A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [277]
“Can I open my eyes now?”
“Oh—yes, of course. Rub more up her legs, please, Ian.” Shoving the jar back in his direction, I caught a glimpse of movement in the doorway. One of the Beardsley twins stood there, clinging to the jamb, dark eyes fixed on Lizzie. Kezzie, it must be; Ian had said “the deaf Beardsley” had come to fetch help.
“She’ll be all right,” I said to him, raising my voice, and he nodded once, then disappeared, with a single burning glance at Ian.
“Who was it ye were shouting at, Auntie Claire?” Ian looked up at me, clearly as much to preserve Lizzie’s modesty as from courtesy to me; the blanket was turned back and his big hands were smoothing ointment into the skin above her knee, thumbs gently circling the small rounded curves of her patella, her skin so thin that the pearly bone seemed almost visible through it.
“Who—oh. Manfred McGillivray,” I said, suddenly recollecting. “Damn! The blood!” I leapt up and wiped my hands hurriedly on my apron. Thank God, I’d corked the vial; the blood inside was still liquid. It wouldn’t keep long, though.
“Do her hands and arms, would you please, Ian? I’ve got to manage this quickly.”
He moved obligingly to do as I said, while I hastily spilled a drop of blood on each of several slides, dragging a clean slide across each one to make a smear. What sort of stain might work on spirochetes? No telling; I’d try them all.
I explained the matter disjointedly to Ian, as I pulled stain bottles out of the cupboard, made up the solutions, and set the slides to soak.
“The pox? Poor lad; he must be nearly mad wi’ fright.” He eased Lizzie’s arm, gleaming with ointment, under the blanket and tucked it gently round her.
I was momentarily surprised at this show of sympathy, but then remembered. Ian had been exposed to syphilis some years before, after his abduction by Geillis Duncan; I hadn’t been sure that he had the disease, but had dosed him with the last of my twentieth-century penicillin, just in case.
“Did ye not tell him ye could cure him, though, Auntie?”
“I hadn’t the chance. Though I’m not absolutely sure that I can, to be honest.” I sat down on a stool, and took Lizzie’s other hand, feeling for her pulse.
“Ye’re not?” His feathery brows went up at that. “Ye told me I was cured.”
“You are,” I assured him. “If you ever had the disease in the first place.” I gave him a sharp look. “You’ve never had a sore on your prick, have you? Or anywhere else?”
He shook his head, mute, a dark wave of blood staining his lean cheeks.
“Good. But the penicillin I gave you—that was some that I’d brought from . . . well, from before. That was purified—very strong and certainly potent. I’m never sure, when I use this stuff”—I gestured at the culturing bowls on the counter—“whether it’s strong enough to work, or even the right strain. . . .” I rubbed the back of my hand under my nose; the gallberry ointment, had a most penetrating smell.
“It doesn’t always work.” I had had more than one patient with an infection that didn’t respond to one of my penicillin concoctions—though in those cases, I had often succeeded with another attempt. In a few instances, the person had recovered on his own before the second brew was ready. In one instance, the patient had died, despite applications of two different penicillin mixtures.
Ian nodded slowly, his eyes on Lizzie’s face. The first bout of chills had spent itself and she lay quiet, the blanket barely moving over the slight round of her chest.
“If ye’re no sure, then . . . ye’d not let him marry her, surely?”
“I don’t know. Jamie said he’d speak to Mr. Wemyss, see what he thought of the matter.”
I rose and took the first of the slides from its pinkish bath, shook off the clinging drops, and, wiping the bottom of the slide, placed it carefully on the platform of my microscope.
“What are