The Sheikh and the Surrogate Mum (7 page)

She watched as the plane dropped lower, seeing now the red harshness of the mountain range, the softer red of desert sands spreading away from it, splotches of green here and there—oases, she imagined—and then a city that from the air looked pink.

Could it really be?

The wheels touched down and the engines roared as it slowed. They were here—in Al Tinine. In Najme, in fact, for Khalifa had told her they’d fly straight to the city where his new hospital awaited her.

Disembarking from the plane was a relief, Liz told herself, yet as she walked down the steps to where a big black four-wheel-drive vehicle waited, she felt a sense of regret.

She and Khalifa hadn’t actually become friends, but they’d laughed together once or twice and she’d felt a connection to him—as if some indefinable bond was holding them together.

As wild a thought as the stories of Scheherazade, she told herself, looking around the flat expanse of the airfield and smiling as she noticed not high-rise buildings or even factories on its outer limits but hills of sand.

The Endless Desert—wasn’t that what Khalifa had called it?

And suddenly she was excited, looking forward to every minute of this experience, looking forward to being positive and cheerful and, yes, successful in this new venture. She even gave the baby a pat, although getting too attached was still definitely not on—not when Oliver was likely to come out of his coma and want his child.

She’d be its aunt—Oliver couldn’t take that away from her—but whether, with Bill gone from his life, Oliver would let her get close to the child, she had no idea.

Neither could she think about it right now for Khalifa, who had exited the plane before her, was talking to the driver of the big vehicle, talking anxiously, then taking out his mobile and pacing back and forth as he spoke to someone.

He glanced towards her, shook his head, then ended the conversation.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, moving to stand in front of her, ‘but there’s an emergency at the hospital and I’m needed there. I would have liked to take you to the palace and see you settled in, but I will have to go directly to the hospital and then my driver will take you from there.’

Palace?

Maybe she’d misheard.

Setting that aside, she hurried to assure him she’d be all right.

‘What kind of emergency?’ she asked as she slid into the car.

Khalifa was in the front seat and turned to look at her.

‘A pregnant woman with a meningioma in the occipital region of her brain. It must be a fast-growing one as the first sign she had was the loss of vision in one eye. Given her condition, we can’t use drugs, or radiotherapy so—’

‘How pregnant is she?’ Liz’s brain switched into work mode.

‘Thirty-four weeks.’

‘And the surgeon needs to get into the back of her skull.’ Liz was thinking out loud. ‘At thirty-four weeks you could take the baby—give the mother some betamethasone to accelerate foetal lung maturation, then do a Caesar. We can provide care for a thirty-four-week neonate.’

‘We?’ Khalifa queried, a slight smile lurking on his lips.

‘I’ll be there. I’ll come in with you. What’s the point of bringing me all this way to loll around in some palace when a baby might need my help?’

‘But you can’t—You’ve just got off a plane.’

‘And if you say it’s because I’m pregnant I’ll probably hit you.’ Liz interrupted his faltering arguments. ‘This is what I do, Khalifa. And if you’re removing a tumour from this poor woman’s brain, the last thing she’ll need is to wake up and find you’ve sent her baby off to some hospital miles and miles away.’

Liz hoped she’d made her point, but when Khalifa did respond it was with a question of his own.

‘You understand I’ll be doing the operation? You know I’m a surgeon with special interest in tumours of the brain?’

Liz grinned at him.

‘Do you really think any woman would go off with a man to a strange country without at least checking him out on the internet?’

He returned her smile.

‘You’d be surprised,’ he said, ‘at how many women would do just that.’

‘Not this one,’ Liz assured him. ‘You’d told me you’d studied medicine, but hadn’t talked much about your surgery or said whether you were still practising. I must admit it was reassuring that as a doctor you’d at least understand what is needed in any hospital unit. The fights I’ve had with bureaucrats who think the setting-up and staffing within a hospital are all about getting the numbers right and meeting something they invariably call the bottom line.’

Khalifa nodded.

‘These men exist in my life as well, but at least I have the power to cut off their heads if they annoy me.’

