Chapter 2
TWO
This was all her fault.
Chloe pressed her shoulder against the bamboo doorframe, her chest tight as she watched Dr. Tobias fight to document his own deterioration. His phone was propped against a water bottle, voice-to-text app struggling to capture words that came slower with each passing hour.
They weren’t prisoners. Captain Wong had made that clear when the Karenni forces had escorted the Free Burma Rangers to Mese village two days ago.
“For our protection,” he’d said, gesturing toward the distant rumble of artillery exchanges between Karenni forces and the Myanmar military. “We’ll leave when it’s safe.”
Safe.
Right.
The teak house perched on stilts above red earth still soggy from yesterday’s rain.
Monsoon season wasn’t her favorite time of year here.
Early-morning light streamed through gaps in the woven bamboo walls.
The air hung thick—humidity and woodsmoke from cooking fires mixed with something medicinal that Mrs. Nu Paw, the resident healer, burned to ward off mosquitoes.
Outside, roosters announced dawn while artillery rumbled in the distance. Chloe’s gut tightened with every mortar round.
The impacts found her bones, rattled them. Too close. Too frequent. This village of five thousand souls existed in the narrow space between warring forces, protected by geography and the pure grit of people who refused to abandon their ancestral home.
Frankly, if it had been up to her, she would have rounded them all up and told them to run. Hard. Fast. Don’t look back. But then again, this wasn’t her home.
Not that she really had a home.
“Day three of symptoms,” Tobias whispered toward his phone, his Nigerian accent growing thicker as exhaustion clouded his thoughts. “Neurological presentation consistent with alkaloid poisoning. Pupils dilated. Hand tremors increasing. Cognitive function . . .”
Pause.
She glanced at him, her heart squeezing as he clearly struggled for the word.
“Declining.”
This couldn’t be happening.
“Tobias, we need to leave. Now.” She stepped into the small room. “The captain says the situation’s deteriorating. They can’t guarantee safe passage much longer.”
“I need to document this.” His dark eyes met hers. “Whatever’s happening to me—someone else will see these symptoms. They need to understand what they’re treating.”
“Then dictate faster.” Aw, her tone emerged sharper than she’d intended. “Because if we don’t get you to a real hospital soon—”
“Suspected alkaloid poisoning,” he continued into the phone, ignoring her interruption. “Most likely solanine or related compounds. Source unknown but definitely ingested, not inhaled or absorbed through skin contact.”
“Ingested?” Chloe crouched beside his makeshift bed—a thin mattress on a wooden platform covered with mosquito netting. “What did you eat that I didn’t?”
“That’s what I’m trying to determine.” Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the morning chill. “Something at the hospital or during transit or here. The timing suggests exposure occurred shortly before symptom onset.”
Footsteps creaked on the wooden stairs outside. Mrs. Nu Paw appeared in the doorway, her traditional Karenni dress a splash of vibrant red and blue against the neutral tones of the house. Silver jewelry clinked softly as she carried a steaming bowl of soup.
“Morning food,” she announced in careful English, weathered face creased with concern. “You eat. Build strength.”
Tobias managed a weak smile. “Thank you, Mrs. Nu Paw. Very kind.”
Boom!
Dust shook from the overhead beams as the explosions rolled across the valley, closer than yesterday. Mrs. Nu Paw’s expression tightened as she set the bowl on a wooden crate serving as a bedside table.
“Fighting moves closer,” she said, glancing toward the sound. “Tatmadaw tries to retake the mountain passes. Karenni Army holds them back, but . . .” She shook her head, her mouth tight.
“How close?” Chloe said.
“Maybe five kilometers. Captain Wong say we evacuate if they reach the river.” Mrs. Nu Paw studied Tobias. “But you too weak to travel.”
“Mrs. Nu Paw,” Tobias said, struggling to sit upright, “have others in the village shown similar symptoms? Neurological problems, tremors, confusion?”
“Some children, yes. Very sick. But Dr. Radi? helps them. He brings medicine.”
Chloe looked at her. “What doctor?”
“Dr. Radi?. Comes every month. Brings aid packages. Medicine, yes, but also food. Rice, cooking supplies, seasoning for the curry. Very generous man.” Mrs. Nu Paw’s face brightened. “He gives herbs that help the sick children. Traditional remedies, he says. From the old ways.”
Something cold slithered down Chloe’s spine. “Where is this Dr. Radi? now?”
“Gone back to Thailand. But he gets special plant that fights the sickness in children.” Mrs. Nu Paw gestured toward the door.
Tobias caught Chloe’s eye. A visiting doctor. Monthly visits. And herbs that supposedly helped sick children?
