The smell takes a while to get used to, but then, it doesn't constantly bother you because there's so much screaming, everywhere. Dr. Pérousse is a brave man, in the sense that he hasn't collapsed under the weight of his own fatigue and of the trauma around him. He is the only surgeon now in the only room where there aren't corpses strewn all over the place. But the operating room is has been in for over twenty hours now has been shipping out new supplies of cadavers that inevitably produce long and painful screaming in the hallway. Joseph is a friend of Dr. Pérousse, and they have known each other for a while now. They have seen a lot in this island country, all the political upheaval, all the criminal violence, and the bone chilling poverty of the poorest nation of the Caribbean. Joseph, unlike Dr. Pérousse, is neither black nor Haitian; he comes from the island of Manhattan where he has a nice little, very little, studio paid for by his job as a freelance reporter and photographer.
Today in this capital of this impoverished island where a merciless earthquake had flattened buildings and lives, Joseph sits motionless. He is tired and he is lucky. Has a broken arm, but he escaped the collapsing building and cheated fate's cage of rubble that is still trapping many others, dead or dying.
There, another scream, another wailing.
His broken arm is not important now. There are people far more wounded than he is and many of these people will not leave this tiny clinic again as they would bleed to death or succumb to vile infections. Joseph is here to help, actually, in whatever capacity his brain and body, minus that non-functional hand. But now he is exhausted. He is sitting on the dirty floor, a small patch not stained with blood. On his left is a corpse covered with a dirty white piece of canvas. The blood from its head has seeped through. In front of him sits a man who is staring into some distance; his occasional blinking is the only sign that he's alive. Joseph saw him earlier when he was writing people's names down and the names of the people they were waiting for in the hospital. The hospital itself is half destroyed; many nurses and doctors perished in the process. But this wing remained functional.
Where are the looters? He wondered at that point, writing people's names down with, luckily, his writing arm. Like the police, the looters were probably stuck somewhere. There he saw this man now sitting motionlessly in front of him. Then he was crying, holding a girl whose face was all bloody. A volunteer from Médicin sans frontier asked if the girl was all right.
"Ça va?"
"Oui"
She could barely squeeze out that one syllable word. The father went on to explain that his oldest daughter was dead, and this one was dying, and begged the volunteer to help.
Joseph didn't hear the rest; he had to work. As he couldn't help with any heavy lifting, his task was to bring some order in this emotionally trying time in the hospital where people couldn't help blaming the doctors and others in charge for the death of their last hope for their loved ones. Now this man sits motionless without his daughter with him.
There's another little girl, much tinier. She lies motionless, too, on a cold, metallic table on Joseph's right. He turns his head to check on her. She is covered with a soft piece of cloth; her abdomen still heaving, slowly, subtly, up and down. Her eyes closed, one of which is covered with the blood still shiny from the huge gash on her right temple. He reaches out to her little right hand; it is soft and still warm. But the little girl is alone, no parents. No one has come to ask for a little girl like her. Joseph didn't even know her name. She was left there by someone, someone who found her somewhere, probably. Her face still has the gray dust from wherever she was dug out from.
Then there was a huge uproar from the east wing. Joseph props himself up, and before he runs to see what's happening, he notices that the man is not at all perturbed by the commotion. His eyes blink once, still staring into the darkness through the iron rails of the window in this section of the hospital.
Joseph reaches the center of the commotion, after nearly tripping on one of the growing number of corpses left lying on the floor. The people who had been sleeping with them are all now standing, tired but alert. A few men were making a lot of noise, but Joseph, the only white man there now, got himself into the center of the crowd. He finally learned that someone has said a tsunami is coming. Many people already have gathered their things and are starting to leave. Joseph manages to outshout the fear-mongering phantom that stalks the living and he explains to them that no tsunami was coming, that he was a scientist and understands that tsunamis only can come if the earthquake happened in the sea. The second part is true, but he was never fond of science. After a lot of desperate looks, finally, the people calmed down and returned to their mattes among the dead. Many are so tired that they immediately fall asleep. Joseph isn't always sure if a given body on the floor is cold or still has a heart beat.
When he returns, he hears a voice, the voice of the man who remains motionless, emotionless, still staring into the distance.
"Elle est morte."
Joseph has no emotion left to spare either. Before he can move, the operating room's door is thrown open and another corpse is rolled out. He catches a glimpse of Dr. Pérousse's face, very serious, even a little sad after having released another soulless shell of a body covered with bloody blanket. He sees Joseph and smiles a little. Unlike most people in the city now, at least they had each other, friends, a familiar face that isn't lying dying on the floor. Then the door closes.
Joseph goes over to the little girl. Yes, the man is right, she is dead. Completely frozen. He touches her little hand again, the one that was warm. It is slightly warm, or maybe that's because of his mind playing tricks on him. He gently tucks the little hand underneath the little blanket but he doesn't sit back down. He has work to do. But whatever it is, he needs one moment. And for that moment, he props himself against the wall of this already underfunded hospital, and he rests his forehead on his right arm. Then he starts to cry as if no one can hear him; but really, no one can hear him on this island; everyone wants to be heard.
