The Sheikh Surgeon's Proposal

She speeded up to keep up with him. “And since I’m to be kept within three feet of you, so will I.”

CHAPTER SIX

MEJBEL WAS A collection of small towns and villages, one of the few places in Damhoor where the modern world hadn’t taken over. Right now it was water that had.

Jay looked down from her window, failed again to imagine what the people had felt when water had invaded their homes, swept away their lives as they’d known it. Her heart seemed to be in a state of perpetual contraction as she saw nothing but roofs jutting out of the water, with higher areas in the path of the torrent becoming instant burial grounds. They’d rescued people who’d wept about how they’d failed to dig out their loved ones from the landslides with nothing to use but their bare hands.

It had been nine hours of unceasing flying between the most affected areas and the relief operation site. Their helicopter alone had rescued six hundred and eighty-two stranded and injured people. The rest of the chopper fleet had contributed a total flying time of six hundred hours, each rescuing over three hundred people. They’d rescued people from everywhere they’d escaped to—rooftops, trees, upper floors of makeshift shelters in schools, public buildings and mosques. At six a.m. their camp and field hospital had been filled beyond capacity with around forty thousand people vying for shelter and treatment.

On the way to the camp they’d treated those whose condition had been critical. With another doctor, whose specialty she didn’t catch, and four trauma nurses along, they treated everything from concussion to severe crush injuries to near-drownings. They resuscitated dozens, stabilized more, lost three casualties, two to drowning and one to electrocution. Malek had flitted between his medical and co-ordinating roles, making her head spin just watching his sheer energy and efficiency.

The local police informed them that they’d issued warnings to two hundred thousand people in the areas predicted to be hit hardest to evacuate their residences. Most hadn’t complied.

And who could blame them? Leave everything they had behind and go where?

She knew all had a tragedy to relate but in the deluge of faces it was one family, whose father spoke good English, who gave her a close-up look at the heart-wrenching losses suffered. And they were one of the lucky families who hadn’t lost a member or been separated in the chaos.

The woman, Samira, clutched her three children to her as she sobbed into her husband’s chest. He clutched her in turn while Jay tended the severe gash he’d sustained down his back as he’d struggled to save his family.

“We worked for ten years for our house and shop and they were gone in ten minutes,” Jaaber lamented. “We lost the car, the clothes, the children’s paintings—our pictures—our memories. We lost everything. This has to be a punishment from Ullah.”

Jay insisted it wasn’t, that tragedies just happened, that you bounced back as long as you had breath left in you.

When she had used up all her arguments, she said, “Well, Jaaber, you have your family. Look around and see how many people don’t have theirs and count your blessings.”

This seemed to calm him down. From then on he and his wife were of great help, tending other victims’ needs.

GAO had arrived on their heels in more helicopters provided by Malek, and he co-ordinated with them about the transfer of fresh water and more food and medicine for the survivors. And more body bags for the dead.

It was dawn now. At least, her watch said so. The sky was weeping solid sheets of water from an impenetrable barrier of clouds. They were now returning to the affected areas after depositing their last helicopter load of refugees at the camp. It was by now doubtful they’d find more. Alive, that was.

“Pilot—three o’clock, from my position,” she heard Malek barking into his walkie-talkie over the clamor of the chopper and the downpour. “A half-submerged red car beneath a palm.” He turned to Saeed. “We’ll lift the car, see if there are any survivors once it’s back on dry land.”

Saeed nodded and ran to fulfill his boss’s directives.

Moving the huge palm off the car took over thirty minutes, and it took as long to secure the car for the aerial ride.

Once they’d landed the car, Malek, Saeed, Dr Rafeeq, the navigator and the flight engineer jumped out to unhook the cables so the chopper could land.

She jumped down and raced to Malek’s side. He scowled down at her, his face frightening in the harsh floodlights from the helicopter. “Get back in there, Janaan.”

“I’m here to do my job.”

“Do it inside.”

“I have nothing to do inside—no patients, remember?”

He clamped his teeth on an expletive then turned and ordered his men away from the car. It looked like crumpled foil around the victims. He reached for the driver through the compressed space of the pulverized window and Jay ran to the passenger seat to examine the woman. A palpation of her carotid artery gave her an instant verdict. The woman was dead. Long dead.

Hope bled out of her in booming heartbeats as she raised stinging eyes to Malek. He raised his eyes at the same moment, the same bleak diagnosis in his. Dead.

Then she noticed something in the backseat. Was this …?

“Malek,” she cried out. “There’s someone in the back seat.”

Malek raced around to her side, bent to peer into the crack where the tree had flattened the top of the car into the back seat. “You’re right. Let’s hope it’s a child.” Her eyes swung up in shock. He elaborated. “An adult would have been crushed. Being smaller might prove the casualty’s only chance.”

“But the car had been submerged!”

“Half-submerged. The man and woman didn’t drown. The impact of the tree killed them.” Then he bellowed for a crowbar.

It was in his hands in seconds and he pried the compressed space widely enough for Jay’s smaller arm to reach inside and feel for the passenger.

After a minute she pulled back, gasping, her eyes filling. “It is a child. A boy. He’s alive. Barely. God, Malek, please, get him out of there. We have to save him.”

Malek squeezed her arm, his orders bringing his men with chainsaws. Then the nightmare of extracting the boy from the car began. An hour-long nightmare.

As minutes ticked by Jay felt like she would burst with frustration, feeling the boy’s life ebbing with every passing second and unable to do anything about it. If not for Malek’s steadying grip and presence, she would have screamed.