Years went by as James became busy with family and work. He would periodically feel the need to take a leave-of-absence from his hospital, though.

It was finally living up to his hopes for it — for the building design and for the staff embracing his philosophy — such that he could now step away for weeks at a time without it devolving into the prevailing paradigm in hospital care.

It had taken some time and a lot of nurturing, but at last the seed he'd planted had grown into a healthy, young tree that was capable of weathering almost any storm. He could now leave for longer and satisfy what had become a compelling interest in how that little native man had saved his life.

. . .

In the past few years, James had become involved in providing medical care for military veterans. He and Dani had informally married a year or so after his misadventure. They had been close friends for awhile, the type of friends with whom you can have deep conversations about life and the nature of the universe. And so, as both were single, it was only natural that they would fall deeply in love with one another as Dani nursed him back to health. “A classic love story of a patient and his nurse,” they sometimes joked.

But after several years and two children together, they'd separated. While they were still together, James had insisted on them hiring full-time security at their rural home. Dani, an acclaimed actor, remained a frequent target of those who were unhappy with some of the things she said in interviews; and so, as violent solutions to nonviolent problems had become increasingly commonplace in American life, James thought it prudent that they hire a robust security team.

Dani, in turn, had declared that if she had to have round-the-clock security, then the team needed to be fully staffed with recent medical retirees from the military services — in particular, the veterans who were most likely to fall through the cracks and wind up homeless or dead: those with no family or close friends outside the military; those with nowhere to go and no-one looking out for them.

As a result, James had become experienced at revising amputation sites for next-generation prosthetics, and with identifying and treating post-traumatic stress (PTS) and traumatic brain injury (TBI), these conditions occurring together with more frequency than the medical establishment and the twin Departments of Defense and Veterans' Affairs cared to admit. So, his interest in learning this entirely-unknown-to-him system of indigenous medicine quickly became overwhelming.

. . .

And now at last he'd found it, the jungle prison in which he'd been held all those years ago. It had been largely dismantled by the recovery team he'd led to the site, but remnants of the fence, the guard tower, and the guards' lodgings were still visible. The jungle had quickly moved in to reclaim the site, but James knew what he was looking for, and he'd been back there once before, so the place had a sort of magnetic pull that brought him unerringly to the site of his… resurrection? No; too biblical. Back to the site of his astonishing and inexplicable recovery.

James had brought enough food and water that he could camp there for up to a week if necessary. He made camp just in front of the SUV he'd bought for cash before going bush, keeping a small campfire burning in the hope that it would alert the native man to his presence. He would sleep in the back of the SUV at night, but during the day he'd tend the fire.

He also tried reaching out to the man telepathically, for want of a better word. Just as he did with sick kids, telegraphing his confidence in their ability to recover, he played a little mental movie of himself and the man talking around the campfire, as a friendly invitation for the man to come join him. Will that work? he wondered. Was he already losing his mind in the jungle heat and isolation?

. . .

Three days went by without any sense that the man was near, but still James continued to broadcast his invitation. On the evening of the third day, the man appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and calmly came and sat down by the fire. Not knowing any of the native languages or dialects, but being fluent in Spanish, James began speaking in Spanish.

He reminded the man that he had saved James' life there several years ago. Before he could go on to thank the man properly, the man made it clear that no thanks or explanations were necessary. He knew exactly who James was, and his actions that day had been spontaneous and natural, as simple as breathing.

The man had replied in English, or so it seemed. His meaning was instantly understandable to James, but it was all nonverbal; telepathic, as it were; a companionable conversation between the two minds. James then understood that the native man had been keeping an eye on the prison since its construction, but James' release had been the man's first opportunity to do anything for any of the prisoners.

As simple as breathing?! thought James, struck that such a spartan explanation could be such a complete one. “How did you do it?” he asked the man wonderingly, eagerly anticipating the answer. At last he was going to learn about the medicine that had saved his life.

But the man made no reply. He simply looked at James appraisingly. James went on to explain that he was a doctor, so he really wanted to know how to heal his patients like that; how to save a life like that, when none of the herbs he knew about and none of the other tools in his now-extensive toolbox could even come close to achieving what the man had done for him, 'as simple as breathing'.

For several weeks after James had returned to the US, his bullet holes would spontaneously start oozing blood or bloody fluid, even though the skin appeared to have healed. At one point, he'd had a CT scan and then an MRI to see what tissue damage remained that could explain these bleeding episodes and perhaps offer a solution. To everyone's utter astonishment and the frank disbelief of his doctors, the path of one of the bullets clearly led through the left ventricle of his heart. How had he survived?

James asked again if the man would teach him how to heal others in the same way. The man remained still for almost a minute, and then he got up and left without a word, without answering one way or the other. Only then did James realize that he'd been holding his breath, hanging on the man's response.

Deeply disappointed, James refused to take the evident dismissal as a definitive answer. Instead, he stayed on at the campsite, having come all this way anyway, and rather stubbornly waited for the man to return.

As each day turned to night and then to the dawn of another day, his resolve slowly turned to resignation. And yet there he sat. Where else am I going to go? he thought. What else am I going to do?  He'd come as far as he thought he could with his medical practice. There was no point going back without the knowledge of how to save a life like the native man had done for him. And so there he sat, day and night, for what felt like eternity.

. . .

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

Chapter 4

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