Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [414]
“It looks like a maternity ward in here,” Brianna said, nodding toward Magdalen as she brushed crumbs off her skirt. Jamie smiled and raised a brow, as he always did when she said something he didn’t understand.
“Oh, aye?”
“That’s a special part of a hospital, where they put the new mothers and their babies,” she explained. “Mama would take me to work with her sometimes, and let me go look at the nursery while she did her rounds.”
She had a sudden memory of the smell of the hospital corridor, faintly acrid with the scent of disinfectant and floor polish, the babies lying bundled, plump as piglets in their bassinets, their blankets coded pink and blue. She always spent a long time going up and down the row, trying to pick which one she would take home with her, if she could keep one.
Pink or blue? For the first time, she wondered what the one she would now keep might wear. The thought of “it” as male or female was strangely upsetting, and she pushed the thought away with words.
“They put the babies all behind a glass wall, so you could look at them, but not breathe germs on them,” she said, with a glance at Magdalen, contentedly oblivious to the strings of green saliva that dripped from her placidly moving jaws onto the head of her calf.
“Germs,” he said thoughtfully. “Aye, I’ve heard about the germs. Dangerous wee beasties, are they not?”
“They can be.” She had a vivid memory of her mother checking her box of medical supplies for the visit to Lachlans’, carefully refilling the large glass bottle of distilled alcohol from the barrel in the pantry. And a more distant but equally vivid memory, of her mother explaining the past to Roger Wakefield.
“Childbirth was the most dangerous thing a woman could do,” Claire had said, frowning in memory of the sights she had seen. “Infection, ruptured placenta, abnormal presentation, miscarriage, hemorrhage, puerperal fever—in most places, surviving birth was roughly a fifty-fifty proposition.”
Brianna’s fingers felt cold, in spite of the hissing pine chunks in the brazier, and her ravenous appetite seemed suddenly to have deserted her. She set the rest of her roll down on the straw, swallowing hard, feeling as though a bite of the thick bread had wedged itself in her throat.
Her father’s broad hand touched her knee, warm even through the wool of her skirt.
“Your mother willna let ye come to harm,” he said gruffly. “She’s fought the germs before; I’ve seen her. She didna let them have the better of me, and she willna let them trouble you, either. She’s a verra stubborn person, aye?”
She laughed, and the choking feeling eased.
“She’d say it takes one to know one.”
“I expect she’s right about that.” He rose and walked around the brindled heifer, squatting down and squinting at her tail. He stood up, shaking his head, and came to sit down again. He settled comfortably back and picked up the discarded part of Brianna’s roll.
“Is she doing all right?” Brianna bent and scooped up a twist of straw, holding it invitingly under the heifer’s nose. The cow breathed heavily on her knuckles, but otherwise ignored the attention, the long-lashed brown eyes rolling restlessly to and fro. Now and then the bulging brindled sides rippled, the cow’s thick winter coat rough but shining in the light of the hanging lantern.
Jamie frowned slightly.
“Aye, I think she’ll maybe do all right. It’s her first calf, though, and she’s small for it. She’s no much more than a yearling herself; she shouldna have been bred so early, but …” He shrugged, and took another bite of roll.
Brianna wiped the sticky moisture from her hand with a fold of her skirt. Feeling suddenly restless, she stood up and walked over to the pigpen.
The vast curve of the sow’s belly rose up out of the hay like a swollen balloon, pink flesh visible beneath the soft, sparse white hair. The sow lay in stuporous dignity, breathing slow and deep, ignoring the squirms and squeaks of the hungry brood that scrabbled at her underside. One piglet was nudged too roughly by a fellow and momentarily lost his hold; there