A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [219]
His hands gave a final squeeze to my shoulders, but he didn’t take them away. I leaned my head back against him, eyes closed, taking comfort in his company.
In the momentary silence, we could hear small sounds across the hall, from the surgery. A muffled grunt from Marsali as a contraction came on, a soft French question from Fergus.
I felt that we really ought not to be listening—but neither of us could think of anything to say, to cover the sounds of their private conversation.
A murmur from Marsali, a pause, then Fergus said something hesitant.
“Aye, like we did before Félicité,” came Marsali’s voice, muffled, but quite clear.
“Oui, but—”
“Put something against the door, then,” she said, sounding impatient.
We heard footsteps, and the door to the surgery swung open. Fergus stood there, dark hair disheveled, shirt half-buttoned, and his handsome face deeply flushed under the shadow of beard stubble. He saw us, and the most extraordinary look flitted across his face. Pride, embarrassment, and something indefinably . . . French. He gave Jamie a lopsided smile and a one-shouldered shrug of supreme Gallic insouciance—then firmly shut the door. We heard the grating sounds of a small table being moved, and a small thump as it was shoved against the door.
Jamie and I exchanged looks of bafflement.
Giggles came from behind the closed door, accompanied by a massive creaking and rustling.
“He’s no going to—” Jamie began, and stopped abruptly, looking incredulous. “Is he?”
Evidently so, judging from the faint rhythmic creaks that began to be heard from the surgery.
I felt a slight warmth wash through me, along with a mild sense of shock—and a slightly stronger urge to laugh.
“Well . . . er . . . I have heard that . . . um . . . it does sometimes seem to bring on labor. If a child was overdue, the maîtresses sage femme in Paris would sometimes tell women to get their husbands drunk and . . . er-hmm.”
Jamie gave the surgery door a look of disbelief, mingled with grudging respect.
“And him with not even a dram taken. Well, if that’s what he’s up to, the wee bugger’s got balls, I’ll say that for him.”
Ian, coming down the hall in time to hear this exchange, stopped dead. He listened for a moment to the noises proceeding from the surgery, looked from Jamie and me to the surgery door, back, then shook his head and turned around, going back to the kitchen.
Jamie reached out and gently closed the study door.
Without comment, he sat down again, picked up his pen, and began scratching doggedly away. I went over to the small bookshelf, and stood there staring at the collection of battered spines, taking nothing in.
Old wives’ tales were sometimes nothing more than old wives’ tales. Sometimes they weren’t.
I was seldom troubled by personal recollections while dealing with patients; I had neither time nor attention to spare. At the moment, though, I had much too much of both. And a very vivid memory indeed of the night before Bree’s birth.
People often say that women forget what childbirth is like, because if they remembered, no one would ever do it more than once. Personally, I had no trouble at all remembering.
The sense of massive inertia, particularly. That endless time toward the end, when it seems that it never will end, that one is mired in some prehistoric tar pit, every small move a struggle doomed to futility. Every square centimeter of skin stretched as thin as one’s temper.
You don’t forget. You simply get to the point where you don’t care what birth will feel like; anything is better than being pregnant for an instant longer.
I’d reached that point roughly two weeks before my due date. The date came—and passed. A week later, I was in a state of chronic hysteria, if one could be simultaneously hysterical and torpid.
Frank was physically more comfortable than I was, but in terms of nerves, there wasn’t much to choose between us. Both of us were terrified—not merely of the birth, but of what might come after. Frank being Frank, he reacted to terror by becoming very quiet, withdrawing into