A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [643]
“I know what it is,” Bree said, her voice tight. “Or?”
“Or infective endocarditis. Or—not.”
“Will she die?” she asked bluntly, looking up at me. Her jaw was set, but I saw the way she held Amanda closer, waiting for an answer. I could give her nothing but the truth.
“Probably.” The word hung in the air between us, hideous.
“I can’t say for sure, but—”
“Probably,” Brianna echoed, and I nodded, turning away, unable to look at her face. Without such modern assistances as an echocardiogram, I of course couldn’t judge the extent of the problem. But I had not only the evidence of my eyes and ears, but what I had felt passing from her skin to mine—that sense of not-rightness, that eerie conviction that comes now and then.
“Can you fix it?” I heard the tremor in Brianna’s voice, and went at once to put my arms around her. Her head was bent over Amanda, and I saw the tears fall, one, then another, darkening the wispy curls on top of the baby’s head.
“No,” I whispered, holding them both. Despair washed over me, but I tightened my hold, as though I could keep time and blood both at bay. “No, I can’t.”
“WELL, THERE’S NO choice, is there?” Roger felt preternaturally calm, recognizing it as the artificial calm produced by shock but wishing to cling to it as long as possible. “You’ve got to go.”
Brianna leveled a look at him, but didn’t reply. Her hand roamed over the baby, sleeping in her lap, smoothing the woolly blanket over and over again.
Claire had explained it all to him, more than once, patiently, seeing that he could not take it in. He still did not believe it—but the sight of those tiny fingernails, turning blue as Amanda strove to suck, had sunk into him like an owl’s talons.
It was, she had said, a simple operation—in a modern operating room.
“You can’t . . . ?” he’d asked, with a vague motion toward her surgery. “With the ether?”
She’d closed her eyes and shaken her head, looking nearly as ill as he felt.
“No. I can do very simple things—hernias, appendixes, tonsils—and even those are a risk. But something so invasive, on such a tiny body . . . no,” she repeated, and he saw resignation in her face when she met his eyes. “No. If she’s to live—you have to take her back.”
And so they had begun to discuss the unthinkable. Because there were choices—and decisions to be made. But the unalterable basic fact was clear. Amanda must go through the stones—if she could.
JAMIE FRASER took his father’s ruby ring, and held it over the face of his granddaughter. Amanda’s eyes fixed on it at once, and she stuck out her tongue with interest. He smiled, despite the heaviness of his heart, and lowered the ring for her to grab at.
“She likes that well enough,” he said, skillfully removing it from her grip before she could get it into her mouth. “Let’s try the other.”
The other was Claire’s amulet—the tiny, battered leather pouch given to her by an Indian wisewoman years before. It contained assorted bits and bobs, herbs, he thought, and feathers, perhaps the tiny bones of a bat. But in among them was a lump of stone—nothing much to look at, but a true gemstone, a raw sapphire.
Amanda turned her head at once, more interested in the pouch than she had been in the shiny ring. She made cooing noises and batted wildly with both hands, trying to reach it.
Brianna took a deep, half-strangled breath.
“Maybe,” she said, in the voice of one who fears as much as hopes. “But we can’t tell for sure. What if I—take her, and I go through, but she can’t?”
They all looked at one another in silence, envisioning the possibility.
“You’d