LEAVE ME ALONE, Abraham.” Kaylan’s feeble shoves did little to deter the teen. He shimmied over a beam and shoved rock aside to clear a path for them, but she didn’t care.
“I will not leave you.”
A mild aftershock shook the neighborhood, and Kaylan threw her arms over Sarah Beth’s head, shielding them both. Abraham covered her with his body.
“You’re going to get hurt. Just leave me.” She played with Sarah Beth’s hair, her fingers stiff and caked with dried blood and dust.
“We have to go. Your leg looks bad. Let me take you to Ms. Rhonda.”
“I won’t leave her, Abe. I won’t leave her. Sarah Beth, please come back.” Tears blurred her vision and fell on her friend’s forehead, pink skin peeking through the caked powder of settling debris. She desperately wished life were like a fairy tale and the magic of tears and love held the ability to bring others back to life. But only one Man had ever held that power. And He had chosen to take her best friend.
“Kaylan, we must go now.”
“I won’t leave her,” Kaylan yelled, the sound tearing through her body. She couldn’t see Abe through her tears.
He shook her. “Will you join Sarah Beth? You are not the only one hurt. Sarah Beth is not the only one who died.” Anger colored his voice.
She shoved against him. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Please forgive me, Kaylan.” Without waiting for an answer, his palm connected with her face just enough to get her attention. More tears colored her vision. Abe’s voice sought to soothe this time. “Get control. Fight this, Kaylan.” He shook her shoulders again. “Fight so others do not end up like Sarah Beth. Honor her. Let’s go.”
Kaylan didn’t have energy. Couldn’t process. Couldn’t leave. But Abe’s words hit the hole in her heart left by Sarah Beth. She bent over Sarah Beth again, cradling her head, sobs racking her body.
“Stevenson.” Abe’s voice drifted through her foggy mind. Another black head appeared in the small hole carved by a few Haitians. He squeezed his lanky, underfed frame through the hole and joined Abraham in front of her. Their long bodies hugged the floor to avoid scraping the precarious ceiling. Their whispered Creole did little to soothe her. The earthquake destroyed more than buildings. Her body, her heart, her soul were irrevocably shattered beyond repair.
Hands grasped her arms and gripped tightly, dragging her backward. Sarah Beth’s head slipped from her lap to the floor. Kaylan kicked and fought with her remaining energy as Stevenson and Abe hauled her to the opening and handed her to the waiting hands of the gathering crowd. Glass and rock cut her bare legs. The hot morning brought welcome light to the relief efforts but illuminated an ugly new reality. Dust choked the air.
“Take me back. I won’t leave her. Take me back.”
Abe took over as the faceless hands set her against Rhonda’s dilapidated home and moved silently to the next house, hoping to hear voices beneath the rubble. She remembered what Rhonda had told her about Haiti: it would be saved one life at a time. She had felt hope at the realization. Now, she only felt despair and despondency. Haiti wouldn’t, couldn’t be saved. This was too big, too devastating.
She blinked in the light and fought the urge to throw up the little water in her stomach. Bodies littered the streets from flying debris. The earthquake had caused buildings to explode and crumble. Hotels and other multistory buildings lay pancaked, each floor indistinguishable from the next. Arms and legs hung at odd angles where doorways had collapsed, trapping those inside. A mother lay on the ground in front of a building down the street, wailing and crying to children trapped, possibly dead inside.
She shook her head. Abe grabbed her face and checked her scrapes and bruises, then finally her leg. Nothing hurt. She couldn’t feel. Maybe that was a good thing. Sophia ran to her, wrapping her arms around Kaylan’s neck. No laughter, no dancing. Just pain, blood, chaos. The bump on Sophia’s head spoke of her own battle. It roused Kaylan as she remembered Abe’s admonition. She gently moved the girl away and checked her for any other cuts or bumps.
“Are you okay?”
Sophia nodded and leaned against her again, arousing Kaylan’s senses to the war zone around her. In Sophia’s young eyes, she saw Sarah Beth as she had once been, blowing bubbles, happy to dance. In the mother lying on the street, she saw her own desperation to save her friend. She cradled the girl close, helpless to protect or shield her.
