The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [258]
Detach the underlying muscle with as little damage as could be managed. Tie off the small digital artery and two other vessels that seemed large enough to bother with, sever the last few fibers and shreds of skin that held the finger, then lift it free, the dangling metacarpal surprisingly white and naked, like a rat’s tail.
It was a clean, neat job, but I felt a brief sense of sadness as I set the mangled piece of flesh aside. I had a fleeting vision of him holding Jemmy, newly born, counting the tiny fingers and toes, delight and wonder on his face. His father had counted his fingers, too.
“It’s all right,” I whispered, as much to myself as to him. “It’s all right. It will heal.”
The rest was quick. Forceps to pluck out the tiny pieces of shattered bone. I debrided the wound as best I could, removing bits of grass and dirt, even a tiny swatch of fabric that had been driven into the flesh. Then no more than a matter of cleaning the ragged edge of the wound, snipping a small excess of skin, and suturing the incisions. A paste of garlic and white-oak leaves, mixed with alcohol and spread thickly over the hand, a padding of lint and gauze, and a tight bandage of linen and adhesive plasters, to reduce the swelling and encourage the third and fifth fingers to draw close together.
The sun was nearly up; the lantern overhead seemed dim and feeble. My eyes were burning from the close work and the smoke of fires. There were voices outside; the voices of officers, moving among the men, rousing them to face the day—and the enemy?
I laid Jamie’s hand on the cot, near his face. He was pale, but not excessively so, and his lips were a pale rosy color, not blue. I dropped the instruments into a bucket of alcohol and water, suddenly too tired to clean them properly. I wrapped the discarded finger in a linen bandage, not quite sure what to do with it, and left it on the table.
“Rise and shine! Rise and shine!” came the sergeants’ rhythmic cry from outside, punctuated by witty variations and crude responses from reluctant risers.
I didn’t bother to undress; if there was fighting today, I would be roused soon enough. Not Jamie, though. I had nothing to worry about; no matter what happened, he wouldn’t fight today.
I unpinned my hair, and shook it down over my shoulders, sighing with relief at its looseness. Then I lay down on the cot beside him, close against him. He lay on his stomach; I could see the small, muscular swell of his buttocks, smooth under the blanket that covered him. On impulse, I laid my hand on his rump and squeezed.
“Sweet dreams,” I said, and let the tiredness take me.
THE CANNIBAL’S ART
WRITING AND REAL LIFE
get quite a number of letters and messages from people who are either working at writing or thinking of writing, all asking (in varying tones of desperation) exactly how one gets any writing done if one has a family, a job, and/or any pretensions to Real Life?
Well, it’s not easy. (Oh, you knew that part already. Well, wait; it gets more interesting as we go on.)
The major difficulty regarding one’s family is that until you have sold something you’ve written, you are not—so far as anyone you know is concerned—a “real” writer. In fact, your family is most likely to regard your writing activities either as subversive in the extreme “You aren’t writing about me, are you?!?”) or simply as “wasting time” (which might better be spent on them, they think).
Once you do sell something, your efforts will get a little more respect (not much, but more). The fact that you are doing exactly the same thing, whether you sell what you write or not, is irrelevant. Money equals respect—and if you aren’t writing with the intention of selling your work, what the heck are you wasting your time for? (So they think. Actually, they’ll say it out loud, at least until you start yelling and throwing things.)
This means that until you do sell something, you will have to fight for every second at your keyboard (I’ve personally found screaming and kicking wastebaskets