Outlander Book Club: Book 2, Chapter 12 breakdown
Just the Outlander chapter
The chapter starts with Jamie agreeing that Claire can work at the charity hospital. He understands that this is important to her.
However, that doesn’t mean he wants to hear about everything that she’s done there. After her first day, which is when she diagnoses a woman with “sugar sickness,” she tells Jamie all about the things that she has done. He can’t eat because of it, and I do find this funny. I’m often guilty of being like Claire and not finding certain things disgusting that others do.
We get to see Claire’s passion for her work. At the same time, Jamie doesn’t complain about hearing it all. Even when it comes to eating, he doesn’t exactly complain that she’s sharing about her day. It’s just that he can’t stomach food hearing about it, and Claire perfectly understands when he tells her. She moves onto his day.
This chapter gives us the two of them as a couple. They’re just an everyday husband and wife talking about the days they’ve had, and I could just see them perfectly fitting into life at Lallybroch like this. I’ve always felt a sadness for them that they never got this.
Throughout the chapter, we see Claire work more at the hospital. At one point, she’s working on someone’s broken leg. She’s helped with that wound but the man still has an infection. That’s when Bouton shows his superpower. This little dog that nobody else seems to like is able to find the infection that Claire can’t.
Mother Hildegarde clearly has respect for Claire. At the same time, Claire is humble and respects both Mother Hildegarde and Bouton. I love seeing Claire make connections with people, seeing her gain some sort of friendship with people in a new place.
I also love that the dog has this ability to sniff out infections. If only others would use him to their advantage!
One thing Mother Hildegarde notes is that Claire doesn’t go near those with sickness or disease. This is when Claire admits that she’s pregnant. She’ll help where she can, but she doesn’t want to put her baby at risk.
When Claire returns home, she finds a young boy in her house. Jamie has brought young Fergus into his employ to help steal letters. It turns out that some men were after Jamie and Jamie ran into a brothel to get to an alleyway so he could fight the men. That’s when he ran into Fergus, who helped him get to the alleyway.
Claire is more curious about the men who tried to kill Jamie—and yes, they wanted him dead. So am I…
One comment I do want to make is Jamie changing Fergus’s name. It was Claudel, but Jamie didn’t think it was manly enough. I do feel for Fergus at this moment since Claudel will be the identity that he currently has and Jamie just removes that. Of course, we know that Claudel is still part of his name in a future book and Fergus takes on his new identity, but I do still find it a shame for this young boy who is an orphan.