‘How do you do, Dr Khalifa?’ Dr Jones said formally, adding her name. ‘Forgive us for reacting like dumbstruck idiots, but it isn’t often anyone takes notice of our small hospital, let alone wanders in and offers us a chance to visit other countries. As for new equipment, we should be dancing with glee and cheering wildly. We make do with what we have and our success rate here in the special care unit in particular is first class, but the money from the trust that set up the hospital has been running out for some years.’
Khalifa heard the words but his brain had stopped working.
The woman he wanted, now she’d stepped out from behind the filing cabinet on which she’d been leaning, was undoubtedly pregnant. Not a huge bump, but pregnant enough to notice.
The shadow of pain, the fiercer thrust of guilt that chased him through each day had registered the bump immediately.
Dr Elizabeth Jones was as pregnant as Zara had been the last time he’d seen her …
Realising he’d dropped the conversational ball, Dr Jones spoke again.
‘It sounds a wonderful opportunity for our staff to travel to your country and I’m sure we’d be very happy to welcome staff from your hospital, to learn from them as well as show them how we do things.’
There was a slight frown creasing the creamy skin, as if she wasn’t absolutely certain of the truth of her words, but before he could decide, or even thank her for her kindness, a faint bell sounded and the group of women broke away immediately.
‘Excuse me,’ the doctor said. ‘That was an end-of-shift meeting we were having. The new shift is on duty and I’m needed.’
She whisked away from the makeshift office—was one small desk and the filing cabinet in this alcove off the hall all they had?—and entered the glass-walled room where two lines of cribs held tiny babies. Two women—nurses, he assumed—in black and white patterned smocks leant over one of the cribs, straightening as Dr Jones joined them. Uncertain as to the isolation status of the ward, he remained outside, watching through the glass as she bent over the crib, touching the infant’s cheek with one finger while reading the monitor beside it.
One of the nurses had wheeled a small trolley laden with drugs and equipment to the side of the crib but in the end Dr Jones straightened and shook her head, writing something on the chart at the end of the crib and stroking the baby’s cheek, smiling down at the tiny being, before leaving the unit.
‘You’re still here!’
She spoke abruptly, obviously distracted by whatever it was that had summoned her to the baby’s crib, then she proved his guess correct by adding, ‘She has a little periodic apnoea but I don’t want to put her back on CPAP.’
‘Has she just come off it?’ he asked, and the woman frowned at him.
‘You understood that? I was really thinking out loud. Very rude, but I suppose if you’ve built one hospital and bought another, you probably do know a few things about medicine.’
‘I know a few,’ he said. ‘Enough to get me through my medical degree and a follow-up in surgery.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, flashing a smile that almost hid a flush of embarrassment in her cheeks. ‘It’s just that health care seems to have become big business these days and the business owners don’t necessarily know anything about medicine. But I’m holding you up. You’ll want to see the rest of the place, and talk to staff in other departments, won’t you?’
‘Not right now,’ he began, uncertain now that the woman’s pregnancy had thrown his plans into disarray. ‘You see, I’m particularly interested in this special care unit because I had hoped to persuade you to come to Al Tinine to set one up. I have heard and read so many good things about the work you do here, running a small unit that offers premature babies surprisingly successful outcomes on a limited budget.’
She studied him, her head tilted slightly to one side, and he wondered what she was seeing.
A foreigner in an expensive suit?
A bloke with more money than sense?
Guilty on both counts!
‘So are you looking for something similar in size? Will there be limitations on the budget of the unit you wish to set up?’
Shocked by the assumption, he rushed into speech.
‘Of course not—that wasn’t what I meant at all. Naturally, we won’t be looking at gold-plated cribs, but I would want you to have the very best equipment, and appropriate staffing levels, whatever you deemed necessary for the best possible outcomes for premature infants born in the southern part of my country.’
She smiled again—not much of a smile but enough to light a spark in the wide blue eyes she hid behind the chunky glasses.
‘Gold plate would probably be toxic anyway,’ she said, then the smile slid away and the little crease of a frown returned. ‘My next question would be, are you setting it up as a working, effective unit that will give preemie babies the very best chance of leading normal lives later on, or are you putting it in because you think hospitals should have one?’
The question shocked him even more than the previous assumption had, although would he have considered it if not for Zara’s and the baby’s deaths?
That thought angered him.
‘Are you always this blunt?’ he demanded, scowling at her now. ‘I expect you to set up a properly organised special care neonatal unit with some facilities for infants who would, in a larger hospital, go into a neonatal intensive care unit. I understand you have such facilities in your unit here at Giles, which is one of the reasons I chose this hospital.’
No need to tell her that the other reason was because he’d heard and read such impressive reports of her work with neonates.
‘Fair enough,’ she said easily, apparently unperturbed by his scowl and growling reply. ‘But when you said “you”, did you mean “you” as in someone from the unit or me personally?’
Direct, this woman!
‘I did mean you personally,’ he told her, equally direct. ‘It is you I wanted—or was you.’
‘And having seen me, you’ve changed your mind?’ The words were a challenge, one he could see repeated in the blue eyes for all she hid them behind those revolting glasses. ‘Too tall? Too thin? Wrong sex, although the Elizabeth part of my name must have been something of a clue?’
‘You’re pregnant.’
He spoke before he could consider the implication of his statement, and as her face flushed slightly and her eyes darkened with some emotion he couldn’t read, he knew he’d made a mistake.
A big mistake!
‘So?’
The word was as steely as the thrust of a well-honed sword, but as he struggled to parry the thrust she spoke again.
‘Pregnancy is a condition, not an illness, as I’m sure you know. I have worked through the first thirty-two weeks and I intend to continue working until the baby is born, returning to work …’
The fire died out of her and she reached out to support herself on the filing cabinet behind which her ‘condition’ had originally been hidden. The air in the alcove had thickened somehow, and though he knew you couldn’t inhale things like despair and sadness, that was how it tasted.
‘Actually—’ the word, her voice strong again, brought him back to the present ‘—a trip away right now