No matter how awful we felt, we still had to work. We dragged ourselves to the Cairo International Hospital the next morning as Tucker mainlined the last of his coffee.
I stepped into the hospital lobby, but two rectangular, fluorescent white lights, mounted on stands, dazzled my retinas. What the heck?
A very polished woman in a white pantsuit stood before me and Tucker.
It wasn't Isabelle. I'd never met her in person, but I remembered Isabelle Antoun's website photo, her glasses and apple cheeks, attractive in a middle-aged, well-fed corporate way. This woman emitted hard-edged glamour, with full makeup, extensions and a blowout.
With a cameraman and professional lights already set up.
The television reporter. Karima Mansour.
Her name was emblazoned on her equipment. Even the cameraman and lighting guy had KARIMA MANSOUR lettered in white over the chests of their black T-shirts, like she was their sports team.
Or their new goddess.
I blinked at her, her cameraman and lighting guy, and then Tucker took my arm to lead me around them. The last thing we needed from this week was a permanent record of our pain on film.
Karima sashayed to the left to block us. She applauded by clapping her left hand against her thigh before she spoke into the microphone in her right hand. "Bravo, Dr. Sze."
I hadn't spoken to her since she'd reported on the IED. Plus I hadn't done anything applause-worthy. Karima Mansour must be hallucinating. I continued to detour around her, heading for the X-ray machines.
"And Dr. John Tucker. So brave. So caring. Our audience is very impressed indeed."
Tucker touched my sleeve, silently asking me to be calm.
I took a deep breath and did a 180 to confront her, trying not to blink under the bright lights that followed me. "What are you talking about? What audience?"
"Well, you've provided quite the rollercoaster for our viewers, haven't you? You literally started off with a bomb. Then you broke our hearts with a child in peril from a possible scorpion sting. You raised our ire over the looting of national treasures. Now you've introduced us to a man willing to sacrifice his health, or even his life, for his son. What will you think of next?"
"No comment." With a quick step, Tucker shielded me from the camera's view and shadowed me from the light.
"But you have so many comments, Dr. Tucker. Really. You have quite the mouth on you." Karima Mansour batted her eyelashes, holding her microphone up to his mouth. She licked her own lips in such a sexual way, it couldn't have been clearer if she'd pretended to fellate the microphone.
Tucker bared his teeth at her.
"No," I told his back. We'd avoided major touching in public. "No one cares if we hold hands."
"You do know how to dance too," she crooned.
"Remember us waltzing in front of that cat? One-two-three, one-two-three," I whispered, but Karima Mansour's grin made my hair prickle.
What if the Egyptian Classic Continental had let Karima and her team inside our suite? They could easily drop a key card into her talons. Especially for the right price in a capitalistic society.
What if she'd spied on us from the peephole or, worse yet, from cameras planted inside our own gorgeous bedroom?
"You've made it popular again to walk like us Egyptians, don't you think?" She flexed her elbows and wrists and pointed her hands in opposite directions before she turned around to give a slight but unmistakable double-twerk under that white pantsuit.
I gasped.
Tucker gagged. I read the tension in his shoulders and the flush in the back of his neck. Meanwhile, the cameraman filmed him in technicolor, full-frontal detail.
My turn to touch Tucker's arm to calm him before I darted in front of him, screening him from view as best I could. "You're bluffing," I told Karima.
This was a conservative Muslim country. No one would spy on a couple of foreigners in the bedroom.
Well, maybe not no one. I could think of a perv or two.
"And if you're not bluffing, we'll sue that white pantsuit off of you," I said.
Karima Mansour unleashed her whiter-than-alabaster teeth on me. "Thank you, Dr. Sze. I'm glad you approve of my outfit. Speaking of legal cases, thank you for pointing us toward the scandal of two police officers breaking a doctor's nose. His family is so grateful."
I tried not to wince. I doubted that shy doctor relished the spotlight any more than I did. But I couldn't let her distract me. "Why did you spy on us?" I asked, straight out.
"Will you start your on-camera interview now?" She signalled her cameraman to approach. "Would you consider a little makeup? Eyebrows, mascara, eyeliner, blush, lipstick, a little evening-out of your complexion, and product in your hair. You're lucky you hardly need anything, darling."
I ignored the jab. "Darling" reminded me of Isabelle. "Why did you violate our privacy and spy on us without our permission?"
She batted her fake eyelashes at me. "I wouldn't call it spying. I'd call it fulfilling the purpose of your journey."
"You brought us here? Is your media outlet associated with Sarquet Industries? Or does Sarquet have a media arm?"
