Diana Gabaldon · @Writer_DG
1st Aug 2013 from TwitLonger
#DailyLines #MOBY #WrittenINMyOWNHeartsBLOOD #Book8 #olfactorymemories #cauterizingwounds
William huckled Zeb into the surgeon’s tent like a recalcitrant colt, and stood by, only half-attending, as a young Scottish surgeon with freckles swabbed the boy’s wound clean of dirt. Arabella-Jane didn’t smell of the whorish scent she’d worn at the brothel, but by Christ, she smelled good.
“We should cauterize the wound, sir,” the young doctor’s voice was saying. “It will stop an abscess forming, aye?”
“No!” Zeb jerked away from the doctor and made a dash for the door, knocking into people and sending one woman flying with a shriek. Jolted out of his random thoughts, William made a reflexive dive and knocked the boy flat.
“Come on, Zeb,” he said, hauling Zeb to his feet and propelling him firmly back to Dr. MacFreckles. “It won’t be that bad. Just a moment or two, and then it’s all over.”
Zeb appearing patently unconvinced by this, William deposited him firmly on a stool, and pulled up his own right cuff.
“Look,” he said, displaying the long, comet-shaped scar on his forearm. “_That’s_ what happens when you get an abscess.”
Both Zeb and the doctor peered at the scar, impressed. It had been a splinter wound, he told them, caused by a lightning-struck tree.
“Wandered round the Great Dismal swamp for three days in a fever,” he said. “Some…Indians found me and got me to a doctor. I nearly died, and—“ he lowered his brows and gave Zeb a piercing look, “the doctor was just about to _cut off my arm_, when the abscess burst, and he cauterized it. You might not be so lucky, hey?”
Zeb still looked unhappy, but reluctantly agreed. William gripped him by the shoulders and said encouraging things while the iron was heating, but his own heart was beating as fast as it might have had he been awaiting cautery himself.
_Indians_. One, in particular. He’d thought he’d exhausted his anger, but there it bloody was again, bursting into bright fresh flame like an ember smashed open with a poker.
Bloody fucking Ian Murray. Fucking Scot and sometime Mohawk. His bloody fucking _cousin_, which made it all that much worse.
And then there was Rachel…Murray had taken him to Dr. Hunter and Rachel… He drew a deep, ragged breath, remembering her worn indigo gown, hanging on its peg in the Hunters’ house. Grabbing a handful of the cloth and pressing it to his face, breathing in her scent as though starved of air.
That was where Murray had met Rachel himself. And now she was _betrothed_ to that—
“Ow!” Zeb writhed, and William realized belatedly that he was digging his fingers into the boy’s shoulder like-- He let go as though Zeb was a hot potato, feeling the memory of James Fraser’s iron grip on his arm and the agonizing pain that had numbed him from shoulder to fingertip.
“Sorry,” he said, voice shaking a little with the effort to hide his fury. “Sorry, Zeb.” The surgeon was ready with the glowing iron; William took Zeb’s arm, as gently as he could, and held it still while the thing was done. Rachel had held his own.