JENNY arrived as Mel was finishing her breakfast, full of plans for the day.
‘I can’t believe you’ve been here for ten days and haven’t seen the city,’ she announced, bubbling over not with her usual newly wed bliss but with the excitement of the proposed shopping expedition. ‘Arun said we were to shop till we dropped and I was to buy you anything you wanted—a whole new wardrobe for your pregnancy and a dress for your wedding, and isn’t it just the most amazing thing, the two of us falling in love with twins?’
‘Marrying twins is amazing,’ Mel said, ‘but me marrying Arun is different—I told you that.’
Jenny smiled.
‘And you can keep on telling me that,’ Jenny responded, ‘until you’re blue in the face, but I only have to look at you when you’re with Arun to realise you’re in love.’
‘Nonsense, that’s lust, it’s different,’ Mel protested, because the love she held for Arun was a secret she wanted to keep hidden deep within her heart.
But to make Jen happy she shopped, allowing her friend to talk her into the most extravagant gown of golden silk for her wedding, although she stuck to practical outfits for the rest of her new wardrobe.
‘I’ll be working,’ she reminded Jenny when they sat down for lunch in a café in the huge new shopping centre.
‘Not all the time,’ Jen reminded her, then she looked up and smiled as Miriam came in, having agreed to leave Tia for long enough to have lunch with the two women.
‘I was telling Mel she won’t be working all the time,’ Jenny explained to Miriam, before turning back to Mel. ‘You’ll have days off to ride with Arun and explore the country. In fact, it’s surprising Arun didn’t take you out to the winter palace today. It’s a fascinating place.’
‘I suppose because he went to talk to Hussa,’ Miriam said, sounding so matter-of-fact it took a moment for Mel to process the words.
But when she did she felt the hurt—as deep as a knife thrust in her chest.
‘Hussa’s dead, surely?’ she blurted out, dismayed by the statement and the pain.
‘Of course,’ Miriam agreed, still totally unperturbed. ‘But her mausoleum is there. He goes to talk to her, to explain about the baby and marrying you—so it would have been rude to take you with him.’
The pain expanded, filling Mel’s chest, squeezing her lungs so she could barely breathe.
Jenny was looking at her anxiously, so Mel smiled as if she’d known all along that was why she hadn’t accompanied Arun, and as if it didn’t matter in the least to her that her husband-to-be still talked to his dead wife. But she must have been smiling too hard, for Jenny touched her arm.
‘Are you all right?’
‘No,’ Mel managed. ‘I don’t feel well. It’s been coming on all morning. Must be the excitement. Do you think you could call the driver and get him to take me back to the hospital? I’ll go up to the apartment and rest. You and Miriam can stay here and have lunch.’
‘As if!’ Jenny said, signalling to a waitress and asking her to call their driver. ‘I’m coming with you.’
‘No, Jen!’ Mel said, looking directly at her friend so Jenny could see she meant it. ‘I just need to get home and lie down for a while. I promise you I’ll be all right.’ She tried a smile as she added. ‘Trust me, I’m a doctor.’
‘Well, it doesn’t seem right,’ Jenny grumbled as she took Mel’s arm and walked with her out to the car. ‘And Arun will be furious if he hears I’ve let you go home on your own when you’re not feeling well.’
‘Arun needn’t know,’ Mel told her. ‘Now, go back to Miriam and make sure she understands that. I’m fine, just a little woozy. It’s been a kind of hectic couple of weeks.’
‘It has, that,’ Jenny said, kissing Mel on the cheek as the driver opened the car door for her. ‘You take care and, whether you like it or not, I’m going to be calling at the apartment just as soon as Miriam and I have finished lunch, and you’d better be resting or I will tell Arun.’
Relief that she was finally alone flooded through Mel as the car pulled into the traffic and began the journey to the hospital. Although now she was alone, she’d have to think.
Have to work out why Miriam’s words had cut into her so deeply.
She’d known all along that Arun didn’t love her, so why was she upset?
Because she’d hoped he’d grow to love her—maybe had even convinced herself he was falling in love already—mistaken his natural kindness and courtesy for more than that…
The common sense part of her head was showing little mercy, but showed even less when it pursued the thoughts to their logical conclusion.
And now, it murmured to her, you know that won’t happen, because no matter how he feels about you he still loves Hussa!
