That 's his real name . Enderson Barbosa Santana . They called him o Bebê . It 's not like he had a baby face or anything . It 's hard to know why , when people get a nickname . There is probably a story behind it , but that is what they called him . At home , he had a kind face , warm and caring . On the street , he was a badass , someone you would respect , as in , cross the street and walk on the other side to stay out of his way . He was a gangster , a tough guy , and he wasn 't putting up with any BS . I met him at the emergency room of the regional hospital in Boa Vista , Roraima , the northernmost state in the Brazilian Amazon , where I was chaplain . It was about 10 in the morning on a Friday . He had been shot just before dawn . His wounds were fresh and blood was all over the gurney . His right leg was in traction and he had a big bandage on his abdomen . There were two shots . The first one fractured his femur and , with that , he fell to the ground . One would think . The second shot entered just above his navel , ripping into his intestines and lodging in his spine . No exit wound . That 's how pathologists say it . When I found him , he was hovering between life and death . He knew it and didn 't seem concerned . The pain came and went , like a giant unbearable wave , every five minutes or so , taking with it , every time , a piece of his soul . I suppose that is what made not dying a secondary concern . Enderson was waiting in the corridor of the hospital because the staff couldn 't find a place to put him . His cot was a stainless steel stretcher on grimy wheels . On top of that , there was a wooden backboard , probably right out of the ambulance . He was tied to that so he wouldn 't fall off , and handcuffed to the gurney because he was under arrest . He was naked except for the bloody green sheet that lightly covered him . When you get stabbed or shot , they cut your clothes off with scissors at the emergency room . It is a question of hygiene , I guess . Enderson couldn 't have cared less right then . At his head , sitting on a stool , was his girl . She was hunched over , clutching her own belly with her face to the wall . She was little more than a teenager and three months pregnant . It was to be her second child with o Bebê . Their oldest was already 2 . That 's how I knew what he looked like before he was shot . They showed me a picture . They looked like a young but happy family . Enderson was disoriented . He wasn 't even really sure what had happened . The room was spinning , between the horse 's dose of dipyrone they had given him and the two quarts of blood he had lost . I took his hand . He got me bloody . And squeezed . I spoke softly , as one would speak to a scared colt to calm him . It seemed to help , in the same way a foot on the floor will help a drunk to make the room stop spinning around . It is a game , of course , but when dealing with pain it often works . Especially when there has been an accident , because the victim is not expecting his pain . You take his hand and tell him to transfer the pain to you . As if by conduction . And it seems to soothe the unbearable . I think it 's just knowing that someone is willing to share it . It 's knowing that someone on the planet is willing to get blood on them . Get involved in your story . There has to be contact . A hand is best , but you can put your hand on the victim 's forehead , too . That works pretty well . Or on his chest . Where the heart is . Enderson was waiting for surgery . They had to open up his gut and repair all the internal damage . If not , he would have certainly died of gangrene after about three very painful days . That is the worst death , the one soldiers most fear on the battlefield . If that were the case , it was better to bleed to death before it happened . He was pretty close . He was on the borderline that divides the known landscape from the unknown abyss . We had gotten through six or seven waves of pain , but the staff was going to throw me out . Visiting hours were over . I had to leave , so I took his girlfriend by the hand and asked her to stand and place her hand where mine had been . Stay here , I said , he is disoriented . And she did . She stayed there for six months by his side . She was gone three days to have her baby . Then she came back . The newspaper said he was arrested before dawn on Friday by the Brazilian military police , that he was armed and dangerous , and that the other three young men arrested with him were not hurt . They all had gangster nicknames and police records . They only shot o Bebê . The papers used his nickname , as if perhaps readers might know who he was . The police knew , for sure . The strange thing is that the bullets were all front to back . First in the thigh , and then in the gut . That means he wasn 't running away . He was facing the officers who were trying to arrest him . If in fact that is what they were trying to do . Murders are also on the rise . There were 60 , 000 in Brazil last year . Gang versus gang , payback , drug debts and love triangles , never at a loss for a motive . O Bebê didn 't die , though . They missed his aorta by about a half an inch , and they missed his heart by about four . By law , he had a right to medical treatment and a fair trial . At least , in theory . He had