Amazonia Read online

  In short order, Tama was loaded on a stretcher of bamboo and palm fronds and placed in the canoe. Takaho, now dressed in a tank top and a pair of Nike shorts, waved Nathan to the bow of the dugout canoe, then shoved away from the shore with his oar and into the main current of the Negro River. The river led all the way to Sao Gabriel.

  They made the ten-mile journey in silence. Nathan checked on Tama frequently and recognized the worry in her father's eyes. The girl had slipped back into a stupor, trembling, moaning softly now and then. Nathan wrapped a blanket around her small form.

  Takaho wended the small canoe with skill through small rapids and around tangles of fallen trees. He seemed to have an uncanny skill at finding the swiftest currents.

  As the canoe sped downriver, they passed a group of Indians from a neighboring village fishing in the river with spears. He watched a woman sprinkle a dark powder into the waters from an upstream canoe. Nate knew what she was doing. It was crushed ayaeya vine. As it flowed downstream, the dissolved powder would stun fish, floating them to the surface where they were speared and collected by the men. It was an ancient fishing method used throughout the Amazon.

  But how long would such traditions last? A generation or two? Then this art would be lost forever.

  Nathan settled into his seat, knowing there were certain battles he could never win. For good or bad, civilization would continue its march through the jungle.

  As they continued along, Nate stared out at the walls of dense foliage that framed both banks. All around him, life buzzed, chirped, squawked, hooted, and grunted.

  On either side, packs of red howler monkeys yelled in chorus and bounced aggressively atop their branches. Along the shallows, white-feathered bitterns with long orange beaks speared fish, while the plated snouts of caimans marked nesting grounds of the Amazonian crocodiles. Closer still, in the air around them, clouds of gnats and stinging flies harangued every inch of exposed skin.

  Here the jungle ruled in all its forms. It seemed endless, impenetrable, full of mystery. It was one of the last regions of the planet that had yet to be fully explored. There were vast stretches never walked by man. It was this mystery and wonder that had attracted Nathan's parents to spend their lives here, eventually infecting their only son with their love of the great forest.

  Nathan watched the jungle pass around him, noting the emerging signs of civilization, and knew that they neared Sao Gabriel. Small clearings made by peasant farmers began to appear, dotting the banks of the river. From the shore, children waved and called as the canoe whisked past. Even the noises of the jungle grew muted, driven away by the noisome ruckus of the modern world: the grumble of diesel tractors in the fields, the whine of motor boats that sped past the canoe, the tinny music of a radio blaring from a homestead.

  Then, from around a bend in the river, the jungle ended abruptly. The small city of Sao Gabriel appeared like some cancer that had eaten away the belly of the forest. Near the river, the city was a ramshackle mix of rotting wooden shacks and cement government buildings. Away from the water, homes both small and large climbed the nearby hills. Closer at hand, the wharves and jetties were crowded with tourist boats and primer-scarred river barges.

  Nathan turned to direct Takaho toward a section of open riverbank. He found the Indian staring in horror at the city, his oar clutched tightly to his chest.

  "It fills the world," he mumbled.

  Nathan glanced back to the small township. It had been two weeks since his last supply run to Sao Gabriel, and the noise and bustle were a rude shock to him. What must it be like for someone who had never left the jungle?

  Nathan nodded to a spot to beach the canoe. "There is nothing here that a great warrior need fear. We must get your daughter to the hospital."

  Takaho nodded, clearly swallowing back his shock. His face again settled into a stoic expression, but his eyes continued to flit around the wonders of this other world. He guided the canoe as directed, then helped Nathan haul out the stretcher on which Tama's limp form lay.

  As she was shifted, the girl moaned, and her eyelids fluttered, eyes rolling white. She had paled significantly during the ride here.

  "We must hurry."

  Together, the two carried the girl through the waterfront region, earning the gawking stares of the townies and a few blinding flashes from camera-wielding tourists. Though Takaho wore "civilized" clothes, his monkey-tail headband, the sprouts of feathers in his ears, and his bowl-shaped haircut marked this fellow as one of the Amazon's indigenous tribespeople.

  Luckily, the small single-story hospital was just past the waterfront region. The only way one could tell it was a hospital was the flaking red cross painted above the threshold, but Nathan had been here before, consulting with the doctor on staff, a fellow from Manaus. They were soon off the streets and guiding their stretcher through the door. The hospital reeked of ammonia and bleach, but it was deliciously air-conditioned. The cool air struck Nate like a wet towel to the face.

  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.

