Shaken Read online

  Kaylan’s excitement since her young mothers group the night before quickly dissolved as she stared at the mother on the bed in front of her. They had tried, but there was nothing she or Rhonda could do. The baby was gone. Kaylan’s fingers dug into her face, choking back a sob. The young woman lay passed out in exhaustion. Rhonda wrapped the tiny bundle in clothes and walked out of the room.

  “Why?”

  The word slipped through her whitened fingers. Every day she fought a battle of two steps forward and one step back. She shared the gospel with Stevenson, but he went back to Eliezer. She tried to help mothers understand the importance of nutrition, but Eliezer dragged two of the mothers away. She tried to help mothers deliver healthy babies, but Eliezer interfered there too. Was there no way to counter his influence? No way to stop his evil? How many would run to Eliezer’s medicine because they lacked knowledge and education? How many more mothers would lose children? A dark cloud hovered over Haiti in the form of voodoo and years of extreme poverty. Would the shadows ever fade?

  She wrung water from a cloth, soothing the sweaty brow of the mother who would never hold the child she had borne for eight months. It was the way of Haiti. With so many uneducated, with the heat, and the need to constantly make a living, there were those who grew tired of pregnancy and sought help from local voodoo priests to induce labor. She still wasn’t sure what Eliezer gave them. Some natural remedy, or so she’d been told. But many times it ended with loss of life and an aching mother. A flash of anger startled Kaylan. How could this mother risk hurting her own child to shave off one month of pregnancy?

  Some days she hated Haiti as much as she loved it. She longed to see change. Like the unfulfilled mother before her, Haiti should be beautiful and vibrant, but her need to provide for the day without thought to a hundred tomorrows left her barren and childless. The people couldn’t provide for themselves. Land was deforested, reefs devoid of fish, people without schooling, children sold as slaves, women employed as prostitutes, and men left wandering the streets without knowledge and skill to provide for and lead their families. Lack of education and resources left them destitute, and an apathetic attitude gripped many. Could anything worse happen to Haiti? Had God forgotten these beautiful people? Some days the battle felt hopeless.

  “You can’t save them all, Kaylan.”

  Silence reverberated in the room, and Kaylan’s eyes drifted over the woman’s sleeping frame.

  “How do you live like this, Rhonda? Don’t you want to save them all?” She turned on her mentor, her eyes flashing. “You’ve grown callous. That was a baby. A baby who never had the chance to live because of this woman’s naiveté and impatience to be back on the streets selling herself.”

  “You’ve been here less than two weeks. I’ve invested ten years. You think I don’t care? You can’t fight the culture, Kaylan. You can’t change years of oppression and voodoo and grinding poverty. She needs to feed her other kids, so she acted. Wrongly, naively, but she did.”

  Kaylan stepped back at the cold emanating from Rhonda, but the current building within her would not be quenched.

  “So, you accept it? You don’t fight to change it?”

  “Before you change a culture, you must understand the basic drive behind every poor decision. Families need food, so they sell their daughters. Men can’t afford to provide for their families, so they leave. Welcome to extreme poverty, Kaylan. Don’t you dare tell me that I don’t care. I’ve been fighting this battle for years. You don’t know anything. You’re acting like a spoiled, selfish, rich girl who has never been out of her comfort zone. Tell me, Kaylan, are you really here for the people or to be a hero? This isn’t a game or a movie. This is real life.”

  Kaylan drew back as if slapped. The fight left her. Was that why she was here? To be a superhero, as she and Sarah Beth had joked about back home? Tears pooled in her eyes. She felt helpless and hopeless. How could she ever have thought she could help here, that she alone could turn things around?

  “I’m sorry, Rhonda.” She brushed tears away with the sweat. Tears wouldn’t save the baby or cure Haiti’s need. “I had no right to question you. I’m not superwoman, and I’ve tried to be.”

  Rhonda crossed the small room and rested her hands on Kaylan’s shoulders, tilting her chin up. “Kiddo, I’ve seen more than you can imagine, cried more than you will ever know, buried more children and treated more people than you could hope to see in your time here. It never gets easier. It is what it is.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” She wiped a tear winding down Kaylan’s cheek. “Kaylan, do you remember how you felt when you first arrived?”

