Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes (9 page)

As I heard the common diagnosis that Keren and Shannon had malaria, I felt smug and superior to these people who had no idea that they really had typhoid fever.

“Her face is terribly sunburned.”

“Look how white they all are!”

“I bet he has a lot of money.”

And so it went, hour after mind-numbing hour.

Then, the third night out of the Auxiliadora, we rounded a bend in the Madeira and I saw a light show off the starboard side. I hadn’t seen electricity for weeks. Humaitá’s lights cut through the darkness of the jungle and reminded me that there was an entire world outside the Pirahãs, away from the Maici. Most urgently, they were evidence of civilization, of doctors. We began to slow and cut across the Madeira, more than a mile across here, to the city. It was about 3 a.m. The boat came up against the bank. There were some crumbled concrete steps, rendered useless by the erosion of the bank in the constant flow of the brown river. A narrow, springy plank was tossed across the four-foot-wide divide between the boat and the bank. No one offered to help me to carry my baggage or children. But I was feral in my urgency. I picked up some bags along with Kristene and Caleb and carried them across the plank to an abandoned structure at the top of the bank, near the road. I could see taxis waiting for passengers.

I told Kris, only four, “Wait right here. Do not move. Sit on the bags. Don’t let anyone take our bags. I’m going to get Mommy and Shannon. You watch Caleb. Do you understand?”

Kristene had been sleeping soundly. It was now 3:30.

“Yes, Daddy,” she said, rubbing her eyes and looking around to try to figure out where she was.

I ran back across the plank and took down all the hammocks. I laid Keren on a bench on the boat and ran Shannon across the plank to Kris. She was shaking and moaning in pain. I returned and took Keren in my arms; she was even lighter than when we left. I carried her up the bank, straight to a taxi. The driver helped me throw the bags in the trunk of his car and I squeezed the kids and Keren in the backseat. In a few minutes we were on our way to the hospital.

The hospital, still standing, is at the edge of town. It was white then, with tile floors and simple brick-and-plaster walls. I took everything from the cab to the reception room. Lights dangled from wires in the ceiling. No one was behind the desk. The place seemed deserted. It was small, maybe fifty beds. But it was a hospital! I ran down the halls looking for help. I found a man in a white suit sleeping on an examining table.

I said, “My wife is sick. I think she has typhoid fever.”

He arose slowly and replied, “Typhoid? Not much of that around here.”

He walked with me to where my family was waiting. He took a look at Keren and noted her fever, and Shannon’s. “Well,” he said, “I think they have malaria. But we will see. I will do some slides.”

He drew blood from Shannon’s and Keren’s fingers and made slides. Looking at them under the microscope, he started to chuckle.

“What are you laughing at?” I demanded indignantly.

“Elas têm malária, sim. E não é pouco, não”
(They do have malaria. And not just a little bit).

He was laughing at my ignorance. And he was laughing because the level of malaria in Shannon’s and Keren’s bloodstreams, he told me, was higher than he had ever seen in his entire life, and he dealt with malaria every single day. No doubt this was because I had been so stupid and not begun malaria treatment right away in the village, I thought. The doctor got Keren and Shannon a room to themselves and started drips of intravenous chloroquine treatment. Krissy, Caleb, and I camped in their room with them. Keren woke up the next morning and asked weakly for some water, apparently improving a bit. Shannon seemed a bit better too and asked if I could find her a Coke. Keren then said she’d like something to hold her hair out of her face. Her hair at that time was waist length, and I had neglected to get anything from our village house to tie it with. I went out to the front desk, where two nuns were working, since the hospital was a joint effort of the local Catholic diocese and the government. I asked one of the nuns if they had something to hold Keren’s hair.

“Olha, gente,”
she yelled out for everyone in the reception area to hear,
“esse gringo acha que somos uma loja aqui. Ele quer algo para o cabelo da mulher dele”
(Look, people, this gringo thinks we’re a store. He wants something for his wife’s hair).