not been formally accused of anything . And so his odyssey began . His first operation ended that night . They opened him up from pubis to sternum so they could root around inside him and repair any internal injuries he might have . They sewed him up with 25 thick stitches , the kind you might see on a horse that got cut . I found him in the B - wing three days later . He was smiling and said he was expecting me . It was obvious to him that I would be back . He had already marked me with blood . I made an effort to stop in every day . Enderson never moved from his hospital bed . He couldn 't move , because his leg was still in traction and he was still under arrest and handcuffed to the bed . So for five minutes a day I held his free hand , the way I had done that first day . It was the least I could do . It was all I could do . He was counting on me . I helped with the little things , sometimes . He wasn 't ashamed . I was family by then . If he were sleeping when I came , he would open one eye , without moving , and I would watch over his dreams . Sleeping was better than being awake , I guess . I usually wouldn 't say much , but sometimes I would encourage him never to lose hope , that this was like climbing a mountain , that it was hard but , with patience , he could make it . I hoped that was true . Enderson was on the waiting list for the other surgery , the one to repair his fractured femur . The hospital was full of fractured femurs . When there were survivors from motorcycle accidents , they all had fractured femurs . There was one operating room , one surgeon and the hospital tended to run out of the titanium bolts used to fix those . So there was a long line , and Enderson was always at the end of it . He was black and young and under arrest . They never did that operation . His femur eventually mended , but 2 inches shorter than it was supposed to be . He was sentenced , by triage , to be lame for life . After six weeks , I went to Rio for a meeting . When I came back , o Bebê had a new tube in his nose to drain off some nasty green liquid . I got worse , he said . It was true . The surgeon had missed something when he repaired the intestine . It didn 't show up as long as he was on antibiotics , but when they took him off , he got peritonitis . The next day , his bed was empty . He had emergency surgery . They took out several feet of gut . He ended up with a new cut in the same place and a colostomy bag . I found him in intensive care , in a panic . We got hold of his mom and his girlfriend on my cell phone . Just to say he was alive . They didn 't know where he was or how long he would be there . He wasn 't supposed to talk on the phone because he was still a prisoner . But there were no guards in intensive care . That 's how it rolled . Every day was a game of roulette . The Russian kind . He went back to B - wing after a few days and started on his legal battle . He had to pay off a lawyer to pay off the judge to move on his case , and nothing happened . Finally , the doctors said he was well enough to leave the hospital , even though he couldn 't walk and he still had a colostomy bag . He was taken to jail pending prosecution . He still had not been formally charged , but the local newspaper had already declared him guilty . He was nervous that day . He said it was fine , he had friends and cousins on the inside and they would protect him . His mother knew how to move the papers around . They were no strangers to jails and judicial process . But he was still sick , and he came back sicker . Two months later , he was in intensive care again . In prison he had no way to properly clean and change his colostomy bag . He needed alcohol , but that was off limits . It got infected and he lost a few more feet of intestine . The new cut down his abdomen wouldn 't heal . This went on for months . He still couldn 't walk and he was still handcuffed to the bed . Enderson said he would rather die than go back to jail . That was hell . If they were going to take him back , he would have killed himself , I think . He was in chains , but he had resources . He gave the orders in a shady world most people never see . He would have found a way . Anything , to keep from going back to that place . In the end , the judge put him under house arrest . The local jail didn 't have an infirmary and the warden refused to take him back under those conditions . It was a good thing . He could be at home with his two boys . He could clean his wounds . He could watch the television shows that made him laugh . I used to take him pirate DVDs of Jackass at the hospital . Those were his favorite . He was one bad dude but just a little kid , at heart . He left in a wheelchair , 40 pounds lighter and diminished in every way . But he was alive and grateful for that . He still had his networks for commerce and protection . But now , he was counting on me , too . For hope , maybe . Hope that there could be another way . The last time I saw him , he reached up and touched my face , you know , the way brothers sometimes do . They kiss your hand , too , in Brazil . It 's a fraternal thing . The younger brother asks for the blessing of the older , and that means you are supposed to take his hand and kiss it . He responds by kissing back . That is how we bid farewell . May God bless