  Kaylan nodded. “I fell in love with these people so quickly, Rhonda. I want to protect them from the world. Give them everything I have and more. I live so sheltered, and these people have so little. Some days I wonder if God cares. And then every day I see some small miracle in the midst of hardship, and I remember that He does. I just still don’t understand why it won’t change more quickly.”

  “I love your heart for these people, Kaylan. But your mind-set is still very American. This is not an instant gratification society. We can’t bring America to Haiti. We have to meet these people where they are at, and help in any way we can.”

  “I understand that. But how do we change a country and a mind-set after years of hardship?”

  Rhonda crossed her arms and studied Kaylan. “Kaylan, how do you finish a test?”

  “What?”

  “I thought you were a brainiac.”

  Kaylan chuckled and lowered her head.

  “Think about it, Kaylan. How do you finish a test?”

  “One question at a time?” Kaylan felt stupid. Surely it wasn’t that easy.

  Rhonda’s voice lowered to a whisper, burning with passion. “Kaylan, how do you change a country?”

  Recognition dawned in Kaylan. She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. “One life at a time.”

  “One life at a time, we will see Haiti changed. One mother understanding the intricacies of the life within her, one child knowing the love of two parents and a full belly, one father knowing how to provide for his family. One by one.”

  Compassion welled for the woman on the bed who would open her eyes to empty arms and a barren womb. Kaylan would teach her, so she never forfeited another child again.

  “One life can save Haiti.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  RHONDA, RHONDA!” THE shouting and banging woke Kaylan, and she sat up with a start, glancing around the dark room for the offensive sound and then at the clock by her bed. Two a.m. It had been almost a week since they lost the baby, and more tragedies had followed in its wake. Kaylan could barely keep up with the never-ending stream of patients who entered the clinic each day, needing help with malnutrition, child abuse, dehydration, malaria. Exhaustion made her eyelids heavy as she struggled to identify what had roused her from her nightmares.

  “Kayles, what’s going on?” Sarah Beth’s Southern drawl lengthened in the dead of night, and Kaylan rubbed her eyes. The house was hot and sticky. The pounding continued. The door. Someone was at the front door. Kaylan stumbled from her bed and hurried to the door.

  “Kay-lin, Kay-lin!”

  Kaylan jerked open the front door as Rhonda entered the hallway, pulling a robe tightly around her. Tasha fell into Kaylan’s arms, her words a jumble of Creole and English. “Yanick’s baby need help. Must come, now.”

  Rhonda darted into her room without a word, and Kaylan stood in the hallway, stunned.

  “What happened, Tasha? What’s wrong with her?”

  She shook her head and opened her mouth to speak, then immediately covered it with her hand, her eyes growing wide again.

  Kaylan tugged her hand down. “I need to know, Tasha, so we can help her.”

  “Eliezer. Pain. Big pain. He hurt me for telling you.”

  Eliezer. Kaylan’s heart dropped to her toes. The last woman he’d
helped in pregnancy lost her child. Her anger broke like the surf, spreading and out of control.

  “Not this time.” She ran from the room and grabbed clothes, throwing them on.

  Sarah Beth bolted from the bed. Her blonde curls stuck out at odd angles on her head.

  “What happened? Where are we going?”

  “Eliezer gave Yanick herbs to make her baby come faster, and now she may lose her child too. That can’t happen again. It just can’t.” Her hands and voice shook slightly, and she grabbed her head, turning in a circle, struggling to concentrate.

  Sarah Beth came and shook Kaylan. “Don’t panic, Kayles. We’ll do our best to get there in time. I’m coming with you. Another set of hands always helps.”

  Kaylan stood staring at her best friend as Sarah Beth grabbed towels and several water bottles and bolted through the door. She glanced back at Kaylan.

  “You coming?”

