Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [424]
“To do it?” His eyebrows shot up. He glanced at the open medicine case, then at the scalpel, and a look of sudden shocked comprehension washed over his face.
“You mean to—”
“If she wants me to.” I touched the knife, its small blade stained with my own blood. “There are herbs—or this. There are awful risks to using herbs—convulsions, brain damage, hemorrhage—but it doesn’t matter; I don’t have enough of the right kind.”
“Claire—have you done it before?”
I looked up, to see him looking down at me with something I had never seen in his eyes before—horror. I pressed my hands flat on the table, to stop them trembling. I didn’t do as well with my voice.
“Would it make a difference to you if I had?”
He stared at me for a moment, then eased himself down on the bench opposite, slowly, as though afraid he might break something.
“Ye havena done it,” he said softly. “I know it.”
“No,” I said. I stared down at his hand, covering mine. “No, I haven’t.”
I could feel the tension go out of his hand; it relaxed, curling over mine, enfolding it. But my own lay limp in his grasp.
“I knew ye couldna do murder,” he said.
“I could. I have.” I didn’t look up at him, but spoke to the tabletop. “I killed a man, a patient in my care. I told you about Graham Menzies.”
He was silent for a moment, but held on to my hand, squeezing slightly.
“I think it isna the same,” he said at last. “To ease a doomed man to a death he wishes … it seems to me that that is mercy, not murder. And duty, too, perhaps.”
“Duty?” That did make me look at him, startled. The look of shock had faded from his eyes, though he was still solemn.
“Do ye not recall Falkirk Hill, and the night Rupert died in the chapel there?”
I nodded. It wasn’t something easily forgotten—the cold dark of the tiny church, the eerie sounds of pipes and battle far outside. Inside the black air thick with the sweat of frightened men, and Rupert dying slowly on the floor at my feet, choking on his blood. He had asked Dougal MacKenzie, as his friend and his chief, to hasten him … and Dougal had.
“It will be a doctor’s duty, too, I think,” Jamie said gently. “If you are sworn to heal—but cannot—and to save men pain—and can?”
“Yes.” I took a deep breath and curled my hand around the scalpel. “I am sworn—and by more than a doctor’s oath. Jamie, she’s my daughter. I would rather do anything in the world but this—anything.” I looked up at him and blinked, holding back tears.
“Don’t you think I haven’t thought about it? That I don’t know what the risks are? Jamie, I could kill her!” I pulled the cloth off my wounded thumb; the cut was still oozing.
“Look—it shouldn’t bleed like that, it’s a deep cut but not a bad one. But it does! I hit a vein. I could do the same to Bree and never know it, until she began to bleed—and if so … Jamie, I couldn’t stop it! She’d bleed to death under my hand, and there isn’t a thing I could do about it, not a thing!”
He looked at me, eyes dark with shock.
“How could ye think of doing such a thing, knowing that?” His voice was soft with disbelief.
I drew a deep, trembling breath, and felt despair wash over me. There was no way to make him understand, no way.
“Because I know other things,” I said at last, very softly, not looking at him. “I know what it is to bear a child. I know what it is to have your body and your mind and your soul taken from you and changed without your will. I know what it is to be ripped out of the place you thought was yours, to have choice taken from you. I know what it is, do you hear me? and it isn’t something anyone should do without being willing.” I looked up at him, and my fist clenched hard on my wounded thumb.
“And you—for God’s sake—you know what I don’t; what it’s like to live with the knowledge of violation. Do you mean to tell me that if I could have cut that from you after Wentworth, that you wouldn’t have had me do it, no matter what the risks? Jamie, that may be a rapist’s child!”
“Aye, I know,” he began, and had to stop, too choked to finish. “I know,” he began again, and his jaw muscles bulged as he