The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [254]
Among the noise, a nearer voice called out; a uniformed officer, on a bay horse.
“Anybody seen that big redheaded bastard who broke the charge?”
There was a murmur and a general looking-around, but no one answered. The horseman dismounted, and wrapping his reins over a branch, made his way through the throng of wounded toward me.
“Whoever he is, I tell you, he’s got balls the size of ten pound shot,” remarked the man whose cheek I was stitching.
“And a head of the same consistency,” I murmured.
“Eh?” He glanced sideways at me in bewilderment.
“Nothing,” I said. “Hold still just a moment longer; I’m nearly done.”
It was nearly dawn before I came back to the tent where he lay. I lifted the flap quietly, so as not to disturb Jamie, but he was already awake, lying curled on his side facing the flap, head resting on a folded blanket.
He smiled faintly when he saw me.
“A hard night, Sassenach?” he asked, his voice slightly hoarse from cold air and disuse. Mist seeped under the edge of the flap, tinted yellow by the lantern light.
“I’ve had worse.” I smoothed the hair off his face, looking him over carefully. He was pale, but not clammy. His face was drawn with pain, but his skin was cool to the touch—no trace of fever. “You haven’t slept, have you? How do you feel?”
“A bit scairt,” he said. “And a bit sick. But better now you’re here.” He gave me a one-sided grimace that was almost a smile.
I put a hand under his jaw, fingers pressed against the pulse in his neck. His heart bumped steadily under my fingertips, and I shivered briefly, remembering the woman in the field.
“You’re chilled, Sassenach,” he said, feeling it. “And tired, too. Go and sleep, aye? I’ll do a bit longer.”
I was tired. The adrenaline of the battle and the night’s work in the surgeon’s tent was fading fast; fatigue was creeping down my spine and loosening my joints. But I had a good idea of what the hours of waiting had cost him already.
“It won’t take long,” I reassured him. “And it will be better to have it over. Then you can sleep easy.”
He nodded, though he didn’t look noticeably reassured. I unfolded the small worktable I had carried in from the operating tent, and set it up in easy reach. Then I took out the precious bottle of laudanum, and poured an inch of the dark, odorous liquid into a cup.
“Sip it slowly,” I said, putting it into his right hand. I began to lay out the instruments I would need, making sure that everything lay orderly and to hand. I had thought of asking Lester to come and assist me, but he had been asleep on his feet, swaying drunkenly under the dim lanterns in the operating tent, and I had sent him off to find a blanket and a spot by the fire.
A small scalpel, freshly sharpened. The jar of alcohol, with the wet ligatures coiled inside like a nest of tiny vipers, each toothed with a small, curved needle. Another, with the waxed dry ligatures for arterial compression. A bouquet of probes, their ends soaking in alcohol. Forceps. Long-handled retractors. The hooked tenaculum, for catching the ends of severed arteries.
The surgical scissors with their short, curved blades, and the handles shaped to fit my grasp, made to my order by the silversmith Stephen Moray. Or almost to my order. I had insisted that the scissors be as plain as possible, to make them easy to clean and disinfect. Stephen had obliged with a chaste and elegant design, but had not been able to resist one small flourish—one handle boasted a hooklike extension against which I could brace my little finger in order to exert more force, and this extrusion formed a smooth, lithe curve, flowering at the tip into a slender rosebud, against a spray of leaves. The contrast between the heavy, vicious blades at one end and this delicate conceit at the other always made me smile when I lifted the scissors from their case.
Strips of cotton gauze and heavy linen, pads of lint, adhesive plasters stained red with the dragon’s-blood juice that made them sticky. An open bowl of alcohol for disinfection as I worked, and