Right on, sister, Abby thought, I know just how you feel.
“Bacterial infection,” he murmured, sitting back. “Not river blindness.”
She waited for him to go on, but it quickly became apparent he had no intention to.
“Carlos,” she admonished him, “would you care to elaborate?”
He grumbled something under his breath.
She raised an eyebrow.
He pursed his lips.
She lifted her remaining eyebrow.
Sighing, he said in a harried rush, “I don’t see the telltale nodules on her upper lids. And considering it runs in her family and isn’t present throughout the entire village, I’d say it’s spread through repeated contact with infected persons and their belongings, or perhaps it is some sort of genetic predisposition to that specific type of infection. But it is definitely not caused by the bite of the black fly, which is how river blindness is contracted. Besides, river blindness is rare in this part of the world.”
“See,” she chided him. “Now was that so hard?”
“Not hard,” he insisted. “And not necessary. I’d already summed it up with five words. Bacterial infection. Not river blindness.”
“You’re impossible,” she told him, unable to contain her affectionate smile.
“Sí,” he admitted, giving her a wink. “Which is one of the many reasons you love me.”
Everything inside Abby went perfectly still. Luckily, Carlos didn’t notice the effect that one simple phrase had on her because he turned to Yonus. “Can I see someone else in her family who has it?”
Yonus nodded and called something over his shoulder to the group of adults standing beside the thick bamboo stilts supporting the village’s central structure. When he turned back to them, his expression was contemplative. Obviously, he was having a difficult time figuring them out. Possible drug runners who also practiced medicine?
Offering Yonus what she hoped was an innocent smile, she turned her attention to the group of adults, watching as heads swiveled toward a woman in an orange and pink printed dress that resembled some sort of elaborate sarong. With hesitant steps and pie-plate eyes, the woman slowly emerged from the center of the group. The first thing Abby noticed about her, besides the lovely tilt to her dark eyebrows, was that she had a beautiful orchid in her charming riot of frizzy black hair. An Arundina graminifolia by the looks of it. And Abby should know. She’d been trying to breed one with exactly those deep, rich colors for nearly two years now.
Just goes to show, Mother Nature is a better horticulturist than me. Not that she’d ever imagined otherwise.
The woman dragged her feet, making the journey over to them in record-breaking time. Seriously, Abby was considering submitting her name to Guinness under the category of Slowest Snail-like Pace Ever! But eventually she completed the journey, smiling hesitantly when Carlos stood from the stool.
“Will you ask her if it’s okay for me to touch her face?” Carlos asked Yonus.
Yonus translated Carlos’s request. The woman nodded shyly, causing the petals on that glorious orchid to quiver. Abby watched Carlos hold the woman’s top lids wide and couldn’t help but admire the gentle way he tilted her face toward the beam of yellow sun slicing through the gathering clouds overhead. Rain was coming. Abby could smell it in the air, feel it in the uptick of the sticky, oppressive heat.
“Definitely bacterial.” He clasped his hands together, nodding his thanks to the woman for allowing him to examine her.
Orchid Lady repeated the gesture before turning, lifting her skirts, and running back to the group of adults. Now she hurries? “She needs antibiotic eye drops,” Abby told Yonus, bouncing the little girl on her knee until she giggled. “They both do. The whole family probably does.”
Yonus was already shaking his head. “They will not venture into town to visit a doctor. And even if they would, I doubt they would willingly put something that comes out of a plastic bottle into their eyes. They distrust things that are not natural to the jungle.”
Natural to the jungle…
And just like that, inspiration struck Abby. “Okay, so say I could show them a plant that if they pound the leaves into a poultice and put it over their eyes while they sleep at night, it could cure them of this infection? It will take longer than the eye drops, of course. Perhaps a few weeks to a few months depending on how bad their case is. But, if used consistently, I’d say it has a pretty good chance of keeping them from going blind.”
“What’re you talking about, Abby?” Carlos asked, his black brows pulled low. The little girl took one look at his scowling face and made a squeaking sound like she’d spotted the boogeyman. She hopped from Abby’s lap to run over to the group of children who’d grown bored with Abby’s appearance and were now playing some sort of game down by the stream.