A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [174]
I put my elbows on the table and leaned my head on my hands; it seemed much too heavy to hold up anymore.
“Necessary,” I said, more or less calmly to the tabletop. “What did you mean, necessary?”
“Does it not occur to you that ye might be with child?” He’d got himself back under control, and said this as calmly as he might have asked whether I planned to serve bacon with the breakfast porridge.
Startled, I looked up at him.
“I’m not.” But my hands had gone by reflex to my belly.
“I’m not,” I repeated more strongly. “I can’t be.” I could, though—just possibly. The chance was a remote one, but it existed. I normally used some form of contraception, just to be certain—but obviously . . .
“I am not,” I said. “I’d know.”
He merely stared at me, eyebrows raised. I wouldn’t; not so soon. So soon—soon enough that if it were so, and if there were more than one man . . . there would be doubt. The benefit of the doubt; that’s what he offered me—and himself.
A deep shudder started in the depths of my womb and spread instantly through my body, making goose bumps break out on my skin, despite the warmth of the room.
“Martha,” the man had whispered, the weight of him pressing me into the leaves.
“Bloody, bloody hell,” I said very quietly. I spread my hands out flat on the table, trying to think.
“Martha.” And the stale smell of him, the meaty press of damp bare thighs, rasping with hair—
“No!” My legs and buttocks pressed together so tightly in revulsion that I rose an inch or two on the bench.
“You might—” Jamie began stubbornly.
“I’m not,” I repeated, just as stubbornly. “But even if—you can’t, Jamie.”
He looked at me, and I caught the flicker of fear in his eyes. That, I realized with a jolt, was exactly what he was afraid of. Or one of the things.
“I mean we can’t,” I said quickly. “I’m almost sure that I’m not pregnant—but I’m not at all sure that I haven’t been exposed to some disgusting disease.” That was something else I hadn’t thought of until now, and the goose bumps were back in full force. Pregnancy was unlikely; gonorrhea or syphilis weren’t. “We—we can’t. Not until I’ve had a course of penicillin.”
I was rising from the bench even as I spoke.
“Where are ye going?” he asked, startled.
“The surgery!”
The hallway was dark, and the fire out in my surgery, but that didn’t stop me. I flung open the door of the cupboard, and began groping hastily about. A light fell over my shoulder, illuminating the shimmering row of bottles. Jamie had lit a taper and come after me.
“What in the name of God are ye doing, Sassenach?”
“Penicillin,” I said, seizing one of the bottles and the leather pouch in which I kept my snake-fang syringes.
“Now?”
“Yes, bloody now! Light the candle, will you?”
He did, and the light wavered and grew into a globe of warm yellow, gleaming off the leather tubes of my homemade syringes. I had a good bit of penicillin mixture to hand, luckily. The liquid in the bottle was pink; many of the Penicillium colonies from this batch had been grown in stale wine.
“Are ye sure it will work?” Jamie asked quietly, from the shadows.
“No,” I said, tight-lipped. “But it’s what I have.” The thought of spirochetes, multiplying silently in my bloodstream, second by second, was making my hand shake. I choked down the fear that the penicillin might be defective. It had worked miracles on gross superficial infections. There was no reason why—
“Let me do it, Sassenach.” Jamie took the syringe from my hand; my fingers were slippery and fumbling. His were steady, his face calm in candlelight as he filled the syringe.
“Do me first, then,” he said, handing it back.
“What—you? But you don’t need to—I mean—you hate injections,” I ended feebly.
He snorted briefly and lowered his brows at me.
“Listen, Sassenach. If I mean to fight my own fears, and yours—and I do—then I shallna boggle at pinpricks, aye? Do it!” He turned his side to me and bent over, one elbow braced on the counter, and hitched up the side of his kilt, baring one muscular buttock.