Cruel Legacy Read Online Free PDF Page B

though she herself refused to admit it, grown away from him, made him feel he was no longer important to her.
    'You're lucky,' one of the men had said to him today. At least your wife's in work.'
    Lucky. If only they knew.
    Sally hummed to herself as she walked down the ward. She always enjoyed her work on Men's Surgical. She paused by Kenneth Drummond's bedside, responding to his warm smile. The forty-five-year-old university lecturer had been very badly injured in a serious road accident several months earlier, and she had got to know him quite well during his lengthy stay in hospital.
    She had been on night duty during his first critical weeks under special care and a deep rapport invariably developed between such patients and the staff who nursed them. At times she had felt as though she had almost been willing him to live, reluctant to go off duty in case without her there he might give up and let go of his precarious hold on life.
    It was a feeling no one outside the nursing profession could really be expected to understand. Joel certainly hadn't done so.
    'You'll have heard my news, I expect,' Kenneth commented as she smiled back at him.
    'Yes, Wednesday, isn't it? You'll be glad to get away from here, I expect.'
    'Not really: His smile disappeared. 'To be honest with you, I'm feeling rather apprehensive about it. Not because of any lack of faith in your surgeon's hard work,' he told her. 'He's assured me that he's put enough pins and bolts in me to hold up the Eiffel Tower. No, it's not that.'
    'Still, you are bound to feel a bit anxious,' Sally comforted him. 'It's only natural.'
    'Mmm. But it's not so much that. To be honest with you, it's the loneliness I'm dreading.' He pulled a wry face. 'I don't suppose I should admit to that, should I? Very unmacho of me. We men are supposed to be tough guys who don't admit to any kind of emotional vulnerability... until we're somewhere lite this. I don't know how you nurses manage to put up with us. You can't be left with a very high opinion of the male sex after you've heard us crying into our pillows.'
    'It isn't always easy,' Sally admitted. 'It hurts seeing that someone's in pain and that you know you can't always do anything about it. Mind you, it's nothing to what you hear down on the labour ward,' she told him, trying to lighten his mood. 'Of course it's the men who get the worst of it down there. Woe betide any male nurse who tries to tell a woman in the middle of her contractions just to remember how to breathe and everything will be all right...'
    'Yes. I've always thought that, when it comes to bearing pain, women are far braver than men and far more stoical.'
    'Not necessarily,' Sally told him with a grin. 'I cursed Joel, my husband, to hell and back when I was having Cathy. I swore afterwards that nothing would ever make me go through anything like that again.' She smiled reminiscently.
    'You've got two children, haven't you?' Kenneth asked her.
    'Yes. I would have liked another, but...'
    She stopped, frowning. It wasn't like her to confide so easily in anyone, especially a patient.
    'Have you any children?' she asked him directly.
    Although he had talked to her a lot during the months he had been in hospital, he had never mentioned any family.
    'Yes and no. My wife and I are divorced. She remarried and lives in Australia now.' His expression changed. 'I'm afraid I wasn't either a good husband or a good father. We married very young, straight out of university, Rebecca was pregnant at the time and she blamed me, quite rightly, I suppose, for the fact that her career was over before it had even started. A termination wasn't an option in those days and neither really was single motherhood. James, our second son, was born following an ill-timed attempt at marital reconciliation. We separated before he was born. They—my sons—are adults now, and anyway they look on their stepfather as their father, and quite rightly, so it's ridiculous of me to lie here feeling