Oh, dear!
Back at the apartment she undressed and climbed into bed, curling herself up into a tight ball, hoping sleep might come so she didn’t have to think, but sleep eluded her, which wasn’t surprising, for how could she sleep when her mind kept replaying little videos of times she’d been with Arun?
Riding over the dunes, walking in the sand by moonlight, Arun soaping her back in the shower, Arun holding her as she shattered in a climax…
It was useless trying to sleep so she got up, had a shower and dressed, but what next? Arun could hardly class checking on Tia’s baby as work so she left a message for Jenny with Olara and went down to the ICU, only to find Jenny and Miriam both there with Tia.
‘He doesn’t seem as well as he did yesterday,’ Tia said, and Mel knew her instincts were probably right, although, just looking at the baby, she could see little change.
Mel checked the monitor. His pulse rate was slightly up, his blood oxygen slightly down, not enough to worry about in a healthy infant but in a baby so fragile…
She made a note for a slight change to the medication that was helping his heart and promised Tia she’d look in later. Assuring Jen she was all right now, it must just have been tiredness making her feel ill, she returned to the apartment and this time when she crawled into bed she did fall asleep, but only after she’d thought the situation through and decided what path to take.
Were her dreams bad that she frowned as she slept? Arun wondered as he stood beside the bed and watched the woman he was about to wed.
So beautiful, but did he really know her?
Not that it mattered. He told himself that repeatedly, reminding himself that no one really ever got to know another person completely. Yet it did bother him, just as her regular reminders that their marriage was a convenient arrangement bothered him.
She stirred and opened her eyes, smiling then frowning at him.
He took the fact that she smiled first as a good omen and sat down on the bed.
‘You weren’t coming back until tomorrow,’ she said, pushing herself up on the bed until she was sitting with her back against the pillows. She frowned again. ‘Did Jenny contact you?’
‘No.’ He answered truthfully because it was Miriam who had phoned to tell him Melissa wasn’t well, and, given the frown, he guessed she’d given Jenny strict instructions to not mention her indisposition.
‘Well, that’s all right,’ his bride-to-be announced, ‘because it’s good you are here. I’ve decided something and it’s probably better I tell you today rather than tomorrow.’
This was not good, whatever it was. He knew for sure he wasn’t going to like whatever was coming. And the way Melissa took a deep breath before launching into what she had to say warned him it was as bad as news could be.
‘I’ve decided not to marry you,’ she said, her clear blue eyes steadfastly holding his. ‘It won’t change much. I’ll live here or in the women’s house and we can sleep together wherever and whenever you like and the baby will grow up in the compound with all the other kids so you will have the same paternal input into him. But we won’t be married.’
The words were ringing in his head, so clear they were repeating themselves—I’ve decided not to marry you— over and over again. But they made no sense.
‘You’ve—?’
‘Decided not to marry you,’ she said, as if maybe he hadn’t heard the first time. ‘But I can’t see that it will make much difference to our lives, unless, of course, there’s something really dreadful in your culture about us continuing to sleep together if we’re not married, in which case that should stop, too.’
Mel ached as she said it, but she’d thought it through and decided a little pain now was better than being in pain for the rest of her life, and to marry Arun, loving him as she did, without him loving her back, would guarantee a lifetime of heartache and regret.
She watched him try to come to terms with her decision, today his thoughts not hidden from her. He was bewildered, as well he might be. So bewildered he hadn’t asked the obvious question—why.
Not that she could tell him why.
Because you still love Hussa would sound lame.
She eased her legs off the bed.
‘I’ve got to go to see the—’
The phone interrupted her. Arun lifted the receiver, and once again his face failed to hide his emotion, concern deepening to worry.
‘That was Sarah Craig. The baby—’
Mel nodded, forcing everything else from her mind—all that mattered now was the baby. ‘I saw him earlier,’ she said. ‘If he’s still losing ground, I’ll need to operate immediately. How quickly can you get a surgical team ready? Kam’s agreed to assist. And Sarah. You’d lined up anaesthetists, perfusionists and someone who is experienced with the heart-lung machine for the op—do you think you can get them to come in tonight?’
Arun stared at her for a moment, unable to believe she’d switched from a declaration that she couldn’t marry him to organising an operation in a split second.
He’d barely nodded when she continued.
