Departures

The staff was just devastated.    A wonderful, bright two-year old had come through surgery safely and was recovering well.  She spoke English as well as Kreyol and because of that was getting a lot of attention.


Mom was nowhere in sight and the little girl announced that her mother had abandoned her. Nurses, doctors, and aid workers were stunned and tearful. 


Then her mother returned.   She had left only to wash clothes, and was gone barely two hours.
Kleiman was in terror that I would try to bring this abandoned girl back with me and waxed cynical about  about childish manipulation. 


But this is a little girl who lost her father and older brother in the quake, an I am certain that every departure seems permanent to her.


I just went down to the OR to check on the neuro case still in progress.   Another pediatric disaster.  It won’t be okay.   It’s oddly calm because everyone accepts that we do our best.  We give our best.  We are the best that Haiti gets right now.

Yet we all know that it isn’ the best at all.  It is only the best we can do with what little we have.  It’s not the best because another child is going to die tonight.  In spite of our best.  Some of us will cry and some will try to apply some philosophical or religious spin to make it easier to sleep.  But it is just a delay tactic that we all silently deploy until we deal with the next cup of pain from this bottomless well of suffering.

Christine comes back every day with her baby, looking steadily into my eyes and quietly insisting "I want you to know this baby."


I saw Pierre and Kensey, the two night shift transporteurs / translators and amazing young men who bring their beautiful  spirits every night without fail to what must be a place of horror for them.  They have become my friends and family over the past month and tonight I had to tell them I am going to try to leave on Sunday.

I promised them I would be back and they trusted my word – but with great hesitation and sadness.  They will come with me to the airport on Sunday along with others who have become my family away from family to me.

I told them the truth about being exhausted and frustrated, and why I have to  leave for a while.  They already knew and were not upset or angry that I need a break from this overwhelmingly painful experience.  There are a lot of lessons about life and humanity to learn here but the most important lessons are about ourselves. 

I can’t wait to see Mark and Brett and David.  Sam, Big Mac  and George.  I will also be as sad to leave Haiti as I am glad to be home with you.