by Angela Hunt
The woman made no sound, but stared up at them with wide, frightened eyes.
“Poor thing.” Caitlyn’s grip tightened on Alex’s arm. “She doesn’t even have a name.”
“Of course she does,” Emma answered, “but she would consider it bad luck for us to know it. Knowing her name would give us power over her.”
“But we have to call her something,” Caitlyn insisted. “Otherwise, she’s just . . . something to drag along behind us.”
Alex’s thoughts drifted back to sunny afternoons in the nursing home, where nurses gaily gossiped around her helpless mother, surrendering to the all-too-common temptation to treat silent people as objects.
“You’re absolutely right, honey.” Feeling the pressure of Kenway’s gaze, she avoided his eyes for fear of betraying her memories. “We’ll call her Shaman’s Wife, okay?”
They moved at a quicker pace once the travois had been completed. The warriors, who positioned themselves at the front and rear of their party, led the way with less bravado, and something that might have been respect gleamed in their eyes.
Drawn by a feeling of responsibility for the woman she had named, Alex found herself walking by the motionless patient on the travois. Because the bearer could not handle the travois and clear the path, she took care to hold branches that might have snapped back to strike their patient or the man who pulled the travois. Joining in the effort, Caitlyn picked up a stick and pulled down spider webs overhanging the trail.
Alex knew part of her concern for the invalid sprang from memories of her mother. Despite the differences in time and location, the limp woman might have been Geneva Pace clothed in other flesh.
Alex wasn’t alone in her concern for the woman’s safety. Whenever they stopped to clear a path or drink from a stream, Kenway reached for the patient’s wrist to take her pulse. Alex knew he couldn’t do much without any sort of medicines or equipment, but the woman was now receiving better care than she had in the village.
Kenway’s compassion, she guessed, sprang from his calling as a doctor . . . and because his encounter with Ya-ree had instigated this expedition. Bancroft, Olsson, and Baklanov cared for their patient because her life had become entwined with Deborah Simons’s. If Shaman’s Wife died before they reached the healing tribe, they would almost certainly have to fight to rescue Deborah from the Angry People.
As the hours wore on, Alex’s mind drifted into a weary haze as she followed Olsson on the trail. Her arms itched from mosquito bites, her shirt clung to her damp chest, and her hair hung in ravels about her face. Trapped in what felt like an eternal day, she lost track of passing time. The few shafts of sunlight penetrating the canopy seemed locked in place, slanting neither east nor west. Sunset remained out of reach. Time had stopped, and the world where cars hummed on expressways and radios blared from clean kitchen countertops existed in another universe.
“So, Alexandra—”
She flinched as Kenway’s voice sliced into her thoughts.
“What do you think about our patient?”
Mechanically, she replayed his words in her mind and forced herself to focus on the conversation. “Um, there’s no fever at all,” she said, resting the back of her hand on the woman’s forehead. “So we can probably rule out a typical bacterial or viral infection.”
Michael threw her a puzzled look. “The shaman said she had the shuddering disease. Do you doubt him?”
“I want to be certain, that’s all. If we had the proper equipment we could test the cerebrospinal fluid for increased numbers of lymph cells to definitely rule out infection—”
“Did you look at her back? Bedsores, particularly bad ones. This woman has been immobile for some time.”
Pressing her parched lips together, Alex studied her patient’s mouth. “She’s drooling, despite the heat. An inability to swallow is a late symptom of kuru. But while Creutzfeldt-Jakob patients show early signs of dementia and agitation, this woman is calm. I daresay she knows exactly what is happening around her.”
“If so, she has to be terrified.” Without losing a step, Kenway lowered his hand to stroke the woman’s cheek. Something in the gesture seemed to affect Shaman’s Wife, because an instant later the fingers of her right hand twitched.
“Look.” Alex pointed toward the woman’s trembling fingers. “Athetoid tremors.”
Michael shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think she was trying to respond.”
