7x15 "Written in My Own Heart's Blood"
I DON’T KNOW how long I had been sitting there, head in my hands, listening to the loud buzzing of bees. But I heard footsteps coming down the path and managed to lift my head. “Are ye all right, Sassenach?” It was Jamie, the large box of medicines and bandages in his arms. And from the look of alarm on his face, it was reasonably obvious that I didn’t look all right. I couldn’t muster the energy to try to look all right. “I just—thought I’d sit down,” I said, flapping a hand helplessly. “I’m glad ye did.” He set down the box on the yellowing grass and came to crouch in front of me, examining my face. “What happened?” “Nothing,” I said, and without warning began to cry. Or, rather, to leak. There was nothing of the sobbing, convulsive, racking nature of weeping; tears were just streaking down my cheeks without my approval. Jamie nudged me over a little and sat down beside me, wrapping his arms around me. He was wearing his old kilt, and the smell of the dusty wool fabric, worn thin with age, made me utterly dissolve. He tightened his grip and, sighing, pressed his cheek to my head and said small, tender things in Gaelic. And in a little time, the effort to understand them gave me a tenuous grip on myself. I drew a deep breath and he released me, though he kept an arm around me for support.
“Mo nighean donn,” he said softly, and smoothed hair out of my face. “Have ye got a hankie?” That made me laugh. Or rather emit a sort of strangled giggle, but still . . . “Yes. At least, I think so.” I groped in my bosom and withdrew a sturdy square of much-laundered linen, on which I blew my nose several times and then wiped my eyes, trying to think what on earth to offer as an explanation for my disordered state—of mind, as well as body. There wasn’t any good way to begin, so I just began. “Do you ever—well, no. I know you do.” “Likely,” he said, smiling a little. “What do I do?” “See the . . . the void. The abyss.” Speaking the words reopened the rent in my soul, and the cold wind came through. A shudder ran through me, in spite of the warmth of the air and Jamie’s body. “I mean—it’s always there, always yawning at your feet, but most people manage to ignore it, not think about it. I’ve mostly been able to. You have to, to do medicine.” I wiped my nose on my sleeve, having dropped my handkerchief. Jamie pulled a crumpled hankie out of his sleeve and handed it to me. “Ye dinna mean only death?” he asked. “Because I’ve seen that often enough. It hasna really scairt me since I was ten or so, though.” He glanced down at me and smiled. “And I doubt ye’re afraid of it, either. I’ve seen ye face it down a thousand times and more.” “Facing something down doesn’t mean you aren’t afraid of it,” I said dryly. “Usually quite the opposite. And I know you know that.” He made a small sound of agreement in his throat and hugged me gently. I would normally have found this comforting, and the fact that I didn’t merely added to my sense of despair. “It’s—it’s just . . . nothing. And so much endless nothing . . . It’s as though nothing you do, nothing you are, can possibly matter, it’s all just swallowed up . . .” I closed my eyes, but the darkness behind my eyelids frightened me and I opened them again. “I—” I raised a hand, then let it fall.
“I can’t explain,” I said, defeated. “It wasn’t there—or I wasn’t looking at it—after I was shot. It wasn’t nearly dying that made me look in, see it yawning there. But being so . . . so bloody frail! Being so stinking afraid.”
I clenched my fists, seeing the knobby bones of my knuckles, the blue veins that stood out on the backs of my hands and curved down my wrists.
“Not death,” I said at last, sniffing. “Futility. Uselessness. Bloody entropy. Death matters, at least sometimes.”
“I ken that,” Jamie said softly, and took my hands in his; they were big, and battered, scarred and maimed. “It’s why a warrior doesna fear death so much. He has the hope—sometimes the certainty—that his death will matter.”
“What happens to me between now and then doesna matter to anyone.” Those words swam out of nowhere and struck me in the pit of the stomach, so hard that I could barely breathe. He’d said that to me, from the bottom of despair, in the dungeon of Wentworth Prison, a lifetime ago. He’d bargained for my life then, with what he had—not his life, already forfeit, but his soul. “It matters to me!” I’d said to him—and, against all odds, had ransomed that soul and brought him back. And then it had come again, stark and dire necessity, and he’d laid down his life without hesitation for his men and for the child I carried. And that time I had been the one who sacrificed my soul. And it had mattered, for both of us. It still mattered. And the shell of fear cracked like an egg and everything inside me poured out like blood and water mingled and I sobbed on his chest until there were no more tears and no more breath. I leaned against him, limp as a dishcloth, and watched the crescent moon begin to rise in the east. “What did you say?” I said, rousing myself after a long while. I felt groggy and disoriented, but at peace. “I asked, what’s entropy?” “Oh,” I said, momentarily disconcerted. When had the concept of entropy been invented? Not yet, obviously. “It’s, um . . . a lack of order, a lack of predictability, an inability for a system to do work.”
“A system of what?” “Well, there you have me,” I admitted, sitting up and wiping my nose. “Just an ideal sort of system, with heat energy.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics basically says that in an isolated system—one that’s not getting energy from somewhere outside, I mean—entropy will always increase. I think it’s just a scientific way of saying that everything is going to pot, all of the time.” He laughed, and despite my shattered state of mind, I did, too. “Aye, well, far be it from me to argue wi’ the Second Law of Thermodynamics,” he said. “I think it’s likely right. When did ye last eat, Sassenach?” “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not hungry.” I didn’t want to do anything but sit still beside him.
“D’ye see the sky?” he said, a little later. It was a pure deep violet at the horizon, fading into a blue-black immensity overhead, and the early stars burned like distant lamps. “Hard to miss,” I said. “Aye.” He sat with his head tilted back, looking up, and I admired the clean line of his long, straight nose, his soft wide mouth and long throat, as though seeing them for the first time.
“Is it not a void there?” he said quietly, still looking up. “And yet we’re no afraid to look.” “There are lights,” I said. “It makes a difference.”
My voice was hoarse, and I swallowed. “Though I suppose even the stars are burning out, according to the Second Law.”
“Mmphm. Well, I suppose men can make all the laws they like,” he said, “but God made hope.
The stars willna burn out.” He turned and, cupping my chin, kissed me gently. “And nor will we.”
The noises of the city were muted now, though even darkness didn’t stifle it entirely. I heard distant voices and the sound of a fiddle: a party, perhaps, from one of the houses down the street. And the bell of St. George’s struck the hour with a small, flat bong! Nine o’clock. And all’s well. “I’d better go and see to my patient,” I said.
118 THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS ~ Written in my own heart's blood
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