Chosen For…by Maria King Carroll--October 2015

  

Southern Haiti–Photo by John Carroll

Chosen For

 

Little did I know

25 years ago when I said,

“Sure, I’ll go to Haiti with you,”

that half an island would claim me.

 

In my work, I am faced

with the limits of what I can do

in the land of limitless heart patients.

Not patients without heart,

but patients with great hearts,

that don’t work quite right.

 

They all know me, Dr. Blan,

who can whisk them

to the magic land, the heaven

up north where hearts

can be synchronized.

 

The Haitians wouldn’t put it that way,

They would say they no longer feel

the ocean rising in their chest

and maybe they won’t drown.

 

Thousands need help.

Who to choose?

 

A priest tells me of a

sick girl in Dame Marie.

Yarnie, the best student

in her class and maybe the cousin

of Edwidge Danticat, who wrote

Breath, Eyes, Memory.

 

I’m sure she is lovely and deserving,

and her weak breath concerns,

but five kids on the list are coming back.

Perhaps next time.

 

The next morning I scale an

eight-foot airport fence

and drop to my knees.

The priest has arranged

for a Haitian Pilot Man

to fly me to Yarnie.

If I can take five, what’s six?

 

Why is the pilot tasting the gasoline?

Because it’s mostly water?

I will not think about it.

We lift off while the sun peeps

innocently over the mountains.

 

Heading west, preparing to land,

the guilty sun blinds the cockpit,

and the pilot confirms,

“I cannot see anything.”

Whack! Whack! Whack!

We hit the treetops and prepare

to die in Dame Marie’s red clay.

 

But instead we land in mud.

Haitian Pilot Man boasts,

“I use only half of runway and am only pilot in

Haiti who will land here,”

and then warns me not to track mud in his plane when I reenter.

Priorities.

 

A group walks toward us,

Yarnie and others.

A runway examination reveals

tachypnea and a heart rate of 140,

the beautiful girl, a stick figure.

 

The brave fool pilot says he will

fly lower than the mountains for Yarnie’s breath,

What choice do I have?

Yarnie’s mother cries for

her daughter whom she

will lose to find.

 

Back in Port-au-Prince,

I must get Yarnie a visa.

If she falls asleep,

she stops breathing, a deadly cardiac slumber.

I tell another cardiac kid, Nadia, to shake

Yarnie if she doesn’t breathe after 15 seconds.

 

I am gone three hours,

Will there be a girl for this visa?

Rushing in the door,

Yarnie standing and smiling,

“Sure had a good nap. Made a new friend who

kept shaking me for some reason.”

 

John A. Carroll, MD

www.haitianhearts.org