Desert King, Doctor Daddy

‘Go ahead and hold the door open, I will lift her,’ he ordered, but he spoke with such authority that Gemma not only went ahead and opened the door but continued on into the house, opening a door to the treatment room as well.

The stranger set his burden down on the examination table but the woman screamed and lunged and would have fallen if the young man accompanying her hadn’t caught her.

‘Floor, she wants floor,’ he said.

That was okay with Gemma. She’d delivered babies on the floor before today, but the young man’s presence was nearly as puzzling as the stranger’s. Somali men, in her experience, were rarely present at their baby’s birth. It was an all-women affair. And surely the beautifully suited, slightly severelooking man who’d appeared couldn’t be her M.B.—she’d been picturing a doddering octogenarian, not a suave, handsome fashion plate who couldn’t be a day over forty.

Not that there was time to question either of the men. Squatting on the floor beside Aisha, one arm around her, supporting her, the other on her belly, Gemma felt the strong contractions and although the woman was doing no more than making tiny mewling noises, Gemma knew she must be in agony.

‘What’s been happening?’ she asked the young man.

‘The women who help, the doula and the other women who promise to help, they say baby die and they walk away from my Aisha. I bring her here.’

Gemma nodded her approval but her hands were feeling for the baby’s position now, and she was discovering exactly why the women who’d been going to help Aisha had opted out. It was a breech presentation, and the baby was too far down the birth canal for her to try to turn it. The problem was, she reflected as she squatted on the floor seeking the degree of cervical dilatation, that a baby’s bottom didn’t provide as effective a wedge as a head to force the birth canal open and the cervix to dilate.

‘You must help her,’ the young man implored. ‘She has suffered too much already, my Aisha. You must get her baby out. It is for the baby she lives.’

‘He is not exaggerating,’ the other man, the stranger, said, as if he was tuned into the labouring woman’s thoughts. ‘You must save the baby.’

Startled by what sounded very like another order, Gemma glanced across at the stranger who was squatting now, for all his immaculate clothing, beside the woman, talking soothingly to her in some language Gemma didn’t understand.

Somali?

He caught her eye and said, ‘I will help. I will monitor her pulse and breathing, you do what you have to do.’

Did he know what she would have to do? Know that freeing the little infant legs before easing them out and delivering the baby would not be comfortable for Aisha?

‘We’ll manage,’ she said, her heart in her mouth because she knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Fortunately, it wasn’t the first time she’d had to deliver a baby at the centre so she was now prepared with a sterile bundle on hand—everything she’d need, and wrappings for the infant as well. She spread a thick paper mat beneath the woman, who had insisted on squatting as soon as Gemma had finished the examination. But squatting wasn’t going to work, so Gemma, with the stranger’s help, eased her backwards and administered some local pain relief before making a small incision. After that it was a straightforward breech delivery, feeling for a leg and releasing it, then another scrawny leg, gentle pressure until the buttocks were revealed, a slight turn of the shoulder, her finger finding the baby’s mouth to keep its head in position for the final push.

And through it all the two men talked to and encouraged the woman, who still made no more fuss than the occasional mew of discomfort.

Gemma suctioned the tiny boy and as he gave his first cry, she handed him to his father, who pressed the little one against his wife’s chest, the umbilical cord still trailing.

Gemma smiled at the picture, her heart as always gladdened by the miracle of birth, especially gladdened by this one. Here were two young people starting a new life in a strange land—and now they had a child to enrich their future.

‘Do you want to cut the cord?’ she asked the young man.

‘Do Australian men do that?’ he asked, amazement widening his shining black eyes.

‘A lot of them do,’ she said, but when Gemma handed him the scissors, Aisha cried out in protest, then spoke urgently in her language.

‘Let me handle this,’ the stranger said, and something in his voice made Gemma turn her attention to the baby, wrapping a cloth around him as she lay against his mother’s breast.

‘He’s beautiful,’ Gemma told her, hoping her smile would translate the words. ‘Truly beautiful.’

With the final stage of delivery finished, Gemma cleaned up her patient then left the little family on the floor of the treatment room, nodding her head towards the door so the stranger followed.