him . I found Evanildo on a Sunday in the emergency room annex of the Roraima hospital . It was about 10 in the morning and he was sitting on his cot , dirty , wearing only his underwear and the regulation green hospital sheet , soaked in his own blood . He smelled of sweat and fear . He was alone and not speaking . He looked like a caged animal . He had been arrested the night before . This time the military police were not the principal aggressors . In fact , I think they saved his life . Evanildo had broken into some shop and the owner caught him . The owner had a machete , and he was mad . Evanildo was no expert at burglary . He was , in fact , naïve . He didn 't use drugs and had no notion of gangs or fights or jails . He did something , but I 'm not sure what or why . The shop owner , I am assuming with some help , managed to chop off Evanildo 's right hand precisely at the wrist . He gave a good chop to the left , too , but there he hit the radius bone . Either the blow was too weak or the machete wasn 't sharp enough . After that , Evanildo escaped onto the roof , arterial blood gushing from both arms . There , the shop 's neighbor shot him in the groin . It was a close call . The neighbor was not a very good shot , thank God . An arm without a hand is shocking . The first time I saw that in the hospital , it was a boy who was only about 15 . An older brother had cut off his hand . He didn 't believe his own sibling would really do it , but the older boy was a drug addict . He told his kid brother he would cut off his hand if he didn 't give him all the money . He was desperate . Drugs do that . A wrist without a hand is like a neck without a head . It 's worse , I 'm sure , if it 's your own ; if yesterday it was there , and today it 's not . Victims feel the amputated member even when it 's gone . Some call it a ghost limb . It often happens when it 's a hand that 's missing . A hand has a lot of nerve endings . It 's as if it were an extension of your brain . Part of your personality , your character , part of everything you had ever done . Evanildo had lost a lot of blood . He was fighting for his life on the neighbor 's roof when the police van arrived . He was saved from a lynching but arrested for burglary . The police took him to the hospital . No family member came for him . He hadn 't eaten breakfast because he couldn 't move a spoon from plate to mouth . He had not bathed , either . He was handcuffed to the bed by his foot , because he had no right hand and his left was full of stitches . The handcuffs were too tight on his ankle and forced him into an uncomfortable position . Sweaty , bloody and caked with dirt , Evanildo breathed rapidly , like cornered prey that doesn 't expect to survive the next few minutes . Evanildo 's mom was in Manaus . She went for one of those big noisy meetings for evangelical Christians . She found out about her son 's plight and just stayed there , praising the Lord . Evanildo 's girlfriend was only 14 . She was five months pregnant . She didn 't have bus money to go to the hospital and wasn 't old enough to stay with him . When there is no family member to stay with a patient , auxiliary staff are supposed to step in , at least to bathe and feed those who can 't do that for themselves . But they said , no , not that one . He was a criminal . Caught red - handed , they said . Yeah , in a bad way . Bright red . That day , I took care of it . The local newspaper took sides with the lynch mob . The shop owner appeared in a photo , brandishing his machete , bragging about what he had done . They made it sound like he had defended the whole neighborhood from a mass murderer . I guess the crowd likes lynching . It isn 't easy to chop off a hand . There is more to it than just taking a lucky swipe in the air . You have to hold a man down , immobilize his arm on a hard surface and take a precise swing with a sharp blade . Butchers are good at that . Then , they held him down again , blood and all , to go for the other hand . It 's something straight out of a baroque woodcut ; the judicial horrors of long ago , executed by an angry mob and applauded in the local paper . Evanildo was not armed . It is interesting that his last name was Ferreira . The shop owner 's name was also Ferreira . He was white . Evanildo 's mom was black , from Bahia , pure Afro - Brazilian . Evanildo was mixed race , what they called mulato . That 's an ugly term . It means you are a mule . Mules are half - breeds . They are infertile and they are slaves . Evanildo told me he had no father . If he cuts off your hand , I guess you can consider yourself disinherited . I suspect that Evanildo wasn 't there to steal anything . He went to ask for paternal assistance in his hour of need . His own child was on the way and he had no way to feed it . The old man refused and things got ugly . His bastard son with that black woman was a problem for his official family . Maybe . I can 't be sure . But it 's unusual that the pieces fit so perfectly . Nothing happens by chance in this world . While he was in the hospital , Evanildo never had any family member stay to take care of him . For a month and a half , I fed him lunch . Spoon to mouth , like a little kid . He liked everything mixed together . I had to take farinha in secret , because the hospital