Page 5 of Her Tempting Protector

“Dr. Adams, please go behind the truck while I go into the clinic.”

She hated this, but agreed with his assessment, so she did as he requested.

It seemed like forever before he came back out with a hunched over, wizened man.

“Dr. Adams, come and meet Dr. Nazer.”

Carys came out smiling with her hand extended, but inside she was concerned. This man looked to be on his last legs. She thought Perkins had told her a younger doctor oversaw this clinic.

“Thank you for coming,” Dr. Nazer said in English with a British accent. “I could greatly use your help.”

“Whatever you need, I’m here for you,” Carys said.

Dr. Nazer started to cough, and it wasn’t a dry cough, it was a deep bronchial cough. It didn’t sound good.

“Should you be up?” Carys asked.

“No,” he smiled. “But right now, I’m all we have until Kenneth gets back. He left yesterday to help at a farm where two men were working to get a corn hopper unstuck. When he called last night, he told me he was able to save part of one man’s arm.”

“Shouldn’t they have come here?”

“No, he needed to do the work on-site, and he’s arranging for them to be treated well enough so they can get to Khartoum without going into shock.” He looked up at her from the corner of his eye and winked. “Maybe if the men are lucky, they’ll get another pretty American doctor like you to work on them, huh?”

That took Carys aback, normally in a Muslim country like this, she would not expect a man to openly flirt with a Western woman like her. He must have seen her look of surprise.

“I studied at Oxford in England,” he explained.

“Ahhh,” Carys smiled. “I wondered.”

“Please call me Rashad and come inside. Not that it will be much cooler, but at least you will be in the shade.”

“When will Kenneth be returning?”

“He should be back tonight. Tomorrow morning at the latest.”

Jamal followed them into the dim light of the clinic. They went down a short hallway before it widened into an open room that seemed to double as a reception area and clinic for simple procedures by the look of things.

The number of people inside surprised her, considering how empty it had been outside the clinic, but now that she thought about it, who would have wanted to be outside in the afternoon sun if they could at least be in the shade? What’s more, she watched a young girl give all the people sitting against the walls and on chairs cupfuls of water from a jug. There was even some bread to be had. Fine service indeed.

As usual, there were mostly women and children, but occasionally a man sat inside, looking ready to topple over. Three women dressed in white administered to them. They had small cots set up where people either sat or were lying down and being questioned, poked, or prodded. It was a medical assembly line, with only an occasional whimper or cough coming from an ill child. What Carys would have given to hear the cacophony of complaints and noise from a US emergency room because then she would know she was dealing with a healthier group of people.

Looking around, she saw a door and another hallway.

“What is behind that door?” she asked Rashad.

“One is an office that Kenneth and I share, but we also have the nurses use it if they need to speak to a patient confidentially.”

“And the hallway?”

“Follow me.”

She was only halfway down the hall when the smell hit her. It was the miasma of odors emitted from healing, infected and dying flesh. Some smelled sweet, some sour, some putrid, it was a stench she was familiar with since practicing medicine in Africa. They were obviously going to the surgery ward.

There were windows along the ceiling letting in plenty of light to help the surgeons see, while operating. Bare lightbulbs that weren’t currently on, hung above the area set up as the operating room. Every attempt had been made to make the space as sterile, functional, and professional as possible. As a matter of fact, compared to most set-ups she’d seen over the years, this was one of the best.

“Better than you thought, huh?” Rashad’s cracked lips smiled broadly.

She grinned back at him. “Very impressive,” she agreed as she moved toward one of the four occupied beds. Only one patient was conscious, and she looked at Carys curiously, despite her obvious pain.