Amy Ruttan - Royal Doc's Secret Heir

“You should rest too,” Farhan suggested. “You’ve been working non-stop since even before the cyclone hit.”

“What for? I have no wife and I like to keep busy.”

“You’re going to work yourself into an early grave, brother.” Farhan turned and left and Maazin let out a breath that he hadn’t even known that he was holding.

He glanced back over his shoulder to see Jeena sitting next to a patient’s bed and talking with the elderly woman, who seemed to recognize her.

Why had Jeena left?

“She’s left,” his mother said with finality.

“What?” Maazin asked, stunned.

“Your paramour. She is gone. Now you can do the duty we all must, and marry someone of the lineage to be your bride.”

“I don’t believe you,” Maazin said hotly. “Jeena would never do that.”

His mother walked calmly over to her desk and pulled out a letter, handing it to him. It looked like Jeena’s handwriting.

His mother held it out to him between two fingers. “Read it.”

Maazin snatched the letter from his mother and quickly read the letter. It didn’t sound like Jeena, but it was her writing.

“Where did you get this?”

“Meleena found it.”

“Why would Meleena find it?” he asked.

“Her father has invested in the Harrak plantation and she’s trying to prevent a scandal for a family her father supports.”

Maazin read the letter again and couldn’t believe it.

It stated that she was leaving him because she couldn’t stand being linked to a prince who had a checkered past full of women and gambling. Even though she knew those things weren’t true...even though he had never been unfaithful to her. He’d wanted to marry her.

Maazin crumpled up the paper. “She would never leave her parents. I’m going to find her.”

He turned to leave but his mother cleared his throat and Maazin turned back.

“Her parents are gone too. They left Kalyana with her. This morning, in fact. They should already be in Dubai.”

“Where are they going?”

His mother shrugged. “Who knows? They didn’t tell me. Kalyanese people are free to come and go out of their country as they please.”

Maazin had gone to her parents’ vanilla plantation, which was on the westerly side of the main island. And his mother had been right. They had left and their plantation had been for sale. It had made no sense.

And he’d felt betrayed.

So he couldn’t help but wonder why they’d left and why she was now back. She’d fled in the middle of the night like she’d been afraid. So why had she come back?

At least now he knew where she had gone and what she had done with her life these past ten years. She’d become a surgeon!

He hadn’t expected that.

Why not? You became one too.

“You okay?”

Maazin turned around to see Jeena standing next to him.

“Perfectly,” he said.

She cocked an eyebrow. “You sure?”

“Yes,” he snapped, and then he sighed. “Sorry. I’m tired. It’s been non-stop since we set up this hospital.”

“I can see,” she said gently, and then tilted her head to the side. “I thought the Royal Guard set up this hospital?”

“They did. I’m part of the Royal Guard.”

Her mouth dropped open and then snapped shut. “You’re a member of the guard? Since when?”

He wanted to tell her since she’d left and he’d had that drunken night, the night his brother Ali and his wife Chandni had died.

After the funeral he’d joined the guard to give back and try to appease the pain and guilt he’d felt for surviving when they hadn’t.

And when he’d served his first year he’d decided to become a surgeon, to save even more lives.

It won’t bring Ali back.

He cleared his throat. “I’ve been a member of the Royal Guard for almost ten years.”

“That seems so unlike you.”

His spine stiffened and he wanted to ask her who she thought he was. He hadn’t been the one to leave. He’d stayed and made the most of the heartache she’d caused.

“Help!”

Maazin spun around as a man came in carrying a lifeless boy. He ran toward the man, who looked exhausted and sick. 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.”