they’d made the decision some time ago. ‘We go with Sahra, and Aisha’s mother will help Sahra’s mother care for the baby while Aisha rests.’
Gemma led them out but couldn’t let them go without having one more look at the tiny infant, so perfect in every way, his ebony skin shining, his dark eyes gazing unfocusedly at the world into which he had been born. Aisha let go of the swaddled bundle long enough for Gemma to hold him, and her arms felt the familiar heavy ache, not of loss but of dreams unfulfilled…
‘Definitely miraculous,’ she admitted to the sheikh, who had appeared at the back of the hall to see the little family off.
Yusef watched her as she handed back the baby, reluctantly it seemed to him, then opened the door to let the group out. What had made this woman, who could be earning big money as a specialist in a city practice, take on the frustrating and often, he imagined, impossible task, of providing medical care for immigrant women and their children?
That she also went beyond straight medical care, he knew from the reports he had read. She had a part-time psychologist on staff, and ran various clubs and get-togethers for the women who visited the centre. She had dragooned a dentist into service once a fortnight and a paediatrician visited once a month to see the children of the women who used the centre.
He studied her as she spoke to the nurse, seeing a profile with a high forehead beneath the red hair, a long thin nose, neatly curved lips and a chin with a small dimple that saved it from being downright stubborn. A handsome woman, not beautiful but attractive in the real sense of the word—attracting glances, he was sure, wherever she went.
Yet she made nothing of herself, scraping the vibrant hair back into a tight knot and swathing it with a scarf, although he doubted it stayed tidy long, and wearing no make-up to hide the little golden freckles most women he knew would consider blemishes.
She was back inside, shutting the door behind her, and she must have seen his visual check because she gave a shrug and said, ‘It is Sunday morning and I was in the centre, making sure all the paperwork was in order for your visit, and that the place was clean. I do have some decent clothes to change into if you’ve time to wait.’
Yusef had to smile.
‘Of course you mustn’t change for me. Was my study of you so obvious?’ he asked, as she led the way back to the kitchen.
‘Not as obvious as the look on your face when you were wondering why on earth I do the job I do,’ she said, and Yusef, who, like all his people, prided himself on keeping all his thoughts and emotions hidden behind a bland face, felt affronted.
And she read that emotion too, chuckling, more to herself than to him, then explaining.
‘I deal with women who are past masters at hiding their emotions behind the blankest of expressions. Reading their faces, the slightest changes in their expressions, helps me to know when I’ve pushed too far, or reached ground too delicate to tread.’
It was the simple truth, for he too could read people, but the mystery remained.
‘And why do you do the job you do?’
She slumped down in a chair and picked up her coffee, which by now must be lukewarm as well as revolting.
‘Because I love it?’
‘You make that a question. Are you not sure, or are you asking me if I’d believe that answer?’
She glanced his way then shrugged her shoulders.
‘I do love it, but it wasn’t because I doubted you’d believe me. I think the question you were asking was more than that, because how could I possibly have known how much pleasure it would give me before I began the centre?’
‘Yet it gives you grief, as well,’ Yusef persisted, although he was coming close to personal ground—ground he rarely trod with either men or women, particularly not with women he didn’t know. ‘I saw your face as you examined Aisha.’
Gemma studied him in silence and he could almost hear the debate going on inside her head. Would she answer him or brush him off? In the end, she did answer, but perhaps it was a brush-off as well.
‘Terrible things happen to innocent people, we all know that, our news broadcasts are full of it every day. A war here, a famine there, floods and earthquakes and tidal waves—these things we can’t control, but what we can do is help pick up the pieces. Some of those pieces wash up on the shores of my country, and it gives me more joy than grief if I can help them.’
Yusef heard the truth of what she said in every word and although what he wanted back at home was not someone to pick up scraps left by disasters, well, not entirely, he did want someone with the empathy this woman felt and the understanding she had for marginalised people. His country was changing, and many tribal groups that had once roamed freely over all the desert before those lands had had borders and names were now having to live within the boundaries of a particular country—many of them in his country.
These people saw the money flowing into his country, and the life it could provide, and wanted some of it for themselves, but their arrival was putting stresses on basic infrastructure like hospitals and clinics. This, in itself, was causing difficulties and unrest, something Yusef wanted to put a stop to as early as possible. He knew the tribal women made the decisions for the family, and that it would take someone special to help them settle comfortably in his land. He’d suspected, from the first time he’d heard of this women’s centre in Sydney that the woman who ran it might be the person he was seeking.
‘You are committed, but your staff? Do they also feel as you do?’
She smiled at him, and again it seemed as if a light had gone on behind the fine, pale skin of her face, illuminating all the tiny freckles so she shone like an oil lamp in the desert darkness. Something shifted in his chest, as if his heart had tugged at its moorings, but he knew such things didn’t happen—a momentary fibrillation, nothing more. Stress, no doubt, brought on by the task that lay ahead of him.
‘I could walk out of here tomorrow and nothing would change,’ she assured him proudly. ‘that is probably my greatest achievement. Although everyone likes to believe he or she is indispensable, it’s certainly not the case here. My staff believe, as I do, that we must treat the women who come here without judging them in any way, and that we must be sensitive to their cultural beliefs and customs and as far as possible always act in ways that won’t offend them.’
She paused then gave a rueful laugh.
‘oh, we make mistakes, and sometimes we let our feelings show—I must have today for you to have picked up on my anxiety when I examined Aisha. But generally we manage and the women have come to trust us.’
‘Except when it comes to a Caesarean birth?’
She gave a little shrug.
‘You’re right. No matter how hard we try to convince them that they can have more children after a Caesarean, they don’t believe us.’
She sighed.
‘There’s no perfect world.’
Yusef took a deep breath, thinking about all she had covered in not so many words. He knew the trauma many women suffered in the refugee camps. Of course this woman—Gemma Murray—would feel their pain, yet she continued to do her job.