  Kaylan rushed to the car where Tasha and Rhonda waited. Lord, keep Yanick safe, and please, help us save her and the baby in time. The pint-sized car bounced over the uneven dirt roads. Kaylan clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from rattling and counted the minutes to Cité Soleil. Her sweaty palms gripped the medical supplies, and she struggled to keep her breathing even. Cité Soleil was not a friendly place to travel in the dead of night, and Eliezer was not a character she wanted to mess with on so little sleep. She prayed for steady hands and patient words.

  Cité Soleil was known as the worst slum in the Western Hemisphere and one of the largest in the Northern Hemisphere. What began as a shanty town soon grew to contain hundreds of thousands of Haiti’s poorest and most dangerous. Homes were pieced together with cement blocks and steel. Gangs had once terrorized and ruled the territory, until the government took extensive measures a couple years before. Now, only remnants of the gangs remained, but the slums were still a place of extreme poverty, illiteracy, raw sewage, and massive crime.

  Sarah Beth hummed “Amazing Grace,” and Tasha’s voice joined in the soothing tune from the front seat. Kaylan smiled. The peace and steady voice of one who had experienced the worst and lived to tell the best made her feel two inches tall. How unworthy she was to help these people. They taught her more each day than she could possibly teach them in a multitude of lifetimes. They knew what it meant to survive—and not only survive, but also thrive. They defined resilient.

  Gritting her teeth, she thought through Scripture to give her courage. Fear wouldn’t paralyze her tonight. The life of a woman and her child rested on their shoulders. She would be strong and fight . . . like Nick.

  They rounded another bend, and water and trash pooled in front of them in the moonlight. Kaylan jolted as the car stopped, and she scrambled to grab her things. The walls across from the dilapidated house bore the scars of bullets and gang wars. She was about to deliver a baby into the fray.

  Kaylan squared her shoulders and followed Rhonda into the house. She would fight, but could she win against a country so entrenched in poverty and despair that the rest of the world seemed to have given up on it?

  “Push, Yanick, push!” Rhonda’s firm, almost frantic tone betrayed the urgency. Daylight crept over the houses in the slums. The pop of gunfire had evaporated in the heat of a new morning, and the offenders had slunk into the shadows to await a new night. Sarah Beth pushed her frizzy curls out of her face, before dipping another towel in water to cool Yanick’s feverish head.

  Yanick screamed, and Kaylan braced her back as she arched it in pain. Kaylan used her body to take Yanick’s weight as she perched on the edge of the bed, using it as a makeshift delivery table, while Rhonda coached the delivery.

  “I see the head. You must push.” Rhonda remained in control, but the early morning hours had been long. An ambulance could not be called during the night, and there were few who would brave the streets of the worst slum in Haiti for the sake of one woman who had grown impatient with her pregnancy and sought other options.

  Kaylan glanced at the door, a mere sheet blowing in the morning breeze. Eliezer stood just outside, refusing to leave. His words had awoken the neighborhood and sent more gunfire popping skyward upon their arrival.

  “She is my charge. Be gone. I will handle her.”

  “You gave her something to make the baby come early, Eliezer, and it isn’t healthy. What did you give her? I need to know, now.” Rhonda left no room for argument. She and Eliezer seemed to have a grudging understanding, one that drew both Kaylan’s respect and frustration. It felt as if Rhonda had compromised sharing her faith for peace with the locals. Kaylan couldn’t help but wonder where her own faith would be at the end of the year, browbeaten by the hopeless cycles of poverty and human insignificance.

  Yanick’s baby spelled hope for Kaylan, and she watched in rapt attention as Rhonda kneaded the womb and coached Yanick.

  “Kaylan, I need you now,” Rhonda called.

  Kaylan moved from her place on the bed, transferring Yanick’s weight to Sarah Beth. Yanick gladly collapsed back against Sarah Beth’s chest in exhaustion. Sarah Beth cradled Yanick’s back, smoothing her hair, and talking softly in her ear to calm her as Kaylan moved to the foot of the twin bed and leaned in close to hear Rhonda.

  Rhonda kept her voice steady and low. “The baby’s neck is caught in the cord. You must slip it over the head. She can’t stop pushing, and the cord is pulling tighter.”

