Outlander - Diana Gabaldon [353]
He seemed not too bad physically, all things considered, but I worried nonetheless. He had had enough whisky during the surgery to fell a draft horse, and a good bit of it was plainly still inside him, despite the retching.
Jamie was not my first hero. The men moved too quickly through the field hospital, as a rule, for the nurses to become well acquainted with them, but now and again you would see a man who talked too little or joked too much, who held himself more stiffly than pain and loneliness would account for.
And I knew, roughly, what could be done for them. If there was time, and if they were the kind who talked to keep the dark at bay, you sat with them and listened. If they were silent, you touched them often in passing, and watched for the unguarded moment, when you might draw them outside of themselves and hold them while they exorcised their demons. If there was time. And if there wasn’t, then you jabbed them with morphine, and hoped they would manage to find someone else to listen, while you passed on to a man whose wounds were visible.
Jamie would talk to someone, sooner or later. There was time. But I hoped it wouldn’t be me.
He was uncovered to the waist, and I leaned forward to examine his back. It was a remarkable sight. Barely a hand’s thickness separated the welted cuts, inflicted with a regularity that boggled the mind. He must have stood like a guardsman while it was done. I stole a quick glance at his wrists—unmarked. He had kept his word then, not to struggle. And had stood unmoving through the ordeal, paying the ransom agreed on for my life.
I rubbed my eyes on my sleeve. He wouldn’t thank me, I thought, for blubbering over his prostrate form. I shifted my weight with a soft rustle of skirts. He opened his eyes at the sound, but did not seem particularly haunted. He gave me a smile, faint and tired, but a real one. I opened my mouth, and suddenly realized I had no idea what to say to him. Thanks were impossible. “How do you feel?” was ridiculous; obviously he felt like hell. While I considered, he spoke first.
“Claire? Are you all right, love?”
“Am I all right? My God, Jamie!” Tears stung my eyelids and I blinked hard, sniffing. He raised his good hand slowly, as though it were weighted with chains, and stroked my hair. He drew me toward him, but I pulled away, conscious for the first time what I must look like, face scratched and covered with tree sap, hair stiff with blotches of various unmentionable substances.
“Come here,” he said. “I want to hold ye a moment.”
“But I’m covered with blood and vomit,” I protested, making a vain effort to tidy my hair.
He wheezed, the faint exhalation that was all his broken ribs would permit in the way of laughter. “Mother of God, Sassenach, it’s my blood and my vomit. Come here.”
His arm was comforting around my shoulders. I rested my head on the pillow next to his, and we sat in silence by the fire, drawing strength and peace from one another. His fingers gently touched the small wound under my jaw.
“I did not think ever to see ye again, Sassenach.” His voice was low and a bit hoarse from whisky and screaming. “I’m glad you’re here.”
I sat up. “Not see me again! Why? Did you think I wouldn’t get you out?”
He smiled, one-sided. “Weel, no, I didn’t expect ye would. I thought if I said so, though, ye might get stubborn and refuse to go.”
“Me get stubborn!” I said indignantly. “Look who’s talking!”
There was a pause, which grew slightly awkward. There were things I should ask, necessary from the medical point of view, but rather touchy from the personal aspect. Finally, I settled for “How do you feel?”
His eyes were closed, shadowed and sunken in the candlelight, but the lines of the broad back were tense under the bandages. The wide, bruised mouth twitched, somewhere between a smile and a