“I certainly hope not.” Alex looked away as dark memories edged her teeth. “I know this may sound cruel, but I think Creutzfeldt-Jakob patients who experience dementia are fortunate—at least they are mostly unaware of what’s happening to them. Kuru and FFI patients, on the other hand, are awake and cognizant until the bitter end.”
Caitlyn, who’d been walking a few steps ahead, suddenly turned. “Like Grandmom, you mean.”
Surprise whipped Alex’s breath away. While she hadn’t meant for Caitlyn to hear the conversation, she certainly hadn’t meant for Kenway to know about her mother.
Swallowing hard, she lowered her eyes, hoping Kenway had been too engrossed in their patient to listen. They walked for several more steps, during which the living forest filled the silence with birdsong, screeches, and whirrs.
In a low voice, Kenway asked the question she’d been dreading. “Your mother died from a prion disease?”
Alex squinched her eyes shut to halt a sudden rise of tears.
“FFI,” Caitlyn answered, speaking in a matter-of-fact voice as she swiped a monstrous spider web from a wild banana tree. “I was only a baby, but I’ve heard the stories. It was horrible.”
Kenway caught Alex’s eye. “She was alert until—”
“Until the final coma, yes.” Forcing herself to speak in a professional tone, Alex bit back the pain that always accompanied thoughts of her mother’s death. She brought her hand to her brow, wiping away beads of perspiration while she hoped he’d be too distracted to put the pieces together. Caitlyn didn’t know that fatal familial insomnia was supposed to be inherited, but Kenway might know that and much more.
Her scampering thoughts veered toward a story she’d recently read. Alex dared to meet his eyes. “Have you heard the story of Joe Slowinski?”
He shook his head. “Can’t say that I have.”
“I read it in the New York Times magazine. Joe Slowinski was a young man who loved snakes and knew how to handle them. But on an expedition in the Himalayan foothills, he was bitten by a highly poisonous krait. At first he wasn’t too alarmed—the snake was a juvenile, barely a foot long, and the wound so small none of his teammates could even see where the fangs had broken the skin.”
She paused long enough to let Olsson maneuver around a huge termite mound, then she hurried to catch up.
Kenway matched her pace. “Go on.”
Shifting the burden of the travois, Olsson grinned. “Do not keep us waiting for the end of the story.”
Alex settled back into her place. “Slowinski thought he might be okay, but he had to prepare for the worst. As he ate breakfast with his team, he joked about his thick skin and hoped the venom hadn’t penetrated. But when he began to feel a tingling in his hand, he knew. After calling his team together, he explained what would happen to his body as the venom took effect. His brain would continue to function; he would remain awake and alert through everything, but the venom’s neurotoxins would gradually paralyze his body, including his lungs. If he were to survive, team members would have to breathe for him for up to forty-eight hours.”
Alex lifted her hand, warding off the memory of her mother struggling to breathe in the coma. In a slightly strangled voice, she continued: “After two days, Slowinski knew the effects of the venom would fade. His lungs would kick in, and he’d be all right.
“Everyone hoped for the best, but soon Slowinski’s head began to droop, his eyes closed, and his lungs stopped working. Two women on the team began to give him mouth-to-mouth, and though he couldn’t speak, he signaled his
wishes by wiggling his fingers—one wiggle for yes, two for no. When a couple of the young men offered to relieve the women, Slowinski demonstrated his sense of humor—and his alertness— by protesting with two wriggling fingers.
“Eventually, though, the effort exhausted the women. The men took over when Slowinski was no longer able to wriggle his fingers or toes. The team members tried to signal a helicopter rescue team, but bad weather prevented the chopper’s landing.
“By the time help finally arrived, Slowinski had expired. But due to the nature of the poison, I think his brain lived until the last minute. It continued to function, so he knew time was passing . . . and help was not coming.”
She looked up at Kenway, whose eyes had softened. “That’s what Shaman’s Wife is feeling; it’s what FFI patients experience. We—they— know what is coming, and yet they are helpless and completely at the mercy of others.”
