Amazonia

He crossed to the nurse’s station and spoke rapidly. The pudgy woman’s brow wrinkled with a lack of understanding until Nathan realized he had been speaking in the Yanomamo dialect. He switched quickly to Portuguese. “The girl has been attacked by an anaconda. She’s suffered a few broken ribs, but I think her internal injuries might be more severe.”

“Come this way.” The nurse waved them toward a set of double doors. She eyed Takaho with clear suspicion.

“He’s her father.”

The nurse nodded. “Dr. Rodriguez is out on a house call, but I can ring him for an emergency.”

“Ring him,” Nathan said.

“Maybe I can help,” a voice said behind him.

Nathan turned.

A tall, slender woman with long auburn hair rose from the wooden folding chairs in the waiting room. She had been partially hidden behind a pile of wooden crates emblazoned with the red cross. Approaching with calm assurance, she studied them all intently.

Nathan stood straighter.

“My name is Kelly O’Brien,” she said in fluent Portuguese, but Nate heard a trace of a Boston accent. She pulled out identification with the familiar medical caduceus stamped on it. “I’m an American doctor.”

“Dr. O’Brien,” he said, switching to English, “I could certainly use your help. The girl here was attacked—”

Atop the stretcher, Tama’s back suddenly arched. Her heels began to beat at the palm fronds, then her thrashing spread through the rest of her body.

“She’s seizing!” the woman said. “Get her into the ward!”

The pudgy nurse led the way, holding the door wide for the stretcher.

Kelly O’Brien rushed alongside the girl as the two men swung the stretcher toward one of the four beds in the tiny emergency ward. Snatching a pair of surgical gloves, the tall doctor barked to the nurse, “I need ten milligrams of diazepam!”

The nurse nodded and dashed to a drug cabinet. In seconds, a syringe of amber-colored fluid was slapped into Kelly’s gloved hand. The doctor already had a rubber tourniquet in place. “Hold her down,” she ordered Nate and Takaho.

By now, a nurse and a large orderly had arrived as the quiet hospital awakened to the emergency.

“Get ready with an IV line and a bag of LRS,” Kelly said sharply. Her fingers palpated a decent vein in the girl’s thin arm. With obvious competence, Kelly inserted the needle and slowly injected the drug.

“It’s Valium,” she said as she worked. “It should calm the seizure long enough to find out what’s wrong with her.”

Her words proved instantly true. Tama’s convulsions calmed. Her limbs stopped thrashing and relaxed to the bed. Only her eyelids and the corner of her lips still twitched. Kelly was examining her pupils with a penlight.

The orderly nudged Nate aside as he worked on Tama’s other arm, preparing a catheter and IV line.

Nate glanced over the orderly’s shoulder and saw the fear and panic in her father’s eyes.

“What happened to her?” the doctor asked as she continued examining the girl.

Nathan described the attack. “She’s been slipping in and out of consciousness most of the time. The village shaman was able to revive her for a short time.”

“She’s sustained a pair of cracked ribs and associated hematomas, but I can’t account for the seizure or stupor. Did she have any seizures en route here?”

“No.”

“Any familial history of epilepsy?”

Nate turned to Takaho and repeated the question in Yanomamo.

Takaho nodded. “Ah-de-me-nah gunti.”

Nate frowned.

“What did he say?” Kelly asked.

“Ah-de-me-nah means electric eel. Gunti is disease or sickness.”

“Electric eel disease?”

Nate nodded. “That’s what he said. But it makes no sense. A victim of an electric eel attack will often convulse, but it’s an immediate reaction. And Tama hasn’t been in any water for hours. I don’t know…maybe ‘electric eel disease’ is the Yanomamo term for epilepsy.”

“Has she been treated for it? On medication?”

Nate got the answer from Takaho. “The village shaman has been treating her once a week with the smoke of the hempweed vine.”

Kelly sighed in exasperation. “So in other words, she’s been unmedicated. No wonder the stress of the near drowning triggered such a severe attack. Why don’t you take her father out to the waiting room? I’ll see if I can get these seizures to cease with stronger meds.”

Nate glanced to the bed. Tama’s form lay quiet. “Do you think she’ll have more?”

Kelly glanced into his eyes. “She’s still having them.” She pointed to the persistent facial twitches. “She’s in status epilepticus, a continual seizure. Most patients who suffer from such prolonged attacks will appear stuporous, moaning, uncoordinated. The full grand mal events like a moment ago will be interspersed. If we can’t stop it, she’ll die.”

Nate stared at the little girl. “You mean she’s been seizing this entire time?”

“From what you describe, more or less.”

“But the village shaman was able to draw her out of the stupor for a short time.”

“I find that hard to believe.” Kelly returned her attention to the girl. “He wouldn’t have medication strong enough to break this cycle.”

Nate remembered the girl sipping at the gourd. “But he did. Don’t discount tribal shamans as mere witch doctors. I’ve worked for years with them. And considering what they have to work with, they’re quite sophisticated.”

“Well, wise or not, we’ve stronger medications here. Real medicine.” She nodded again to the father. “Why don’t you take her father out to the waiting room?” Kelly turned back to the orderly and nurses, dismissing him.

Nate bristled, but obeyed. For centuries, the value of shamanism had been scorned by practitioners of Western medicine. Nate coaxed Takaho out of the ward and into the waiting room. He guided the Indian to a chair and instructed him to stay, then headed for the door.

He slammed his way out into the heat of the Amazon. Whether the American doctor believed him or not, he had seen the shaman revive the girl. If there was one man who might have an answer for Tama’s mysterious illness, he knew where to find him.

Half running, he raced through the afternoon heat toward the southern outskirts of the city. In about ten blocks, he was skirting the edge of the Brazilian army camp. The normally sleepy base buzzed with activity. Nate noted the four helicopters with United States markings in the open field. Locals lined the base’s fences, pointing toward the novelty of the foreign military craft and chattering excitedly.