A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [382]
Her eyes had opened when I pinched her hand. That was good. I smiled at her, and brushed the gathering flies away from her half-open mouth. The soft pink membranes were dry and sticky-looking.
“Hallo, darling,” I said softly. “Don’t worry now. I’m here.”
And was that going to help? I wondered. Damn it all; if only I had been a day earlier!
I heard Bree’s hurrying steps and met her at the door.
“I need—” I began, but she interrupted me.
“Mr. MacNeill’s in the woods!” she said. “I found him on the way to the spring. He’s—”
The kettle in her hands was still empty. I seized it with a cry of exasperation.
“Water! I need water!”
“But I—Mr. MacNeill, he’s—”
I thrust the kettle back into her hands and shoved past her.
“I’ll find him,” I said. “Get water! Give it to them—the baby first! Make Lizzie help you—the fires can wait! Run!”
I heard the flies first, a buzzing noise that made my skin crawl with revulsion. Out in the open, they had found him quickly, attracted by the smell. I took a hasty gulp of air and shoved through the buckbrush to where Padraic lay, collapsed in the grass beneath a sycamore.
He wasn’t dead. I saw that at once; the flies were a cloud, not a blanket—hovering, lighting, flicking away again as he twitched.
He lay curled on the ground, wearing only a shirt, a water jug lying near his head. I knelt by him, peering as I touched him. His shirt and legs were stained, as was the grass where he lay. The excrement was very watery—most had soaked into the soil by now—but there was some solid matter. He’d been stricken later than Hortense and the children, then; his guts hadn’t been griping long, or there would be mostly water, tinged with blood.
“Padraic?”
“Mrs. Claire, thank the Lord ye’ve come.” His voice was so hoarse I could scarcely make out words. “My bairnies. Have ye got my bairnies safe?”
He raised himself on one elbow, shaking, sweat plastering strands of gray hair to his cheeks. His eyes cracked open, trying to see me, but they were swelled to mere slits by the bites of deerflies.
“I have them.” I put a hand on him at once, squeezing to force reassurance into him. “Lie down, Padraic. Wait a moment while I tend them, then I’ll see to you.” He was very ill, but not in immediate danger; the children were.
“Dinna mind me,” Padraic muttered. “Dinna . . . mind . . .” He swayed, brushed at the flies that crawled on his face and chest, then groaned as cramp seized his belly again, doubling as though some massive hand had crushed him in its grip.
I was already running back to the house. There were splashes of water in the dust of the path—good, Brianna had come this way, hurrying.
Amoebic dysentery? Food poisoning? Typhoid? Typhus? Cholera—please God, not that. All of those, and a lot more, were currently lumped together simply as “the bloody flux” in this time, and for obvious reasons. Not that it mattered in the short term.
The immediate danger of all the diarrhetic diseases was simple dehydration. In the effort to expel whatever microbial invader was irritating the gut, the gastrointestinal tract simply flushed itself repeatedly, depleting the body of the water necessary to circulate blood, to eliminate wastes, to cool the body by means of sweat, to maintain the brain and membranes—the water necessary to maintain life.
If one could keep a patient sufficiently hydrated by means of intravenous saline and glucose infusions, then the gut would, most likely, heal itself eventually and the patient would recover. Without intravenous intervention, the only possibility was to administer fluids by mouth, or rectum as quickly and as constantly as possible, for as long as it took. If one could.
If the patient couldn’t keep down even water—I didn’t think the MacNeills were vomiting; I didn’t recall that smell among the others in the cabin. Probably not cholera, then; that was something.
Brianna sat on the floor