Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [196]
“Tell me about Brianna.” These were Jamie’s favorite stories; the tales of Brianna as a child. What she had said and worn and done; how she had looked, all her accomplishments and her tastes.
“Did I tell you about the time I was invited to her school, to talk about being a doctor?”
“No.” He shifted to make himself more comfortable, rolling onto his side and fitting himself to my shape behind. “Why should you do that?”
“It was what they called Career Day; the schoolteachers invited a lot of people with different jobs to come and explain what they did, so the children would have some idea of what a lawyer does, for instance, or a firefighter—”
“I should think that one would be fairly obvious.”
“Hush. Or a veterinarian—that’s a doctor who treats animals—or a dentist, that’s a special doctor who deals only with teeth—”
“With teeth? What can ye do to a tooth, besides pull it?”
“You’d be surprised.” I brushed the hair out of my face and up off my neck. “Anyway, they’d always ask me to come, because it wasn’t at all common for a woman to be a doctor then.”
“Ye think it’s common now?” He laughed, and I kicked him lightly in the shin.
“Well, it got more common rather soon after that. But at the time, it wasn’t. And when I’d got done speaking and asked if there were any questions, an obnoxious little boy piped up and said that his mother said women who worked were no better than prostitutes, and they ought to be home minding their families, instead of taking jobs away from men.”
“I shouldna think his mother can have met many prostitutes.”
“No, I don’t imagine. Nor all that many women with jobs, either. But when he said that, Brianna stood up and said in a very loud voice, ‘Well, you’d better be glad my mama’s a doctor, because you’re going to need one!’ Then she hit him on the head with her arithmetic book, and when he lost his balance and fell down, she jumped on his stomach and punched him in the mouth.”
I could feel his chest and stomach quivering against my back.
“Oh, braw lassie! Did the schoolmaster not tawse her for it, though?”
“They don’t beat children in school. She had to write a letter of apology to the little beast, but then, he had to write one to me, and she thought that was a fair exchange. The more embarrassing part was that it turned out his father was a doctor too; one of my colleagues at the hospital.”
“I wouldna suppose you’d taken a job he’d wanted?”
“How did you guess?”
“Mmm.” His breath was warm and ticklish on the back of my neck. I reached back and stroked the length of a long, hairy thigh, enjoying the hollow and swell of the muscle.
“Ye said she was at a university, and studying history, like Frank Randall. Did she never want to be a doctor, like you?” A large hand cupped my bottom and began to knead it gently.
“Oh, she did when she was little—I used to take her to the hospital now and then, and she was fascinated by all the equipment; she loved to play with my stethoscope and the otoscope—a thing you look in ears with—but then she changed her mind. She changed it a dozen times, at least; most children do.”
“They do?” This was a novel thought to him. Most children of the time would simply adopt the professions of their parents—or perhaps be apprenticed to learn one chosen for them.
“Oh, yes. Let me see … she wanted to be a ballerina for a while, like most little girls. That’s a dancer who dances on her toes,” I explained, and he laughed in surprise. “Then she wanted to be a garbageman—that was after our garbageman gave her a ride in his truck—and then a deep-sea diver, and a mailman, and—”
“What in God’s name is a deep-sea diver? Let alone a garbageman?”
By the time I had finished a brief catalog of twentieth-century occupations, we were facing each other, our legs twined comfortably together, and I was admiring the way his nipple stiffened to a tiny bump under the ball of my thumb.
“I never was sure whether she really wanted to read history, or whether she did it mostly to please Frank.