‘We’ll need the best theatre nurses you can find—Kam will help you there—and most importantly the homograft and possibly a couple of tiny dacron ones as well in case the homograft doesn’t fit. We need to move now, although we won’t need the theatre team for a couple of hours. I want to be sure everything is in place before we start, and I’ll want to talk to all the people who’ll be in Theatre so they know what I’m doing.’
She didn’t want to marry him? His mind swerved between that and business.
‘I’ll phone Kam then go down with you to the ICU to get the rest happening. He knows the surgical staff and can phone ahead with orders for what and who we’ll need. We’ll get your team if we have to fly in staff from a neighbouring country.’
Satisfied that things were moving, and with her mind now fully focussed on what lay ahead, Mel went through to the bathroom to wash before heading for the ICU.
‘If he is not thriving, is it safe to operate?’
Arun was putting down the phone and asked the question as she returned to the bedroom, her hands raised as she plaited her unruly hair into a thick pigtail.
‘That’s the one question I’d rather you hadn’t asked,’ Mel said, snapping a band on her hair and turning to him with a sigh. ‘I suppose it will be up to Tia. I do wish her husband was here because she shouldn’t have to decide this on her own.’
‘He is here, or he should be. He was due to fly in this morning. Kam arranged for him to come home as soon as we knew the baby had problems, but getting flights and connections…’
He paused, then added, ‘Why are you so concerned? Why do two people need to make the decision?’
Mel sighed again.
‘You must know why,’ she said, cross that he was forcing her to say it. ‘If the baby’s health is deteriorating, it means his heart isn’t coping and so we have two choices. We do nothing more than keep him comfortable until he dies, or we operate, knowing he’s very young and losing the battle already, so he might die anyway.’
Arun took her hand and squeezed her fingers.
‘At least that way he gets a chance,’ he reminded her, but Mel refused to be comforted.
‘Not that great a one,’ she said. ‘Think of all the variables. Will he survive a switch to a heart-lung machine? Will he even survive the an-aesthetic? Will his heart muscle be patent enough for me to stitch it after the operation, will whatever homografts you have in storage be the right size? We need more than a chance, we need a miracle.’
‘Miracles happen,’ Arun reminded her, pulling her closer to him and holding her against his body. She hadn’t mentioned no physical contact, just that she wouldn’t marry him. ‘Jenny and Kam found each other and fell in love in a rebel stronghold, you’re having the baby our country needs as an heir. I know it seems we’ve had our share of miracles, but shouldn’t they come in threes?’
‘I’d like to think so,’ Mel said, but it was a grudging admission, mainly because being held in Arun’s arms reminded her of all she was turning away from with her decision to not marry him. She pushed away.
‘We’ve got to go,’ she said, and left the room.
The little boy was struggling, his lips much bluer than they had been when Mel had seen him only hours earlier, his oxygen stats on their own low enough to be a concern. Mel examined him, an anxious Sarah hovering by her side.
‘It happened so suddenly I thought at first the monitors must be playing up,’ the anxious young doctor said.
‘It can happen quickly,’ Mel assured her. ‘Don’t blame yourself. Where’s Tia?’
‘In the visitors’ room across the hall,’ Sarah responded, nodding towards the small room families used as a refuge. ‘Dr al’Kawali went in there to talk to her.’
Mel finished her examination, then made her way to the next room.
Tia sat on the couch with a young man in jeans and a polo shirt, looking so anxious he had to be the baby’s father. Arun squatted in front of the pair, his hands holding a hand of each of them.
‘I have told them the two options,’ he said to Mel as she entered the room.
Mel felt relief, then wondered how much time the young parents would need to discuss these unhappy options.
‘We want to go ahead with the operation,’ Tia said, looking directly at Mel. ‘That was what I had already decided, and when my husband was asked, he said the same. The baby deserves to have the chance of life and without the operation that is taken from him.’
‘You understand he still might not live,’ Mel pressed, because she had to hear for herself that they had considered that.
Both heads nodded, and the young man reached out to clasp his wife’s hands.
‘OK, we go ahead,’ Mel told them. ‘I’m going to take him now to Radiology for some scans while Arun collects the team of people we’ll need for the operation and Kam organises the theatre and makes sure we have everything we need on hand.’
She looked at the two young people, so patently lost in their concern and grief, and stretched out her hands to them.
