Sarah Kent-Hughes

Crisis at the Hospital

December 6, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Scott knelt before Sarah in the emergency room.

“Sarah,” he said, “Michael’s going into surgery. It’s likely to take a long time. His injuries are serious but he’s hanging on. And I’m not going to mislead you. It’s bad. He’s been shot near his heart and in his shoulder, near where it joins with his arm. His left lung collapsed, and they almost caught it too late. But they caught it. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Scott,” Sarah said to her brother, “please save Mike.” She began to cry in great sobbing breaths.

– From A Light Shining

Photograph by Piron Guillaume via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Joining the Family

November 23, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

That evening at dinner, Michael raised the issue. “We have a sixth family, Jason.”

“Yes?” he said, his eyes hopeful but wary.

“Sarah, why don’t you tell him?” Michael said.

“I’ll tell him,” said Jim. “It’s us. We want you to live with use.”

Jason looked at the three of them. “Are you doing this because no one else will?”

“No,” said Michael, “we’re doing this because it took God this long to make us open our eyes and see the obvious. You’re already part of our family. We want you to stay part of our family, if you’re willing to have us.”

From A Light Shining

Photograph by Warren Wong via Unsplash. Used with permission.

A Soldier Dreams: A Story

September 5, 2018 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

He remembered the light, then the roaring. A silence followed, succeeded by screams.

Then nothing.

People gathered around him, doing things, barking instructions. He tasted blood. The pain came suddenly, a blinding, screaming pain tearing him in half. He heard the screaming again.

“Morphine! Now!” someone shouted. And he knew the screaming was his own.

He opened his eyes and saw white. And light.

A man’s voice. “We’ve got this, Peter. Soon you’ll be dreaming.”

He saw the café. They had stopped for a coffee. It was safe, in the green zone. They had stopped there for coffee dozens of times. He liked the coffee that was so strong it could keep him wired for hours.

He saw the girl. Dark hair and eyes. She was perhaps six. Someone at the table handed her a candy bar, a treat that carried with them for the children. She smiled. And pulled at her belt.

He could feel the vibration and knew it was a plane. He could smell leather and metal, and something antiseptic. He heard beeping sounds. Through a haze he saw a drip bag. A face.

“You’re going home, Peter. It won’t be long.”

His lips felt cracked with dryness, and he moved his dry tongue over them. Then fingers on his lips, smoothing ointment. Mandy will be glad.

Sleep.

“Joanie will be there with me,” Mandy said. “She’s my coach, but she’ll have a camera and take lots of pictures. When the baby’s born, of course. You won’t want to see the actual birth and the mess.”

“But I do,” Peter said, “I want to see it all. I want to be there.” He didn’t tell her that his captain was moving heaven and earth to try to get him leave for the birth. He knew how the army worked, and he might get it, or he might not. He didn’t want to disappoint her. Or himself.

She was due in three weeks.

He woke with the touchdown on the runway. He was fully awake. He saw a nurse come by and smile.

“We’ve landed,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “I felt it.” He could see portable military beds. Some men were standing. Bandaged. A man was the right side of his face bandaged. “Are we going to hospital?”

“The Royal Chelsea,” the nurse said. “They have great facilities there.”

He knew. It was where they took they badly injured, flown from the airbase in Basra to the big RAF base near Norfolk, and then driven to London by ambulance.

He saw her inject something in the tube from the drip bag.

Sleep.

Two men in white coats were talking. He could hear their voices but not make out the words.

Sleep again.

He was lying on the floor of the café. Something was on his chest. Someone’s leg. And the wet stickiness. He pushed at the leg. It rolled to the floor.

Mandy. He heard her voice.

“Mandy?”

He felt a hand on his cheek.

“Yes, Pete, it’s me.”

“Have we had the baby yet?” he said.

“Not yet. Just under three weeks.” He heard the stifled sob.

“I take it I’m in a bad way. No one’s said.”

The sobbing was no longer stifled.

A nurse doing something, fiddling with the IV tube.

Darkness.

The voices pulled him from a deep sleep with no dreams. He didn’t recognize them. A man and a woman. The man was being deferential, and Pete wasn’t sure why.

Someone sat next to his bed. He opened his eyes.