  He ignored the oddity and hurried to a cement-block building set amid a row of dilapidated wooden structures. The letters FUNAI were painted on the wall facing the street. It was the local office for the Brazilian Indian Foundation and represented the sole source of aid, education, and legal representation for the local tribes, the Baniwa and Yanomamo. The small building housed both offices and a homeless shelter for Indians who had come in search of the white man's prosperity.

  FUNAI also had its own medical counselor, a longtime friend of the family and his own father's mentor here in the jungles of the Amazon.

  Nate pushed through the anteroom and hurried down a hall and up a set of stairs. He prayed his friend was in his office. As he neared the open door, he heard the strands of Mozart's Fifth Violin Concerto flowing out.

  Thank God!

  Knocking on the door's frame, Nate announced himself. "Professor Kouwe?"

  Behind a small desk, a mocha-skinned Indian glanced up from a pile of papers. In his mid-fifties, he had shoulder-length black hair that was graying at the temples, and he now wore wire-rimmed glasses when reading. He took off those glasses and smiled broadly when he recognized Nate.

  "Nathan!" Resh Kouwe stood and came around the desk to give him a hug that rivaled the coils of the anaconda he had fought. For his compact frame, the man was as strong as an ox. Formerly a shaman of the Tirios tribe of southern Venezuela, Kouwe had met Nate's father three decades ago, and the two had become fast friends. Kouwe had eventually left the jungle with his father's help and was schooled at Oxford, earning a dual degree in linguistics and paleoanthropology. He was also one of the preeminent experts in the botanical lore of the region. "My boy, I can't believe you're here! Did Manny contact you?"

  Nathan frowned as he was released from the bear hug. "No, what do you mean?"

  "He's looking for you. He stopped by about an hour ago to see if I knew which village you were conducting your current research in."

  "Why?" Nathan's brow wrinkled.

  "He didn't say, but he did have one of those Tellux corporate honchos with him."

  Nathan rolled his eyes. Tellux Pharmaceuticals was the multinational corporation that had been financing his investigative research into the practices of the region's tribal shamans.

  Kouwe recognized his sour expression. "It was you who made the pact with the devil."

  "Like I had any choice after my father died."

  Kouwe frowned. "You should not have given up on yourself so quickly. You were always--"

  "Listen," Nathan said, cutting him off. He didn't want to be reminded of that black period in his life. He had made his own bed and would have to lie in it. "I've got a different problem than Tellux." He quickly explained about Tama and her illness. "I'm worried about her treatment. I thought you could consult with the doctor."

  Kouwe grabbed a fishing tackle box from a shelf. "Foolish, foolish, foolish," he said, and headed for the door.

  Nathan followed him down the stairs and out into the street. He had to hurry to keep up with the older man. Soon the two were pushing through the hospital's front doors.

  Takaho leaped to his feet at the reappearance of Nathan. "Jako...Brother."

  Nathan waved him back down. "I've brought someone who might be able to help your daughter."

  Kouwe did not wait. He was already shoving into the ward beyond the doors. Nathan hurried after him.

  What he found in the next room was chaos. The slender American doctor, her face drenched with sweat, was bent over Tama, who was again in a full grand mal seizure. Nurses were scurrying to and fro at her orders.

  Kelly glanced over the girl's convulsing body. "We're losing her," she said, her eyes frightened.

  "Maybe I can help," Kouwe said. "What medications has she been given?"

  Kelly ran down a quick list, wiping strands of hair from her damp forehead.

  Nodding, Kouwe opened his tackle box and grabbed a small pouch from one of the many tiny compartments. "I need a straw."

  A nurse obeyed him as quickly as she had Dr. O'Brien. Nathan could guess that this was not the first visit Professor Kouwe had made to the hospital here. There was no one wiser on indigenous diseases and their cures.

  "What are you doing?" Kelly asked, her face red. Her loose auburn hair had been pulled back in a ponytail.

  "You've been working under a false assumption," he said calmly as he packed the plastic straw with his powder. "The convulsive nature of electric eel disease is not a manifestation of a CNS disturbance, like epilepsy. It's due to a hereditary chemical imbalan
ce in the cerebral spinal fluid. The disease is unique to a handful of Yanomamo tribes."

  "A hereditary metabolic disorder?"

  "Exactly, like favism among certain Mediterranean families or 'cold-fat disease' among the Maroon tribes of Venezuela."

  Kouwe crossed to the girl and waved to Nathan. "Hold her still."

  Nathan crossed and held Tama's head to the pillow.

  The shaman positioned one end of the straw into the girl's nostril, then blew the straw's powdery content up her nose.

  Dr. O'Brien hovered behind him. "Are you the hospital's clinician? Dr. Rodriguez?"

  "No, my dear," Kouwe said, straightening. "I'm the local witch doctor."