Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [526]
“Oh, good,” he said faintly.
“Bree, I need you to help,” I said, turning casually toward the far end of the room, where the two girls sat, taking turns between baby and spinning wheel.
“I could; let me do it.” Lizzie sprang up, eager to help. Remorseful over her part in Roger’s ordeal, she had been trying to make amends in any way possible, constantly bringing him bits of food, offering to mend his clothes, and driving him mad generally with her expressions of contrition.
I smiled at her.
“Yes, you can help. Take the baby so Brianna can come here. Why don’t you take him outside for a little air?”
With a dubious glance, Lizzie did as I said, scooping little Gizmo into her arms and murmuring endearments to him as they went out. Brianna came to stand beside me, carefully keeping her eyes off Roger’s face.
“I’m going to open this up and drain it the best I can,” I said, indicating the long black-crusted slit. “Then we’ll have to debride the dead tissue, disinfect it, and hope for the best.”
“And what exactly does ‘debride’ mean?” Roger asked. I let go of his foot and his body relaxed, very slightly.
“Cleansing of a wound by the surgical or nonsurgical removal of dead tissue or bone,” I said. I touched his foot. “Luckily, I don’t think the bone’s been affected, though there may be a bit of damage in the cartilage between the metacarpals. Don’t worry,” I said, patting his leg. “The debridement isn’t going to hurt.”
“It isn’t?”
“No. It’s the draining and disinfecting that will hurt.” I glanced up at Bree. “Go take hold of his hands, please.”
She hesitated no more than a second, then moved to the head of the couch and held out her hands to him. He took them, his eyes on her. It was the first time they had touched each other in nearly a year.
“Hold on tight,” I instructed them. “This is the nasty part.”
I didn’t look up, but worked quickly, opening the half-healed wounds cleanly with a scalpel, pressing out as much pus and dead matter as I could. I could feel the tension quivering in his leg muscles, and the slight arcing of his body as the pain lifted and bent him, but he didn’t say a word.
“Do you want something to bite down on, Roger?” I asked, taking out my bottle of dilute alcohol-water mixture for irrigating. “It’s going to sting a bit, now.”
He didn’t answer; Brianna did.
“He’s all right,” she said steadily. “Go ahead.”
He made a muffled noise when I began to wash out the wounds, and rolled halfway onto his side, his leg convulsing. I kept tight hold of his foot and finished the job as quickly as possible. When I let go and recorked the bottle, I looked up toward the head of the bed. She was sitting on the bed, her arms locked tight around his shoulders. His face was buried in her lap, his arms around her waist. Her face was white, but she gave me a strained smile.
“Is it over?”
“The bad part is. Just a little more to do,” I assured them. I had made my preparations two days before; at this time of year, there was no difficulty. I went outside to the smoking shed. The venison carcass hung in the shadows, bathing in clouds of protectively fragrant hickory smoke. My goal was less thoroughly preserved meat, though.
Good, it had been out long enough. I picked up the small saucer from its place near the door and carried it back to the house.
“Phew!” Brianna wrinkled her nose as I came in. “What’s that? It smells like rotten meat.”
“That’s what it is.” The partial remains of a snare-killed rabbit, to be exact, retrieved from the edge of the garden and set out to wait for visitors.
She was still holding his hands. I smiled to myself and resumed my place, picking up the wounded foot and reaching for my long-nosed forceps.
“Mama! What are you doing?”
“It won’t hurt,” I said. I squeezed the foot slightly, spreading one of my surgical incisions. I picked one of the small white grubs out of the stinking scraps of rabbit meat and inserted it deftly into the gaping slit.
Roger’s eyes had been closed, his forehead sheened with sweat.
“What?” he said, lifting his head and squinting over his shoulder in an effort