Desert Doctor, Secret Sheikh

‘You need to be higher,’ Kam told the unexpected donor. ‘Are you all right to sit up if we stack pillows behind you?’

‘I’ve two bedrolls behind the partition,’ Jenny told him. ‘I can sit with those behind me to prop me up and that way my arm is higher than Akbar’s and it will feed down into him.’

She half smiled, while the nurse, Aisha, fetched the bedrolls.

‘It will be up to you to check the blood’s going the right way. I don’t want to be taking more of it from the poor man.’

Not only was she here in this desperate situation but she was joking about it. Kam thought back to the women he had studied with, both women from his own land and Western women, but none of them had been anything like this particular female doctor. No fuss, no nonsense, just get on with the job.

Although there was one problem now he thought about it…

‘I don’t think we should run it direct into Akbar. We should measure the amount—both for your sake as a donor and his as the recipient,’ he said, trying to be as efficient as she was at getting on with the job. ‘Do you have a container?’

‘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.