A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [261]
“All right, then.” I had a tiny minute-glass to hand, the best I could do by way of keeping accurate time. “Put it gently over her face. Lizzie, just breathe deeply, and count with me, one . . . two . . . goodness, that didn’t take long, did it?”
She’d taken one long breath, rib cage rising high—and then gone limp as a dead flounder as the breath went out. I hastily flipped the glass, and came to take her pulse. All well there.
“Wait for a bit; you can feel it, when they start to come round, a sort of vibration in the flesh,” I instructed Malva, keeping one eye on Lizzie and the other on the glass. “Put your hand on her shoulder. . . . There, do you feel it?”
Malva nodded, nearly trembling with excitement.
“Two or three drops then.” She added these, her own breath held, and Lizzie relaxed again with a sigh like an escape of air from a punctured tire.
Bobby’s blue eyes were absolutely round, but he clung fiercely to Lizzie’s other hand.
I timed the period to arousal once or twice more, then let Malva put her under a little more deeply. I picked up the lancet I had ready, and pricked Lizzie’s finger. Bobby gasped as the blood welled up, looking back and forth from the crimson drop to Lizzie’s angelically peaceful face.
“Why, she don’t feel it!” he exclaimed. “Look, she’s never moved a muscle!”
“Exactly,” I said, with a profound feeling of satisfaction. “She won’t feel anything at all, until she comes round.”
“Mrs. Fraser says we could cut someone quite open,” Malva informed Bobby, self-importantly. “Slice into them, and get at what’s ailing—and they’d never feel a thing!”
“Well, not until they woke up,” I said, amused. “They’d feel it then, I’m afraid. But it really is quite a marvelous thing,” I added more softly, looking down at Lizzie’s unconscious face.
I let her stay under whilst I checked the fresh blood sample, then told Malva to take the mask off. Within a minute, Lizzie’s eyelids began to flutter. She looked curiously round, then turned to me.
“When are ye going to start it, ma’am?”
Despite assurances from both Bobby and Malva that she had been to all appearances dead as a doornail for the last quarter hour, she refused to believe it, asserting indignantly that she couldn’t have been—though at a loss to explain the prick on her finger and the slide of freshly smeared blood.
“You remember the mask on your face?” I asked. “And my telling you to take a deep breath?”
She nodded uncertainly.
“Aye, I do, then, and it felt for a moment as though I were choking—but then ye were all just staring down at me, next thing!”
“Well, I suppose the only way to convince her is to show her,” I said, smiling at the three flushed young faces. “Bobby?”
Eager to demonstrate the truth of the matter to Lizzie, he hopped up on the table and laid himself down with a will, though the pulse in his slender throat was hammering as Malva dripped ether on the mask. He drew a deep, convulsive gasp the moment she put it on his face. Frowning a bit, he took another—one more—and went limp.
Lizzie clapped both hands to her mouth, staring.
“Jesus, Joseph, and Mary!” she exclaimed. Malva giggled, thrilled at the effect.
Lizzie looked at me, eyes wide, then back at Bobby. Stooping to his ear, she called his name, to no effect, then picked up his hand and wiggled it gingerly. His arm waggled limply, and she made a soft exclamation and set his hand down again. She looked quite agitated.
“Can he no wake up again?”
“Not until we take away the mask,” Malva told her, rather smug.
“Yes, but you don’t want to keep someone under longer than you need to,” I added. “It’s not good for them to be anesthetized too long.”
Malva obediently brought Bobby back to the edge of consciousness and put him back under several times, while I made note of times and dosages. During the last of these notes, I glanced up, to see her looking down at Bobby with an intent sort of expression, seeming to concentrate on something. Lizzie had