A Greater Evil Read Online Free PDF

parents had used. He was pushed out of the way so the paramedics could move Cecilia onto it, then lift it and her onto their stretcher. Their movements were sure but very slow until she was on the stretcher and strapped in. Then they ran with the trolley towards the door.
    He’d lost his keys. He could feel the paramedics’ fury at the prospect of waiting any longer. He saw the bunch in the end, in the middle of the messy table, which made them exchange more suspicious glances; then they moved out of the studio faster than he’d have thought anyone could with the weight of a pregnant woman to push.
    He followed, taking only a second to look round his shambles of a studio before he locked the door. He felt as though he’d never seen it before. Blood splatters were everywhere; bits and pieces of brittle old maquettes had been flung all over the floor; and his most cherished marble piece, which he hadn’t been able to make himself sell because Ceel had loved it so, had been smashed into a dozen pieces. He hadn’t known blood would look so bright red against matt white marble.
    Hours later Sam was aware of the voices outside the room in which he was waiting for Cecilia to die. They’d already told him there was no surgery they could perform to repair the damage to her brain and heart and lungs. The emergency Caesarian had resulted in the birth of a girl, just alive but unable to breathe on her own. She’d been put on a ventilator and whisked away to the Special Care Baby Unit. They’d told him to go along any time he wanted to see her, but he wasn’t going to waste a second he could have with Cecilia.
    ‘She might speak,’ he’d said to the doctor who had so kindly and so implacably told him she couldn’t survive. ‘And I have to be here if she does.’
    ‘No,’ the doctor had said once more, patient as a saint. ‘She’s not going to regain consciousness. She cannot possibly speak and there is nothing going on in her brain, except the reflexes keeping her heart pumping and what’s left of her lung function working. She doesn’t know you’re here; she could not hear you if you spoke to her.’
    ‘But she is breathing.’
    ‘Only just. It won’t be more than a few hours. Of course you must stay with her as long as you like. The nurses will look in at intervals and if you need anything, there’s the bell. I’ll see you later.’
    Sam hated the doctor. But not as much as he hated the owners of the other voices. They were determined to talk to him, and he knew they’d get him in the end. Whenever they’d forced their way in, they’d looked at him as if he were a wild animal that needed to be caged. It was as if they knew about every cruel word he’d ever yelled at Ceel and every single one of the times she’d made him so angry he’d wanted her dead.
    He owed his temporary freedom to a tiny little Asian nurse, who’d been fighting their urge to drag him out of the cubicle to face them. She looked too delicate to do anything other than decorate a recruiting poster, but she’d been standing up to them all along and keeping them out.
    ‘Have patience,’ she said now. ‘And some pity, for the love of God. His wife is dying. Give him this time with her now, whatever you plan to do to him later.’
    Sam held on to Cecilia’s hand and felt it growing cooler. He quickly checked that she was still breathing. For a moment he thought she wasn’t, then he held the back of his own hand against her lips and felt the faintest current of air.
    Curtain rings rattled behind him and he looked round, furious, to see one of the uniformed police officers. The man’s pink face was eager and he took a step between the curtains.
    ‘You’re trying to stop her speaking, aren’t you? Take your hand away from her mouth. Now!’
    Sam looked away so that he could fall back into the old position of keeping his watch on Cecilia’s eyes in case the lids lifted. He heard the Asian nurse again. She sounded even angrier than he