Chapter 12 — The One Who Keeps The Venom Saves People

The water at that bend flowed differently than the rest of the river — Du realized that even after the canoe had passed a few dozen meters. There was a slight eddy under the surface, an undercurrent that only someone familiar with the river could sense in the way the boat rocked slightly unevenly, even though the water above appeared calm.

"Mr. Nguyen, do you know what people call this song?" she asked, her voice barely audible over the sound of the engine.

Nguyen glanced over, a bit surprised by the unexpected question amid the recent tension. "Three-layer Vortex. Everyone in the area tells each other to stay away from that place, especially during flood season, because the river bottom there has three layers of reefs arranged at different angles, creating a more complex and unpredictable vortex than any other part of the river."

"I know." Du spoke softly, almost just talking to himself.

Nguyen looked at her again, this time his eyes were more questioning. "Have you been here before?"

"My father died there, twenty-four years ago." Du said, her voice was so calm that even she was surprised that she could say that sentence without shaking. "You swam across the river in the middle of a flood to find the serum for me. You never reached the other shore."

Khiem turned around to look at her, his mouth open but he couldn't say a word. Nguyen was silent for a long time, only the steady sound of the boat engine filled the void.

"And yet you still agreed to go on this trip." He said finally, not a question.

"That's why I left." Du replied, still looking ahead, where the thin rain curtain was gradually melting to reveal a pale gray sky on the horizon. "If I keep letting that fear hold me back, there will be another child who won't get the serum in time, just like I almost didn't make it that year."

She told it, slowly, paragraph by paragraph, as if for the first time in her life she was allowing herself to tell the whole story to outsiders, not just the fragmentary fragments she had mentioned to Thanh. That night, the snake bit her ankle when she followed her mother to the backyard to harvest sweet potato vegetables before it was completely dark. The commune health station only has two bottles of old serum, but injecting them does not help. They said they had to take her to the next district to get enough medicine of the right kind, but that night the water rose so high that no one dared row across the ferry. The only bridge connecting the two banks had been swept away by floods three years ago and had not yet been rebuilt.

"My father was in his thirties at that time, the best swimmer in the village." Du continued, his voice still steady but there was something trembling hidden deep beneath the calm shell. "He said he would swim across and ask an acquaintance from the other side to take the motorboat over, it would be much faster than waiting for dawn. My mother couldn't stop him, he got off the wharf before she could finish his sentence."

She stopped for a moment, looking down at the water flowing past the bottom of the boat, turbid and bottomless, exactly like the color of the water she remembered that night through the oil lamp light from the house window.

"He never made it to the other side. His body was found two days later, three kilometers downstream from the wharf, stuck in a bamboo bush along the shore." Du said, and this time her voice choked up a bit, even if only for a brief moment. "And I survived thanks to a provincial rescue team that happened to pass by my commune the next morning, carrying a supply of flood prevention medicine. Half a day later, I probably wouldn't have survived."

Nguyen said nothing for a long time, just steered the boat through the remaining water more cautiously, as if he was also carrying a part of the story he had just heard.

"My grandfather, the person who taught me this profession, once told me something that I will always remember." Du continued, his voice regaining stability. "He said, you can't stop the river from flowing, you can't stop the snakes from biting people. You can only choose where to be when it happens — watching from afar, or standing close enough to do something."

"You chose to stand close." Khiem spoke softly, more like a statement than a question.

"I chose to stand close." Du nodded. "Even every time I stand that close, I'm still scared, just like tonight."

She remembered when she was ten years old, a year after her father's death, when her grandfather Ninh Vien Tuyen first took her to this riverbank, not to teach her how to swim or to force her to face her fear, but simply sat down on a rock, silently next to her all afternoon, not saying a word about her father, not mentioning anything about the snake that bit her. He showed her a bird's nest building on a tree branch along the shore, and a school of small fish swimming in a shallow puddle.

"You don't need to stop being afraid right away." He spoke as it was about to get dark, his voice hoarse and familiar. "You just need to learn to live with that fear, so it doesn't take up all the space in your head, leaving some space for the things you need to do."

Over the years that followed, he taught her to read snake tracks, teaching her how to recognize each species by the shape of its head, by the way it moves, and by the characteristic smell some species secrete when threatened. He did not force her to follow the profession, simply shared what he knew, so that when she grew up and chose her own path to become a snake farm technician, he just nodded and said a short sentence: "So you have found your own place."

He died when she was twenty-three years old, right before she took an official job at Khe Lanh Snake Farm. She always regretted that he couldn't see her doing this job for how long, couldn't see her standing firmly on the path he had silently nurtured for her all those years after her father's death.

The boat glided through the last stretch of water before approaching the other shore, where the lights of an ambulance were flashing red and white through the thin mist, waiting on the still dry road. Nguyen reduced the throttle and let the boat gently approach the shore, avoiding any collision that could affect the insulated tank that Khiem was still holding tightly in his arms.

"Arrived." He said, his voice filled with relief. "You and this guy go ashore quickly, I'll keep the boat here."

Du stepped onto the shore first. As soon as his feet touched land, he clearly felt the difference compared to the unsteady feeling during the two canoe trips tonight. A person wearing a white blouse rushed over from the ambulance. It was not Thu, but a young nurse sent to welcome her.

"You're the one who brought the serum from the snake farm, right?" The nurse asked, panting because she had just run quickly through the muddy road.

"Right." Du passed the insulated box to him with both hands, a gesture more formal than necessary for a simple action, but to her now, it held a much greater meaning than it appeared. "Three vials of temporary serum, the temperature remains stable. There are dosage instructions and an allergic reaction warning posted on the lid of the box, give it to Dr. Thu immediately."

The nurse nodded, grabbed the box and rushed back to the ambulance. The siren sounded immediately after the car drove away, leaving Du standing and looking in the thin mist, his hand still feeling the cold air of the insulated box that had just left his palm.

"Shall I follow too?" Khiem asked, standing next to her, his eyes still following the light of the ambulance disappearing around the corner.

"Go." Du replied immediately, without any hesitation. "You need to be present when the hospital injects the first dose, to monitor the reaction and adjust the dose if necessary. This is a serum that has not been fully tested, and cannot be completely entrusted to someone who has never used this type before."

Nguyen, still holding the boat close to the shore, called out. "Do you and this guy need me to drive you home, or can you continue by road?"

"You can go home and rest first. Thank you very much today." Du turned back, bowed his head and thanked him sincerely. "Without you, we couldn't have crossed that river."

"It's nothing, it's my business." Nguyen waved his hand, but his eyes still retained something after the story he had just heard, a quiet sympathy that did not need to be spoken. "You stay healthy, if you need anything, just call me."

He waved goodbye and turned on the gas, turning the boat back to the other side, leaving Du and Khiem standing in the middle of the muddy dirt road, waiting for another car from the district hospital to pick them up and take them to the medical center, where the real battle - the battle between the small body of a seven-year-old child and the amount of venom that had been absorbed into his blood for nearly twelve hours - was still going on minute by minute.

Du's phone rang, this time the signal was back. Thu's message appeared, sent twenty minutes ago: "Red blood cells decreased further, suspected internal bleeding. Can you come yet?"

She finished reading, tightened her grip on the phone, then dialed the number to call back immediately, quickly walking towards the road leading into town, not waiting for the car to pick her up, but deciding to walk the first part if necessary, as long as she could get to the hospital as soon as possible.