Haiti part two

One full week in Haiti….driving the streets, smelling the rotting corpses that are still buried under the rubble, I hold my breath not to take it in…not to make my brain understand what my senses were telling me…not to think about the families that are lost…that are buried…that will not be remembered...and then I look in the eyes of this scared mom-to-be…

She is heavy breathing…obvious signs of labor far along…and I look frantically around me – there is NO one there who speaks French, or Criole who can translate for me, and the only thing I can think of…the only word that seems so “universal” to me is “no…”  No…not here…no, not now…no, not by myself…no, not in this grime and despair…no, not on the filthy floors of this once abandoned hospital…but she looked at me, and without a common tongue, the language of “mom” spoke volumes!  The baby was coming…there was no “no”…it was time…

I frantically looked around me, without any other medical people in sight, in a desperate plea to appease my OWN sanity, I yelled out, “WE ARE HAVING A BABY HERE!!!”…but no one heard…no one came running.

I assessed my situation, my circumstances…I grabbed this moms hand, and took her outside our “hospital” and found the left-over card board box “bed” of someone we had lost the night before…and there I laid her down.  She was alone…I was alone…and the look in her eyes was one of complete terror.  So I steadied my breath, prayed a very serious, very quick prayer to the One who knows all, for the wisdom beyond my own, to the physician of all, to grant me the ability to make this happen.  I met this moms eyes, and in the unspoken words of someone who was here to help, I helped her understand that I was here for her.  I would make it all right…and I put the gloves on my hand…

To be continued…