Break of Dawn

She sat on, praying and beseeching and, when the desperate pain within got too much, pacing the waiting room for an hour or more, only sitting down when she felt too weak and faint to continue. She was frightened, so very frightened.

At midnight, the surgeon came. Sophy had been surprised when she had seen him before Kane had been taken to the theatre earlier in the day. He looked to be about thirty-five, maybe forty years of age, which she thought young for such an important post. She wasn’t to know that any of the other surgeons whom Kane might have had wouldn’t have hesitated before amputating both legs, so severe were his injuries. But Edgar Grant was not only a brilliant young surgeon, he had the advantage of a formidably intelligent and empirical mind and was bang up to date with the most advanced thoughts and techniques. Kane’s injuries had presented him with the perfect opportunity to try out some experimental surgical procedures at which a lesser man would have baulked. Added to this, Grant was an avid disciple of Joseph Lister, a British surgeon who’d pioneered antiseptic techniques in surgery to prevent the infection of wounds following an operation, and who’d introduced carbolic acid to dress wounds and clean equipment. Through observing various patients, Grant insisted his serious cases be isolated in side rooms within a ward, and that any nurse or doctor attending to the wounds of such patients must wash their hands in a solution of diluted carbolic acid before touching their charge. Grant was not a popular man among his peers and subordinates, having a cold, analytical mind which suffered fools badly, but he was a respected one.

Sophy rose to her feet as the door opened. The surgeon looked tired and he wasn’t smiling. Again, she wasn’t to know that Edgar Grant almost never smiled. Her heart filled with dread, as she stared at him.

‘Please sit down, Mrs Shawe.’ Grant waved at the seat she’d just vacated and Sophy automatically sat. He pulled up a chair and sat down himself, stretching his neck out of the collar of his shirt as he did so. Sophy found she still couldn’t speak.

‘Mr Gregory is a fighter,’ he said quietly. ‘He has just survived a very long operation which in itself would have finished most men, but he is a very sick man.’

‘His – his legs?’

‘I have done the best I can but, should he survive this trauma which I have to tell you is by no means certain, whether he’ll walk again, I don’t know. Apart from the damage to his legs, he also has several broken ribs which I think are due to the horses’ hooves rather than the carriage. He also has some concussion which is not unusual in the circumstances.’

‘Can I see him?’

Grant shook his head. ‘Maybe tomorrow if he’ – he had been about to say ‘lasts the night’ but something in the extraordinary amber eyes holding his made him change it to – ‘is well enough. He’s asleep now and I don’t expect the effects of the anaesthetic to wear off for at least twenty-four hours.’

The relief which had flooded her at the surgeon’s first words had quickly abated as he’d gone on. He didn’t expect Kane to live. She could tell.

Grant stared at the lovely young woman in front of him. He knew who she was. One of the doctors who had been to see her in a play had said she was a fine actress, but he had no interest in anything besides his work. She was certainly beautiful, but she had the saddest eyes of anyone he had ever seen. He briefly wondered what had happened in her life to put such a depth of grief in such a relatively young woman. It had to be more than her concern for this fellow Gregory.

His thoughts caused him to say, in a voice that would have amazed the junior doctors on his team who were terrified of him to a man, ‘The will to live is a powerful force, Mrs Shawe, and one that we doctors cannot always understand. I have seen men and women who should have died make a good recovery, and others who should have lived simply fade away. Mr Gregory is fighting back. It’s a good sign.’

‘Thank you.’

His reward for the uncharacteristic thoughtfulness was her smile. As he found himself smiling back, he thought to himself that in Gregory’s position he would do battle to come back to the land of the living too.



After a few hours’ sleep and a wash and change of clothes, Sophy was back at the hospital at ten o’clock in the morning. She was allowed into Kane’s room with a nurse at her side at twelve o’clock for five minutes, after being warned that he was still unconscious. His face was deathly white on the pillow and the huge contraption to keep the covers from his damaged legs was alarming. She sat down, taking his limp hand which was resting on the counterpane and told him, over and over again, how much she loved him, even though she knew he couldn’t hear her. She still hadn’t cried.

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