Outlander 03 - Voyager

“Lots.” I smiled back and closed my eyes.

56

TURTLE SOUP

When I woke again, in the late afternoon, I ached all over. I had thrown off the covers in my sleep, and lay sprawled in my shift, my skin hot and dry in the soft air. My arm ached abominably, and I could feel each of Mr. Willoughby’s forty-three elegant stitches like red-hot safety pins stuck through my flesh.

No help for it; I was going to have to use the penicillin. I might be proof against smallpox, typhoid, and the common cold in its eighteenth-century incarnation, but I wasn’t immortal, and God only knew what insanitary substances the Portuguese had been employing his cutlass on before applying it to me.

The short trip across the room to the cupboard where my clothes hung left me sweating and shivering, and I had to sit down quite suddenly, the skirt clutched to my bosom, in order to avoid falling.

“Sassenach! Are ye all right?” Jamie poked his head through the low doorway, looking worried.

“No,” I said. “Come here a minute, will you? I need you to do something.”

“Wine? A biscuit? Murphy’s made a wee broth for ye, special.” He was beside me in a moment, the back of his hand cool against my flushed cheek. “God, you’re burning!”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “Don’t worry, though; I have medicine for it.”

I fumbled one-handed in the pocket of the skirt, and pulled out the case containing the syringes and ampules. My right arm was sore enough that any movement made me clench my teeth.

“Your turn,” I said wryly, shoving the case across the table toward Jamie. “Here’s your chance for revenge, if you want it.”

He looked blankly at the case, then at me.

“What?” he said. “Ye want me to stab ye with one of these spikes?”

“I wish you wouldn’t put it quite that way, but yes,” I said.

“In the bum?” His lips twitched.

“Yes, damn you!”

He looked at me for a moment, one corner of his mouth curling slightly upward. Then he bowed his head over the case, red hair glowing in the shaft of sun from the window.

“Tell me what to do, then,” he said.

I directed him carefully, guiding him through the preparation and filling of the syringe, and then took it myself, checking for air bubbles, clumsily left-handed. By the time I had given it back to him and arranged myself on the berth, he had ceased to find anything faintly funny about the situation.

“Are ye sure ye want me to do it?” he said doubtfully. “I’m no verra good with my hands.”

That made me laugh, in spite of my throbbing arm. I had seen him do everything with those hands, from delivering foals and building walls, to skinning deer and setting type, all with the same light and dextrous touch.

“Well, aye,” he said, when I said as much. “But it’s no quite the same, is it? The closest thing I’ve done to this is to dirk a man in the wame, and it feels a bit strange to think of doin’ such a thing to you, Sassenach.”

I glanced back over my shoulder, to find him gnawing dubiously on his lower lip, the brandy-soaked pad in one hand, the syringe held gingerly in the other.

“Look,” I said. “I did it to you; you know what it feels like. It wasn’t that bad, was it?” He was beginning to make me rather nervous.

“Mmphm.” Pressing his lips together, he knelt down by the bed and gently wiped a spot on my backside with the cool, wet pad. “Is this all right?”

“That’s fine. Press the point in at a bit of an angle, not straight in—you see how the point of the needle’s cut at an angle? Push it in about a quarter-inch—don’t be afraid to jab a bit, skin’s tougher than you think to get through —and then push down the plunger very slowly, you don’t want to do it too fast.”

I closed my eyes and waited. After a moment, I opened them and looked back. He was pale, and a faint sheen of sweat glimmered over his cheekbones.

“Never mind.” I heaved myself upright, bracing against the wave of dizziness. “Here, give me that.” I snatched the pad from his hand and swiped a patch across the top of my thigh. My hand trembled slightly from the fever.

“But—”

“Shut up!” I took the syringe and aimed it as well as I could, left-handed, then plunged it into the muscle. It hurt. It hurt more when I pressed down on the plunger, and my thumb slipped off.

Then Jamie’s hands were there, one steadying my leg, the other on the needle, slowly pressing down until the last of the white liquid had vanished from the tube. I took one quick, deep breath when he pulled it out.

“Thanks,” I said, after a moment.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, a minute later. His hand came behind my back, easing me down.

“It’s all right.” My eyes were closed, and there were little colored patterns on the inside of my eyelids. They reminded me of the lining of a doll’s suitcase I had had as a child; tiny pink and silver stars on a dark background. “I’d forgotten; it’s hard to do it the first few times. I suppose sticking a dirk in someone is easier,” I added. “You aren’t worried about hurting them, after all.”