Chapter 17: Headway

"Jack?" Soft, tender fingers touched his cheek, making him aware that Claire must've re-entered the room while he had apprently dosed off. "William said you're in pain?" She questioned, intent.

He shook his head, "not now." He wouldn't exactly say he was lying earlier, just gave an evasive answer. Her manner around him was more intriguing than his own reasoning. "What happened?" He asked the same question of her as he had asked of his brother previously, hoping for a more informative and to him relevant answer. Like what made her so lenient with him.

"You had a pocket of fluids collecting in your abdomen that needed drained. No major surgery, I was only worried about the hygienic conditions."

"I'm afraid most of the household thinks you've performed a miracle, or more like, a handful of them."

"Like with La Dame Blanche," she shrugged, "nothing new about that."

Jack reached for her hand, squeezing it lightly, "you have to be careful," he insisted, "this might not be the back of beyond of the Scottish Highlands, yet it doesn't change the fact that the common folk are very likely to explain what they don't understand by supernatural forces."

"Witchcraft has been ruled out as an act in England, there are no more witch trials after 1735." Claire claimed, more unsure than she sounded. Was the year correct?

"According to my understanding, it has proved possible to change history," he meant himself as the only outcome they were aware of so far. "It would be unwise to tempt fate."

"That's hardly your life philosophy," she argued, rolling her eyes.

"That was...before," he broke eye contact. The past was always treacherous ground to cover. "Before I had something to lose besides gambling with my life and fortunes," he specified, avoiding dangerous mentions of past events. "How long are you staying for?" He changed subject quickly, under no circumstances wanting to be asked what was so precious that he possessed now.

Claire sighed, "you are hardly able to take care of yourself. I'm intending to get you into remission and then I will leave you with a set of instructions regarding diet and life choices that should serve you to preserve your relative health."

"You're still intending to leave," he summarised. Would making sure he stayed ill change or delay her departure?-The thought occurred to him fleetingly, and he dismissed it for the moment to be pondered upon at a different time as he was rather unsure he would ever get well to start with. He was clinging to her, obsessively, he was aware, in somewhat of a similar fashion as he had been attached to Jamie and it probably wasn't all to do with him needing her medical knowledge or even pertaining to her relationship to the fascinating Scotsman.

The time traveller fixed him with an incredulous look, "besides not belonging here, I have every intension to get as far from you as possible."

"Our paths keep crossing, no matter what we do. It has surprised me how much a few times already. We can't even escape each other going to a different country."

"I will worry about that when it comes to it," Claire dismissed his claim, "I can think of real far away places." She almost added, 'and we're not quite as fierce foes as we used to be.' Not now, not after what they've done for each other. Him in effect, for all intents and purposes, as good as saving her child, that's got to count for something.

"For now though, you have played along with your guise I laid out for you," Jack couldn't help but rejoice at that.

"Lacking of a better one..." She admitted. She moved round the nightstand to produce the medicine bag Jack knew well. "Could you sit up for me a bit? I'm going to look at your stomach."

The invalid wriggled upwards onto his back slowly and hesitantly and was surprised to find that apart from a pang of emptiness and a dull echo of a diffuse and brief ache across his midsection, moving didn't present difficulties. Claire washed her hands in the basin, shook them for the air to dry them a bit and sat down beside him on the edge of the bed to peek under the bandage on his belly. "The incision I made is healing well," she told him with a gratified and self-confident expression, clearly having checked on it not long ago and many times while he was still unconscious. The qualified nurse pulled the padding that sat against the wound out and exchanged it with a clean one from her bag, but did not put him through having to be maneuvred around for the entire bandage running round him to hold the one under in place to be changed.

Jack sat compliantly while she took his pulse, made him open his mouth so she could look into it and listened to his belly and chest. "There's no better assessment than what the patients can give you themselves," she quated someone, or perhaps herself, "so how are you feeling?"

"Lucky to be alive," he repeated what he had said to her on a previous occasion in Edinburgh, and this time, he meant it, with how thorough and considerate she had been with him. Last time that was the case, he was too unwell to marvel over it. "Thanks to you."

"Don't remind me," Claire grunted. The brunette also took a moment to reflect and be weirded out by the situation. It wasn't the first time she had saved his life, but there always was a reason. It was getting to the ridiculous stage. "Any pain?" She probed. It was easier to concentrate on pracical matters.

"Almost none."

"Alright, let's see," she neared her hand to his stomach, fingers extended so she could perform a full palpation of the abdomen. Jack tensed, on instinct, but eventually blew the air out his lungs in relief half way through her examination. Whatever she had done to him while he was unconscious, it had proved to be the exact treatment he needed. All her ministrations set off was making his stomach gurgling as if he was hungry.

"All's well," she concluded, "now I'd like you to understand that your welbeing depends on how closely you follow my intructions. As I have explaned before, what you have is a chronic, recurring condition that could easily kill you if not looked after and could also remain dormant for many years if we're lucky. Triggers vary and until we figure out yours, we need to be even more cautious."

"You are taking my health very seriously," Jack couldn't help noting. The surreality of it had been occupying him for some time and he wanted to find some answers. "Why. And don't give me the story about Denys' upbringing and offspring."

"It wouldn't be me if I didn't treat those ill. I've risked my life, health and child before, for people I didn't know."

Jack dismissed her explanation as one that didn't apply to them, "you should want me dead. You wanted me dead."

Claire could've said a million things. That her own concience rarely allowed such a thing, that she owed him a life for her daughter, that she kept him alive so she was the one choosing when he died and was keeping his life in her hands which in fact she entirely had been, given the circumstances, that she was using him to put a foot in the door, that she was holding a card for a favour for later, but instead she stood silently. "I see you Jack. I see you. You can't hide behind the darkness forever. For there is good in you and I swear on everything that's dear to me that I will bring that out to light from inside you. Now, I shall get you something safe to eat when restarting digestion." She closed the door and slid against it, heart racing and cursing herself for what she had done, once again. 'Typical Claire,' she admonished herself, 'setting yourself up to accomplish the impossible.'

At the other side of the door, Jack was similarly taken aback, the admiration he had for her swelling in size once more. That woman didn't give up. The why of his question however, remained unanswered.

Tbc