He scooped the boy up in his arms.
“Your Highness, please...my son.”
“What’s wrong?” Jeena asked, coming up beside Maazin and looking at the boy.
“He’s burning up,” Maazin stated, touching the boy’s face.
“He started complaining of abdominal pain two days ago and there was blood...” The boy’s father looked pale.
Maazin’s stomach dropped and he felt sure he knew what it was.
The boy’s father was probably a farmer who got water from the river. After the cyclone the water source had probably become contaminated.
“We need to isolate the boy and his father. I think it’s dysentery,” Maazin said to Jeena under his breath so as not to alarm the others in the hospital.
Jeena nodded and Maazin took the boy to the back of the hospital. There was a small building that they had the use of with a few rooms for cases such as this. Jeena led the boy’s father to one of the rooms as well.
They had to get the two of them away from the other patients as bacillary dysentery was highly contagious, and since Maazin had picked the boy up without gloves he was going to have to go on a course of antibiotics as well and burn his clothes.
At least Jeena had on a surgical gown and gloves, as well as a mask. She was prepared and Maazin had been too busy thinking about the past and letting Jeena’s presence unnerve him, so that he hadn’t thought about dysentery being a problem after a cyclone. He hadn’t changed into scrubs. He hadn’t set up to deal with such a contagious disease, and he was kicking himself for not doing it sooner.
He was a fool, but right now he was going to try and save this young boy’s life.
The boy winced and moaned in pain, but had a high fever and was completely out of it. Maazin set him on a bed and then got about setting up an IV with a bolus of fluids, electrolytes and antibiotics.
Jeena got the boy’s father into the room beside him and through the small window that separated these two rooms he could see that she was doing the same and instructing a nurse, who had put on a hazmat suit, how to set up the quarantine.
Jeena then slipped out of the room and came to him. She looked at the boy and Maazin thought he saw a pained expression on her face.
“You’re going to need to get out of those clothes and go on antibiotics in the other room.”
“I know,” Maazin said. “And you’ll have to as well.”
She nodded. “I know. I’ve changed and disposed of the gown, gloves and mask. I’ll have the decontamination shower just to be sure, and then get the course of antibiotics.”
“I want to make sure my patient’s fever comes down.” Maazin glanced down at the boy. So small and so sick. He hated seeing his people suffer.
“Your patient? I didn’t realize you were a doctor.” And he could hear the surprise in her voice.
“Yes. I’m a surgeon, a surgeon in the Royal Guard. My brother Farhan and I have been working here since the cyclone hit. I do my duty to my people!”
“Wow, I’m surprised,” she said.
“What? That I’m a doctor or that I’m competent?” he snapped.
Jeena’s cheeks flushed in embarrassment. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” he said. He appreciated her apology.
“Either way, you need to take precautions. Princes are susceptible to dysentery too.”
“I’m not leaving my patient!”
“I can take care of that, Your Highness.” A Canadian doctor he was not familiar with came into the room in a hazmat suit. “I think you best go and clean up so we can keep the infection from spreading.”
Maazin sighed. “Fine. You’re right.”
He followed Jeena to where the showers were. She slipped into one of the stalls and Maazin made his way to the other stall. As he passed by, he glanced down at her phone, which was buzzing, and was shocked to see a picture of a little boy on her phone. At first glance it reminded him of his late brother, but there were no pictures of Ali in a hockey jersey. And then it hit him.
The picture was of a little boy with gray-green eyes like his, looking back at him.
And suddenly he felt a bit dizzy.
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