Such Sweet Sorrow by Catrin Collier

Author:Catrin Collier [Collier, Catrin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, General
ISBN: 9781783750603
Google: nnXangEACAAJ
Publisher: Accent Press
Published: 2013-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Andrew leaned wearily against the door of the operating theatre and tore the cap from his head.

‘Operation go well?’ His father was sitting in the small room the doctors used as a changing room.

‘Not wonderfully.’

‘From what the admitting sister said, it was bad. Both legs crushed beyond repair.’

‘I’ve tried to save one.’

‘The other?’

‘I had to amputate below the knee. It should heal well enough. It’s the other one I’m worried about. God only knows if the bones will knit back together. If they don’t, he’ll be facing another major operation, probably an amputation, within the week. He told me he joined the Guards yesterday. Poor devil, one thing’s certain, they won’t want him now.’

‘Look on the bright side: this accident may have saved his life.’

‘Are you saying he’s better off crippled in Pontypridd than dead on the fields of France?’

‘A lot of men would have given a great deal to be offered that option in the last show.’

‘I suppose they would, but I can’t see Wyn being overly grateful for his present state.’ Andrew pulled off the operating gown he was wearing and tossed it into a linen bin. ‘What are you still doing here? I thought Diana’s injuries were superficial?’

‘Apart from mild concussion they are. Cuts, grazes, contusions, and a bad case of worrying about Wyn Rees. I gave her a sedative and they found her a bed. She’s been sleeping for the past two hours.’

‘You could have gone home and gone to bed yourself.’

‘I wanted to have a word with you. You always seem to be in a hurry when you’re in the surgery, and you and Bethan never call in to see your mother …’

‘Don’t start that again, Dad.’

‘Your mother would like to see more of Rachel.’

‘I know.’ Andrew resigned himself to receiving yet another lecture. His father was a doctor, his parents ‘crache’ who looked down on Bethan and her family because her father was a miner. But class differences hadn’t prevented him and Bethan from falling in love, and staying in love, even through the trauma of the death of one baby, and a temporary estrangement that at one time had threatened to become permanent.

‘I think you should teach Bethan to drive.’

‘What?’ Andrew had been expecting many things, but that suggestion hadn’t been one of them. ‘You know something about my interview on Thursday, don’t you?’ he asked warily. His father had influential contacts. It wouldn’t take much for him to find out exactly why his son and the other junior partner from the practice had been called to register.

‘They’re expecting trouble to break out in France at any moment, and they’re doubling the number of field hospitals to cope with the expected casualties.’

‘You mean we’re going to start dropping more than paper on the Germans?’

‘There may be a way to get you out of this …’

‘Oh no you don’t.’ Andrew turned on his father. ‘If I find out that you’ve pulled strings to keep me out of the army, I’ll go to the recruiting office and enlist in the first regiment that will take me as a private.

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