‘It’s going to be a long, hard wait for you two. Why don’t you go somewhere private—maybe out to the compound—so you can comfort each other and perhaps even think of other things while the operation is going on?’
Tia looked at Mel and managed a weak smile.
‘Private at the compound? I don’t think so. No, we’ll stay here in my room. We’ll sit and talk and pray and know you’re doing the best you can for our baby.’
She took her husband’s hand and led him away. Arun turned to watch them go, a small, sad smile on his face.
‘So my baby sister has grown up,’ he said quietly, and Mel felt the weight of what she was about to undertake press down on her. So many people wanting this baby to live—so many people’s happiness dependent on this operation…
She straightened up and took a deep breath. She could do this!
She went back to the baby’s room
‘Come on, kid,’ she said to the little mite in the crib. ‘Let’s get you sorted.’
To Arun the most amazing thing was the noise in the room. He’d imagined operating theatres as places of deep quietness, but here, as he stood beside Kam, second assistant and general dogsbody, it was the noise that struck him.
He tried to think back to his student days when he’d done stints in Theatre, but although he remembered music playing in the background, and surgeons telling stupid jokes as they worked, he didn’t remember the buzz of the Bovie as small blood vessels were sealed off or the blip of the heart monitor and the puffing noise of the ventilator.
He looked at the tiny baby on the table, his eyes taped closed, a ventilation tube in his trachea, a tube feeding into the radial artery at his wrist, a central line in the jugular vein in his neck and a fourth line, just in case, in his foot. The anaesthetist was organising the necessary mix of gases into the stressed lungs and the drugs that were needed in the blood. Heparin, Arun knew, to thin the blood so it wouldn’t clog up the heart-lung machine when the little one went on bypass. The anaesthetist had everything on hand, blood, saline, drugs, ready for any emergency. The perfusionist was taking blood all the time, checking the balance, while the monitor showed everyone in the room the baby’s blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen saturation and temperature.
Melissa had used shears to cut the small chest open, and while he held it open with retractors Kam had fitted brackets to the sides of the sternum and turned a handle—more noise—to give Melissa a good opening to work in.
The heart-lung machine was ready, the baby’s temperature was being reduced and they were approaching the moment when he would be connected to the machine.
‘I’m cutting these small pieces of pericardium to use as a patch for the ventricular septum,’ Melissa explained, using a stitch to secure two small squares of the pericardial tissue to an intercostal muscle. ‘By stitching it there I’m not frantically looking for it when I need it. Now I use a stitch to keep the pericardium out of the way so we can get to the heart cleanly.’
Arun knew she was explaining this for the benefit of Sarah, who was in Theatre with them, but he couldn’t help feeling proud that she was making the effort to explain while ninety-nine per cent of her mind must be concentrated on the difficult task.
‘Now we put a cannula into the aorta, and it will send blood from the machine around the body while this cannula goes into the right atrium and we’ll be sucking blood through it into the machine. Heart rate?’
‘One-thirty,’ someone answered.
‘Temp?’
‘Thirty.’
Arun shivered, thinking how cold the deep hypothermia must be, but it slowed the heart rate and made it easier to transfer the baby to the machine.
‘Now we need to check the pulmonary artery. We come back from where it divides to right and left arteries to where it merges with the aorta—that’s where we cut and put in the grafted artery. We’ll fix that to the right ventricle…’
He was following it all, mainly because Melissa had called them all together earlier and drawn diagrams on a whiteboard, taking everyone who’d be involved through every stage of the operation. But how could she be so calm, operating on a baby—stitching together blood vessels so small one misplaced stitch could close them completely?
Yet she worked with a concentration that excluded all outside thoughts, quietly telling Kam what needed to be done, giving orders to the theatre staff to tie this, Bovie that, suction here, check the screen. And as he watched, and helped, he felt a sense of pride. This was his woman, doing this—his woman producing the miracle the baby needed.
Or was she?
She’d said she wouldn’t marry him.
Why now?
What had happened to make her change her mind?
And why was it so hard to accept?
Painfully hard.
‘OK, now we go. Pavulon to paralyse the heart muscle then we’re going onto the machine—you all know what you need to do.’
Arun forgot everything but the baby on the table, and even the theatre noises seemed to abate as Melissa cut and stitched, fixing up the malformation that something as simple as a virus in Tia’s early pregnancy might have caused.
