A Night in Haitian Hell

One group of people I've always admired are the aide workers who volunteer to go into unbelievable situations at the most critical times. This small piece of creative non-fiction is dedicated to them.

A NIGHT IN HAITIAN HELL

For a moment – just a moment, he knelt down and held his head in despair. For a fraction – just a fraction of that moment, he allowed a wave of helplessness and hopelessness to carry him along. Every facial muscle tensed, and just the tiniest, smallest groan leaked out of his mouth.

He looked around at the flapping walls of this makeshift hospital littered with the barely alive. But there was still some breath of life within the heaps of misery laying on the ground. And he was a doctor, after all. He was also a news reporter for a major tv channel, but that didn't matter now. What these suffering earthquake survivors needed were doctors and medical supplies.

But where were they? The doctors who had operated on and given some care to these patients during the day had been loaded onto buses and taken away because of a security scare – of what, where, why, he didn't know. The only thing he was absolutely sure of at that moment was that the lives of these pitiful patients were all in his hands now, and for the whole night at least.

He sighed, took a deep breath, wiped the incredulity from his face with one hand, then waved his exhaustion away with the other hand. He bent down to check the wounds of a patient. There was no logic or reason that could make any sense of what was happening. The only thing he could truly count on was the medical knowledge in his brain and hands.

I followed him around, filming his lonely vigil. I had no medical skills to offer, but I needed to record the pathos playing out that long dark night. My prying video caught first the pain of the bleeding young man he was examining, and then the grimace of empathy on the doctor's face. There were no words to accompany the scene of him cradling a two-week-old baby boy, holding his tiny body tight to prevent death from snatching him away. My pictures often blurred with the tears in my eyes, especially when I taped a teenage girl touching his face gently in an international sign of “thank you.”

Would the morning light bring the other doctors and supplies back? Would we survive the night from the dangers that had driven them to abandon their patients? Working in tandem, he doctored and I photographed wordlessly through the lonely night, through the absurdity of it all. The only comfort we could offer each other was our physical presence. He saved lives and I visually documented his dogged heroism for millions of you tv viewers to see on the next day's news. The night passed, but the many big and small ways it scarred both of us were permanent. We never spoke of that night again.