Full Throttle (Black Knights Inc. #7)(52)
“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.
I guess even unicorns lose their luster after a while…
“I saw a patch of Sida rhombifolia somewhere back there in the jungle.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. When Carlos continued to frown at her, she shook her head, reminding herself that even though he was schooled in medicine, he wasn’t aware of the names of the plants that provided the extracts for so many of today’s modern cures. “It’s sometimes referred to as Queensland hemp or Indian hemp, though it’s not really in the hemp family at all.”
“Is there a point to this lesson in botany?” he asked.
This is the part where, had he been sitting beside her, she would lean over and smack him on the shoulder, telling him to stop it. Then he would take a swipe at her and say, no, you stop it. Which would then have them grinning at each other.
“Yes, there’s a point to it,” she told him, making a face. “Sida rhombifolia has incredibly high antimicrobial and antibacterial properties. It can be used to treat any number of infections including, I would suspect, whatever type of infection that little girl and her family are suffering from.”
Carlos glanced toward the jungle, a muscle ticking in the hard line of his jaw. Yep, she knew the smart thing to do would be to immediately resume their journey north. But she couldn’t stand the thought of that sweet little girl losing her eyesight when the solution was so easy and growing right in her own backyard.
“Pardon me,” Yonus said. “But could you tell me what plant you are speaking of?”