Falling For Her Reluctant Sheikh. Amalie Berlin

neighbor needs you to set up an IV for her?”

      “I do blood draws for her weekly to take with her to her anticoagulation appointment. I draw in the morning when I get in from work, we put it into a thermos and she takes it with her. They can never hit the vein without several stabs, so she prefers it if I do it.” Rather than give a fuller recitation of her most recent IVs, she figured she’d said enough for him to decide and quieted to let him work it out.

      “I appreciate the offer.”

      The woman who held her child hadn’t said anything, and Adalyn didn’t know how much English she understood, if any. So she did what she could and smiled, reaching over to pat the woman’s arm. “It’ll be okay. We’re going to help him.” And then asked Khalil, “What’s his name?”

      “I don’t know,” he answered, but ignored her offer in favor of palpating the tiny arm for a vein.

      “Upper arm might be better. I’d say leg, but they can kick those out pretty easy.”

      He flipped off the tourniquet and moved to the boy’s other arm, starting over again.

      Her keys …

      Adalyn patted the many pockets on her pants, unsnapped a thigh pocket and fished out the set, then snatched the little laser she played with her neighbor’s cat with.

      “What are you doing?”

      “This will help.” She pressed the button to turn on the cheap little laser pointer and pressed it to the boy’s arm where he was palpating for a vein. Through the thin layer of baby fat the light illuminated the dark pathways that were blood vessels. “That help?”

      “What the …?” He blinked and let her track the light over the boy’s skin. There were special infrared lights he’d heard of for illuminating veins, but he’d never seen such a cheap-looking gadget do it. “Is that infrared?”

      “Wee sight illuminators are best, and I have one for Mrs. Stiverson’s sticks, but I didn’t bring it with me. I’ve used this in a pinch before, though. I probably should have left my keys at the p—” She stopped herself before palace came out of her mouth. “At home.” A slightly flummoxed shake of her head and she moved past it. “But I’m kind of afraid something will happen and I’ll be separated from something important if I don’t have it with me at all times.”

      If he kicked her out of the country, she meant. Khalil could read between those lines easily enough.

      The thought had occurred to him.

      Rather than comment, he reached for another alcohol prep, swabbed the skin and then lifted her hand to swab the tip of the light and the area she’d pressed against the small boy’s arm. When he was certain that it was all disinfected and the skin illuminated, he felt right over one of the larger, dark vessels. “It’s not all that deep,” he murmured, getting a nod from her.

      “And there’s a small amount of thickness on the edges, probably the walls of the vessel, but if you aim for the center you’ll be fine.”

      After a few more words of reassurance for the mother, he asked the boy’s name and gave instructions on holding him snugly in case he woke up and began to struggle.

      “His name is Nadim, and he’s three,” Khalil said in quiet English, since Adalyn had wanted to know. “If he wakes up, drop the light and hold his legs. She’ll have his top half, but if he has use of his legs he’ll be able to put up more of a fight.”

      “Of course.” She kept the light against the boy’s skin, but with her other hand reached down and wrapped her fingers around the tiny ankle closest to Khalil.

      So, she could follow orders.

      Carefully, he threaded the line into the boy’s vein and when rewarded with a blood return attached a saline flush to double-check. Sometime in all this she’d dropped the light and had taken over holding the line so it didn’t slip out.

      When he’d confirmed that the vein was indeed intact still, he taped down the cannula and she hooked the tubing up to the bag and stood, letting gravity feed the fluid down to the end before he attached it to the needle.

      “How are we going to hang it?” she asked.

      “We’ll have a stand when the medics get here.”

      “I made them late.”

      “No. Well, yes, but you’re earning your keep.” Her little cheap key chain light had saved him a lot of headache. Khalil might not want her there to help him, but he could appreciate the help she provided for the people in his care. “I might not have hit that vein without your trick, and most assuredly would not have on the first try. Where’d you learn that?”

      “It’s something I always check on pretty much every light I get my hands on.” She smiled at him, her first honest, unguarded smile. Her cheeks bunched, bringing the pink closer to her green eyes so that they seemed all the greener, and gave that suggestion again of innocence. Beneath her aggravation at him there was a sweetness about her.

      “My dad and I used to put flashlights to our cheeks, noses, whatever … then turn off the lights and make faces at one another with glowing cheeks and black hollow-looking eyes. Got me in the habit of checking different lights against my skin.”

      He spoke again with the mother, giving her instructions and explaining what he was going to do. When he stopped speaking and looked at her again, Adalyn continued her story. “I had to give a presentation in college and got my own pointer because I wanted to be the best. I was nervous talking in front of everyone, but I managed to get through the whole thing by distracting myself by pressing it against my arm or hand and watching the veins get illuminated. Coping mechanism that turned into a trick that helped me in residency. I was all about tricks that might make me better able to do the job. I’m not a natural, like Jamison.”

      “That why you went into sleep medicine?”