Kelly merely nodded, too full of worry to appreciate the professor's observation. Her attention remained focused on her brother.
Overseen by the tiny Indian, the stretcher was lowered, and Frank was transferred onto the hammock. Kelly hovered nervously at his side. Jarred by the movement, Frank moaned slightly, eyes fluttering. His sedatives must be wearing off.
Kelly reached down to her med pack atop the abandoned stretcher. Before she could gather up her syringe and bottles of morphine, the tiny healer barked orders to his staff. Their guide and another tribesman began to loosen the bandages over Frank's stumps with small bone knives.
"Don't!" Kelly said, straightening.
She was ignored. They continued to work upon the soaked strips. Blood began to flow more thickly.
She moved to the hammock, grabbing the taller man's elbow. "No! You don't know what you're doing. Wait until I have the pressure wraps ready! An IV in place! He'll bleed to death!"
The stronger man broke out of her grasp and scowled at her.
Kouwe intervened. He pointed at Kelly. "She's our healer."
The tribesman seemed baffled by this statement and glanced to his own shaman.
The smaller Indian was crouched by the curved wall at the head of the hammock. He had a bowl in his hand, gathering a flow of thick sap from a trough gouged in the wall. "I am healer here," the small man said. "This is Ban-ali medicine. To stop the bleeding. Strong medicine from the
yagga:"
Kelly glanced to Kouwe.
He deciphered. "Yagga . . . it's similar to yakka . . . a Yanomamo word for mother."
Kouwe stared around at the chamber. "Yagga must be their name for this tree. A deity."
The Indian shaman straightened with his bowl, now half full of the reddish sap. Reaching up, he stoppered the thick flow by jamming a wooden peg into a hole at the top of the trough. "Strong medicines," he repeated, lifting the bowl and striding to the hammock. "The blood of the Yagga will stop the blood of the man:" It sounded like a rote maxim, a translation of an old adage.
He motioned for the tribesman to cut away one of the two bandages.
Kelly opened her mouth again to object, but Kouwe interrupted her with a squeeze on her arm. "Gather your bandage material and LRS bag," he whispered to her. "Be ready, but for the moment, let's see what this medicine can do:"
She bit back her protest, remembering the small Indian girl at the hospital of Sao Gabriel and how Western medicine had failed her. For the moment, she would yield to the Ban-ali, trusting not the strange little shaman, but rather Professor Kouwe himself. She dropped to her medical pack and burrowed into it, reaching with deft fingers for her wraps and saline bag.
As Kelly retrieved what she needed, her eyes flicked over to the nearby sap channel. The blood of the Yagga. The tapped vein could be seen as a dark ribbon in the honeyed wood, extending up from the top of the trough and arching across the roof. Kelly spotted other such veins, each dark vessel leading to one of the other hammocks.
With her bandages in hand, she stood as her brother's bloodied wrap was ripped away. Unprepared, still a sister, not a doctor, Kelly grew faint at the sight: the sharp shard of white bone, the rip of shredded muscle, the gelatinous bruise of ruined flesh. A thick flow of dark blood and clots washed from the raw wound and dribbled through the hammock's webbing.
Kelly suddenly found it difficult to breathe. Sounds grew muted and more acute at the same time. Her vision narrowed upon the limp figure in the bed. It wasn't Frank, her mind kept trying to convince her. But another part of her knew the truth. Her brother was doomed. Tears filled her eyes, and a moan rose in her throat, choking her.
Kouwe put his arm around her shoulders, reacting to her distress, pulling her to him.
"Oh, God . . . please . . :" Kelly sobbed.
Oblivious to her outburst, the Ban-ali shaman examined the amputated limb with a determined frown. Then he scooped up a handful of the thick red sap, the color of port wine, and slathered it over the stump.
The reaction was immediate-and violent. Frank's leg jerked up and away as if struck by an electric current. He cried out, even through his stupor, an animal sound.
Kelly stumbled toward him, out of the professor's arms. "Frank!"
The shaman glanced toward her. He mumbled something in his native, language and backed away, allowing her to come forward.
She reached her brother, grabbing for his arm. But Frank's outburst had been as short as it was sudden. He relaxed back into the hammock. Kelly was sure he was dead. She leaned over him, sobbing openly.
But his lungs heaved up and down, in deep, shuddering breaths.
Alive.
She fell to her knees in relief. His limb, exposed, stood stark and raw before her. She eyed the wound, expecting the worst, ready with the bandages.
But they proved unnecessary.
Where the sap had touched the macerated flesh, it had formed a thick seal. Wide-eyed, she reached and touched the strange substance. It was no longer sticky, but leathery and tough, like some type of natural bandage. She glanced to the shaman with awe. The bleeding had stopped, sealed tight.