Since I had not come from a religious background I was unfamiliar with the hatred that some Catholics have for Protestants and vice versa. I was hurt by this response, as tired and disoriented as I was. I know that poverty can make people suspicious of those who are not poor. I seemed rich to this nun. And everyone assumed that as an American I must also be a racist. I knew these social platitudes from books. But I had never experienced them in the flesh. I had never been the victim of prejudice myself, as I now was and would continue to be occasionally during the next decades. I had no one to talk to here in Humaitá. Ironically, although everyone thought I was rich, we were almost out of money. Kris, Caleb, and I had no place to sleep, since there were no beds for us in the hospital. We dozed off a bit, sitting by Keren’s and Shannon’s beds, but I knew when I woke up that we had to get to Porto Velho.

I found out that there was a bus to Porto Velho at 11:00 a.m. I decided to take Kris and Caleb to the state capital and then return for Keren and Shannon first thing the next morning. It was out of the question to take Keren and Shannon on the bus. Keren could barely move with her malarial pain, and Shannon was also aching terribly. They were being fed, receiving intravenous fluids and medicine for malaria. I told Keren and Shannon that we were leaving and that I would be back the next morning.

“Please don’t go, Daddy,” Shannon sobbed. “I’m afraid without you here.”

Keren agreed that it was best for me to get everyone to Porto Velho, a much larger city, as soon as possible. From there we could even get them to the United States if necessary, since there was a commercial airport. We both knew that I couldn’t phone for help, since the mission headquarters lacked a telephone. In 1979 phones were almost impossible to get in Brazil. A landline for a home in the city could cost more than $10,000. So there was no way to make contact with the SIL missionary center, thirteen miles out of town.

I walked out of the hospital and down the street to try to find the bus station. Without the jungle shade, Humaitá was baking hot in the direct tropical sunlight. It was dusty and depressing, barely more than a clearing at the side of the Madeira River. The bus “station,” I discovered, was a house off the main street, with a counter in the front room, just in front of a family watching television. I bought three tickets to Porto Velho with most of my remaining money. I returned for Kris and Caleb and we said goodbye to Shannon and Keren.

By this time I had had only about fifteen hours of sleep in over a week. I was thoroughly worn out, emotionally and physically at the end of my endurance. And I wasn’t even thinking all that clearly. Kristene and Caleb and I got on the old rusty bus then running between Humaitá and Porto Velho and settled in as best we could for the nearly five-hour trip. I found enough change to buy us some water and snacks at the first stop and we tried to rest. When we arrived in Porto Velho it was nearly 4 p.m. I hailed a taxi and we got in wearily for this last leg of our trip. The cabdriver, like everyone else, stared at us—three dirty-looking white people with U.S. military duffel bags for luggage. I asked him to take us to the American colony, as the SIL missionary compound was known.

We drove on a jungle road that was surrounded by flora and fauna as wild as any along the Maici—I had seen a jaguar waiting just off the road myself while jogging during an earlier visit. When we arrived at the SIL center, I went to the house closest to the entrance to the compound. The missionaries there paid my taxi, then sent around a “phone chain” (the compound had a donated set of Bell telephones good only for calling between houses at the center). Soon all the missionaries there were praying for Keren and Shannon and offering me help. One man offered to drive right then to get them. I told him that they were too ill (and I had to sleep; I was about to fall down). I arranged for a nurse, Betty Kroeker, and a pilot, John Harmon, both of SIL, to fly back to Humaitá with me the next morning.

The three of us took off from the Porto Velho airport at 7:00 a.m. for the one-hour flight. John acted as though this were a routine trip, indicating that he thought I might be exaggerating the emergency. Betty tried to reassure me. She had worked in major U.S. hospitals in emergency rooms and I knew that she was qualified for this task. As we were nearly completing our descent to Humaitá’s paved runway, John buzzed the taxi stand in the center of town, a signal that a taxi was needed at the runway out of town. By the time we landed, the taxi was there with its doors open and the driver was waiting to help us with our bags, smiling broadly. John stayed to watch over the plane while Betty and I went to the hospital. I was extremely anxious and nervous, not knowing at all what to expect. I didn’t know how I could go on living if anything happened to Shannon or to Keren. I had to stop thinking about that or I could break down. I was tense, all of my body felt pulled taut, and I was fighting back tears at times.

