The little boy was mesmerised and Philippe started telling him a superhero story to distract him from the stitches. He was finished in a matter of minutes. Then he threw the little boy in the air, declaring him a new champion superhero. They finished with a fist bump and the little boy left the clinic with a wide smile on his face.
She stopped for a second and gave a sigh. It was just another plus point of the guy she was still a bit unsure of.
Philippe was great to work with. No patient was a problem and she trusted his judgement. He seemed to have tireless energy and could last all day on coffee alone. She envied his commitment. And it made her even more curious about him. A guy who could afford to stay at one of the luxury resorts in Temur Sapora was happier slogging his guts out in a community clinic? She couldn’t make it up.
But it just made the underlying attraction she felt towards him smoulder even more.
Even watching him from afar was becoming more than a little distracting. He had such a way with the patients, and the few conditions that he came across and was unfamiliar with, he wasn’t afraid to come and ask for advice. She liked that. She’d worked with way too many doctors who were arrogant enough never to admit their own lack of knowledge—often to the patient’s detriment.
She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. There was something about him that wasn’t quite off, but just wasn’t quite right. Maybe it was her own hang-ups about the rich, the very rich and the very, very rich, that were skewing her normally sound judgement. But whatever it was, the person he was, the man he was, was definitely getting under her skin.
Besides the good looks and charm, Philippe Aronaz was, at heart, a good guy. Occasionally he drifted off someplace, as if there was something else on his mind, but most of the time he was focused. He related well to the patients. In fact, it was one of the things that was most impressive about him. He could talk to literally anyone, from cajoling the youngest baby, to having lengthy discussions with some of their most elderly patients. It was almost as if he’d been born to it. And she envied him. She’d had to work hard at that part of herself.
There was always that little part of herself she didn’t want to share. She’d shared it once with a colleague at medical school, but the reaction hadn’t been good. Her colleague had instantly wanted to do an Internet search on abandoned babies, cross-check with hospital admissions that could be related to childbirth, and search DNA ancestry websites. It almost turned into a personal quest.
They couldn’t understand why Arissa didn’t want to do all that. They couldn’t understand why she wasn’t desperate to find out where she came from. Of course, they couldn’t begin to realise what it felt like to be abandoned by her mother. To have to spend endless nights wondering if she wasn’t good enough, wasn’t pretty enough.
Her adoptive parents had told her she was a special angel sent to them from heaven. They’d filled her with such happiness, but told her honestly about her start in life. Arissa had never wanted to be anyone’s ‘project’. And after that first reaction of sharing her background, she’d learned to keep quiet.
She’d originally lived in one of the smaller villages in Temur Sapora, so no one in the capital city knew her story. No one questioned her dedication to getting the safe haven project off the ground and she’d managed to keep that part of her past out of the public eye. So, trying to connect with patients—opening herself up to people, even just a little—was something she’d struggled with. So, she’d taken steps to stop closing herself off to her patients and their families. Working in paediatric oncology meant she was exposed to a huge amount of joy and pain—she had to be able to have difficult conversations at any point in the day. She had to give people a spark of hope while keeping things realistic. And sometimes she just had to be there, in body and in mind. And she couldn’t do that without connecting with people, without exposing a little of herself.
Watching Philippe do things so easily reminded her how hard she’d found her job for a while. It didn’t make her resentful. It just made her a little sad that she’d had that experience.
Philippe appeared behind her as she was finishing some notes on a child she’d just seen.
‘I phoned to check on the kid yesterday with the fractured ulna and radius. They had to pin it, but the operation went well.’
‘So, no more diving off the rocks and crashing into the sea bed?’
He smiled. ‘I think we can safely say his mother will have him bound to some kind of deckchair for the rest of the holiday.’
Arissa pulled a leaflet from the wall. ‘I might give the paed ward a call and ask them to steer him towards the community centre. They have less harmful activities for kids during the day that could stop him getting bored.’
Philippe looked over the leaflet and nodded. ‘No worries, I’ll do it. Nothing worse than a bored, overactive nine-year-old.’