“The open eyes are a common feature,” a man’s voice said. “He’s still asleep.”

He stared at the women’s face. She was beautiful. Her brown eyes had flecks of gold.

“Are you sure he’s asleep?” she said.

“Quite sure, ma’am. He’ll likely not regain consciousness.”

He felt her touch his cheek. Feeling her fingers on his skin, he could immediately tell he needed a shave. She didn’t seem to mind.

She stood and, leaning over him, she kissed him on his forehead.

“It will be all right,” the woman whispered. “She’ll be okay.”

Before slipping back into sleep, he realized she was right. And that she was an American. Were all angels American?

Escorted by the hospital administrator, Sarah Kent-Hughes walked down the hall to a waiting room. A very pregnant young women, tears staining her cheeks, looked up. Stunned, she struggled to stand.

“Your majesty—” she said.

“No,” Sarah said, “sit. I know what late-term pregnancy feels like.” She sat next to the young woman and took her hand.

“It doesn’t seem like it,” Sarah said, “but it will be all right. It doesn’t mean it won’t be hard, but it will be all right.”

The soldier was dreaming of angels with American accnts.

Top photograph by Des via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: Sarah Kent-Hughes

July 2, 2018 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

The story of Michael Kent and Sarah Hughes begins in Dancing Priest, the first novel in the Dancing Priest series. And while other narratives will stream through the series, the love story of Michael and Sarah remains the core.

They meet at the University of Edinburgh. She’s an art student at the University of Southern California, studying a year abroad with her brother David Hughes. She and Michael share a class in medieval church history; he sees her sitting a few rows away and is instantly smitten. He introduces himself after the class, she thinks she’s been hit on for the fourth time that day; and she dismisses him with an Anglo-Saxon profanity, believing his statement about studying for the priesthood to be a come-on line.

But they both get passed that, and at a school festival, dance what comes to be known as the “last tango in Edinburgh.” And it’s during that dance that the dancing priest of the title is born.

Dancing Priest is the story of how Michael and Sarah find each other, lose each other, and then find each other again. In the process, they are both growing and maturing, Sarah moving steadily toward the faith that divided her from Michael and Michael learning that the priesthood of study and preparation may not be the same as the priesthood meeting life on the streets.

In A Light Shining, the second novel in the series, Sarah almost becomes the main character. She and Michael are married, living in San Francisco, and soon expecting their first child. And then comes The Violence, a planned and coordinated terrorist attack on Britain’s royal family, Michael’s brother Henry, and Michael and Sarah. The attack on a very pregnant Sarah is thwarted by their two adopted son, Jason and Jim, but Michael almost dies. Sarah goes through childbirth while Michael is in surgery. And while he’s recovering and still unconscious, she assumes responsibilities far beyond the typical new young mother.

In Dancing King, the third in the Dancing Priest series, Sarah becomes one of the narrators of the story – the arrival in London, the upheavals with palace staff, the creation of a new staff, and the growing attacks by people determined to drive Michael and Sarah from the throne.

Sarah is self-confident and assured, but she is also shy. She’s also slightly terrified at dealing with all of her new responsibilities. Physically, she’s about 5 feet 7, golden-brown hair, brown eyes, with high cheekbones. Michael thinks she’s absolutely dazzling. Her favorites clothes to wear are jeans and a man’s dress shirt (which is what she was wearing when she and Michael first met).

She also is an artist, with an artist’s soul and temperament. Sarah had been on her way to establishing a successful career in painting when she met Michael again and married him. She will continue to paint, in addition to all of her new responsibilities. Her painting style is Realism; people often think her paintings are photographs.

At the very beginning of Dancing King, as the family is leaving their life in San Francisco and flying to London, the man who will become Michael’s chief of staff is sitting on a jump seat across from Michael and Sarah in the car to the airport. Reflecting on the events detailed in A Light Shining, what he says about Sarah and her husband is the key theme of the book:

“This young woman, this young queen with a new baby sitting across from me in the SUV, had been the pivotal player. The PM knew that. I knew that. And I had had to insert myself into her fear, confusion, and shock. I didn’t expect to be inserted into the middle of her faith. And her husband’s faith.”

Photograph by Andrei Lazarev via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Sarah Kent-Hughes

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