Chapter 15: Julio Martinez

Julio Martinez made his way toward La Ceiba along the rugged Cangrejal River. The pain from the bullet in his knee had now become a familiar throb, and he marveled that he no longer thought of it as painful; it was just massively inconvenient.

Julio was a dreamer. He was highly educated, and a skeptical scientist. But he had never lost the mysterious power of imagination that fuels all great discoveries. As he made his way along the muddy banks, he recounted the series of accidents that led to his latest titration of an antiviral solution. He had never actually set out to find a cure for anything other than for one of his howler monkeys. The animal had contracted an extremely rare hyperplasia, and, mostly just as a side experiment, Julio tried to cure it. Oral focal epithelial hyperplasia was known in some native tribes, even Eskimos, but Julio had never heard of it in a new world primate. That was how he had begun. The implications of his findings were, well, possibly revolutionary.

On the other hand, he knew that Wilhelm Roentgen had never set out to find the X-ray; Edward Jenner’s intuition with the milkmaid Sarah Nelms led to vaccinations for smallpox; Dr. Alexander Flemming (only thirty years ago) decided not to toss out a moldy flu culture and discovered penicillin. And Julio knew very well the story of the Inca Indian who ingested the “poisonous” chinchona (which the natives called quina-quina) and so, with “quinine” was cured of malaria.

Governments the world over, however, often sought new discoveries and inventions as a means of controlling each other. Something in Julio’s vial had struck a chord somewhere in the world. Someone wanted his discovery, or at least wanted it suppressed.

Julio had not devised a plan once he arrived at La Ceiba, other than to get to the French Hospital d’Antoni and have this bullet removed. He had noticed a persistent headache and sore muscles, but ignored these as self-evident. He couldn’t understand why his fingers and toes tingled though. He just knew that he had to keep going.