Months went by as he was nursed back to health by his dearest friend, Dani Carmichael, on her ranch in California. He had several through-and-through bullet wounds in his chest and back, any one of which could or should have killed him. And yet he was still alive. How? How!

Slowly he regained his strength, but he never wanted to even think about his ordeal, let alone talk about it. Yet Dani gently persisted. “You have to go back,” she would say, over and over. “There are still men in that prison, still families wondering what has happened to their husbands, brothers, fathers, sons.”

Finally, James relented and agreed to go back and help the authorities locate the jungle prison. To his regret, when they arrived he didn't recognize any of the men still imprisoned in that awful place. He concluded with sadness that all of his fellow inmates must have died in the months that had gone by since his release, because in all his time there, no-one but he had ever left that place alive.

As difficult a duty as it was, he stayed on to help the authorities disinter the many bodies buried outside the prison fence and try to identify those he had known. He camped there for two or three days with the recovery team, the nearest town being a day's drive away. Again and again, he scanned the jungle around him, hoping for a glimpse of the little native man who had saved his life against all odds. How had he managed that? What strange and wonderful indigenous medicine was this, that seemed to hold the power of life over death?

. . .

James had been interested in herbal medicine for many years, and he used herbs and other natural therapies in the thirty-bed children's hospital he had designed and built to his own specifications after years of dreaming and planning.

It was octagonal in shape, its center a large, grassy, open-air courtyard where patients could safely play or simply get a little fresh air and sunshine. The children were housed in dormitory-style rooms that opened onto the courtyard and were reminiscent of summer camp.

“No more monkeys jumping on the bed!” he'd quoted with mock outrage one day, to the delighted squeals and giggles of the kids as they played 'the floor is a crocodile-infested swamp'. Also known as 'the floor is lava', it's a game in which one has to get around the room without touching the floor. (Pro tip: it doesn't have to involve jumping from bed to bed when the beds have wheels.)

Everyone ate together, family style, in the large, indoor–outdoor dining room around the courtyard from the patients' rooms. Even — especially — the patients who thought they were too sick to get out of bed were encouraged to join the others for meals. It was amazing what a little healthy competition could do to get sick kids to change their minds about their illness and their capacity to heal, even those who had been ill for a long time or given a 'death sentence' diagnosis such as 'stage-four cancer'.

That was perhaps James' most potent not-so-secret weapon: his unwavering belief in a patient's ability to recover. He had a habit of seeing his patients in his mind's eye as healthy once more, back home with their families and friends, and getting on with their lives, their hospital adventure an ever-receding memory as they grew up.

Kids, he found, were especially susceptible to belief, and therefore especially suggestible — for better and for worse. Kids were too ready to accept a terminal diagnosis when their parents believed it. By the same token, kids were just as ready to accept that they could recover when James calmly assured them of it. And so they generally did.

As for the food, James had enticed the chef away from one of his favorite vegetarian restaurants to run the hospital kitchen, which provided restaurant-quality fresh, healthy, delicious meals for staff, patients, and parents alike that even kids would eat. And now the hospital had a large kitchen garden, more of a small farm, which provided much of the fresh produce they used each day. The rest came from local organic farms and dairies. James also contracted with a botanist to grow medicinal plants for the hospital and experiment with growing conditions for optimal medicinal potency.

The entire ethos of the place was to 'let kids be kids', and so everything was designed around play and friendship and delicious food. It was a revolutionary concept in pediatric hospital care, and James prided himself on the fact that the health insurance companies seldom hesitated to approve the treatments he advised, however novel or unconventional they were. As James loved to say about his hospital and its impressive outcomes, “The insurance companies love us because kids get better faster here, and so we save them money.”

. . .

But he also had the most compelling personal experience with the power of plants to heal. As time went on, he began to feel an unquenchable desire to learn how to do that himself.

Alas, the mysterious native man had remained hidden, if he had even been there at all. At times, James had felt that he was being watched from the shadows. He thought it was probably the little man, but it could have been a jaguar or other jungle animal.

Somewhat reluctantly, James left with the recovery team when all of the graves they could identify had been dug up. He resolved to return at some point and look for the little man, in part to thank him, but mostly to learn how he did it, how he'd saved James' life.

. . .

Copyright © Christine M. King, 2026. All rights reserved.

Chapter 3

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