this passage is one of my favorite Jamie and Claire conversations in all of the books. more than anything else it shows how much they love and understand each other. how thrilling to see this so wonderfully adapted in 7x16 "A Hundred Thousand Angels"!
“Sassenach? Are ye all right?” A segment of the darkness on the floor moved suddenly and resolved itself into a Jamie-shaped shadow.
That got me the breath of a laugh.
“I’ll do, Sassenach,” he said softly, and I heard the rustle of his movement as he got his feet under him. “I’m glad ye feel well enough to ask. D’ye need water?”
“Er . . . rather the opposite, really,” I said.
“Oh? Oh.” He stooped, a pale blur in his shirt, to reach under the bed. “D’ye need help?”
“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have waked you up,” I said, a little testily. “I didn’t think I could wait for Mrs. Macken or Dottie, though.” He snorted a little and got me under the arms, lifting me into a sitting position.
“Now, then,” he murmured. “It’s no like ye’ve not done this—and a good many worse things—for me.”
While this was true, it didn’t make matters easier.
“You can let go now,” I said.
“Perhaps leave the room?”
“Perhaps not,” he said, still mildly, but with a tone indicating
that his mind was made up on the subject. “If I let go, ye’ll fall on your face, and ye ken that perfectly well, so stop talkin’ and be about your business now, aye?”
It took some time—anything that put pressure on my abdomen, including the act of urinating, hurt remarkably—but the business was accomplished and I was eased back down onto the pillow, gasping. Jamie bent and picked up the chamber pot, clearly intending to hurl the contents out the window in customary Edinburgh fashion.
“No, wait!” I said. “Keep that ’til morning.”
“What for?” he asked cautiously. Clearly he suspected I might still be unhinged from fever and be contemplating some grossly irrational use of the pot’s contents, but he didn’t like to say so, in case I had something logical, if bizarre, in mind. I would have laughed, but it hurt too much.
“I need to check, once there’s light, to be sure there’s no blood,” I said. “My right kidney’s very sore; I want to be sure there’s no damage.”
“Ah.” He set the utensil down carefully and, to my surprise, opened the door and glided out, moving soft-footed as a hunting fox. I heard one squeak as he stepped on a stair tread, but nothing more until a glow betokened his return with a candlestick.
“Have a look, then,” he said, picking up the pot again and bringing it to me. “I kent ye’d just fret about it did ye have to wait for daybreak.”
He sounded resigned, but this small thoughtfulness brought me close to tears. He heard the catch in my breathing and leaned close, alarmed, bringing the light up to my face.
“Are ye all right, Sassenach? Is it bad, then?”
“No,” I said, and wiped my eyes hastily on a corner of the sheet. “No—it—it’s fine. I just —oh, Jamie, I love you!”
-- Written In My Own Heart's Blood
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