The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [565]
“Yes?” I said, giving her a slightly fishy look, which she ignored.
“The fangs are hollow,” she said, and touched a finger to the glass, marking the spot where the venom had soaked into the linen cloth, leaving a small yellowish stain. “They’re connected to a venom sac in the snake’s cheek, and so when they bite down, the cheek muscles squeeze venom out of the sac . . . and down through the fang into the prey. Just like a—”
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I said.
She nodded, finally taking her eyes off the snake in order to look at me.
“I was thinking of trying to do something with a sharpened quill, but this would work lots better—it’s already designed for the job.”
“I see,” I said, feeling a small surge of hope. “But you’ll need a reservoir of some kind . . .”
“First I need a bigger snake,” she said practically, turning toward the door. “Let me go find Jo or Kezzie, and see if that one did come from a den—and if so, if there are more of them there.”
She set off promptly on this mission, taking the glass jar with her, and leaving me to return to a contemplation of the antibiotic situation with renewed hope. If I was going to be able to inject the solution, it needed to be strained and purified as much as possible.
I would have liked to boil the solution, but didn’t dare to; I didn’t know whether high temperatures would destroy or inactivate raw penicillin—if, in fact, there still was active penicillin in there. The surge of hope I had experienced at Brianna’s idea dimmed somewhat. Having a hypodermic apparatus wouldn’t help, if I had nothing useful to inject.
Restlessly, I moved around the surgery, picking things up and putting them down again.
Steeling myself, I put my hand on the saw again, and closed my eyes, deliberately reliving the movements and sensations, trying also to recapture the sense of otherworldly detachment with which I had killed the buffalo.
Of course, it was Jamie who’d been talking to the otherworld this time. Nice of you to give him the choice, I thought sardonically. I see you aren’t going to make it easy on him, though.
But he wouldn’t have asked for that. I opened my eyes, startled. I didn’t know whether that answer came from my own subconscious, or elsewhere—but there it was in my mind, and I recognized the truth of it.
Jamie was accustomed to make his choice and abide by it, no matter the cost. He saw that living would likely mean the loss of his leg and all that that implied—and had accepted that as the natural price of his decision.
“Well, I don’t bloody accept it!” I said out loud, chin uplifted toward the window. A cedar waxwing swinging on the end of a tree limb gave me a sharp look through his black robber’s mask, decided I was mad but harmless, and went about his business.
I pulled open the cupboard door, threw open the top of my medicine chest, and fetched a sheet of paper, quill, and ink from Jamie’s study.
A jar of dried red wintergreen berries. Extract of pipsissewa. Slippery elm bark. Willow bark, cherry bark, fleabane, yarrow. Penicillin was by far the most effective of the antibiotics available, but it wasn’t the only one. People had been waging war on germs for thousands of years, without any notion what they were fighting. I knew; that was some slight advantage.
I began to make a list of the herbs I had on hand, and under each name, all the uses that I knew for that herb—whether I had ever made such use of it or not. Any herb used to treat a septic condition was a possibility—cleansing lacerations, treating mouth sores, treatment of diarrhea and dysentery . . . I heard footsteps in the kitchen, and called to Mrs. Bug, wanting her to bring me a kettle of boiling water, so I could set things to steeping at once.
She appeared in the doorway, her cheeks bright pink from the cold and her hair coming down in untidy wisps from under her kerch, a large basket clutched in her arms.