didn 't provide any . Once we became friends , Evanildo confided to me that he was hungry all day long . I started taking soda crackers and juice . He would devour an entire package at 10 in the morning , like a growing adolescent . That would keep the hunger at bay for half an hour . Evanildo 's mom stopped by a few times but never stayed long . The die - hard evangelicals tend to abandon family members when they get into trouble . Pastors will tell them they have to . They say that when bad things happen to you , it means you don 't belong to the chosen few . If you are not among the chosen few , you could drag your family down to hell with you . That 's what they believe , anyway . So they cut all ties . She was a superstitious woman , deep down . Evangelical voodoo . Her world was inhabited by demons , ghosts and evil vapors . The girlfriend came about once a week . When she couldn 't make it , she would call me on my cell to see if I could put Evanildo on the line . It had to be when the guards were dealing with some other prisoner . There were always at least three or four in the hospital . Prisoners weren 't allowed phone privileges . When she went to the hospital , it was usually in the afternoon . I would have to leave money for her bus fare home hidden in the drawer of the bedside table , because prisoners couldn 't have money , either . Evanildo felt abandoned . No one was going to believe him , and he knew it . He accepted his situation without complaint , consternation or amazement . On the one hand , he had provoked it . On the other , life had taught him never to trust , not in people , not in the world , not in the sun that might or might not rise tomorrow . He was like a wild animal . He had learned to expect death at any moment . He belonged to a class of people the civilized world considers subhuman . They have no rights . They are excluded , a priori . Their lives are disposable and unimportant . I suspect that is the way it is for most of the human race . This is why terrorism in Paris is news , terrorism in Pakistan is not . Evanildo lived the moment . It was all he had . He recovered from his wounds and the day drew near when his guards would take him to jail . There he would have to wait for a trial , something to legitimize the cards he had been dealt . He was saved from a lynching to be punished by the state . Whatever they gave you for burglary . The newspaper said attempted murder . The press had already condemned him . It was a done deal . Since the days of the Roman Colosseum , Evanildo had been predestined to a lengthy sentence . Disfigured as he was , he did not elicit mercy . On the contrary . People were horrified . The crowd seemed to see an amputee as some kind of monster who , for some reason , deserved to suffer . He would be given the maximum sentence , I was sure . Not even Caesar would dare to apply jurisprudence . His job was to please the crowd and he knew it . I taught Evanildo to ask for the public defender . He didn 't know what that was and he forgot how to say it every 15 minutes . I think he really had no hope . He went to jail resigned to the fact that in there they would do whatever they wanted with him . The pariahs in our caste system accept things as they are . They have no choice . I didn 't get a chance to say goodbye . One day he was just gone , and I never heard from him again . I went to his room , and his bed was empty , as if he had died . I had no way to visit him in prison . It was really hard to get authorized . I missed him . He was a criminal , they said . Even the social workers were self - righteously negligent in handling his case . But I fed him with a spoon . As if he were my own kid . In his room , on the B - wing , there was an old man with cirrhosis . He couldn 't walk or talk any more . He reeked of ammonia and was waiting for surgery so he wouldn 't die so soon from the hard drinking he had done all his life . His adult children took turns caring for him . There also was a boy of about 13 . He was skinny with curly blond hair and had a broken femur from a bicycle accident . He had been run over by a motorcycle . His parents took turns tending to him . His name was Aurelio and , little by little , he had become friends with Evanildo . Aurelio was really innocent . At the beginning , Evanildo didn 't talk to him . He didn 't expect that they would be able to get along . But as time went by , they became like brothers . They knew I sometimes had these little coconut squares in my knapsack in case I got hungry on the road . If they teamed up , they could con me out of them . Sometimes when I arrived , they would be singing together . Just to pass the time . I think Aurelio missed him , too , when Evanildo went away to prison . The night before Thiago died , I ran into him on a street corner in Santarém . I practically knocked him down . I was out running in the dark , and he was walking home from the pool , no shirt and swim goggles on his right shoulder with the strap running through his armpit , as if he had an extra pair of eyes on that shoulder . Thiago was always original , though it wasn 't as if he tried to be . It was just that he was so uninhibited that things came out unusual , seu jeito , as they say in Brazil , his way . I came up from behind and almost didn 't recognize