FOURTEEN HOURS HAD passed since the earthquake, but Kaylan couldn’t remember the day of the week. More people arrived at the clinic. More bodies lay in the streets. Kaylan hobbled from patient to patient, stitching, cleaning, and applying salve and bandages until supplies ran out.
Aftershocks rattled remaining bodies, sending precariously perched rubble tumbling down. With every rumble, people sprinted to the middle of streets, covering their heads and wailing. Sometime during the day a voodoo candle was lit and placed in the middle of the street. The thick dust stamped its glow, but people instinctively ran to it during each aftershock—anything to get away from the crumbling buildings. As the shaking died away, hymns replaced the wailing, and the soothing sounds of Creole chants filled the streets, a true picture of the combination of Christianity and voodoo in Haiti.
“Help! We need help over here.” Rhonda and Kaylan rushed to a stretcher Abraham and Stevenson placed on the floor. A young girl, no older than sixteen, lay unconscious, her arm broken and protruding below the elbow. Kaylan gagged and averted her eyes, scanning the girl for more injuries.
“Where was she, Abe?”
“In a house up the hill. A boulder was on her arm. She passed out when we moved it.”
Rhonda pulled Kaylan aside. “We have to amputate, but the only medicine I have left to give her is Tylenol. Put these in her mouth and make sure she swallows them. I’ll need you to hold her down.”
Kaylan’s mouth fell open in horror. She had to be joking. “Can’t we just set her arm? Maybe it’s a bad break.”
“Believe me, if that was the case, I would do it in a heartbeat. I need your help, Kaylan.”
“Rhonda . . . ”
“She’ll die if we don’t.”
Kaylan looked at the girl and saw Sarah Beth’s twisted legs, blood slipping from her mouth, and unfocused blue eyes. Kaylan blinked away the images. “Just tell me what to do.”
Rhonda instructed Stevenson and Abraham as Kaylan gave the girl pills and water. The grind of a chainsaw drew Kaylan’s gaze. Abraham braced the girl on the table.
“No, Rhonda. You can’t use that.”
“We don’t have anything else. Lay across her, and hold her still.”
“Rhonda.”
“You think I want to do this? It’s her only option. Now, do as I say or leave and let Stevenson help.” A tear slid down Rhonda’s cheek.
Stretching her body over the girl’s torso, Kaylan angled her head away from the grinding noise. The girl’s body jerked as she screamed. Kaylan fought the urge to move off the girl as something warm splattered the back of her neck. She squeezed her eyes shut and then quickly opened them as the image of Sarah Beth flashed before her with a vengeance. Kaylan tightened her hold.
“Kaylan.” Kaylan glanced up from changing a woman’s bandage to find Abraham and Stevenson towering over her. She stood slowly, grabbing the stick that helped her hobble from patient to patient. She hadn’t said anything to Rhonda, but she was worried about infection.
“Can you come outside?” Kaylan nodded and followed them out of the clinic, past the line of tents that stretched from the doorway around the block. A body lay on a stretcher, a dirty hot pink towel obscuring the identifying features. The hand brushed the dirt, and Kaylan saw Sarah Beth’s neon nail polish and pale skin.
She reached to pull the towel back. Just a glimpse. Abe grabbed her waist and held her fast. “No, Kaylan. She is not there. She is with Jesus.”
“Sarah Beth.”
“We don’t sorrow as those that have no hope,” he whispered in her ear, slowly releasing her.
“Where’s the hope in this, Abe, where? My best friend is dead. She loved Haiti. She wanted to be here.” She covered her face. “Why?” The word was barely audible.
Abe hugged her, remaining silent. Stevenson observed them, his face etched in stone. They had found young Reuben that morning in the doorway of a building near Rhonda’s house. He had been huddled around his soccer ball when he was buried. Stevenson hadn’t shed a tear, but he wouldn’t leave Abe’s side. Abraham’s classmates had been buried in the seminary. Few remained alive to bring their people the gospel. Kaylan’s heart broke for the teens who only wanted better for their people.
Why, God? Why here? Why Sarah Beth? Why sweet, precious Reuben, who only wanted to play soccer?
Abraham released her and, with Stevenson’s help, lifted the stretcher. Kaylan balked at the shovel tucked under Sarah Beth.
“I need to take her home. She can’t stay here. I need to take her back to Alabama to her family.”
