The Sheikh Surgeon's Proposal

She rushed to his side then. “Sir, I appreciate your desire to help this man, but if you’ll just let me take it from here? I’m a doctor …”

Those eyes, now blazing amber in the sun came up to hers.

“So am I. You’re welcome to assist me.”

So he was a doctor. That figured. And he spoke perfect English. With a deeply cultured, highly educated British accent to boot. Shouldn’t be a surprise. Most well-to-do Damhoorians were educated in the best institutions in the world and England, with its deep ties in the region from its colonial days, was a favorite destination for them. It was still startling to hear that flawless, fathomless drawl flowing out of those spectacular lips. As startling as finding out he was a doctor.

He produced the parts of a hand-held suction machine and expertly snapped them together. She made use of his move, extended her driver’s neck gently backwards and performed a jaw thrust. It was the best technique to provide airway patency with the suspicion of neck injury, and the best position to suction his throat. Those amber eyes acknowledged her actions with a glance of approval then resumed his position at the driver’s head, inserted the disposable catheter into his throat and turned the machine on.

As soon as blood and secretions shot up into the attached cylinder, her eyes snapped to the bag. Everything was labeled in Arabic and she wasn’t that far into her learning process that she could actually read what the labels said.

As if reading her mind, the man murmured, “The blue bag is the airway kit.”

For answer, she swooped down on the indicated bag. In under a minute she had the laryngoscope assembled, the cuffed endotracheal tube, the 10-ml syringe and introducer all ready.

He finished aspirating the driver’s throat, took in her measures with another marrow-melting glance of appreciation.

“We won’t need rapid sequence anesthesia,” he said in that confidential tone colleagues in resuscitation shared. “His gag reflex is absent. We can go ahead with intubation.”

She nodded and tossed him a pair of gloves, falling into the synergy of sharing the responsibility for another human being’s life with someone who possessed resuscitation experience as extensive as hers. He caught the gloves without batting an eyelid and snapped them on before she’d managed to snap hers on.

Then it started.

And it was as if they’d been managing critical patients in the field together for years, collaborating with the merest of looks and partial murmurs, delineating their needs and obtaining the other’s support. In under two minutes they had an endotracheal tube inserted and connected to a self-expanding bag-valve-mask and their patient ventilated with 100 percent oxygen.

Then they turned to handling circulation.

She measured blood pressure as he took the man’s pulse. Then they exchanged findings.

He exhaled. “Not good. He’s going into shock.”

She only nodded, reached for two 18-gauge over-the-needle catheters. “I’ll go for bilateral IV access for quickest fluid replacement.”

In answer, he applied tourniquets, prepared two bags of Ringer’s as she slipped one catheter after another into the driver’s cephalic veins, each on the first try. She withdrew the needles and he snapped off the tourniquets, attached the tubing to the giving sets and set the drips to maximum.

His eyes moved from watching the uninterrupted flow of fluid into the driver’s veins, stilled on her. Then he finally shook his head, as if to clear it. “All right. That’s A, B and C. On to D.”

His murmur snapped her out of the fugue state she seemed to fall into each time his eyes fell on her.

She scrambled to join in assessing the driver’s neurological status using the Glasgow coma score.

With a GCS of fifteen as fully conscious and three as deeply comatose, the driver’s nine wasn’t good, but it still boded well for no irreversible neurological damage. E—or exposure—revealed no other gross injuries. So they turned to the patient’s major one. He cut off her improvised, and now soaked and leaking, pressure bandage and the scalp wound spurted again. She jumped in with another bandage.

He sighed. “You didn’t sacrifice your jacket for nothing. At this rate, he would have gone into shock in minutes without your pressure bandage. This uncontrollable bleeding indicates a serious bleeding-clotting disorder.”

She thought so too. Even with the scalp being one of the areas best supplied with blood vessels in the body, leading to alarming and not easily controlled bleeding, this was in a different league from any scalp injury she’d ever handled.

“What I’d give for cautery right now,” she said.

He simply unzipped another bag and produced a cautery probe.

Her mouth fell open. “What else do you have in there? A full OR?”

His lips twitched as he turned on the machine and handed it to her. She jumped on the offending bleeders, zapped them closed as he blotted blood for her. When she’d gotten them all, she turned it off and cleaned it as he applied meticulous pressure once more, concluding their resuscitation efforts.

The man exhaled, stretching up to what she now realized was a truly daunting height. He was about a foot taller than her five feet six. “He’s stable for now,” he said. “And once he has the benefit of definitive investigations and management, I think he’ll be as good as new in a few days.”

She believed so too. Thanks to his intervention and preparedness. If no thanks to his carelessness and recklessness that had caused the accident in the first place. The reminder brought her outrage bubbling to the surface once more.

“It’s all well and good that you helped stabilize him. Now will you make one of your cars lead the way to the nearest hospital, where this man can get definitive management?”

He blinked, her renewed resentment clearly taking him by surprise. Then he only extended his hand to her.

With no conscious decision to do so, she gave him the hand he’d demanded. He barely held it as he escorted her back to his car, seated her with every care and courtesy then walked around the car and sat down beside her.

She stared at him, wondering what had just happened, feeling her hand sizzling from that contact with his.

He got out his cellphone, dialed one number after another and let rip in Arabic. This time she didn’t get one word of the deeply colloquial torrent.

Just a second before she exploded, he terminated his last call and turned to her, his lips spreading, his teeth a stunning flash.

Everything inside her jangled with that blast of charisma. This man shouldn’t be allowed to smile in inhabited areas.