him in the dark except for his tall form and characteristic gait , kind of a springy urgent amble , what you would expect of a dancer who also plays soccer . That I would run into him seemed obvious . Nothing ever surprised Thiago . Everything just sort of happened to him . Life was like a boat that moved under the feet of river people . They managed to always expect the unexpected . That was a good thing in Santarém , because transportation generally happened over water . Roads for cars and trucks were few and badly maintained . There was a bus station , but only three or four buses were coming in or out on any given day . By contrast , the dock on the riverfront was enormous and busy . Life happened there . In fact , the city has been in that spot for the last 400 years because that was where the Amazon River met the Tapajós . In Santarém , many young men are named Thiago . That is on account of a bishop who ruled like a feudal lord there for decades . His name was Jimmy Ryan , and he died in 2002 . He brought lots of foreign money into the city to fund charity institutions . He also hired lots of people to do nothing at all . They called him Dom Thiago and named their boys after him in gratitude for his boundless generosity . Our Thiago never met Dom Thiago but bore his name , same as about 30 percent of all youth of masculine persuasion . Because he was so impulsive , he took meeting a friend in the street in the dark as the most normal of occurrences . There was no hi - how - are - you business . He just picked up the conversation wherever his vagabond mind was at that particular moment . Thiago was as spontaneous as anyone could be . It used to drive Felipe crazy . Felipe was his brother , older by a year , and in public he was usually making an effort to get Thiago to settle down , be more careful , not call attention to himself , watch out for this , take care of that , not bounce the ball in front of the car or say bad words in front of small children and little old ladies . Thiago never paid any attention . He had so much fun . Their parents were separated , and the boys lived with their mom in a house on the edge of an old airstrip . Their mom had a huge collection of orchids that took up half the house . They hung in wooden pots , each variety in just the right place for temperature , humidity and sunlight . The night I ran into him , Thiago was obsessed with the flip turn , you know , what swimmers do at the end of the pool to turn around and go back the other way in a race . He wanted to know if I knew how to do it , if I could explain it to him , so that next day he could get it right . I don 't know why he thought I would know . We came to his corner . He put his right arm over my left shoulder for an instant . I could feel his vacant swim googles as they watched the horizon . Then he went on his way and I went mine . I could feel his friendly sweat running down my arm . The following day , practicing flip turns at the pool , he died . I had been dreaming about my dad . I would meet him walking down the same street where I bid farewell to Thiago . It 's the one that connects the city park with the only overland route to the rest of Brazil . My dad had died 10 years before . We all missed him enormously , and I thought he had come for me . So I was watching the traffic , expecting a spectacular accident to end my pilgrimage on earth . But no . Dad had come for Thiago . As a good angel , a guide to take him through unknown territory . I was surprised . There were rumors that Thiago had been on drugs , but they weren 't true . Others said he hit his head on the bottom of the pool , blacked out and drowned . Also false . He simply lost consciousness and went to the bottom . The boys swimming with him noticed immediately and fished him out . He regained consciousness briefly , complaining of a really bad headache , then started bleeding from his nose and ears . Then he blacked out again . They took him to the emergency room at the regional hospital in Santarém . It is one of the most dangerous medical centers on the planet . That night , it didn 't matter . Via text message , the news spread quickly and a small crowd began to gather . He was DOA . Doctors officially listed the cause of death as unknown . He just died . Felipe wept uncontrollably . It was one of those things . What couldn 't possibly happen was exactly what had happened . Felipe had never been very far away from Thiago . I had only ever seen two souls closer when they were identical twins . Identical twins share the same soul and , for all practical purposes , the same body , though a body capable of going off in two directions if it wants to , though rarely does it ever want to . Felipe and Thiago were like that , conjoined at the heart . They even had the same feast day on the calendar of saints . The only difference was that Felipe was clearly the older brother , eternally in charge of Thiago . They showed some childhood photos at the funeral . Photos of Felipe watching over his brother , making sure that , in Thiago 's spontaneous innocence , he was OK , making sure he never sank to the bottom of the pool and died . But he did . When Felipe got to the emergency room , Thiago was already gone . He was naked except for racing trunks and covered with blood , as if he had just