Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [204]
“I know,” I said, and put my forehead against his shoulder blade. It was a long time before I stopped shaking, though.
“How long have you been out here?” I asked finally. “On the ground, I mean?”
He started to shrug, then stopped abruptly, groaning.
“A good time. It was just past noon when I jumped off a wee crop of rock. It wasna more than a few feet high, but when I landed on one foot, my back went click! and next I knew, I was on my face in the dirt, feelin’ as though someone had stabbed me in the spine wi’ a dirk.”
It wasn’t warm in our snug, by any means; the damp from the leaves was seeping in and the rock at my back seemed to radiate coldness, like some sort of reverse furnace. Still, it was noticeably less cold than it was outside. I began shivering again, for purely physical reasons.
Jamie felt me, and groped at his throat.
“Can ye get my cloak unfastened, Sassenach? Put it over ye.”
It took some maneuvering, and the cost of a few muffled oaths from Jamie as he tried to shift his weight, but I got it loose at last, and spread it over the two of us. I reached down and laid a cautious hand on his back, gently rucking up his shirt to put my hand on cool, bare flesh.
“Tell me where it hurts,” I said. I hoped to hell he hadn’t slipped a disc; hideous thoughts of his being permanently crippled raced through my mind, along with pragmatic considerations of how I was to get him off the mountain, even if he wasn’t. Would I have to leave him here, and fetch food up to him daily until he recovered?
“Right there,” he said, with a hiss of indrawn breath. “Aye, that’s it. A wicked stab just there, and if I move, it runs straight down the back o’ my leg, like a red-hot wire.”
I felt very carefully, with both hands now, probing and pressing, urging him to try to lift one leg, right, now the other knee … no?
“No,” he assured me. “Dinna be worrit, though, Sassenach. It’s the same as before. It gets better.”
“Yes, you said it happened before. When was that?”
He stirred briefly and settled, pressing back against my palms with a small groan.
“Och! Damn, that hurts. At the prison.”
“Pain in the same place?”
“Aye.”
I could feel a hard knot in the muscle on his right side, just below the kidney, and a bunching in the erector spinae, the long muscles near the spine. From his description of the prior occurrence, I was fairly sure it was only severe muscle spasm. For which the proper prescription was warmth, rest, and anti-inflammatory medication.
Couldn’t get much further away from those conditions, I thought with some grimness.
“I suppose I could try acupuncture,” I said, thinking aloud. “I’ve got Mr. Willoughby’s needles in my pouch, and—”
“Sassenach,” he said, in measured tones. “I can stand fine bein’ hurt, cold, and hungry. I wilna put up wi’ being stabbed in the back by my own wife. Can ye not offer a bit of sympathy and comfort instead?”
I laughed, and slid an arm around him, pressing close against his back. I let my hand slide down and rest in delicate suggestion, well below his navel.
“Er … what sort of comfort did you have in mind?”
He hastily grasped my hand, to prevent further intrusions.
“Not that,” he said.
“Might take your mind off the pain.” I wiggled my fingers invitingly, and he tightened his grip.
“I daresay,” he said dryly. “Well, I’ll tell ye, Sassenach; once we’ve got home, and I’ve a warm bed to lie in and a hot supper in my belly, that notion might have a good bit of appeal. As it is, the thought of—for Christ’s sake, have ye not the slightest idea how cold your hands are, woman?”
I laid my cheek against his back and laughed. I could feel the quiver of his own mirth, though he couldn’t laugh aloud without hurting his back.
At last we lay silent, listening to the whisper of falling snow. It was dark under the hemlock boughs, but my eyes were adapted enough to be able to see patches of the oddly glowing snow-light through the screen of needles overhead. Tiny flakes came through the open patches; I could see it in some places, as a thin cloud of white mist, and I could feel the cold