The lurking smile told her he was joking, and she smiled back as she said, ‘I’d better remember that, hadn’t I? I don’t think my head would look too good raised on a pike outside this palace you talk of.’

She hesitated, then, aware she was showing her ignorance or possibly naivety, added, ‘Is it really a palace? And, anyway, I don’t need to stay with you. Surely there are staff quarters at the hospital.’

His smile broadened and warmth rushed from her curling toes to the top of her head, revealing itself, she was sure, in a rich blush.

‘You will stay with me. The place is big enough for dozens of visitors—welcoming strangers and taking them in is part of our culture. And while not a palace in the style of a western fairy-tale, as the home of the ruler, it is called that.’

‘But wouldn’t the home of the ruler—the real palace—be in the capital?’

The smile turned to laughter.

‘Does not the English queen have many palaces? Balmoral and Windsor and who knows what others, as well as the one in London. Now, we will stop talking nonsense about palaces, and you will see Najme as we drive into it.’

It
was
pink! All the buildings not pink stone but pink bricks or pink earth, made perhaps from the local sand—red desert sand. Liz was fascinated, and wanted to ask many questions, but Khlaifa was back into work mode, speaking crisply and confidently on his mobile to someone at the hospital, giving orders for the preparation of a theatre, for a crib, for specialist staff.

In English, Liz realised with a surge of relief. If most of the staff spoke English she wouldn’t have to learn Arabic, although as she looked at the flowing script on signs in front of buildings she knew she’d like to learn it—to speak it and to write it.

Another challenge.

One she could forget, she told herself firmly. She probably wouldn’t be here long enough to find her way around, let alone learn the language.

Best she should concentrate on work. What could she remember from her early studies about the tumour called a meningioma? Usually benign, she thought, but its growth within the outer covering of the brain—the meninges—could be causing compression on areas of vital function—in this case on the occipital region.

‘Has she had any treatment for it?’ Liz asked as Khalifa folded his phone and slipped it into his pocket.

‘Normally the patient would have been given steroids in an attempt to shrink the tumour, but with her pregnancy it was thought an immediate operation was the best option. We have cribs with radiant heaters at the hospital because we use them to fly at-risk babies to the capital. I’ve asked one be prepared for you and for staff to be available.’

He paused, turning to look directly at her.

‘Are you sure about this?’ he asked. ‘The journey—you must be tired…’

Liz had to smile.

‘When I slept for most of it? Hardly,’ she said. ‘And isn’t this the best way to tackle a new job? To leap right in and find out exactly what you do and don’t have on hand? I’m very sorry for the poor woman, but I have to admit I’m excited at the same time.’

She really was, Khalifa realised as he took in the shine in her eyes and the slight flush of colour in her cheeks. He shook his head, unable to believe he’d, just by chance, found a colleague who obviously felt as he did about their profession, felt the physical thrill of a challenge.

Though it was probably best he not think of physical thrills and this woman in the same breath…

‘Oh, it’s pink as well.’

She whispered the words but he saw wonder in her face and felt a surge of pride because his hospital was truly a beautiful building. Stretched out in a swathe of parkland, the architect had somehow managed, with the design of the multi-level building, to still hint at the shape of the tents his family had used for thousands of years, while the dark pink colour of the walls spoke of desert dunes, the gold highlights desert sunsets.

But all he’d said was, ‘We can leave our luggage in the vehicle.’

It was the most unusual hospital Liz had ever seen, arched openings leading into wide verandas that spread out from every floor, bright rugs and cushions thrown with apparent abandon across the marble tiling. Here and there black-robed women and turbaned men sat around low tables, drinking coffee from tall silver pots set over braziers that looked as if they held live coals.

In a hospital?

‘Families like to be close to their loved ones, and this seemed to me a practical way to provide accommodation for them,’ Khalifa said, making Liz realise her amazement must be showing.

‘And presumably they don’t take their cooking fires inside near the oxygen tanks,’ she remarked, following him through a self-opening door into the foyer of what looked like a six-star hotel but was obviously the hospital’s main entrance.

Voices called what she took to be greetings to Khalifa, some men bowing their heads in his direction, not, she felt, subserviently, but merely an acknowledgement that he was among them again.