He stood beside Kam, suctioning, passing instruments, tossing debris away, totally concentrated on the baby now, barely breathing, although he didn’t realise that until Melissa said, ‘OK, coming off bypass now,’ and he had to take a gulp of air.
‘This is the moment,’ Kam whispered to him as Melissa reconnected the baby’s vein and artery then massaged the heart to get it beating. Drugs were flowing into him to stimulate the heart, and those gathered in the room held their collective breaths and waited for the heart muscles to contract and lift the floppy, patched and stitched heart back to a working organ.
‘There,’ someone said, and they were right. The little heart was beating valiantly. Arun looked across at Melissa and behind the goggles she was wearing he saw the brightness of tears in her eyes. She must have sensed his regard for she looked at him and shook her head.
‘That’s the easy part,’ she said lightly, although he could hear exhaustion in her voice and knew how much it had taken out of her. ‘Now we have to put him back together again, then get him through the after-effects of the terrible trauma we’ve caused him. First off, Kam, could you check for bleeding on any of the joins we’ve made? And I want oxygen stats, BP and heart rate. No point sewing him up if there’s still a problem somewhere.’
The results must have pleased her for within minutes she bent her head again, working swiftly and surely, putting, as she’d said, the little baby back together again.
‘I’ll stay with the anaesthetist and the baby,’ Kam said to Arun when Melissa finally stepped back from the operating table. ‘You take Melissa back to the apartment. She’ll be exhausted—it’s mental strain as much as the physical effort of concentration. Tell her I’ll call if there’s any change.’
Arun moved away—the theatre was noisy again, instruments clanging together, people talking, most in awed tones, as they cleared away the debris of a long operation. Melissa was at the far side of the room, stripping off her gloves, the fourth set she’d worn during the operation.
‘Come, there’s a room here where you can change in privacy, then I’ll take you home and get some food and drink into you—you must be totally depleted.’
She had slid the goggles she’d been wearing to the top of her head, and now pulled them off.
‘Home?’ she echoed, a tired smile on her face.
‘The apartment, you know I meant that—no talk, hidden agenda, not after what you’ve just done for us.’
She shook her head.
‘Not for you, but for the baby. Not even for Tia and her husband, just for the baby.’
She pressed her hand against her stomach, and he wondered how often she worried whether the child she carried was OK. Working with babies with congenital conditions, she couldn’t help but wonder…
‘So, where’s this private space?’
Her apron and outer gown had joined her mask, gloves and goggles in the bin and she stood there in the pale green scrub suit, looking so spent he wanted to lift her into his arms and carry her back to the apartment.
‘This way. Your clothes are there, but if you don’t want to change, you can come up to the apartment as you are and shower there.’
‘I’ll do that—just get out of the boots and into my sandals. Thanks.’
But as she was about to leave the theatre complex she turned back.
‘The baby?’
‘Kam will stay with him. He’ll contact you immediately if there’s any change or any cause for concern.’
She nodded and Arun realised just how tired she must be to not argue that he too should stay, or even she herself.
Mel let him take charge, leading her out of the warren of rooms around the theatre then up to the apartment, where with gentle hands he stripped off her clothes and helped her step into the shower, already running at a beautiful temperature, the water jets spraying from the wall just what she needed for her aching back.
Eventually, certain her skin had shrivelled to crêpe, she left the shower, to find Arun waiting once again, wrapping her in a big warm towel, then leading her to the bedroom where he sat her on the bed while he towel-dried her hair.
‘Now, you’re to eat—doctor’s orders,’ he said, and Mel looked around, saw daylight at the window and frowned.
‘It’s morning?’
Arun nodded.
‘We went down to the baby’s room at six last night and you’ve been working ever since,’ he said. ‘You were in Theatre five hours.’
‘It didn’t seem that long,’ Mel managed, but as she spoke she felt a wave of tiredness bear down on her, all but engulfing her.
She sipped some tea and ate two pancakes, then shook her head.
‘No more. I really, really need to sleep.’
But as she set her cup down she thought of the baby and looked up at Arun.
‘You will wake me up if I’m needed?’ she demanded. ‘No nonsense about letting the poor little woman sleep?’
He smiled and in spite of her tiredness and her determination to stop loving him, her heart beat faster.