‘They need time alone and I need time to figure out what to do next,’ she explained. Then she looked at him—really looked. Stared, in fact, at mesmeric black eyes set in a swarthy skin, dark eyebrows arched across the obsidian eyes, while his nose was finely boned, leading the gaze down towards lips rimmed in paler skin, not too full but suggesting a sensuality that made her skin tingle.

Skin tingle? It must be because she’d been nervous about the visit that she was reacting this way!

‘Mr Akkedi? I’m assuming that’s who you are?’

He moved his head in such an infinitesimal nod that if she hadn’t been staring at him she wouldn’t have noticed.

‘I’m sorry not to greet you properly. Even now, I can’t really spend time with you. Aisha should be in hospital, or at least somewhere she and the baby can be cared for. I need to get hold of our translator as she’ll know—’

‘Can you not even pause to be pleased with the wonder of birth? To enjoy the achievement of delivering a healthy baby?’

It wasn’t exactly criticism but it felt like it to Gemma.

‘How can I be pleased,’ she protested, ‘when she risked so much? And when she has suffered unnecessarily? Somehow we must learn to overcome the fears some women have about visiting doctors, we must do better—’

She broke off, shook her head at her own regrets, and smiled at him.

‘Of course I should pause,’ she admitted, ‘for surely the birth of a child is a reaffirmation of all that is good in humanity, no matter what has gone before.’

Yusef stared at her—at the smile that had transformed her face. She was a mess, this woman with the wild red hair escaping from the bounds of a scarf, clad in a faded T-shirt and jeans worn by age rather than fashion. Shadows of tiredness lay dark beneath her pale green eyes, almost translucent, like the new spring leaves on the almond trees at home. Yet her smile made her face come alive, as if all the tiny golden freckles on her skin were sparking with electricity, causing a glow.

Was he mad? Standing in this shabby house, staring at a woman, when so much work awaited him at home? He had to talk to her, professionally. Had to explain his plans.

Not that he could when she was obviously still thinking of the couple and their baby. Her smile faded and worry etched lines in her forehead.

‘Surely time, and perhaps the experience of those like Aisha, will overcome those fears,’ he said, wanting to see Gemma Murray smile again.

‘I keep hoping that’s the case,’ she said.

Yusef nodded, although the doubt in her voice puzzled him. Everything he had learned about this woman and the centre she had set up built a picture of someone who really cared not only about her patients but about treating them with respect for their culture and heritage. As for fear, how could she think the patients might fear her when he had seen at first hand her kindness to the young couple, her empathy and understanding as she’d delivered their child?

He watched her cross the hall, her mind no doubt on her patient, but as she passed the front door it opened and another young woman, also from her looks Somali, came bursting in.

‘Aisha?’ she asked, and Gemma Murray, for although introductions hadn’t been completed Yusef knew it must be her, replied.

‘Sahra, I was about to call you. Aisha’s in there,’ she said, pointing to the room, ‘with her husband and new son. Will you talk to them, Sahra, and sort out what’s best to do for both of them now? This is Mr Akkedi, our benefactor. I have to talk to him but I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.’

She led the way towards the back of the house and Yusef followed her, then looked with distaste at the collection of old chairs that surrounded an equally old Formica table.

‘You do not use the money for some decent furniture?’ he asked, then realised his mistake for the woman had turned back towards him with a frown.

‘New tables and chairs for the kitchen or an ultrasound machine—there’s no choice, you know. Actually, a new table and chairs would cost much less but there’s always something more important. Would you like a coffee?’

He glanced at the tin of instant coffee on the kitchen bench and gave an inward shudder, although he’d drunk the same brand when he’d been working in Africa, and had survived.

‘No, thank you.’

A man who only drank real coffee, Gemma surmised. He was reminding her more and more of her grandfather! Well, that was too bad! She put on the kettle, explaining as she did so that she needed caffeine, and needed it now!

‘The young woman, Aisha, was a patient?’ the man asked, and she sighed, poured boiling water over the coffee powder, added sugar and sat down.