Benecio, the same soldier who had guarded her tent the previous night, ducked into the tent, and Gina shouted, “Help me roll him onto his side!”

Together they leaned the man up onto his side—which helped to keep his airway clear—as his body convulsed. After twenty more seconds, the man’s limbs relaxed. Gina kept him on his side for another minute before slowly rolling him onto his back.

The IV had come out during the seizure, and Gina fitted the needle back into the catheter she’d set in the man’s left forearm.

Benecio asked if he could go, and Gina nodded.

She pulled another IV drip bag from her supplies and switched out the empty one. She’d already gone through three in two days, and there were only four remaining. She filled a syringe with the last of her gabapentin, an antiseizure medication, and injected it into the IV port. Gina had been planning a trip to the pharmacy in Riberalta in the coming weeks to stock up on supplies before the rainy season, but at the time of her abduction, her personal pharmacy had been heavily depleted.

Gina heard the flap on the tent open.

It was the dark-haired man, whom Gina had overheard someone call Patrick. He was kneeling at the tent door and asked, “When will he be ready to move?”

“Move?” she exclaimed. “He just had a grand mal seizure!”

“Don’t you have antiseizure meds you can give him?”

“I just gave him the last of what I have.”

Patrick bit his bottom lip, something Gina had noticed him doing when he was deep in thought, then said, “We’ve constructed a gurney from some bamboo. It’s sturdy enough to hold him. We’ve already lost too much time. We’re moving out tomorrow.”

Gina wanted to say, “And if he has a seizure while they’re carrying him and falls and breaks his neck, what then?”

But she knew the answer.

Patrick had been very clear about that.

≈

El Jefe had another seizure that night, but by the time they loaded him onto the gurney the next morning, he’d gone the longest he had in three days without convulsing.

Also, his temperature had dropped. Gina was fairly certain he would survive. If she hadn’t been there to administer an IV and antibiotics, most likely that wouldn’t have been the case. As for when he would come out of his coma, it could be minutes, it could be months, or it could be never.

“Okay,” Patrick said. “Let’s head out.”

“I have to go to the bathroom first,” Gina said.

The nine of them—Patrick, his spectacled associate, the five soldiers, and Gina, plus El Jefe on the gurney—were situated in the smaller camp with the lean-to and fire pit.