The Pilot

Connie meets Jeff Lewis at Whit’s End to hear how he became a missionary pilot. She is trying to settle into June’s house with Penny, but grief keeps attaching itself to ordinary objects. Paint samples make her feel disloyal because June disliked yellow, and the plastic smell of new refrigerators reminds her that June always kept bacon in the old meat drawer for Connie’s visits. Wooton discreetly checks on her with a box of tissues, then joins them for Jeff’s account.

Jeff had earned a private pilot’s license and an aviation degree and needed only three hundred more flight hours to qualify for a major airline. When the plane he borrowed became unavailable, Dr. Lily Graham offered him those hours in exchange for flying her and nurse Eva Parker to a remote Venezuelan village. Jeff resisted because the dangerous trip did not fit his commercial-airline plans, but he finally agreed to go once.

The village’s short dirt landing strip nearly ends at a lake, but Jeff gets the plane down safely. He then helps Lily and Eva turn a new adobe hut into a clinic. With many patients and no other volunteer, Jeff handles triage despite his poor Spanish. A young mother named Maya arrives with her dangerously ill baby, Graciana, who has blue skin and trouble breathing.

Lily stabilizes Graciana but cannot identify the cause. Several babies in the village have the same symptoms without the fever or lung congestion expected from pneumonia. While the medical team works, Jeff befriends Maya’s eight-year-old son, Alberto. Using discarded containers, they make maracas, drums, castanets, and a strange-looking guitar, giving the frightened boy something joyful to do.

Lily explains that many villagers die from illnesses that have simple, inexpensive treatments elsewhere because they cannot reach medical care. She first came reluctantly too, but now wonders what her own life would be without the people she serves. That evening, Maya becomes dizzy and exhausted. Jeff walks her home while Lily remains at the clinic to monitor Graciana and three more sick babies.

The next morning, the team investigates a warming hut where families bring infants during cool weather. The hut is well ventilated, but villagers burn sweet-smelling plants inside to soothe the children. Eva recognizes a large white flower among them as a highly poisonous plant. Its fumes may be responsible for the babies’ illness.

Before the team can finish investigating, Alberto leads Lily and Jeff to Maya. She lies unconscious, bleeding from her mouth and nose, with a weak, rapid pulse. Her symptoms do not match the babies’ poisoning, and the clinic lacks the laboratory equipment needed to diagnose her. Lily can ease Maya’s constricted breathing, but she fears that the young mother is dying.