Pulling up to the hospital, I paid the driver and ran straight into Keren’s room, Betty just behind me. Keren and Shannon seemed OK, though still very weak and, surprisingly, still feverish in spite of all the chloroquine they’d been taking overnight. For the first time I noticed how burned their faces were from the sun during our river trip. Their skin was red and peeling. I asked if the ambulance could take them to the runway. The administrator on duty said that they would indeed send it out right away, so long as I could buy the gasoline. As we loaded my daughter and wife into the back of the ambulance, I could see that Betty’s face was drawn and very serious. She said little to me. She began injecting both Shannon and Keren with Plasil, an antinausea drug, and giving them drops of Novalgina for their pain and fevers. As we pulled up to the runway, I could see John nonchalantly reading something. The ambulance backed up to the cargo door at the side of the Cessna 206. We opened the back and Betty climbed out. John was watching. Then we started to pull Keren out. When John saw Keren, he suddenly became all business and he turned immediately, working at a pace I had never seen from him, taking out the backseats of the aircraft. We put Keren in, then Shannon. John and Betty rigged their IVs to hook up inside the plane. John said that we could not use seat belts for them, they’d just have to lie in the back. And Betty would sit with them, without a seat belt herself. This defied all safety regulations and procedures, something John otherwise never did. Within minutes we were in the air.

Arriving in Porto Velho, we took Keren to Betty’s house and put her in Betty’s bed. Betty wanted to be able to watch Keren twenty-four hours a day. We took Shannon to another house at the center, where another missionary nurse was waiting to care for her. Even as I write these words, tears of gratitude come to my eyes thinking of the kindness and professionalism of these missionary pilots, nurses, administrators, and others. I have never known kinder people in all my life. I suspect that I never will.

Betty sent me and her husband, Dean, to town to find a doctor.

“Look for Dr. Macedo,” Betty urged. “He’s good, I’m told.”

Dean and I left and found Dr. Macedo where Betty said he would be, in his office on a small side street.

I explained to Dr. Macedo,
“Minha esposa tem malária. O senhor foi recomendado como um médico muito bom”
(My wife has malaria. You were recommended as a very good doctor).

Dr. Macedo was dark brown, very lean, and in his conversation he conveyed an obvious intelligence and confidence. He told me he had been the secretary of health for all of the territory (this was before its statehood) of Rondônia until recently. He said he would come with Dean and me forthwith. We made the drive that normally took thirty minutes in less than twenty, in spite of the rough condition of the dirt roads in the rainy season. As we walked into Betty’s house, Dr. Macedo went straight back to Keren. He announced that her blood pressure was dangerously low and that she clearly had far too much malaria for outpatient care.

“We need to get her to the hospital right away,” he said.

Betty had already been looking very concerned when we entered the bedroom. The doctor said that Keren needed blood, and urgently. Since she was O positive, donors would not be a problem. Many men at the center volunteered when they learned of this need by yet another phone chain. They were to go with Dr. Macedo back to town and I was to wait with Betty and Keren for the ambulance that Dr. Macedo would send when they got there.

“Look, this is very bad,” Macedo told me after taking me aside. “Your wife has gotten here too late. She weighs about seventy-six pounds. The malaria is still strong in her blood. I think she may not live. If she has relatives, you should call them.”

I just stared at him. He left. I turned to the nurse. “How is she, Betty, really?”

“We’re losing her, Dan,” Betty told me with tears in her eyes.

I told her that when we got to town, I would go to the phone company and call Keren’s parents, Al and Sue Graham, who lived in Belém, where they had been missionaries for decades.

The ambulance arrived in an hour and Betty rode in the back of it with Keren. I followed along separately in another mission automobile, after checking on Shannon, who was in pain and still had a fever, but who was improving. I was numb. I didn’t believe Keren could die. I had lost my mother at eleven years of age, when she was twenty-nine; my brother drowned when he was six and I was fifteen—isn’t that surely enough for anyone? How could my wife die now? Once we got to town, they put Keren in a poorly lit room in a run-down private clinic in the center of Porto Velho. The nurses were just then trying to give her the donated blood. They had put it in an old freezer in the hall of the clinic, and as the ice-cold blood hit Keren’s veins, she screamed with pain. They had started giving her intravenous quinine as well, and this caused her to need oxygen. I stayed for a couple of hours and then left Betty with Keren to return to stay with Shannon, Kris, and Caleb.