Karima Mansour touched her hair extensions to make sure they'd stayed in place. "Darling, please. You should see who owns Sarquet Industries."
"I looked it up. It's a privately-owned corporation."
She laughed. "And who owns the corporation?"
I glanced at Tucker, who shook his head, looking annoyed.
"It's not online," I said finally.
"Exactly. Sarquet's owner values privacy. However, I'll tell you this one for free, Dr. Sze." She beamed at her own rhyme. "Your escapades are followed all over the world. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat, WeChat, Weibo, and it balloons from there. One of your fans in Saudi Arabia made this trip possible."
You've got hits as far away as the Middle East, my brother Kevin had said.
All this time, I was trying to figure out Isabelle and Sarquet Industries, but someone else lay behind the curtain controlling both them and Karima Mansour. Some stalker in Saudi Arabia.
"Sarudi," I said to myself, remembering the ER chief's instant animosity. The arachnid doctor's attitude. The male doctor's contempt when I'd introduced myself to Dr. Kyrollos. The way the staff had brushed me aside during the posterior nosebleed. Even Samira's stare in the cafeteria.
Somehow, they'd known who'd sponsored my trip, or at least that he came from Saudi Arabia. To them, I wasn't a real doctor, but some rich man's toy, while they hunkered down in a war zone.
Me: I thought you wanted us to start in the emergency room right away.
Isabelle: Darling. Why would you think that?
They didn't treat Tucker with the same animosity, but I was the primary plaything. And female doctors are always first in the firing line of public opinion.
"You can tell him this for free." Tucker crossed his arms and angled himself in front of me, forcing Karima and the camera guy to back up.
Some guys wouldn't survive the ego death blow she'd just delivered, that they'd been flown in as a sidekick and filmed twerking in the bedroom. Not Tucker. I felt a burst of love for him as he said, "Tell him we'll sue him for more than he's worth and shred his privacy after he pulverized ours."
Karima pretended to applaud once more before she held the microphone up to his face. "Dr. Tucker, we sincerely admire your passion and value your medical expertise. Both of you have inspired our viewers to no end."
"Really?" I snapped. "Because it sounds like your buddy flew us over like a pair of stuffed animals for Show and Tell. Then he filmed us in our bedroom. How can you live with violating our fundamental human rights to make your own twisted reality TV show. We're not your zoo animals!"
My mind spun back to our first afternoon in Egypt and the IED. We'd never made it to the Giza Zoo, or Reza's grandmother, the Pyramids, or even ta'ameya. Just bloodshed and tears and a child suffocating in the sand.
"Dr. Sze and Dr. Tucker, please don't misunderstand me. We're eternally grateful for all that you've already accomplished. We pray for your well-being. In fact, we brought you a gift as a token of our esteem." She held out a bracelet-sized white box, tied with a glittery gold ribbon.
I refused to take it, staying behind Tucker's shoulder. "I'm sure it's illegal to spy on us. Especially in a private space, like our hotel room, or this hospital right now. Your owner might have money, but the law trumps money."
"Please. Dr. Sze. Take your gift. You've earned it." She shook the box at me.
I whirled on the cameraman and stared straight into the lens. "I don't want your 'gift.' Was everything a Big Brother setup? Did you—or whoever funded this—bring us to Egypt and set off an IED?"
"Of course not!" She blinked at me like an offended doll. "He wouldn't want to risk hurting you after all the trouble to bring you here."
"He did hurt me. He's not allowed to film me. He's not allowed to televise this. I never gave permission!"
"Oh, but you did." She stared down her aquiline nose at me.
"What are you talking about? I never did. Even at the hospital, when they gave me a bunch of forms about our swipe cards on the first day, I read every word."
She clicked her tongue. "It wasn't at the hospital, Dr. Sze."
"At the hotel, too."
She held out the gold-ribboned box. "Take your present."
"I don't want any presents from the stalker. What's his name?"
She stared at me. "That's not for me to say. He'll reveal his identity when he's ready to do so."
I turned back to the camera. "No problem. I'll figure out his ID when I sue him for taping me illegally."
"Tchh." When I turned back, Karima Mansour gazed down at me from her stiletto height with a pitying expression. "I doubt you have sufficient legal resources, Dr. Sze, but I'll make you a deal. You open this present, and I'll explain to you why he hasn't taped you without your consent."
"That 'present' could be another IED."
She burst into full-throated laughter and cast a sidelong view at the cameraman as he filmed every word. "First of all, I assure you that I wouldn't carry an IED with such carelessness. Secondly, I can open it for you, but we do want to capture the expression on your face."
That didn't sound promising. "Like I said, I could sue all of you."
