The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [337]
“And if it doesn’t?” another woman said, skeptical. The first woman’s nostrils pinched, and her friend butted in helpfully.
“Johanna Richards lost two babes to the croup. Gone like that!” She snapped her fingers, and Brianna flinched as though the sound were one of her own bones cracking.
“Why are we havering so, and a medico to hand? You, girl, go and fetch Dr. Fentiman! Did I not say so?” One of the women clapped her hands sharply at Phaedre, who stood pressed back against the wall, eyes fixed on Jemmy. Before she could move to obey, though, Brianna’s head shot up.
“No! Not him, I won’t have him.” She glared round at the women, then shot Roger a look of urgent entreaty. “Find Mama for me. Quick!”
He turned and shoved past the women, fear momentarily assuaged by the ability to do something. Where was Claire likely to be? Help, he thought, help me find her, help him be all right, directing the incoherent prayer toward anyone who might be listening—God, the Reverend, Mrs. Graham, Saint Bride, Claire herself—he wasn’t particular.
He thundered down the front stair to the foyer, only to meet Claire hurrying across it toward him. Someone had told her; she gave him one quick look, asked, “Jemmy?” with a lift of her chin, and at his breathless nod, was up the stairs in a flash, leaving a foyer full of people gaping after her.
He caught her up in the hall above and was in time to open the door for her—and to receive an undeserved but much appreciated look of gratitude from Bree.
He stood back out of the way, catching his breath and marveling. The moment Claire stepped into the room, the atmosphere of worry and near-panic changed at once. There was still an air of concern among the women, but they gave way without hesitation, standing back respectfully and murmuring to one another as Claire headed straight for Jemmy and Bree, ignoring everything else.
“Hallo, lovey. What is it, then, are we feeling miserable?” She was murmuring to Jem, turning his head to one side and feeling gently under his flushed chubby jowls and behind his ears. “Poor thing. It’s all right, sweetheart, Mummy’s here, Grannie’s here, everything will be just fine. . . . How long has he been like this? Has he had anything to drink? Yes, darling, that’s right. . . . Does it hurt him to swallow?”
She alternated between comforting remarks to the baby and questions to Brianna and Phaedre, all delivered in the same tone of calm reassurance as her hands touched here and there, exploring, soothing. Roger felt it working on him, too, and drew a deep breath, feeling the tightness in his own chest ease a bit.
Claire took a sheet of Jocasta’s heavy notepaper from the secretary, rolled it into a tube, and used it to listen intently to Jemmy’s back and chest as he made more of the choking-seal noises. Roger noticed dimly that her hair had fallen down somehow; she had to brush it out of the way to listen.
“Yes, of course it’s croup,” she said absently, in answer to a half-questioning diagnosis offered diffidently by one of the bystanders. “But that’s only the cough and the difficult breathing. You can have croup by itself, so to speak, or as an early symptom of various other things.”
“Such as?” Bree had a death grip on Jemmy, and her face was nearly as white as her knuckles.
“Oh. . . .” Claire seemed to be listening intently, but not to Bree. More to whatever was happening inside Jemmy, who had quit coughing and was lying exhausted against his mother’s shoulder, breathing thickly in steam-engine gasps. “Um . . . coryza—that’s only a common cold. Influenza. Asthma. Diphtheria. But it isn’t that,” she added hurriedly, looking up and catching a glimpse of Brianna’s face.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Claire replied firmly, straightening up and putting aside her makeshift stethoscope. “It doesn’t feel at all like diphtheria to me. Besides, there isn’t any of that about, or I’d have heard. And he’s still being breast-fed; he’ll have immunity—” She stopped speaking abruptly, suddenly aware of the women looking on. She cleared her own throat, bending down again,