been born . Felipe picked him up to hug him and got blood all over him . He got Thiago 's life all over himself . And there it will stay , for the rest of eternity . Felipe called me from the hospital . I didn 't understand a thing he said . He always spoke too quickly on the phone , and there was a lot of static on the line . This time , though , he was coming apart , saying a million incoherent things all at once . To make matters worse , he had called from Thiago 's cell . I thought it was Thiago saying that their mother had died . But it was Felipe , saying that Thiago had died , filho da mãe . Thiago had been on a fitness binge . Some days , it would be soccer , then taekwondo , then he would go run with me at the city park . He would overdo it . But all 17 - year - olds overdo everything . He didn 't die of that . I think he had a massive stroke , or perhaps he burst an aneurism in his head . It would have happened , sooner or later . An autopsy was not performed , because the boys ' father got there before their mother , and he was a Jehovah 's Witness . They don 't do autopsies . They assume that the only real cause of death is the wrath of God . After midnight , they found Thiago 's mom . She was interested in knowing if her dead boy had died of something hereditary that her living boy might also have . But his body was already in the hands of the morticians . She later talked about exhuming the body , but I think that was because she couldn 't let go . I told her the smartest thing would be to have Felipe checked out . At someplace besides the local hospital . They were experts at amputations and sudden deaths , not complex diagnoses . It was the only time I ever really felt like I wished it had been me . People often say that , but it 's usually not true . What people are secretly thinking , even when a loved one has passed away , is thank God it was you and not me . Once , when Dad came to visit me in Chile , we had an issue with the water pump at the beach house . He laughingly insisted that he would hold the hot wire to the connection , because he had already lived more years than anyone else there . Yeah , like that . If anyone was going to get electrocuted , run over or struck down by Jehovah 's insatiable wrath , he thought it should be him . That 's really what I was thinking when Thiago died . But I had no way of taking the aneurism out of Thiago 's head and putting it into mine . Besides , he was already gone . At memorial services , they always say the deceased was the kindest person , the most loving , everybody 's favorite human being and all that . It 's usually a lie , but Thiago really was all that . He had some unconscious magic qualities , an indescribably prodigious way that made him an endangered species . He didn 't really fit into our miserable world . That was , perhaps , the true cause of death . The underlying cause . He was so innocent , he had no notion that others didn 't have those same magic qualities . They called him impulsive , but he was intuitive . It was as if he were seeing in colors while everyone else was seeing in black and white . His frequent misunderstandings in everyday life came from his belief that others perceived what he was perceiving . He was just wired differently . Maybe that 's what killed him . His wires got too hot . The coffin was too small . Perhaps it 's all they had at the funeral parlor on a moment 's notice , or maybe his dad just picked the first one he saw , imagining that his son was still a little boy . It was flimsy , too , made for the weight of a child . The cousins and classmates who carried him in the procession had to put their hands underneath so he wouldn 't fall out the bottom . That sort of thing shouldn 't happen at funerals . If the bottom falls out of the box , you have a body on the sidewalk . Then what do you do ? After it was all over , the parish ladies got together every afternoon for a week to say the rosary for Thiago 's eternal salvation . He was an altar boy , after all . His buddies draped the saintly white tunic over the coffin during the wake . But the parish ladies imagined that because he was young and male - the worst possible combination , in their pious eyes - he had probably accumulated a long list of unthinkable sins . They professed that dusty self - righteous piety that passes for religion the world over . There was some anxiety on their part because , on the day of the burial , it got late and they didn 't say the rosary . In Brazil , the tradition is seven days of rosaries , rigorously recited without skipping the verse about the fires of hell , and a Mass for the eternal repose of the soul of the faithfully departed on the seventh day . It had to be exactly right . Like medieval sorcery , it was supposed to keep dead sinners out of Lucifer 's corral . It 's all most people really believe in , or even understand , about salvation . The parish ladies were convinced that Thiago would be excluded from the circle of divine love for all eternity because of a glitch in the protocol . Felipe 's grief took a long time . He wore his brother 's favorite shirt till it was threadbare . To this day , he uses Thiago 's cell phone . Felipe made a baby with his girlfriend not long ago . It 's going to be a boy . He hasn 't been born yet , but his name is Thiago .