Antoine perched herself in front of her family’s television. She couldn’t believe that she got to watch it all by herself today! Her three older siblings were playing at a friend’s house, her mom was out selling goods on the street, and her father was in the other room with the neighbors who were visiting.
The rambunctious 6-year-old had just gotten home from school. She thought about her day. She had done lots of drawing, which was one of her favorite things to do at school. And she had played dolls with her friends. She snuggled up to watch a show just as the ground beneath her began to shake. She looked around, panicked, not understanding what was going on as cracks started forming in the walls and ceiling around her. Antoine screamed to her father in the next room out of the terror rising in her gut. What was happening? She could hear her father yelling to her, yelling that he was coming to get her. But she couldn’t see him. Where was he? She tried to move, to get outside, but the walls of her house began to cascade down from the shaking ground and Antoine soon found herself under the cement blocks—she cried out in pain and fear. Her legs were throbbing in pain and she couldn’t move them. She lay there—underneath block upon block—the trembling ground finally still beneath her.
She heard her father, Bolivar calling to her and giving her words of comfort. He quickly lifted the pieces of wall off of his little girl, pressing his face and arms against the sharp pieces and pushing them out of the way—his cheeks bleeding in the process. She was there—his daughter was there! And she was alive.
Antoine couldn’t move her legs—her father tried to hold her and she screamed out in pain. Why did it hurt so much? He clutched her close to quickly get her out of the crumbled house, where the visiting neighbors remained—both dead from the home crashing down on them.
Outside, Antoine saw her mom come running down the street of rubble, through so many people. Her siblings were also soon there—a few had minor injuries, but as she listened to their stories of what just happened, they had been able to run out of the home they were in.
Bolivar couldn’t stop looking at Antoine in his arms. How had this happened to his little girl? His heart was worried. Her legs were limp and her pelvic bone shifted when he tried to carry her—she screamed in pain. He knew she needed a doctor, but where would he find one now?
The family all slept on the street that night—together—for safety and for comfort. “The next day, an American found us,” Bolivar recalls, “and brought us to Jimani in the Dominican Republic.”
Leaving her mother and her three siblings in their section of town called Delmas 30, Antoine and her father showed up at Good Samaritan Hospital in Jimani in desperate need. Every time Antoine moved, she felt pain in her legs and hips. How could she stay still? What would the doctors do to her? Would she ever feel better again? Examined by doctors at the hospital, they determined Antoine had a fractured pelvis, however they had no X-ray machine* to be sure. They lined up her bones the best they could and put a cast on her hips and legs—she and Bolivar remained, depending on the nurses and doctors who came by to check on her every few hours. The little girl’s pain was still fierce.
At Jimani more than 10 days, Bolivar was unsure if his daughter was getting any better. There were so many people who needed care; Antoine just lay there in her cast. She tried to smile at her dad to cheer him up, but sometimes she just couldn’t muster up a grin.
COTN medical team leader Dr. Vicki Sakata determined that Antoine was in need of more focused and critical care, so she asked Bolivar if they would come to COTN’s clinic in Barahona where she could be cared for in a more sterile, clean environment. He agreed, though it meant that they would be farther away from their family in Haiti. He looked down at Antoine and didn’t think there was much choice.
Once at COTN’s clinic in Barahona, the surgeons who were part of COTN’s medical team immediately took off her old, urine-soaked pelvic caste and replaced it with a new one. Antoine looked down at it after she got out of surgery. The caste was red. One of my favorite colors, she though to herself. She looked over at her father, sitting next to her. He looked tired, but some of the worry was gone from his eyes. That made her happy. Her pain wasn’t as bad as it had been a few days ago. Maybe being here in this new place was good, Antoine thought. “Antoine is doing okay now. She was suffering, but now she is okay,” Bolivar said through an interpreter. “I am really happy with the care that you are giving her.”
As Antoine begins to sit up in a chair, fill up a coloring book with vibrant pictures and laugh out loud—showing her huge, joyful smile—there is hope in her healing and her uplifted spirit at COTN’s medical clinic. Bolivar is grateful and more relaxed, though he still thinks about his wife and three children who are by themselves back in Haiti. “I don’t even know where they are,” he said.
by Laura Brost, COTN–USA staff writer
Visit the COTN website for pictures on this story and more stories like it!
http://www.cotni.org/articles/328-a-child-s-story-antoine-of-haiti
