Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [110]
The boards of the platform felt strange underfoot, heaving like the dry land does when one steps off a ship. It was no more than a few steps to where the slave lay; by the time I reached him, that cold clarity of mind that is the surgeon’s chief resource had come upon me. I paid no heed to the heated arguments behind me, or to the presence of the remaining spectators.
He was alive; his chest moved in small, jerky gasps. The hook had pierced the stomach, passing through the lower rib cage, emerging from the back at about the level of the kidneys. The man’s skin was an unearthly shade of dark blue-gray, his lips blanched to the color of clay.
“Hush,” I said softly, though there was no sound from the slave save the small hiss of his breath. His eyes were pools of incomprehension, pupils dilated, swamped with darkness.
There was no blood from his mouth; the lungs were not punctured. The breathing was shallow, but rhythmic; the diaphragm had not been pierced. My hands moved gently over him, my mind trying to follow the path of the damage. Blood oozed from both wounds, flowed in a black slick over the ridged muscles of back and stomach, shone red as rubies on the polished steel. No spurting; they had somehow missed both abdominal aorta and the renal artery.
Behind me, a heated argument had broken out; some small, detached portion of my mind noted that Byrnes’ companions were his fellow overseers from two neighboring plantations, presently being rebuked with vigor by Farquard Campbell.
“… blatant disregard of the law! You shall answer for it in court, gentlemen, be assured that you shall!”
“What does it matter?” came a sullen rumble from someone. “It’s bloodshed—and mutilation! Byrnes has his rights!”
“Rights no for the likes of you to decide.” MacNeill’s deep growl joined in. “Rabble, that’s what ye are, no better than the—”
“And where d’you get off, old man, stickin’ your long Scotch nose in where it’s not wanted, eh?”
“What will ye need, Sassenach?”
I hadn’t heard him come up beside me, but he was there. Jamie crouched next to me, my box open on the boards beside him. He held a loaded pistol still in one hand, his attention mostly on the group behind me.
“I don’t know,” I said. I could hear the argument going on in the background, but the words blurred into meaninglessness. The only reality was under my hands.
It was slowly dawning on me that the man I touched was possibly not fatally wounded, in spite of his horrible injury. From everything I could sense and feel, I thought that the curve of the hook had gone upward through the liver. Likely the right kidney was damaged, and the jejunum or gallbladder might be nicked—but none of those would kill him immediately.
It was shock that might do for him, if he was to die quickly. But I could see a pulse throbbing in the sweat-slick abdomen, just above the piercing steel. It was fast, but steady as a drumbeat; I could feel it echo in the tips of my fingers when I placed a hand on it. He had lost blood—the scent of it was thick, overpowering the smell of sweat and fear—but not so much as to doom him.
An unsettling thought came to me—I might be able to keep this man alive. Likely not; in the wake of the thought came a flood of all the things that could go wrong—hemorrhage when I removed the hook being only the most immediate. Internal bleeding, delayed shock, perforated intestine, peritonitis—and yet.
At Prestonpans, I had seen a man pierced through the body with a sword, the location of the wound very much like this. He had received no treatment beyond a bandage wrapped around his body—and yet he had recovered.
“Lawlessness!” Campbell was saying, his voice rising over the babble of argument. “It cannot be tolerated, no matter the provocation. I shall have you all taken in charge, be sure