‘Touched my things. She touched my things,’ Bristow, the second woman, roared from the other side of the room.
‘Jackie wouldn’t do that,’ Gemma said, turning to face the attacker, who was huddled in the chair, her damp and wrinkled layers of cardigans and coats making her look like an insect that had sunk back into its chrysalis. The sheikh stood beside her, perhaps perplexed by her retreat. ‘She’s your friend,’ Gemma added. ‘She knows not to touch your things.’
Gemma helped Jackie back to her feet and half carried her into the treatment room, the sheikh joining her and lifting Jackie onto the examination table. This time the patient didn’t object and Gemma was able to unfasten Jackie’s fingers and move enough clothing to see the long, deep gash in Jackie’s arm.
‘She needs to go to hospital—it’s deep, there could be nerve and ligament damage.’
The sheikh was right behind her, and Gemma turned, puzzled by his instant diagnosis.
‘I told you I was a surgeon,’ he said, but his voice was drowned out by Jackie’s cries.
‘No hospital, no hospital. I can’t go to hospital,’ she wailed, and Gemma turned towards the visitor.
‘There are reasons,’ she said quietly.
‘Then I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘You can get me what I need—I assume you have sutures—and assist me. Her friend will be all right?’
Gemma didn’t know how to answer that. She’d known Bristow for over a year and never seen any signs of violence, but now this had happened, who knew what the little woman might do?
‘You’ll do it yourself?’
It didn’t seem right. The man was a benefactor—not to mention a sheikh and apparently a highness, although that really wasn’t the point. Surely sheikhs had as much right to be surgeons as anyone else. It just seemed…unseemly somehow that the man in the beautiful suit should be—
‘Shall I look for myself to see what’s available?’ Curt words! The man had tied his handkerchief around Jackie’s arm to slow the bleeding and was obviously getting impatient.
Gemma hurried towards the cabinet. Jackie’s tremors were getting stronger and though a quick glance had shown that Bristow was still sitting on a chair in the foyer; if she disappeared further into her coat she’d be nothing but a bundle of rags. And, Gemma knew from experience, she wouldn’t emerge to answer questions or even move from the chair for some considerable time.
‘Here,’ she told the visitor, unlocking the cabinet and piling all she thought he might need onto a tray. Local anaesthetic, a bottle of antiseptic liquid, swabs, sutures and dressings joined a couple of pairs of gloves.
‘A gown—there must be a plain gown,’ she muttered, but as hard as she flipped through the folded gowns on the bottom shelf there was nothing that was really suitable for such a man.
‘Anything will do,’ he said, calling to her from the sink at the corner where he’d stripped off his coat, rolled up his shirtsleeves and was now scrubbing his hands.
‘It’ll have to,’ Gemma muttered to herself but the largest gown she could find, one she often wore herself, had bunny rabbits hopping gleefully all over it.
Yusef grimaced as she held it up for him but, wanting to save his shirt and suit trousers, he slid his arms into it and let her tie it behind him, concentrating on the job ahead, not his awareness of the woman who’d slipped her arms around him to get the ties. He snapped on gloves and returned to his patient. She was trembling, but whether from nerves or from pain or from a pre-existing condition he had no idea.
All he could do was try to soothe her, talking quietly to her, knowing that the sound of a human voice was sometimes more important than the words it spoke. The gash on her arm was deep and he worried that it might be infected.
‘Will she take a course of antibiotics?’ He turned so he could quietly ask the question of Gemma without upsetting the patient.
‘Probably not, but if we give her a tetanus and antibiotic shot today, that might hold off any infection. We can try to get her back to have the stitches removed.’
Yusef understood what she was saying—that these women might not return to the surgery for months, but if Jackie could be convinced to come back for some reason then they might be able to give her more antibiotics.
He swabbed and stitched, talking all the time, feeling Jackie growing calmer under his prattle. And it was prattle. He talked of a wound he’d had as a young boy, out in the desert, a wound one of the women of the family had stitched with sewing thread. Then, for good measure, he told her of the infection that had set in and how his father had told him he’d lose his arm if he didn’t take some medicine. This last part wasn’t quite true, and he read disbelief in Gemma’s eyes, but she seemed to understand his motive and went along with it.
But having Gemma so close to him was accelerating all the physical impulses his body was experiencing, and adding to his belief that taking this woman to his country might not be the best of ideas.
Except that she was so exactly what he needed! What the service he hoped to set up needed.
‘I bet there’s no infection scar,’ she muttered to him, as they left Jackie, wound stitched and dressed, on the table and went to wash their hands.
‘You’re right, although the sewing thread part was true. In point of fact, my father was in the city at the time, but when he heard, he sent a helicopter and had me flown out, flying in a surgeon from Singapore of all places to ensure the wound would heal as cleanly as possible.’
Gemma shook her head. The man must inhabit a world so different from her own it seemed like another planet. But other planet or not, he had been extremely helpful, and still could be.
‘If you could help Jackie off the table, maybe offer her a cup of tea and something to eat, I’ll talk to Bristow.’
He looked startled, as if no one had ever asked him to make tea for a street-person before, but then he smiled and crossed to Jackie’s side, talking again—more stories?
Gemma found Bristow still huddled in the chair in the foyer. She squatted beside her.
‘Talk to me,’ she said, her voice quietly persuasive. ‘Tell me what happened.’
Bristow’s head inched out of the coat.
‘Medicine, she tried to take my medicine. She take that and she die. I tell her she die.’
Tears began rolling down Bristow’s cheeks, her rheumy eyes reddened by her anguish.
‘You’re right,’ Gemma told her, patting the bundle of rags. ‘It’s okay. I understand and Jackie’s going to be okay. Now, seeing you’re here, let’s go into my office and I’ll check you out.’
‘I need my knife.’
Gemma hesitated, then pulled the knife from behind the umbrella stand.
‘I can’t give it back to you,’ she said gently, touching Bristow on the cheek. ‘You must know that.’
Bristow’s head dropped deeper into the bundle of coats and rags and Gemma felt so guilty she added, ‘You don’t really need it, Bristow. Jackie won’t touch your things again.’
‘My things outside. Must get my things.’ Bristow had hopped off the chair and was bouncing up and down, her agitation increasing every second.
Gemma ushered her out, knowing the elderly woman wouldn’t be settled until she had her old pram full of plastic bags of treasure with her again. They retrieved the pram, then she led Bristow into a consulting room and talked quietly to her, although she’d have loved to have