‘Poor little woman indeed,’ he teased. ‘Woe betide any man who dared to use that description for you.’
Then he bent and kissed her on the lips.
‘I will wake you up,’ he promised. ‘You can be sure of that, so sleep at peace, my beautiful one.’
She lay back on the pillows and he drew the sheet over her naked body, then touched her gently on the cheek and left the room.
‘My beautiful one?’ Mel murmured to herself, savouring the words, then she remembered back before the operation.
Remembered telling him they wouldn’t marry…
Remembered he hadn’t asked why…
She turned on her side, tucked her hands beneath her head and sighed, though for what she wasn’t quite sure, and she was too darned tired to think about it now.
‘His name is Shiar.’
Tia rose from beside the crib in the ICU room to greet Mel with this news as Mel, refreshed, fed and anxious to see her patient, entered at about midday.
‘Oh, I’m so glad you’ve named him,’ Mel told her, giving the young woman a quick hug.
‘And you didn’t meet Sharif, my husband—not properly,’ Tia added, introducing Mel formally to the young man who bowed over her hand and rushed into a welter of thanks for all she had done for the baby.
‘It is nothing,’ she said, resting her hand on the sleeve of the white gown he now wore. ‘And the little one, Shiar, is still far from well. We must wait and see.’
Both parents nodded, but Mel could read the hope in their shining eyes and prayed it would not be misplaced.
She checked Shiar, who was to be kept sedated for at least twenty-four hours, then said goodbye to the pair, but once outside the baby’s room she leaned against the wall, uncertain what to do next.
It was to be her wedding day so the women who were still trickling into the A and E department with sick children had been told she wouldn’t be available, although, having assured Arun she intended to keep working, she did have appointments lined up for the following day.
But today?
Perhaps she could ride. She’d go out to the compound—
‘I was looking for you.’
Arun had pushed through the doors into the ICU without her noticing.
‘Come!’ he said, and took her hand. ‘I want to take you somewhere.’
She tried to tug her hand away but his grip was too strong.
‘I’m not going with you to get married,’ she told him, and he smiled the kind of knowing smile that always made her heart flutter. Only today it made her angry as well and she tugged again at her trapped hand.
‘Did I mention marriage?’ he teased, releasing her hand but slipping his arm through hers so she would have to make a scene to escape his touch.
They reached the bank of lifts and to Mel’s surprise he pushed the ‘up’button rather than the ‘down’ one.
‘We’re going up? Are your rooms up? No, they’re on the same floor as the ICU, aren’t they? Why are we going up?’
‘You’ll see,’ he said.
And Mel did, for the doors of the lift opened onto a flat roof and there, not forty feet in front of them, was a small green helicopter.
‘I thought I’d show you my kingdom,’ he said, leading her towards it. ‘So you can see what you’re missing out on by not marrying me.’
Mel frowned at him. Surely he couldn’t think she would have been marrying him for riches or property or to be the sheikhess—no, that was wrong, Jenny was a sheikha. But her annoyance was more than outweighed by excitement that she would be seeing more of this beautiful desert country. With Arun…
He helped her into the helicopter then walked around and climbed in on the other side, taking the controls himself.
‘There are parts of the land where you can’t fly helicopters—out near the mountains where Jenny was, for instance—but most of the country is accessible this way and flying takes many hours off a journey.’
His long slender fingers worked easily at the controls and the little machine lifted into the air and took off, circling the city first, Arun pointing out the port where ships from all over the world docked to take on oil, and the swathes of green contrasting with the red-brown desert sands—golf courses and resorts—playgrounds of the wealthy. Then the city disappeared and beneath them lay the desert, dotted here and there with encampments of black tents or clusters of palms that indicated oases.
‘This is the long wadi—there are oases all along it,’ Arun explained as they banked over a small village, stone and earth brick houses clustered by the green patch of vegetation. ‘And here we are—see below—the winter palace.’
The winter palace?
Where Hussa was buried?
Mel felt her chest grow tight and her breathing become shallow and irregular. Why was he bringing her here?
She turned towards him, wanting to ask, not about Hussa but about the reason for the visit, but he was concentrating on putting the little aircraft down on the ground, onto a white circle painted on a concrete pad just outside the walls of the rambling, red stone building he’d called the winter palace.