"Dr. Sze, you have no mon-ey." She sing-songed the phrase, rhyming again. "Are you really digging yourself further into debt with a lawyer when I've promised you the answer within minutes? Your man has exquisite taste."
"Tucker does have excellent taste," I replied.
"Like Ryan Wu?"
I surged toward her before I reigned my body in.
Tucker didn't move or say a word, but his hands squeezed into fists.
Glee sparkled in her eyes as she slipped off the gold ribbon and popped open the white box's lid.
Tucker backed me away from her, protecting me with his body.
"Tucker, no!"
"You said it yourself, Hope. You don't know what's in there." He's bigger than me, and he threw out his arms when I tried to dart past him, so I peeped around his shoulder—
—and stared at a gleaming gold broach, at least an inch wide, in the shape of a fly, nested on what looked like white satin.
I hate insects. Mosquitoes dive bomb me and leave welts the size of my palm. Flies consider my food a second harvest. Ryan had cockroaches in his apartment in Ottawa when he was a poor student.
Who the fuck would want a fly as a present?
"Do you like it?" she purred.
I did my best to school my features. My Saudi stalker must have lost ten more screws if he thought this would make me like him.
"It's symbolic," she explained. "The Egyptian Pharaohs presented their best warriors with gold flies after a particularly hard-fought battle. Flies are a symbol of persistence, which is a trait he admires very much in you. Look at the detail, all rendered in 24 karat gold." Karima pointed at its outstretched wings and the individual hairs on its torso. Its spiky eyelashes reminded me of her own. "He thought you won this battle. Will you wear this for the camera?"
"No." The word jerked out of my mouth. I associated pure gold with my grandmother, who gave me a jade pendant on a 24K gold chain when I graduated from medical school.
Tucker stared at the fly, expressionless, as he probably calculated how much it was worth.
Hadi's family could use that money for their hospital debts. I could give this fly to them.
It would be so easy to reach for that box. To make myself say thank you.
Revulsion held me back, along with five words lodged in my throat.
I am not for sale.
She sighed. "Such a pity. He thought you might laugh, especially once you learned the history of it."
"He" didn't know me at all. She'd also confirmed the stalker's gender. Both things brought me tiny pieces of comfort. "You haven't answered my question about filming me illegally."
Karima Mansour laughed. "Oh, goodness. You're like an elephant. You don't forget. Yes, we have permission to film you. You gave it yourself."
"When and how?"
"At the airport. Here, I have a copy on my phone, just in case." One pink talon flicked, and she showed me a photo of a purple and white contract written in Arabic.
The contract we signed at the airport. For our cell phone SIM card. When I was jet-lagged and sprayed by toilet water and desperate to get out, I'd signed a contract I couldn't understand.
"I'm happy to send you a copy. You'll find that pages 2 and 3 are quite explicit with regard to media rights."
"Show me," said Tucker, and she pointed out the key paragraphs, switching between Arabic to English with almost palpable condescension.
"I'm sorry, Hope." Tucker looked pale and pinched.
"Not your fault. I'm the one who signed it." Tucker had told me it looked okay, but I should have realized his written Arabic was almost nil.
I should have asked a passer-by for help. I should have tried Google translate, even though I was conserving my phone battery to contact Sarquet Industries. I should have …
"If it's any consolation, your platform has soared since our coverage. Before, you were only known in Canada and a few other places. Now you're known worldwide. I have nine million followers on my Facebook page alone. You see this post?"
I closed my eyes.
Someone like Karima Mansour would never understand that I'd come to Egypt to escape from notoriety, not to add to it.
My mind flicked through my immediate priorities.
1. Get to work.
2. Make sure Tucker doesn't flip.
3. Get rid of the stalker.
I couldn't stop them from filming me, so I struck back the only way I could. "Keep the fly. Tell him I've withdrawn my permission for him to film us in public or in private. Never contact me. Don't follow me. You are dead to me." I felt a twinge at having to pay for this trip, but firmly reminded myself, I am not for sale.
"That goes double for me," said Tucker.
I gestured at the small, murmuring crowd that had gathered around us. Some of them captured my words on video too. "These are my witnesses, as well as you and your own cameraman. Good-bye forever."
Karima Mansour dashed after me and Tucker as we neared the X-ray machine, waving the fly box. "Dr. Sze, it's 24 karat gold!"
"I don't need any more vermin," I said. "The deal was that I'd open it, not that I'd keep it."
She fluttered her eyelashes. "He'll be so disappointed. Still, I have to thank you, Dr. Sze, for our most recent news piece."
Tucker couldn't resist. "What was that?"
"The drowning of Abdallah Hussein."