Yeah, what he said. Too many coincidences.
“What kind of plant?” Tobias asked.
“Local name is htawbyu. Small leaves, bitter taste. Dr. Radi? says it removes poison from the body.” Mrs. Nu Paw touched Tobias’s forehead, checking for fever. “Maybe it helps you too.”
Another boom, followed by the distant chatter of automatic weapons. The fighting was escalating.
“Mrs. Nu Paw,” Chloe said carefully, “what does Dr. Radi? look like?”
“Tall man. Light hair. Speaks good Thai, little Karenni. Always smiling, very patient with children.” The older woman’s expression grew thoughtful. “Why you ask?”
Chloe exchanged glances with Tobias. A foreign doctor making regular visits to remote villages. Bringing “medicine.” Were children getting sick despite his treatments—or because of them?
“Just curious.” Chloe forced a smile. “This plant—htawbyu—does it grow around here?”
“Of course. But dangerous now. Fighting makes travel—”
Footsteps. Captain Wong appeared in the doorway, his mouth a grim slash. He wore a tactical vest over camouflage fatigues, held a radio.
“Miss Silver. We have problem.” His English carried the clipped precision of someone accustomed to crisis. “Myanmar forces are moving toward the village. Two hours, maybe less.”
Chloe’s stomach dropped. “Can we evacuate Dr. Tobias?”
“Not in his condition. The journey is difficult—jungle paths, river crossings. He cannot survive.”
She stilled.
“Chloe, don’t—” Tobias started.
“Then we make a stand here.” The words escaped before she’d thought them through. Still, maybe she was right.
Captain Wong’s expression remained neutral. “We are a humanitarian mission. We do not ‘make stands.’ We evacuate civilians and medical personnel.”
“I’m not leaving him.” She looked at Tobias, her throat filling.
“Chloe—”
“I got you into this.”
Tobias lay back on his pillow. “That’s not how I remember it.”
Her eyes filled.
“You need to go.”
“Miss Silver—” Captain Wong began.
“No,” she said, folding her arms around herself, clamping down despite the boom of the mortar in the distance. “I brought him here. I’m not abandoning him now.”
Mrs. Nu Paw looked between them, wearing a stricken expression. “The htawbyu plant,” she said quietly. “If it helps him, we must try.”
Tobias struggled to speak, his voice barely audible. “Go. Get the plant. Document everything.” His eyes met Chloe’s. “Someone needs to understand what’s happening here.”
Another explosion. Close enough to rattle the bamboo walls.
“Time is running out,” Wong said.
“No. Somewhere out there, there’s a plant that might hold the key to saving not just Tobias but countless other victims—I’m going.” She turned to Mrs. Nu Paw. “I’ll go—tell me where.”
The woman nodded and pointed out the window. “Follow the path to the waterfall. It grows at the base. Small leaves, silver.”
“This is . . . not advisable,” the captain said, but Chloe pushed past him.
“I’ll hurry.” She stepped out onto the narrow wooden walkway that connected the stilted homes.
The village spread below her in the growing daylight—a cluster of traditional teak houses—and she ducked into the house where she was staying to grab her rucksack, checking that her camera equipment was secure.
Her phone caught her eye—still no signal, but she packed it anyway.
She threw the rucksack over her shoulders as she made her way down the wooden stairs.
Smoke drifted from cooking fires, where women prepared morning rice over charcoal braziers. The scent mixed with incense from the small Buddhist shrine at the village center. A rooster crowed from somewhere behind a bamboo fence, answered by another from across the narrow lane.
Captain Wong had followed her out. Now he stood, a radio pressed to his ear, expression grim. He caught her eye and nodded toward the northern path—the route Mrs. Nu Paw had described. Two kilometers through jungle to reach the waterfall and the medicinal plants that might save Tobias.
Or might do nothing at all.
Please, God, protect us all.
Behind her, more shelling. It seemed closer, but she didn’t look back as she took off toward the path that wound between houses where laundry hung limp in the humid air.
The jungle began abruptly where the village ended. Green walls rising on either side of a trail that had been carved by generations of feet. Within ten steps, the sounds of the village faded behind curtains of vegetation.
And then the jungle simply swallowed her up.
Chloe pushed through swaths of green that dripped with yesterday’s rain, her boots squelching in mud that clung like wet concrete.
Two kilometers felt like twenty in this heat.
Vines thick as her wrist dangled from towering dipterocarp trees, whose canopy blocked most of the morning sun.
What light filtered through came in cathedral shafts that illuminated clouds of gnats and the occasional flash of a hornbill’s yellow beak.
The air tasted of decomposition and new growth—that particular jungle soup redolent of so many places in the world.