stood, before disappearing from view.
There was no rush of conversation, which seemed weird as either the surgeons or their skills usually came in for comment during the post-op clean-up. But here the women worked competently and silently, Jawa finally telling Marni that was all they had to do.
‘We have time for lunch and you’re back in Theatre again this afternoon—you and me both, they have paired us for a while.’
‘I’m glad of that,’ Marni told her. ‘I still need someone to lead me around.’
She opened her mouth to ask if the surgeon called Gaz would be operating again, then closed it, not wanting to draw Jawa’s attention to the fact the man had affected her in some strange way.
A very strange way!
The afternoon operation was very different, removal of a benign cancer from the ankle of a little girl. The surgeon was French and seemed to think his nationality demanded he flirt with all the nurses, but his work was more than proficient and Marni decided she’d enjoy working here if all the surgeons were as skilled as the first two she’d seen.
A minor operation on a child sent up from ER, repair of a facial tear, finished off her shift, but as she changed into her outdoor clothes she wondered about their first patient, the little boy who’d been born with a deformity that would have been affecting his life. No child liked to look different from his mates…
Uncertain of protocol but needing to know how he’d come out of the operation, Marni asked Jawa if she’d be allowed to see him.
‘Just a brief visit to see he’s okay,’ she added.
Jawa consulted her watch and decided that, yes, he should be well and truly out of Recovery and back on the children’s post-op ward.
‘Of course you can visit him,’ she assured Marni. ‘I would come with you but I have an appointment.’
The faint blush that rose in her cheeks as she said this suggested the appointment was special, but Marni forbore to tease, not knowing Jawa or the local customs well enough.
The post-op ward was easy to find. The hospital was set up rather like an octopus with all its tentacles spread flat on the ground. The operating theatres, recovery rooms, the ICU and the administration rooms were all in the tall body of the beast, while the arms supplied different wards.
In the post-op ward, bright with murals of colourful forests and wild animals, Marni found most rooms occupied not only by the patient but by a clutch of family members as well—black-robed women, white-robed men.
‘Can I help you?’ a passing nurse inquired.
‘A little boy who had a cleft palate operation this morning. I was one of the theatre staff and wondered how he was doing.’
‘Ah, you mean Safi. Do you wish to visit him?’
‘I wouldn’t want to intrude on his family,’ Marni said.
‘You won’t,’ The nurse told her. ‘In fact, it would be good if you could visit him. He’s not local but has come here for all his surgery. The hospital takes many children from neighbouring countries because we have the doctors with the skills to help them, and this wonderful facility where they can recover, but often the parents cannot afford to accompany the child. The nurses will do their best to see these children are not too lonely, but most of the time—’
‘You’re too busy,’ Marni finished for her. ‘I understand, but I’m far away from home myself so I’ll be happy to visit Safi when I can.’
Following the nurse’s directions, she found Safi’s room, knocked quietly then went in. The little boy turned wide, troubled eyes towards her.
‘Hello,’ she said, aware he probably had no idea of English but not knowing what language he might speak. ‘I’ve come to visit you.’
She sat beside him and held his hand, wishing she’d brought a toy or a book. Although this boy was eight and she’d been only two when she’d first gone to live with her grandfather, she remembered how Pop had helped her feel at home—he’d sung to her.
Dredging back through her memory, she sang the nursery rhymes of her childhood, using her hands as she had back then, making a star that twinkled in the sky and an itsy-bitsy spider climbing up a water spout.
Safi regarded her quite seriously but when she sang ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ for the fourth time, he joined in with his hands then smiled at her.
The smile made her want to cry for his aloneness, but apparently the music had soothed him and he fell asleep.
Not wanting to disturb him too soon, she sat by the bed, holding his hand, her mind drifting through the memories of the tumultuous few weeks since she’d made the decision to come to Ablezia, stumbling out of the drift when she thought of her goal—her goal, not Pop’s.
Could she do it? Go cold-bloodedly into a relationship with a man simply to rid herself of her virginity?
Hot-bloodedly if it was Gaz! The thought popped into her head and Marni knew heat was colouring her cheeks.
Think sensibly!
It wasn’t that she’d thought it precious, the virginity thing. It had just happened, partly, she knew, as the result of having a wayward mother who flitted like a butterfly from man to man. But the biggest hurdle had been growing up with two elderly men who thought the world of her, and not wanting to ever do anything that would make them think less of her.
So she’d pulled back through her late teens when her friends had been happily, and often unhappily, experimenting with sex, although, to be honest, there’d never been a boy with whom she’d desperately wanted to go to bed.
At university, her lack of experience had embarrassed her enough for her to be cautious, then, probably because of the virginity thing, she’d virtually stopped dating, somehow ashamed to admit, if a relationship had developed, her intact state. Until Jack—
Enough brooding!
But Marni still sighed as she lifted the little fingers that had been clasped in hers and kissed the back of Safi’s hand.
Who would have thought it could be so hard?
She stole silently out of the room, turning her thoughts back to the child, knowing she’d return and wondering just where she could buy toys and books to cheer the little boy’s recovery.
Nelson would send whatever she wanted but he was busy with Pop—she’d check out the internet when she went back to her room.
As she passed the nurses’ station, nerves prickled along her spine and glancing over her shoulder she saw the back of a tall, dark-haired man bent slightly to listen to what the nurse at the desk was saying.
Of course it’s not him, she told herself, though why had her nerves reacted?
Surely she wasn’t going to tingle when she saw every tall, dark and handsome stranger!
NO GAZ IN Theatre the next day or the next, and Marni decided, as she made her way down the children’s ward to visit Safi, that she was pleased, she just had to convince herself of the fact. But the sadness in the little boy’s eyes as she entered his room banished all other thoughts. She sat beside him, took his hand, said ‘Hello’ then ‘Salaam’, one of the few words she’d managed to remember from Jawa’s language lessons.
Safi smiled and repeated the word, then rattled off what might have been questions, although Marni didn’t have a clue. Instead she opened up the folder of pictures she’d printed off the internet, showing Safi a map of Australia and pointing to herself, then one of Ablezia. Using a cut-out plane, she showed how she’d flown from Australia to Ablezia.
The little boy took the plane