Healing The Sheikh's Heart

The last thing the people of Da’har needed was a leader drowning in grief at the loss of his wife. Seven years ago his newborn daughter had needed a father with purpose. Direction. So he’d shut the doors on the past and sharply fine-tuned himself to focus on Amira and the role she would one day take on as Sheikha of Da’har and all her people. People whose voices she now longed to hear.

“Where are all the toys?” Robyn asked pointedly.

“I’m sorry?” Idris swung his attention back toward her, not realizing his thoughts had wandered so far away.

“Toys? You did bring your daughter with you, right? And she’s seven so...” He watched her brightly lit eyes scan the immaculate sitting room. “Where does she play?”

“She’s at the zoo with Thana.”

Kaisha’s eyes widened at his words. He knew as well as she, he would normally never tell a virtual stranger his daughter’s whereabouts. Or to call him Idris for that matter. He’d offered no such “common” courtesy to the surgeons he’d met before Robyn. Something about her elicited a sense of...comfort. Ease. She exuded warmth. Albeit, a higgledy-piggledy variety of warmth—but she seemed trustworthy, nonetheless. Which was interesting. Trust wasn’t something he extended to others when it came to his daughter.

“And Thana is her...?” He bristled at Robyn’s open-ended question. He never had to face this sort of questioning in Da’har. Or, generally, anywhere else. His wife’s death during childbirth had been international news. Where their wedding had lit up television broadcasts, her funeral had darkened screens around the globe. It was near impossible to explain how leaden his feet had felt as he’d followed her casket, Amira’s tiny form tightly swaddled in his arms, the pair of them making their way toward the newly dug grave site. He swallowed the sour sensation that never failed to twist through his gut at the memory.

“Her nanny.”

Robyn winced. He could see she remembered now. The myriad expressions her face flashed through and finally landed on was something he recognized too well.

The widowed Sheikh and his deaf daughter...all alone in their grief at the loss of the Sheikha.

So.

He quirked an appraising eyebrow.

She had done her research, after all. Just wasn’t going to any pains to prove it.

“Right!” Robyn pulled open the flap to her satchel and pulled out a thick sheaf of papers, which she knocked into an exacting rectangle on the glass coffee table. “I generally prefer to do this sort of initial ‘meet’ with the child. Amira,” she corrected. “While I am relatively certain the type of surgery and treatment I am proposing will suit her case, I also like to make sure it suits her.”

“What do you mean?” None of the other surgeons seemed to care a jot about Amira’s thoughts on the matter. They just wanted to showboat their latest clinical trials...for a price, of course. A large one.

“When someone who is profoundly deaf has hearing restored, it can be quite shocking. Not all deaf people, you may be surprised to learn, want to hear.”

“That is not the case with Amira.”

Robyn gave him a gentle but firm smile before continuing. “It would be preferable to hear that from Amira. Sometimes what a parent desires for their child is different from what the child themselves wants. Tell me, how does she communicate?”

“She mostly reads lips, although—” he raised a hand as Robyn’s own lips parted to interject “—we have our own sign language of sorts. As I’m sure you are aware, there is not yet a regionally recognized sign language between the Arab nations as there is in America or here in the United Kingdom.”

Robyn was nodding along, the tiniest flicker of “been there, done that” betraying the fact he wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t know already.

“And is her lipreading in Arabic, French and English?”

Hackles rising, Idris checked the volume of his response. “Da’har’s local dialect is what interests her most as the people of my kingdom are the ones she will one day be Sheikha to. Though she speaks a smattering of the others as we travel together regularly. Do bear in mind, Doctor, she is only seven.”

“I have met some very savvy seven-year-olds in my day.” Her chin jutted forward decisively.

Was she mocking him? Amira was the most precious thing in his life. He was hardly going to overwhelm his already serious little girl with an endless stream of tutors and languages when life was innately challenging for her.

When his eyes met hers, he was heartened to see Robyn’s countenance matched her words. She seemed to have...respect...for her patients. He notched up a point for her. A small one. But a point, nonetheless.

“Shame.” Robyn was shaking her head, fanning out some of the papers she’d brought. “It’s much easier to learn multiple languages as a child. The younger, the better, some say. Particularly if it’s not in a scholastic setting.” Her eyes made a derisive skid across the decidedly “grown-up” hotel suite.

“Actually...” Kaisha interjected shyly. “Amira’s English is pretty good and we have been practicing some British Sign Language. She seems to enjoy it.”

“You’ve not told me this!” Idris knew it wasn’t something to be angry about—but why would they keep this from him? A small twinge of concern that his own serious demeanor might be the reason teased at his conscience. Then he dismissed it. He was who he was. A father who put his daughter above everything.

“It was a surprise. For Dr. Kelly.” Kaisha jumbled the words together, then launched herself into some fastidious note-taking to avoid any reaction Idris might have.

“That’s excellent!” Robyn gave a fingertip pitter-patter clap.

“British Sign Language is closer to French—so if she takes that up as well, it sounds as though she’s got some solid grounding in the wonderful world of the polyglot!”

Kaisha beamed with pride.

“Hold on!” Idris unsuccessfully tried to rein in the women’s enthusiasm. “What has all of this got to do with the operation to restore her hearing?”

“Everything,” Robyn replied solidly.

“And why is that?” Idris asked, now feeling sorely tested.

“Because there is always the chance it might not work.”

A thick silence settled between them as he took on board what none of the other surgeons dared suggest. Failure. It was a courageous thing to admit.

“I thought you were one of the best.”

“I am,” Robyn replied without so much as a blink of an eye. “But Amira’s case is a tricky one and the treatment I’m proposing has never been done in exactly this way. Not to mention, I’ve never done it in tandem with gene therapy.”

“Gene therapy?” Idris’s hackles went straight up. It sounded invasive. Dangerously so.

“Don’t worry...don’t worry.” Robyn waved away his concerns as if they were minor. “This is really exciting stuff. During my time in Boston Pediatrics—”

“I thought you were based at Paddington’s.”

Was nothing as it seemed with this woman?

“I am,” she confirmed patiently, then gave a self-effacing laugh. “Unlike most of the human race I like to take my ‘holidays’ at other hospitals. See what my fellow comrades in the Ear, Nose and Throat world are up to.”

“So...you work on holiday.” It came out as a statement.

“I never feel like I’m at work,” she replied, looking shocked he could think otherwise. “I love what I do. So, really, I’m living the dream!”

Idris saw something just then—the tiniest of winces as she spoke of her “perfect life.”

That she was passionate about medicine he had no doubt. But there was something missing, something personal. Which was what she seemed to be making this whole affair by the constant reminders that Amira wasn’t available for “inspection.”

He gave a dissatisfied grunt at the thought, smoothing away an invisible crease on his trousers.

Work and play might be one and the same for Robyn, but he had yet to get a handle on what it was she was actually going to do for his daughter apart from test her emotional elasticity. What was she expecting? A picket fence lifestyle for a girl who had lost her mother at birth and would one day rule a nation, all the while coping with profound deafness?