He spoke briefly to a woman in loose trousers and a long tunic, a uniform not unlike the clothes Liz had brought with her.
So she’d got that right
, she was thinking when Khalifa took her arm and steered her towards another foyer with a bank of lifts.

This was the bit she still had to get right, she realised as her body reacted with volatile enthusiasm to his touch. She could have lit up an entire fireworks display had the fizz and sparks been visible. It had to be the hormonal shift of being pregnant. She’d put it down to that and, in the meantime, avoid opportunities that involved touch—or smiles, or laughter, or even, if possible, hearing his voice. Toes could only take so much!

‘This is the theatre floor,’ he said, preparing to lead her out of the lift, but she dodged his hand and strode ahead then realised she’d turned the wrong way. That was okay. Now she could follow him, trailing in his wake, taking in the ramrod-straight back, the sleek sheen of his hair, and the neat way his trousers hugged—

Totally not going there, Liz!

He led her into a theatre anteroom where a group of men and women were already pulling on hospital gowns over T-shirts and shorts, or were fully gowned and discussing what lay ahead of them.

‘This is Dr Elizabeth Jones,’ Khalifa announced above the rush of greetings. ‘I won’t confuse her with all your names at this stage but she’ll take care of the baby once it’s delivered.’

He beckoned to a woman at one side of the room and she came forward, her dark eyes studying Liz.

‘Laya is the head nurse in our nursery,’ he explained, and Liz held out her hand.

‘Call me Liz,’ she said. ‘And lead me somewhere I can have a shower and change. Who knows what foreign germs I could be carrying?’

Laya led her into a large bathroom with several shower stalls.

‘Theatre gowns are in these cupboards,’ she explained. ‘I’ll wait and get you kitted up.’

Liz grinned at her.

‘Kitted up? Is that a local expression?’

‘I trained in England,’ Laya said. ‘I could have chosen the USA but my family had been visiting London for years so I knew people there who were happy for me to live with them.’

She’d been stacking clean theatre gear on a bench so hadn’t noticed Liz’s baby bump until she turned back towards her.

‘Oh!’ she said.

‘Exactly,’ Liz told her, ‘though it’s not what it seems and, anyway, I’m perfectly well and quite capable of doing my job. Just get me a couple of sizes larger of everything.’

Laya looked as if she’d have liked to protest, or maybe ask more, but Liz hurried into a shower stall, stripping off her underwear then grimacing as she realised she’d have to put it back on again afterwards—or wear some of those enormous paper undies that were available throughout most hospitals. Pity they didn’t do large size paper bras.

‘Now we’re organised,’ she finally said to Laya, ‘so lead on.’

Scrub up next, then into Theatre, gowned and gloved, where the patient was already on the table, one of the men from the anteroom in place at the patient’s head, another man, obviously the obstetrician, preparing for an incision on the woman’s swollen belly. Khalifa was on the far side of the room, examining the X-rays and scans on what looked like a flat-screen television fixed to the wall.

Liz checked the preparations Laya had made in the hastily set-up newborn care corner. A trolley of fixed height with radiant warmer, drawers that would hold equipment, an oxygen bottle, a hand-operated neonate resuscitator, scale, pump suction with foot operation, IV cannulas, mucus extractors, soft towels for drying and wrapping the baby, sterile equipment for tying and cutting the cord, feeding tube, sterile gloves—everything seemed to be in place.

As the obstetrician reached into the small incision and drew out the tiny infant, Laya wheeled the trolley close and Liz took the baby—a boy. She used a fine tube to clear his mouth and nose, squeezed his little chest so he began to breathe and then to cry. She held him against his mother’s chest, only for a moment, but it felt the right thing to do for both of them, then, when the obstetrician had tied and cut the cord, she set the infant on the trolley and wheeled him to the corner of the room while the surgeons prepared the woman for the next stage of her operation.

‘He’s come through this well,’ she said to Laya, as the vital Apgar numbers added up to six at one minute. She’d used a bag and mask to give him a little extra oxygen, and by five minutes his score was up to nine.