The softness vanished from Kenway’s face, replaced by a look of shrewd determination. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To find a cure . . . because of your mother?”
Cynicism warred with hope as she met his gaze. “Tell me, Doctor— you’re absolutely convinced your Iquitos patient was healed of an encephalopathy?”
“We may have to qualify the word healed. Though Ya-ree walked and talked, he still bore evidence of the disease in his body. You saw the photograph.”
“I saw proof of his disease. I never saw proof of his healing.”
“I’m convinced he was healed from this.” Kenway gestured to the woman on the travois. “He must have gone to the healers for help when he first noticed symptoms. Whatever they did to him stopped the prions, perhaps neutralized them. I’m convinced the man I treated would have enjoyed a normal life span had he not been wounded.”
She tilted her head, analyzing Shaman’s Wife with a cool, appraising look. “You’re sure this is the same ailment that affected your patient?”
“Ya-ree called it the ‘shuddering disease,’ and if we can trust Delmar’s translation, the shaman used the same term. The source of their infection is no mystery. If they really do drink the ground-up bones of their dead, the entire village may be infected. It’s only a matter of time before they all become symptomatic.”
She lowered her eyes, moving gingerly through the mottled green carpet of ferns on the path. “Then, God help us, maybe we can find a cure.”
“Do you mean that?” A smile lifted the corner of Kenway’s mouth. “You want God’s help?”
“I meant it in a colloquial sense,” Alexandra answered, irritated by his mocking tone.
“Doesn’t matter.” Michael swished a fly from Shaman’s Wife’s face. “I’m sure he will help us . . . and I think he already has.”
14 APRIL 2003
5:30 P.M.
By the time the sun had climbed down the sky and filled the forest with inky shadows, Michael felt as lifeless as a wet tea towel. He breathed a silent sigh of relief as their native guides called a halt. True children of the jungle, they knew better than to sleep on the forest floor, so from their quivers they produced string-and-grass hammocks like those Michael had noticed in the shabono. They had not brought enough for all their captives, however, so Michael found himself sharing a hammock with Alejandro Delmar. Fortunately, the Indian tracker was only five foot two and lightweight.
In a tree across the path, Alexandra cuddled with her daughter, while the others hung hammocks in the vicinity and hurried to prepare for the shades of darkness. Though the moon was nearly full, only a residual silver glow penetrated the forest canopy.
Michael and Delmar had wordlessly agreed to sleep at opposite ends. Once in position, Michael clung to the edge of the thin hammock and tried to position his nostrils away from the jungle tracker’s feet. Other than quick splashing at streams, none of them had bathed in the past week. Now the odors of human perspiration mingled with the stench of sweaty socks and the sweet scents of lilies and acacias.
As the black cowl of night settled over the jungle, the living sounds shifted from those of daylight animals to nocturnal creatures. Somewhere in the distance a jaguar screamed, startling even Delmar, whose wiry body tensed tight as a bowstring before eventually relaxing. Michael waited for him to offer a word of assurance, but the man remained silent.
No one spoke in the darkness, not even the two warriors who’d agreed to keep watch during the first part of the night. Every one of their party should have been fast asleep, but the green bananas they’d eaten on the trail did not agree with Michael’s stomach, and its rumbling kept him awake.
His patient, Shaman’s Wife, was faring as well as could be expected, but the remainder of her life could be measured in days, if not hours. He and Caitlyn had dribbled water down the woman’s throat; Alexandra had smashed bananas in her hands and attempted to feed the invalid. Alexandra, in fact, had proven herself a compassionate nurse as she helped clean the woman and prepare her for the night.
As Michael helped Bancroft hang the sick woman’s travois as a makeshift hammock, he’d been satisfied that they had done all they could for her. Shaman’s Wife had closed her eyes, her breathing had slowed, and she seemed to be resting.
