There were no jobs for migrant stoop laborers around Arizona's Indian reservations in early August, so Robert Grey-Eyes and family were idle. True to the Navajos' matrilinear tradition, they moved in on his mother-in-law, Ason Tso, near Many Farms, 150 miles east of the Grand Canyon. Mary Grey-Eyes, 35, a broad-faced, well-built mother of two, seemed fit despite chronic gall-bladder disease. But one Saturday afternoon, as towering Black Mountain's shadow reached across Carson Mesa to the comfortless, slab-sided hogan, the pain in Mary's side got worse than ever. Soon she was nauseated and feverish; then her headache became unbearable.
Following centuries-old tribal custom, the family called in a nidilniihi, a diagnostician who works by hand-trembling—but they fetched her in their own 1953 Chevrolet sedan. Diagnostician Emma Teller squatted at Mary's bedside, dusted corn pollen on her upturned right palm, made the zigzag lightning sign with her left forefinger and crooned a ritual chant. As she passed her hand over Mary's body, it began to tremble. From its motion (ni'dilniih) Emma concluded that Mary had somehow offended the Wind Spirits. Her prescription: a chishiji, a two-day sing led by a medicine man.
First Aid, Cold Bath. But Mary Grey-Eyes was not to be sung over. Next day she was worse, and the family decided there might be stronger medicine more promptly available five miles away at the Navajo-Cornell Field Health Research Project's clinic. For first aid they performed a hóchxó'iji to ward off evil. This included a cold bath in the open air, after which the patient understandably felt worse. Then they took her to the clinic.
From Mary's 104° fever and other signs, Field Physician Garfield Fred Burkhardt suspected meningitis, probably tuberculous—a disease that was invariably fatal until twelve years ago. He plunged a needle into her back and tapped the spinal fluid. Its high cell content buttressed his fears. While Navajo Nelson Bennett worked the field radio to alert the Navajo medical center at Fort Defiance for an emergency admission, Dr. Burkhardt gave Mary Grey-Eyes a massive penicillin injection. This would combat the infection if pneumococci, rather than tubercle bacilli, were the cause.
There was a third and worse possibility: meningococci, which could kill Mary within an hour or two. Dr. Burkhardt dared not delay either treatment or hospitalization. He ordered one of the clinic's two radio-equipped sedans rigged with an infusion bottle hung from the coat hook and bundled Mary into the car. A Navajo staff member drove the 90 miles (much of it over spring-breaking dirt roads) to Fort Defiance, while Burkhardt squatted by the patient, gave her a continuous intravenous infusion of sulfadiazine.