More days had passed, in a blur; she began to suspect that she was being deliberately kept sedated. Once she woke in the night and through the translucent curtain dividing her from the rest of the tent, she could hear muffled sounds of lovemaking. Of course, she realized, in this culture, a lone male would not just have "servant women" cooking and cleaning but wives. Of which she was apparently intended to be one. Why had he brought her to him? Her capture at the border must have been intended for this – and if that was the case, did Joan – who always had an odd soft spot for Eyal – had Joan shipped her to him, sending her on a mission she knew would end in her being captured and sent to him? And if so, was she actually "on a mission" right now – one no one , least of all Eyal, was reading her in on? She was glad when sleep overtook her again.
When she woke, she could feel the stitches on a shaved strip of scalp and they were starting to itch but did not feel tender. Her thoughts were more disturbing to her than the incision. That morning, when Laylah, looking very pleasant and alive, came to tend to her, Annie had pulled out the needle again and refused to let her reattach it, pushing her away. Maybe without drugs she could start making sense of it all. This refusal brought Eyal to her quickly thereafter. She didn't know what to expect from him and braced herself for the worst, but he seemed calm and concerned.
"Laylah tells me her patient is becoming combative," he said, sitting down beside her.
"I don't need it. My pain level is manageable." He nodded, felt around her head, checked the stitches.
"You're healing well. I don't think you need so much sedation or pain meds, if any. I'll let you decide."
"Was it you? Who … fixed this?"
"You know I trained for it," he said, which was technically not true – she knew he had been "in medical school" but not that he was on a surgeon or neurosurgeon track, or that he was already adept at the necessary arts. Still, that specialty made perfect sense given his personality and skills. "it was not as bad as I feared it might be. Anything worse… would have been more challenging to handle," he said, with what she suspected was understatement. But he must have been able to get in a medevac or equivalent if needed, if a helicopter could come in? But then he would have possibly lost control of her. He ceased his inspection of her stitches but made no move away. He touched her, very lightly, on the chest. "I'm very glad that injury did not come to me here," he said, softly, and gathered her to him, stroking the area over her heart, nuzzling his face into her hair, or at least, what was left of it. He stayed on the unshaven side. He held her tighter, as if realizing how close she had come to dying before. For a moment she let herself relax in his embrace, delighting in the scent of him and his touch, and then she tensed, realizing she didn't know what this meant in their new context, and he, at almost the same instance, abruptly changed the subject and loosened their embrace. "By the way, we're moving camp today. Your best course is to stay quiet and let Laylah and Hejra do what they need to do. I don't want you moving about much, and if you do, I will sedate you again. Do you understand?"
Those words were slightly easier to take in the context of Dr. Lavin than when she had heard them last, from her "new Islamic fundamentalist husband". And she was still slightly under the spell of the affectionate moment they had just shared. "Yes, doctor, I will comply."
He smiled at her. "Good. The next site is an oasis about sixty miles from here. It's cooler. You'll enjoy it."
"Ey-" She stopped herself. She never had been good at calling him by cover names, almost never getting it right in Santa Margarita – if that is what this is, she reminded herself. A "cover" name and not a name in religion. His eyes flashed at her as she stopped mid-word. But she continued. "Where are we?"
"At the moment, we are at the edge of the Rub al Khali." Her expression must have showed she had no idea where that was, and she was proud of her knowledge of geography. "In the middle of the Arabian peninsula. In the Empty Quarter."