They were all bone-weary, yet if his eyes could be trusted in this darkness, Alexandra was not sleeping, either. She and Caitlyn had hung their bed from branches of a jacaranda tree that rained lacy purple blossoms over them as the wind stirred the canopy overhead. Alex’s feet were visible at the edge of the hammock, two dirty sneakers crossed at the ankle, one foot rhythmically rocking the woven bed with a restless up-and-down motion.
The cold wings of shadowy foreboding brushed his spirit as his thoughts returned to an episode of the afternoon. Alexandra had glossed over Caitlyn’s sudden comment about her grandmother’s illness; perhaps she didn’t think he’d notice. But in the moment after the girl’s spontaneous remark Michael had experienced a spine-tingling revelation.
Alexandra Pace had not come to the jungle on a quest for fame or publication or to gain the admiration of her peers. She had come because she suffered from FFI. She was not risking her life for Horizon Biotherapies, but to save herself . . . and her daughter.
He closed his eyes, searching his memory for facts about the rare strain of prion disease. Researchers considered fatal familial insomnia genetic because it tended to run in families—he had read that one unfortunate Italian family was unable to get life insurance because it had lost so many members. Disease-carriers typically did not exhibit symptoms of the illness until well into their fifties, though exceptions had occurred.
Alexandra was Italian—and her mother had died from FFI, perhaps even her grandmother. She was probably no more than thirty-five or so, yet, judging from her gaunt appearance and the restless motion of her hammock, she had already become symptomatic.
He groaned as memories opened before him. With the curtain of her deception pulled aside, he recalled the many times he had found her awake, noticed her weariness, even commented upon the shadows under her eyes. No wonder she had been defensive! Time and again he had inadvertently stumbled across the secret she meant to keep from the world.
Now he saw the truth in the restless shimmy of her hammock, recognized an illness as evident as the sun at noon. None of the others had seen it, but they were not familiar with prion diseases. They had not watched one of their loved ones die from an affliction that riddled the brain while it robbed its host of the essence of life.
The snakebite story she told on the trail . . . she’d been thinking of herself as she told it. He had suffered as he watched Ashley die, but Alexandra was right, dementia could be a blessing as the disease gradually overtook a patient’s cerebrum. But in FFI cases, prions attacked the thalamus, a completely different part of the brain, so Alex would not be granted that mercy, and neither would Caitlyn.
Oh, God. Rolling onto his back, Michael contemplated the noisy darkness above him. Let us find the answer she seeks in this healing village. Clear her mind, banish her fears, and open
her eyes to any truths we find there.
She would be desperate to find a cure, but her strong streak of pragmatism might make it difficult for her to accept the cure if and when one was offered. Desperation might compel her to drink a brew or ingest a medicinal plant, but Alex would demand samples, tests, and hard evidence before she would commit to a treatment.
As the darkness deepened, Michael turned, then smiled as he recalled something Olsson had said during their tramp through the jungle. Because there was only so much available space in the uppermost layer of the canopy, the botanist had explained, saplings had to be the world’s most patient life forms. As many as 150,000 seedlings might germinate annually in a hectare of rainforest, but less than 1 percent of those would ever grow to full height. The infant plants that survived germination and the early cotyledon stages would have to wait in shadows and shallow soil for as long as thirty-five years before an older tree fell and opened up space above. When that happened, all the saplings in the area would shoot upward, racing for that one available bit of sunlit sky. Eventually one—and only one—would emerge the victor.
Michael closed his eyes as the image of Alexandra filled the backs of his eyelids. Drowsing on the edge of sleep, he saw her racing across a finish line, her arms upraised in victory, her eyes glowing and her cheeks round with health. If God proved faithful to answer his prayers, she would win the race . . . because the healing tribe had been patiently waiting.
What had Ya-ree said? The tribe had sent him to find a naba. And he had died in peace, knowing he had done his duty.
For generations the healing tribe had been waiting for contact with the outside world. Now the world was approaching with Alexandra Pace, who sorely needed the people of the keyba to shed light upon her research.
