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 been a fly on the wall in the kitchen. All she could hear was the faint murmur of the man’s voice, but his presence in the old house unsettled Gemma as she talked Bristow out of her agitation, checked her blood sugar and assured her she’d done the right thing in not letting Jackie touch her insulin but gently chiding her for using the knife.
‘She had to understand,’ Bristow said, and Gemma shrugged, not wanting to agitate the woman again. Bristow was right, and even if her methods were a little extreme, Gemma was reasonably sure that Jackie would never touch the insulin again.
‘So maybe now we can talk.’
Gemma shut the door on the ill-assorted pair and turned to find her visitor right behind her. He’d taken off the happy, hopping bunny wrap but hadn’t put on his jacket, which he’d hung on the knob at the bottom of the stair banister. He’d also removed his tie and draped it over his coat, so, with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his collar unbuttoned, he looked a very different man from the one she’d met earlier that morning.
An even more attractive man!
And given the attraction, she should be seeing him off the premises as quickly as possible, but politeness—and his promise of even more donations—prevailed.
‘I’m sorry we keep being interrupted, but it’s lunchtime and Beth’s just arrived to relieve me. Can I offer you some lunch? We can go up to my flat where we won’t be disturbed, or do you have to be somewhere?’
Yusef thought of all the business he’d hoped to get done after his morning meeting at the centre, and all the reasons he shouldn’t be spending more time in this woman’s company, but so far he’d achieved nothing of his main purpose. He had to spend more time with her.
‘Lunch sounds good but can’t I take you somewhere?’
‘Tempting though that sounds, I think we should get down to business and we can hardly do that in a restaurant. Besides, I’m sure you’re already way beyond the time you scheduled for this meeting, so it will be quicker and easier to eat next door.’
She ducked into one of the consulting rooms to speak to someone, then returned, a bundle of keys dangling from her fingers.
‘Beth’s another of the doctors on staff. She’s done the O and G short course and hopes to go back to study next year to do a full specialty course. We’ve been lucky to get so many good quality staff, especially as the pay isn’t nearly as much as they’d earn in private practice.’
She led the way outside, Yusef pausing to grab his jacket and tie, then down the steps and up the steps of the adjacent house, unlocking the bright red front door.
‘The