“If we do not bury her now, she will be thrown in a mass grave or burned in the street. I am sorry, Kaylan. This is the best way for you and for Sarah Beth.”
The boys hastily dug a grave outside the city and lowered Sarah Beth inside. Abraham read Scripture and prayed while Stevenson fashioned a cross out of two sticks. Kaylan couldn’t speak, couldn’t process the events surrounding her. This couldn’t be happening. She would never hug Sarah Beth again, never hear her tinkling laugh or smell her flowery perfume. Sarah Beth wouldn’t have a class in the fall. What would Kaylan tell the students she had tutored and taught last semester? Would they understand that the woman who’d loved them, who’d brought them snacks from home because some hadn’t eaten all weekend, was gone forever? The grave was permanent.
“All things work together for the good, Kaylan.”
“Where’s the good in this, Abe?” Leaning on her cane, Kaylan felt the cool poison of bitterness seep through her veins and wrap around her heart. Then, so only Abe could hear, she met his brown eyes and whispered, “God left Haiti, just like He left Sarah Beth.” A tear coursed down her face and landed near the cross. The wind dried its track as she hobbled back to town to help.
Kaylan’s mouth felt like cotton. She licked her lips and winced when her split lip stung in protest. The man stretched out on the cot before her was dying. She’d failed again. His wife and adult children hovered around his pallet on the ground. Kaylan ran a cool rag over his forehead and checked his pulse, again. There was nothing she could do. Another part of her heart chipped away. Helpless and useless, she made herself keep moving.
Lord? Are You there?
She stood, slowly, and her leg wobbled beneath her, threatening to collapse. She gritted her teeth and counted silently, focusing on the process instead of the pain. Kaylan moved to the next patient, one who could be saved. A flurry of activity behind her made her spin back around to the dying patient. The man drew a rattled breath, and as his chest fell, his head drifted down his pillow and became limp. His wife and daughter threw themselves over his chest, crying and wailing, his son attempting to console both women.
Kaylan couldn’t bear it. All around her, under the makeshift tents of the medical clinic, people wailed or sat in utter silence, too numb, too shocked to react. She needed to get away, but death had become a constant companion. She couldn’t stop it. She tried, but the grave respected no person. She fought a losing battle.
“I’m so sorry.” She hurried toward the clinic door, limping and dragging her leg. She needed refuge, respite for just a moment.
The sound began as a wail and morphed into a melody, quiet at first and then gathering in intensity. The air around the clinic charged with energy as the wailing fell silent.
The Creole words soothed her as they had in her few weeks in the country. As the song gathered, she recognized the melody and stopped cold. She sank to the ground facing the woman who lost her husband. “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” intermingled with the dust. For the first time since the quake, the earth was still. The woman’s hair and arms were coated white. Dark eyes reflected her sorrow, but they weren’t fixed on her late husband. They were tilted to heaven, pouring their sorrow out to the Lord. For a moment, Kaylan wondered if she were an angel in disguise, come to lift the souls of the downtrodden.
One by one, other voices joined the woman’s until a chorus of Creole enveloped the clinic. Abe and Rhonda appeared from the clinic, mouths hanging open. Tears coursed down Abe’s dust-covered cheeks, and his lip quivered. As the chorus began again, he added his voice to the throng, louder and louder still. He threw his arms open wide, his face tilted toward heaven.
“All I have needed Thy hand hath provided; great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!”
Chills coursed down Kaylan’s spine as the refrain ebbed into silence. The woman hummed and swayed, tears weaving down her dust-stained cheeks, a small smile on her lips—like the one Kaylan had seen on Sarah Beth’s face as she slipped into eternity. The woman had just lost her husband, and yet peace radiated from her chalky face. Kaylan had never seen anything like it. Just as the earthquake united their plights, the song bonded their hearts.
Abe helped her to her feet and moved with her to another cot. The atmosphere had a different feel, as if the song had morphed the area from one of gloom and despair, to hope.
Abe whispered in her ear, “That is the first time I have seen something beautiful come out of this chaos.” A small smile graced his lips. “Now I know, I remember that we will be all right.” The fervency of his words made her pull away and study his eyes. They were no longer filled with fear, uncertainty, or the ghosts of the many he had pulled from debris. Peace rested in their depths.
Uncertainty settled in her heart. She had lost one she loved dearly. These people had lost everything. Where was her peace that life would be all right? What was she missing?