful word list?’

He studied her for a moment then smiled a real smile, one that lit up his rather stern face and revealed strong, even white teeth.

‘Definitely not. They have even more words for love.’

The huskiness was back in his voice, and Jen shivered as a strange sensation feathered down her spine.

She glanced at her companion, hoping her reaction hadn’t been obvious to him, and was pleased to see he’d turned his attention to the woman serving their meals, speaking again, perhaps telling her how good the food smelt.

Another of the women set a bowl of food in front of Jenny and handed her a thin round of bread.

‘Eat,’ she said, then smiled shyly, as if embarrassed by showing off the English word.

Jen returned the compliment by thanking her in Arabic, although she knew her pronunciation was hopeless—especially after hearing Kam’s fluid, rhythmic use of the same words.

They ate, Jen now adept at scooping up the food with her bread, holding it always in her right hand and using pieces of it as easily as she’d use cutlery at home. But as she ate uneasiness crept in, born of not knowing what to make of the stranger who already seemed so at home in the camp.

‘We shall check on our patient then sit outside for a while,’ he decreed, as if picking up on vibes she hadn’t realised she was giving out. ‘Today’s experience has probably made you think of other things that a proper medical clinic will need.’

‘I refuse to think about work while I’m eating,’ Jenny said, wiping the bread around her bowl to soak up the last bits of gravy. ‘Especially as we haven’t had dessert yet.’

As she spoke one of the women approached, a big metal dish of sheep’s milk yoghurt in her arms. She scooped some into Jenny’s bowl, handed her a spoon, then passed her a tin of golden syrup, a carton of which had somehow found its way into the camp’s supplies.

‘Best dessert in the world,’ Jen told Kam, scooping golden syrup onto her yoghurt. ‘Sweet and sour and very yummy. The women here think I’m mad!’

He watched her eat, shaking his head when the woman offered him yoghurt and Jenny urged the golden syrup on him, but she’d only taken a couple of mouthfuls when Rosana appeared, crawling across the floor of the tent and settling herself into Jenny’s lap. Now Jenny shared, spooning most of the treat into Rosana’s mouth, cuddling the little girl and talking to her all the time, although she knew Rosana didn’t understand a word she said.

‘She has no family?’ Kam asked as they left the tent, Rosana once again perched on Jenny’s hip.

‘Not that we can find. In fact, I think she might belong to one of the warring tribes or clans across the border.’

She paused, stopping beneath a spindly juniper tree, knowing questions could be considered rude but intrigued enough to ask anyway.

‘Having lived here, grown up here, do you know enough about these countries to understand the war that is going on over there?’

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