CHAPTER 1: INCITING WRATH
SARAH WANDERED FROM BED TO bed, checking on the few patients at the Hedley Clinic. It was such a welcome contrast from when she’d arrived and established the makeshift hospital off the Rio Negro. The treatment area had overflowed with patients from the first day, all in desperate need of care. Malaria, Yellow Fever, Cholera, Typhoid fever and uncontrolled diabetes had run rampant throughout the area. But thanks to antimalarial drugs, vaccinations, antibiotics and rehydration solutions, the number of patients had dwindled dramatically. Most days brought patients with ear infections, high blood pressure, asthma attacks, and even the occasional prenatal checkup. Still, there was a relatively regular flow of emergency patients suffering injuries from farming accidents and even alligator bites. The enormous black caimans were especially troublesome, particularly during the wet seasons when they ventured into the flooded savannas of the Amazon basin.
Though there was so much more she wished she could do, never a day went by when she didn’t feel she made an important contribution to the surrounding small communities. It was hard work, but it was fulfilling work, and she’d come to view the two nurses and the handful of locals who helped out at the hospital just like family. They really were a family, maybe not by blood, but in every way that counted. They strove together toward common goals, supported one another and were always there to try to help relieve each other’s burdens. They suffered each other’s pain when they encountered tragic loss, and helped to pick one another back up off the ground to keep going. It was home, and she hadn’t once regretted her decision to leave everything she’d known back in Virginia.
“Sarah, come quick,” Abby called from the front door of the hospital. Abby was the nurse who had worked alongside her from the beginning. In fact, Abby had been there before the beginning, helping out in the area months before Sarah arrived. And one of the many things she knew about Abby was that the woman seldom panicked. So hearing the shrill tone in her voice meant whatever the emergency was, it was no small matter.
She dropped the chart in her hand and dashed down the empty walkway between the beds. And in seconds she knew the source of Abby’s panic. The young boy lay writhing in his mother’s arms as blood dripped in a steady stream from his leg. It was difficult to identify the source of the injury given the smears and drops that covered him from thigh to shin. She reached for the boy without hesitation, taking him to cradle in her own arms and she rushed through the patient area to the lone operating room in a curtained-off area of the small hospital. Laying him out on the rickety wooden table, she went to work and quickly found the source. It was a bite—an alligator bite—on his thigh, in between his knee and hip. And that explained the profuse amount of bleeding. The animal must have nicked the boy’s femoral arte
