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the intrusion…’ Aarif was sobbing.
Karim swore violently in Arabic.
He was cursing and furious. How dared a servant intrude? If his father were sick his aide would ring. Nothing, nothing should disturb him in his chamber.
‘Please forgive me, Your Highness,’ Aarif pleaded. ‘But Bedra is dying, bleeding….’
IN A trice he dressed and sped through the tent. Felicity took a few seconds longer, but almost as soon she raced into the servants’ quarters.
Bedra lay collapsed, her huge brown eyes terrified. Karim deftly examined her belly, and it was only then that Felicity realised Bedra was pregnant. The abaya had concealed it. Karim was speaking in Arabic, then quickly translating for Felicity.
‘She is about six months pregnant.’ There was blood everywhere as Karim delivered his stark diagnosis. ‘Abruptio placentae.’
In a hospital Felicity would have known what to do. There Bedra and her baby would both have a chance. But here in the desert, with help miles away, it was clear from the extent of bleeding they would rapidly lose them both.
Felicity rolled the woman on to her side, to help with oxygen delivery to the baby, and Karim barked rapid orders to a tearful Aarif, who quickly ran off.
‘Should we drive her?’
‘There is not enough time to get her to the hospital.’ In one deft movement Karim scooped up the woman, carried her through long white corridors of tent. Felicity followed, confused as to where they were going. The desert was dark and cool as they stepped outside, and she was even more confused—because Karim had said it was too late to transport Bedra anywhere and yet one of the large four-wheel drives was speeding towards them. It stopped. Aarif jumped down and opened up the rear, and Karim ran towards the vehicle with Bedra in his arms. As Karim lay Bedra down in the rear of the vehicle Aarif was already pulling at leads, while Felicity stood, her nightdress billowing in the wind, unsure as to what exactly was going on.
Karim snapped her out of it. ‘Felicity—come on.’ He was strapping on a tourniquet as Aarif opened large labelled boxes, pulled out drapes. Here, right here in the desert, a mini operating theatre was being created. ‘We must operate now.’
He was a surgeon, yes—but to operate, to perform a Caesarean section here…
‘I am a surgeon,’ Karim said, his eyes locked with hers. ‘I know what I am doing.’
Aarif, on a strange kind of auto-pilot, where he was detached from his wife and baby in the hope of saving them, was slapping at Bedra’s arm, trying to find a vein. It was then that Felicity stepped in. How and why didn’t matter for now. They were in the middle of the desert in a four-wheel drive that looked like a mini-ambulance—and Karim about to perform a Caesarean section!
Karim was drenching Bedra’s belly in iodine; Aarif was pulling up drugs. ‘I cannot give them,’ Aarif said, handing her the vials, and Felicity looked at them. A strong analgesic, and a relaxant that would cause temporary amnesia. It wasn’t a general anaesthetic, but in such a strong dose it would compromise her airway.
‘Give them,’ Karim said, setting up his instruments. ‘Aarif will watch her airway. Felicity, get ready to receive the baby.’
His authoritative tone was welcome now. On Karim’s instruction she shot the drugs into Bedra, but she was acting on her own instincts now, opening up a large resuscitation box and selecting the smallest equipment. Aarif took the ambu bag and bagged his wife, delivering vital oxygen as if he had done it a hundred times before.
The surgery was urgent and basic. It had to be. It was a classic Caesarean, a vertical incision, performed for haste. In seconds Felicity was being handed a scrap of life, and Karim delivered the placenta that had been ripping away from the uterine wall. It was the only way to stop Bedra from haemorrhaging to death.
Felicity worked on. The baby was flaccid, but responding to her resuscitation. She tried not to think, just to do.
Still her heart went out to Aarif. He looked over a few times, his eyes blank. This quiet man was guarding his emotions because it wasn’t safe to have them yet.
Karim was calling to Aarif to give him more drugs, then packing the abdomen to prepare Bedra for transfer. Just as Felicity was about to ask Karim how she should summon help she heard the sound of a chopper landing.
Here in the desert Karim had saved not one life but two, against impossible odds, and now help had arrived.
He was shouting rapid orders to a doctor Felicity recognised from the hospital. It was Dr Habib running from the chopper to the four-wheel drive, but thankfully he didn’t glance at Felicity, just headed straight for the mother. A paediatrician came to take over the infant’s care. Aarif must have seen the fear in her eyes, and Felicity wondered whether he understood or misinterpreted it as shame at being uncovered. But he threw her a drape and hastily Felicity put it over her head.
Just not in time.
She saw the absolute shock on Helen’s face. There was a stunned, questioning second, where both women swallowed the response on their lips. Then Felicity gave Helen a quick, urgent shake of her head, to indicate that this must not be acknowledged, and they did what they had to—got on with the job of preparing the little babe for urgent transfer. He had pinked up and was crying, but his cry was weak. To Felicity he looked around twenty-six weeks’ gestation, and the paediatrician agreed.
Karim only relaxed when Bedra was under full anaesthetic and blood was dripping into her veins. Resting back on his heels, he stared over at the incubator, stared at the little life he had saved, and remembered his nephew, Kaliq, whom his brother had refused to hold. He remembered too Jamal’s wailing, his father’s tears—the whole country had been in mourning for the tiny little baby that had died in his hands.
And then he stared over at Felicity, chatting with the paediatrician, her eyes watchful on the child, and he knew that it would kill her to give her child away.
He straightened his back, refusing to let sentiment in. Because…Well, she might have to.
Only when they had loaded the mother and infant into the rescue chopper, the blades whirring as it prepared for takeoff, did Felicity manage to utter a few vital words to Helen—her only link with the real world, the one woman who could understand her predicament.
‘I’ll make contact.’
IT SHOULD have brought them closer, what they had shared, what they had achieved. Karim had been about to make love to her before the interruption, of that Felicity was absolutely sure, but as for the first time in his life Karim prepared his own bath his silence spoke volumes. He stonewalled her questions, pretending to be asleep by the time she’d bathed and returned to his bed.
‘Karim?’ She spoke to tense broad shoulders. ‘You did so well out there…’
Yes, pretending to be asleep. Because in response to her question he proceeded to snore. And for all his ruthless ways, there were some redeeming features—and one of them was that Karim didn’t actually snore.
It was worse than being told to be silent.
She persisted in her own way. She refused a husband who was less than he could be, refused to live with his silence. So at various times, as the days dragged on and they were truly alone in the desert, she chatted happily, though mostly to herself.
‘I’ve cut myself,’ she said—and she had, lounging on cushions, reading a magazine. She had a tiny paper cut that really didn’t need anything