Challenging The Doctor Sheikh

By the time they got inside, Nira had picked up more of the Prince’s frustration, but the beautiful interior of the building helped her at least.

Speaking might just help them both. Heavy silences made everything worse.

“I love this building. It’s like they plucked the interior of some glorious old nineteen-twenties New York building and encased it in glass. I expected the flat to carry on the same style, but it’s completely modern. Floor-to-ceiling windows, clean, straight lines—gorgeous, but two completely different styles blended together.”

Dakan stopped in front of the lift, pressed the button, then folded his arms. In the polished brass on the lift doors she met his reflected gaze and did the only sensible thing she could think of—she continued babbling.

Maybe he just needed more encouragement to break the ice.

“Take this lift door, for example. It’s definitely art nouveau.” She reached out to trace her fingers along the polished brass design, tracing the flowing curlicues symbolic of peacock feathers, “and I’d say it’s actually from the period—not a replica. The way the design is incised into the metal like a patterned window screen.”

She looked directly at him again, and her stomach bottomed out once more as if she were in the lift already, all hope that he’d take the hint diminishing.

Nothing but a slight lift of his dark brows came in response. Was that a sign of interest for her to continue, or some kind of hint for her to shut up?

Probably to shut up.

He checked that the button to summon the lift was still lit.

Definitely to shut up.

Had she really made him so angry by not waiting around, doing nothing, with no idea of when he might swing by? She’d left once to go to the bazaar close by, it wasn’t like she’d taken a desert trek by camel to skinny-dip at some oasis. And she wasn’t on the clock anyway. Her company had no billable code for sitting around, doing nothing.

She should probably shut up.

In a moment.

“I’ve seen those cut screens in all of the admittedly few places I’ve been to here. The bedroom in the flat has the eastern wall of windows with these pliable die-cut screens that roll down from the ceiling like you might expect a window blind to do. It makes waking up a pleasure, softens the sunshine into little patches of light to ease you into the brightness of the day.”

A bell pinged and the lift doors slid open.

Still no response. And that was top-notch architectural geekery too, completely wasted on this man. Everyone at her firm would’ve been interested in her description of the building details. In fact, her fellow architect geeks had already flooded her daily social media posts with pictures of the building or skyline, always asking for more detail. Because it was interesting. And beautiful. And unexpected.

He stepped into the lift, and she and her escort followed.

Give it up. He was angry, and that was all there was to it. Once they got up there she was definitely going to be shouted at. She should probably be glad he hadn’t deigned to dress her down in public.

She settled in between the men, far enough from each to avoid accidentally touching either, and folded her hands.

Zahir was more personable.

He probably would’ve liked her architectural geekery too.

The lift stopped and as they exited, the flat door swung open, as if someone was simply standing there, waiting for his return. Probably the kind of deference the Princely One expected, for people to wait around to do things for him.

If she wanted this job—and she really did—she had probably better figure out how to do that without screaming at him or stabbing him with her 9H pencils. She could sharpen those suckers to a deadly point, and they didn’t wear down fast. That made for the potential of lots of stabbing between sharpenings, so very few billable hours would need to be devoted to it. Was there a code for Stabbing the Client? She’d just have to use the handy old 999-MISC.

Dakan strode through the monochrome penthouse, his black suit and shiny shoes perfectly complementing the gunmetal gray tile floors, pale gray walls, and the black and white accents. He stopped when he’d reached the work area she’d spent days rearranging while waiting for him to get there.

Where the heck had Zahir gone?

She trailed to the desk and opened her laptop. Might as well get this over with. She could at least have something to work on and he could leave her to it. Then she could schedule her hours off—one couldn’t work twenty-four hours a day—explore the city to satisfy her need to know, and still have a well-filled-in time sheet to show him later with far more than eight hours per day anyway.

“I don’t know what instructions Prince Zahir gave—”

“He didn’t give me instructions. That’s not how we operate,” Dakan said finally, as he grabbed a chair from the other side of the desk and joined her where he could best view the laptop.

The laptop and the photo of her parents.

Given the way their meeting had gone so far, providing him a hint she was in the country for more than professional reasons might be a mistake. She discreetly laid the frame down to cover their faces and went on.

“Okay, then I don’t know what he told you about how we’d been working. I had done some proposals and pitched other ideas with rough sketches or animations—”

“We’re starting over.” Dakan cut off her explanation as he settled behind her—which was at least better than him looming over her shoulder.

Starting over. Right. She went about finding and opening the file for the rough animation she’d first thrown together for Zahir and opened it.

“We started by talking time lines and construction methods so he could have some ideas on how long it’d take to have a fully functioning hospital with the different means of construction. There are a couple of ways to do this and I’ve prepared a sample time line for each.”

“I want the shortest time.”

Impatient. She fixed her eyes on the screen precisely because she wanted to turn around and speak to him.

“The shortest time line to get full use of the building, of course, would be to build it all and then open it. But there’s an alternative, which would allow you to start getting use out of it much sooner but at a limited capacity. Given the current need, it might be worthwhile to have a staged opening.”

“Staged?” Dakan said, and in his reflection she saw him shed his jacket and drop it on the table before leaning forward, elbows on knees. “Open different parts at different times?”

“Yes.” The animation started to play as she spoke. “In a staged opening you start with one department—and here I started the animation with the original hospital because it’s already there. But basically you build one section at a time and finish it for use before moving on to the next part of the facility. That way you can open and just keep tacking on expansions as they become available.

“They do this in smaller communities usually to make medical care available locally at the earliest possible time and start with, say, doctors’ offices. Open those and start seeing patients while they build the next section and maybe add an emergency department. Then testing facilities and outpatient surgery, then open fully with a number of beds and a children’s ward, add a proper obstetrics and surgical department, then add more beds. Like that.”

Reflected Dakan nodded as he sat back. “I like that idea. Do that. But we don’t really have the number of doctors required to staff a building of offices yet. I’d rather start with two different departments at a reduced scale that can be expanded on each side. The biggest part would be the emergency department with some very basic diagnostic equipment—X-ray and a lab—and then have a smaller area to the side where a couple of GPs could have offices in the guise of urgent care for less-than-life-threatening illnesses that still require immediate treatment.”

As the conversation and planning started, the tension she’d felt in him drained away. He definitely seemed as eager to get started as Zahir had been, and as he spoke, the irritation that had saturated his voice during the bazaar confrontation earlier ebbed away.

She could work with this man. It’d be different, but he was a doctor too. They had the same goal: get a facility up and running for the people.

“We could do two different reduced-size units. Any time you split your building efforts, construction slows. So unless the extensions are staggered from one side to the other, you’re going to slow progress to open new units. Unless you really expand the crew.”

“The size of the crew won’t be a problem. Will you be designing as we go too? Is that possible? I know it will take a long time to finish a full design, and I’d rather they break ground and get going sooner than later.”

Nira gave up looking at his reflection and spun in her chair to face him, her eyes finding his immediately. He was still leaning forward, maybe that was why it suddenly felt so intimate. Even just talking shop, their eyes instantly connected and held just a beat too long for her comfort.

Nira would never call herself shy, but this was all new terrain for her, and she didn’t want to make another mistake already. She shifted her gaze to the safety of the middle distance, a thinking point to keep her thoughts on track.

She probably should put off some of her exploring until they got the first unit under way, devote as much time to this as she could now, show Dakan that his goal was her goal. Reflecting well on her firm and gaining a happy client who might ask for her again for later construction efforts would be a great thing for her career.

Her quest could wait.