The Devil in the Children's Ward

CHAPTER ONE

"Real" doctors were not supposed to be afraid of anything!

What a joke! That statement had to be either complete nonsense or I was not a real doctor because right then and there, I was not sensible, careful or apprehensive; I was simply scared witless.

Stripped to the waist, wearing only jeans and sloppily laced riding boots (barefoot in the boots, because of the urgency of the present situation) I was performing a strange dance on the gray slate floor in the main hospital lobby.  Fortunately, the long wooden benches lined up along two of the walls (the lobby was also the main waiting room for the institution) were almost empty and there were no more than a handful of amused witnesses around to enjoy my obvious discomfort. 

"Don't let it get away! Don't let it get away!" The double emphasis behind Doña Bernarda's admonition was neither needed nor deeply appreciated at this point in time.  "Mire qué grandota, look what a big one!" She added admiringly.

I didn't need to be told that either! Any imbecile could tell when a coral snake was big.  Since this was the first one I had seen that year, I could state with a squeaky clean conscience that it was truly the biggest one so far that year.  I stood on the snake's head with my right heel, grinding it into the floor, so, no, I was not going to let it get away either.  I was not that dumb! Prudently, I kept my advantageous position on top of the snake's head for a couple of minutes.

"How come I'm supposed to take care of this kind of stuff?" The fiend was dead.  It still managed to whip its virtually beheaded body back and forth on the floor in writhing, purposeless motions, but it was most definitely dead.  Relieved, I stood next to it and glowered at the nurses.  "Where is Camilo? Where is Don Rodrigo for that matter? I don't do snakes! I'm a doctor, not an exterminator! Why didn't you take care of this stupid snake when you first saw it?" Since the reptile was truly dead, there was no need to waste my energy on being afraid of it any more.  This meant that I could now afford to puff up with a considerable bit of righteous indignation.

"Snakes come in on the orange trucks all the time, but, they don't come into the hospital unless it's too hot outside.  When that happens, they like to take a break and cool off on the terrazzo floor." Doña Bernarda shook her head in disgust.  Her tone and demeanor made it clear that any further discussion of the subject would be completely useless.  Solita and Matilde had joined us in the meantime and glanced at my quarry with ill disguised fear. 

"We get them in here in summer all the time.  None of us ladies would dare to touch them.  Snake killing is a man's job!" She was not going to have anything to do with snakes, nor would any of the other ladies now present, period! Camilo finally showed up wearing his perennial little grin and was told in no uncertain terms to dispose of the still spasming reptile.

"Hombre, that was one big snake!" He said approvingly to me as he disappeared with the brightly colored carcass dangling precariously from a broomstick.  My very last, and almost desperate, line of reasoning directed at Bernarda, that I was a city boy and, therefore, ill equipped to deal with snakes fell on deaf ears.  It looked like from here on slithering, sliding, creeping and any other kind of reptiles would be under my jurisdiction. 

There had to be an easier way to make a living! What on earth was I doing there to start with? I was there supposedly to work as a physician! That was really what I had been hired to do! Alone for the first time, far away from "civilization" in one of the out of the way crags of the Colombian Andes, I tried to make a living practicing medicine in a small town in the middle of nowhere, working under circumstances where the "buck" stopped on my desk, and only on mine.  In Colombia