“Abe, help me up, please.”
His look made her question her appearance. Did she look as she felt inside: one more aftershock and she would fall to pieces? Haiti had beaten her.
“Please, Abe. Take me to Rhonda. People need help.” And I need to get Sarah Beth out of that house. She would find someone to help her later.
Stevenson grasped her other arm, and she hobbled between the two boys, murmuring a thank-you. The trek to the clinic a few blocks away seemed to take hours. There were no visual landmarks: no restaurant with a green sign to let her know she should turn left, no rainbow-painted tap-tap to let her know she had arrived on a new street, no impromptu art gallery to let her know she should turn right. Bodies, shambles, and weeping swirled with the dust, blocking visibility.
Kaylan’s leg bled in earnest, and the boys formed a gurney with their hands, lifting her through the debris and potholes. A block before the clinic Kaylan knew she was close. Sheets hung from poles hastily stuck in the ground. People stretched out or sat on the dusty ground, solemn, emotionless, staring into space. Others cried and wailed. The clinic had withstood the quake, a small miracle in Kaylan’s mind, a tower of refuge in the midst of a battle-torn city. Rhonda’s red bandana-covered head traveled from person to person, helping where she could, calming. Her eyes found Kaylan’s through the heavy dust, and she rushed to meet them.
“Oh, thank God. Are you okay?”
“I’m alive.”
“Better than many, then.” Rhonda looked behind them, scanning the crowd. “Where’s Sarah Beth?”
“She’s . . . ” Kaylan couldn’t tell her. “At home.”
Rhonda’s eyes traveled between Stevenson and Abe, and Kaylan knew the moment it registered. Rhonda’s eyes shot to Kaylan’s. There were no tears left. Kaylan gritted her teeth, and Rhonda squeezed her hand.
“I’m so sorry.”
Kaylan remained silent.
“I need to get you fixed up. Can you walk?”
“I sliced my leg open on a wire or pipe in the debris.”
Kaylan understood the reason for the sheets outside. A few doctors and Haitians ran between patients. The clinic room overflowed with humanity and blood. Kaylan smelled the brine and iron of the red liquid. Only a day before the sight had marked a new life. Now, it signified death.
Rhonda shouted instructions to another doctor and motioned to her office. Several men and women stood cramped in the small room, bruised and cut. A child lay unconscious at their feet. Rhonda motioned for a man to stand up. The teens lowered Kaylan into the chair then left to dig more bodies out of buildings.
Rhonda removed the blood-soaked T-shirt from Kaylan’s leg. She didn’t wince. Pieces of glass and rock caked the wound.
Rhonda’s eyes met hers. “This wound is getting infected. I have to clean and stitch it up. You’ll be hobbling for a while, but I need you. We’re short on medicine until someone gets here with supplies, so you’re going to have to deal with this unmedicated. Can you handle it, Kaylan?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Kaylan jumped as Rhonda knelt before her and took her hands. “I’m so sorry for what you’ve faced.” Her fingers soothed the cuts on Kaylan’s hands and almost drew tears to her eyes at the first gentle touch outside Sarah Beth’s she had experienced since the earthquake. She longed for her mother, for Alabama, for Nick’s comforting arms, for Micah to carry her away.
Instead, she remained in Haiti, shaken and bruised. Home was an illusion, a wonderful dream to which she hoped to return. Reality was death and devastation. How did Nick fight against this daily? Where did he find the strength?
“I’ll help. Stitch me up.” Rhonda hesitated for a moment, but Kaylan allowed no chance for further pity. Work would dull the pain. Every face would bear Sarah Beth’s smile or eyes. Every child would remind her of her bubbly best friend. Every cry for help would motivate her never to allow someone else she loved to die, if it was within her ability to stop it.
It was no longer her body that felt the keen sting of pain, but her soul, as if it too had been shaken. Forced tears poured as Rhonda removed debris from her leg in a hurry to help those outside. Within moments of the needle tugging her skin, Kaylan slipped into pain-driven oblivion, the cries for help smothered by blackness.