Around the rim of the crater, thousands of shadowy spider monkeys capered and shrieked, throwing stones and debris down from the cliff top. I was surrounded by large boulders, and across each sprawled a dying person covered with a white sheet. Flaco lay in front of me with his throat slashed, one hand dangling over the lip of his boulder, and I needed to sew the pieces of his esophagus together quickly if I was to save him. Tamara lay face down, slumped over a sharp rock to his right, her fever burning high, brain cells dying at a tremendous rate as she waited for an injection of antimosin. Behind me, Arish also lay on a low flat stone with a slashed throat. He tugged the back of my shirt to beg for help, but I was too busy caring for Flaco. I bent close in the failing light and stitched at Flaco’s throat. The rip in his esophagus lay between the triangular cricoids’ cartilage just above the Adam’s apple and the first ring of tracheal cartilage beneath—a region hard to treat quickly, since there could be major damage to his vocal cords.