She gave a grateful smile and picked up the list for this afternoon. It was an immunisation clinic and was packed full. Several of the babies had missed some of their routine vaccinations due to coughs, colds and a bout of chicken pox that had been doing the rounds of the local nursery. She put a star at several of the names, taking note that if they didn’t show today, she would give them a follow-up call.
‘We should break for lunch. Want me to go and grab something?’ Philippe asked.
She laughed. ‘What—like yesterday?’
Yesterday he’d gone to grab lunch and couldn’t make up his mind, coming back with the most bizarre range of foods she’d ever seen—none of which had gone together.
The muffled scream came out of nowhere and they both froze.
Arissa turned, trying to locate where the sound had come from, but Philippe was quicker, heading straight to the front door of the clinic and out onto the street.
She followed him with rapid steps. He stood for a few seconds until he heard the scream again, then moved across the street,
A few people glanced at them. It was a baby crying. Babies cried all the time, but the noise put Arissa’s teeth on edge.
Outside the grocery store a tired-looking woman had a small baby on her shoulder, patting its back soothingly.
Arissa recognised her instantly. It was Mariam, one of the local mothers who was due to attend with her baby this afternoon.
She shook her head at Arissa. ‘Looks like we won’t be getting this immunisation either.’ She sighed. ‘Rosni has been unsettled all night and she’s got a bit of a temperature. Her big brother just had chicken pox. I wonder if she’s next.’
The baby screamed again, a high–pitched noise, and Philippe held his hands out straight away, giving Arissa a warning glance. ‘Would you mind if I take a look at her?’ he said.
When Mariam hesitated he quickly explained. ‘I’m one of the doctors that’s helping Arissa at the clinic. Dr Aronaz. Do you mind if I take a look at your daughter?’
Mariam’s brow creased, instantly worried. ‘Do you think there’s something wrong?’
Philippe’s voice was steady. ‘Why don’t we just give her a check to be on the safe side?’
Prickles ran down Arissa’s spine; she didn’t like the sound of the scream any more than Philippe did, but it was clear he had something else on his mind.
She gestured across the road and slid her arm around the woman’s waist. ‘Come on, Mariam. The clinic’s open and there’s no one there right now. Let’
s give Rosni a check and see if she’s about to come down with chicken pox.’
Arissa was sure that Philippe wouldn’t be reacting like this over a case of chicken pox, but she didn’t want to alarm Mariam.
Mariam held out Rosni with slightly shaking hands and Philippe took her quickly and pulled the blanket down that was tucked around her. He gave a nod of his head. ‘Let’s go over to the clinic.’
It only took a few moments to reach the clinic and set Rosni down on one of the examination tables. Arissa pulled out a tympanic thermometer and pulse oximeter as Philippe gently peeled back Rosni’s clothes, speaking to her in a soothing manner.
But Rosni was clearly agitated, her legs and arms flailing wildly and the high-pitched scream continuing.
‘Has she fed at all?’ he asked Mariam.
Mariam shook her head. ‘I tried to feed her all night but she just wasn’t interested. I eventually gave her some water this morning—it was all I could get her to take.’
‘Have you given her any acetaminophen?’
Mariam shook her head. ‘I was just about to buy some. They sell it in the grocery store.’
Philippe continued his examination. When the temperature gauge sounded a few seconds later she turned the screen towards him. The baby’s temperature was dangerously high and her heart rate rapid. Rosni continued with the high-pitched wailing as Philippe checked her over. The baby appeared to have bouts of agitation, between periods of sluggishness. Philippe murmured to Arissa, ‘Look.’ He ran his fingers over the baby’s fontanelle. It was bulging slightly.
She started and walked quickly over to one of the locked clinic cupboards. She grabbed some IV antibiotics, some acetaminophen, and some other equipment from the cupboards.
Philippe narrowed his gaze in question. He was still examining Rosni, checking the palms of her hands, soles of her feet and eyes. There was no obvious rash right now, but sometimes in Malaysian children rashes could be difficult to spot. He shook his head.