A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [199]
“What a very good idea,” I said, putting down the nibbled muffin. “I believe I’ll go and get some.”
Carrying my cup, I escaped as quickly as I could down the hall to my surgery, followed by shouted reminiscences of Dominic Mulroney, an Irishman who’d walked face-first into a church door in Edinburgh and him sober as a sheep at the time. . . .
I shut the door of the surgery behind me, opened the window, and tossed the remains of the coffee out, then took down the bottle from the shelf and filled my cup to the brim.
I had intended to ask Mrs. Bug about Lionel Brown’s state of health, but . . . perhaps that could wait. I found that my hands were trembling again, and had to press them flat on the table for a moment to steady them before I could pick up the cup.
I took a deep breath, and a swallow of whisky. Another. Yes, that was better.
Small waves of pointless panic tended still to seize me unawares. I hadn’t had one this morning, and had rather hoped they’d gone away. Not quite yet, apparently.
I sipped whisky, dabbed cold sweat from my temples, and looked round for something useful to do. Malva and I had started some fresh penicillin the day before, and had made up fresh tinctures of boneset and troutlilly, and some fresh gentian salve, as well. I ended up thumbing slowly through my big black casebook, sipping whisky and dwelling on pages recounting various horrible complications of childbirth.
I realized what I was doing, but didn’t seem able to stop doing it. I was not pregnant. I was sure of it. And yet my womb felt tender, inflamed, and my whole being disturbed.
Oh, there was a jolly one; one of Daniel Rawlings’s entries, describing a slave woman of middle age, suffering from a recto-vaginal fistula that caused her to leak a constant small stream of fecal matter through the vagina.
Such fistulas were caused by battering during childbirth, and were more common in very young girls, where the strain of prolonged labor often caused such tears—or in older women, where the tissues had grown less elastic. Of course, in older women, the damage was quite likely to be accompanied by complete perineal collapse, allowing uterus, urethra—and possibly the anus for good measure—to sag through the pelvic floor.
“How extremely fortunate that I am not pregnant,” I said aloud, closing the book firmly. Perhaps I’d have another go at Don Quixote.
On the whole, it was a considerable relief when Malva Christie came and tapped on the door, just before noon.
She gave my face a quick glance, but as she had the day before, merely accepted my appearance without comment.
“How’s your father’s hand?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s fine, ma’am,” she replied quickly. “I looked just as ye said, but no red streaks, no pus, and just that tiny bit of redness near where the skin is cut. I made him wiggle his fingers like ye said,” she added, a dimple showing briefly in her cheek. “He didna want to, and carried on like I was poking thorns into him—but he did it.”
“Oh, well done!” I said, and patted her on the shoulder, which made her pinken with pleasure.
“I think that deserves a biscuit with honey,” I added, having noted the delectable aroma of baking that had been wafting down the hall from the kitchen for the last hour. “Come along.”
As we entered the hallway and turned toward the kitchen, though, I heard an odd sort of noise from behind us. A peculiar kind of thumping or dragging outside, as though some large animal was lumbering across the hollow boards of the front stoop.
“What’s that?” Malva said, looking over her shoulder in alarm.
A loud groan answered her, and a thud! that shook the front door as something fell against it.
“Mary, Joseph, and Bride!” Mrs. Bug had popped out of the kitchen, crossing herself. “What’s that?”
My heart had begun to race at the noises, and my mouth went dry. Something large and dark blocked the line of light beneath the door, and stertorous breathing was clearly audible, interspersed with groans.
“Well, whatever it is, it’s sick or injured,” I said. “Stand back.