Sophy shut her eyes for an infinitesimal moment. The small hospital waiting room was painted a sickly green and smelled strongly of antiseptic, its immaculate walls and floor as clinically clean as only plenty of disinfectant and elbow grease – and a healthy fear of Matron – could achieve. She wanted to scream at Sadie that if she said the same thing one more time, she would go mad. Yet when she looked at Sadie’s quivering lips her innate kindness overcame her own guilt and fear, and, putting out her hand, she patted Sadie’s. ‘It’s not your fault. I was the one who stepped out into the road without thinking.’
They had been sitting huddled together for what seemed like an eternity but in reality was only a matter of hours. A young nurse had brought them cups of tea at regular intervals, which they had drunk without tasting, and twice a middle-aged Sister had put her head round the door and tried to persuade them to go home and rest. Kane had not regained consciousness before they had taken him down to theatre to attempt to save his crushed legs, and there was talk of other serious injuries too. The surgeon had held out little hope when he had spoken to them earlier.
Sophy was always to look back on those hours and the ones that followed as the worst of her life. They eclipsed anything that had happened in her childhood, the revelations about her mother which had driven her from the north-east, the misery she’d endured in her marriage with its terrible conclusion when Toby had sold her to be violated, even the horror of Cat’s death at the hands of a madman. Those things she had been unable to prevent, they had been out of her control. But Kane . . .
When she had crawled over to him in the road and seen what the carriage had done to him she had begun to whimper his name over and over but he hadn’t heard her. He’d lain deathly still, bloodied and broken in the dirt. One of the women who had been on the march had come running over and, after explaining that she was a nurse, had torn pieces of cloth from her dress and applied tourniquets on Kane’s legs where the blood was pumping freely. The doctor had told her Kane wouldn’t have reached the hospital alive but for this lady’s action, but the woman had disappeared when the ambulance had arrived and Sophy had never thanked her.
Dazed, and her white dress stained red with Kane’s blood, she had travelled with him to the hospital, willing him to open his eyes so she could tell him she loved him. Why hadn’t she realised it before? she’d asked herself, only to have the answer in all its starkness: she had realised it, deep down in the depths of her. For months now she had known she loved him in a way she had never loved Toby, and because of that, Kane could hurt her more. If she had admitted to herself that she loved him, it would have given him a power over her that she found terrifying, and so she had substituted affection and fondness in all her deliberations, weak versions of the real thing.
Ralph had joined them at one point for an hour or so and, in an effort to comfort her, had added to her silent screams of protest and self-denigration when he’d told her he knew Kane had loved her for years. ‘He’s never said, mind,’ Ralph elaborated quickly as though his knowing might cause offence, ‘but it tore him in two the day you got wed. He went out and got blind drunk – paralytic, he was, and that’s not like him. He’s a man of few words, is Mr Gregory, but he feels things more deeply than most and that’s a fact. He’s a fine gentleman—’ Ralph, great hulking Ralph, had broken down at this point and it had been she who had comforted him, all the time wishing she could cry too. But the agony inside was too acute for the relief of tears.
Giving Sadie’s hand a last pat, Sophy straightened in the uncomfortable hardbacked chair. ‘I think you should go home and get some sleep for a few hours,’ she said quietly. She had sent a messenger boy to the house to inform Sadie and Harriet what had happened, saying she didn’t know when she would be home; she hadn’t expected Sadie to drop everything and rush to her side, but maybe she should have.
‘No, I’m staying with you.’
‘What good is it going to do if you make yourself ill? I don’t want to have to worry about you as well as Kane. Please, Sadie, go home.’
It took a little more persuasion but eventually she saw Sadie off in a cab and returned to the waiting room. She saw several people looking at her askance and realised her bloodstained dress must appear disconcerting, but she wasn’t about to go home and change. However long it took, she had to stay until she knew he was going to be all right. He had to be all right. But his legs, if they amputated his legs, how would that affect him? But she wouldn’t think like that. Please, God, please save his legs, but if he has to lose them to live, then please grant him life. I can’t bear it if he dies, God. I’ll do anything, anything, but don’t let him die.