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His eyes were closed, and his skin was the color of old ivory His head was turned slightly away from me, so that the cords of his neck stood out, but I couldn’t see any pulse in his throat He was still warm, or at least the bedclothes were still warently The room was fetid with the scent of onions and honey and fever-sweat, but no stink of sudden death

I clapped a hand on the center of his chest, and he jerked, startled, and opened his eyes

"You bastard," I said, so relieved to feel the rise of his chest as he drew breath that my voice trembled "You tried to die on me, didn’t you?"

His chest rose and fell, rose and fell, under h I had been pulled back at the last moment from an unexpected precipice

He blinked at me His eyes were heavy, still clouded with fever

"It didna take much effort, Sassenach," he said, his voice soft and husky fro was harder"

He ht of day, I saw clearly what exhaustion and the aftereffects of shock had stopped ht before His insistence on his own bed The open shutters, so he could hear the voices of his family below, his tenants outside Anda word to ht you were dying e brought you up here, didn’t you?" I asked My voice sounded

It took hih he didn’t look hesitant It wasfor the proper words

"Well, I didna ken for sure, no," he said slowly "Though I did feel verra ill" His eyes closed, slowly, as though he were too tired to keep them open "I still do," he added, in a detached sort of voice "Ye needna worry, though--I’ve roped beneath the covers, and found his wrist He arain, in fact, and with a pulse that was too fast, too shallow Still, it was so different froht before that my first reaction was relief

He took a couple of deep breaths, then turned his head and opened his eyes to look at ht"

He could, certainly--and yet that wasn’t what he meant He made it sound like a conscious--

"What do you mean you’ve made your choice? You’ve decided not to die, after all?" I tried to speak lightly, but it wasn’t working very well I remembered all too well that odd sense of timeless stillness that had surrounded us

"It was verra strange," he said "And yet it wasna strange at all" He sounded faintly surprised

"I think," I said carefully, keeping a thumb on his pulse, "you’d better tell h the smile was more in his eyes than his lips Those were dry, and painfully cracked in the corners I touched his lips with a finger, wanting to go and fetch so ointment for hi myself to stay and hear

"I dinna really know, Sassenach--or rather, I do, but I canna think quite how to say it" He still looked tired, but his eyes stayed open They lingered on ht, with an expression alh he hadn’t seen me before

"You are so beautiful," he said, softly "So verra beautiful,blue blotches and overlooked s in unwashed tangles tofrom the stale-urine odor of dye to the reek of fear-sweat on h he were looking at the full ht, pure and lovely

His eyes stayed fixed on htly as they seemed to trace er Mac broughtand an to dread the next And so I would listen to the spaces between Ye wouldna think it," he said, sounded vaguely surprised, "but there is a great deal of tiun to hope, in those spaces, that the next beat would not co--and that the pain was growing rerown colder, the fever fading fro the latter oddly clear

"And this is where I canna really say, Sassenach" He pulled his wrist froers over mine "But Isaw"

"Sahat?" And yet I already knew that he couldn’t tell me Like any doctor, I had seen sick people make up their minds to die--and I knew that look they so in the distance

He hesitated, struggling to find words I thought of so, and jumped in to try to help

"There was an elderly woman," I said "She died in the hospital where I was on staff--all her grown children with her, it was very peaceful" I looked down, htly swollen, interlaced with its

"She died--she was dead, I could see her pulse had stopped, she wasn’t breathing All her children were by her bedside, weeping And then, quite suddenly, her eyes opened She wasn’t looking at any of the And she said, quite clearly, ‘Oooh!’ Just like that--thrilled, like a little girl who’s just seen soain" I looked up at hi back tears "Was it--like that?"

He nodded, speechless, and his hand tightened onlike," he said, very softly