  Kaylan hesitated, her eyes widening at the tiny bloody head protruding from Yanick’s body.

  “Now, Kaylan.”

  With a deep breath, Kaylan tugged the cord over the baby’s head, feeling the tautness. The baby slid free, and Rhonda handed him to Kaylan to clean as she walked Yanick through the final stages of labor.

  A boy. His bloody body soaked Kaylan’s T-shirt, and she quickly cleared his mouth and wrapped him in a blanket, patting his back to make him cry. She stared in wonder at the bundle before her. Life, new life, pulsated in the middle of a slum of death. The blood coating her arms and shirt marked something new, beautiful, and tiny. What would his life be like? Would he grow up to be one of the many who fired guns in the night hours in Cité Soleil? Kaylan’s heart ripped at the thought, and she cuddled him closer, sheltering him from the world outside his metal walls.

  “Bring him to Yanick when you’re finished, Kaylan.” Rhonda delivered the placenta, and her low Creole tones danced through the shoebox house, joining the cries of a new Haitian child.

  Kaylan walked to Yanick and laid the baby in her outstretched arms, a new fear developing. “Rhonda, he’s underweight and premature. He needs to go to the hospital. I’m worried he’ll get sick if he stays here without proper care.”

  “No one goes to the hospital in Haiti, except by accident. We’ll take him to the clinic. I’ll monitor him from there.” Rhonda began to pack the bloody cloths and the medical supplies, her dirty blonde hair frizzy after a night of exertion and heat.

  Sarah Beth knelt next to Yanick and smoothed the new mother’s hair away from her face. Her eyes filled with wonder at her tiny son. She touched the baby’s hands and smiled when they opened and grasped her finger.

  Kaylan knew victory. This baby had survived. His future was uncertain, his health worrisome, but his chest rose and fell, his voice sounded through the neighborhood, and his mouth groped his mother’s chest for something to eat. He lived.

  The sheet flew open as Eliezer and Rolin, Yanick’s husband, rushed in. Relieved at the sight of his wife and son, Rolin broke into a wide smile. But Eliezer’s chocolate-brown eyes glowed like black coals. Kaylan stood slowly, approaching him, hoping to make peace.

  “He lives, Eliezer. But he is too small. We will take him back to the clinic to watch over him.” At the fury in his eyes, Kaylan immediately knew she had said too much.

  Eliezer snapped. “He will not go to the clinic. I will care for him. The spirits of his ancestors will make him strong. If he dies, he will join them.”

  Kaylan exchanged glances with Rhonda, who remained silent,
pushing Kaylan to take the lead. “He needs the care of trained professionals. And Yanick needs to be checked for any lingering effects of the drugs she took.”

  “I said no.” His finger almost poked her eye out, and she backed up a step. “These are my people. I will care for them.”

  Kaylan struggled to keep her voice even, anger burning in her chest as if she’d been branded. “You caused this. He is early because of you. A baby died because of you. Yanick is sick because of herbs you gave her. We are here because of you. You do not help your people. You hurt them.”

  Kaylan silenced her anger as his eyes shot bullets. Love him, Kayles. He is stuck in the ways of his people. Remembering Sarah Beth’s admonishment, Kaylan fought to control her temper, searching for something to smooth over her harsh words. “Eliezer, did you know your name means ‘God has helped’? You can help your people more by following the God above all gods rather than spirits who have no real power.” She reached to touch his arm. “I’m still praying that you will find the one true God.”

  His hand struck like a cobra, and her head snapped to the side, her cheek stinging. Sarah Beth tugged her shirt, jerking her backward and to the floor with a thud. A string of angry Creole filled the house. Rolin leaped up and confronted Eliezer, his temper apparent in the tone of his voice and his steady stream of dialogue as he maneuvered Eliezer out the door.

  “Curse your God! He has no power here. Curse you!” Eliezer’s shouts echoed long after his departure.

  Kaylan shivered despite the humidity, wondering how far Eliezer’s temper would carry him. Had she brought trouble to this fragile family because she hadn’t kept silent? She eyed the small bundle in his mother’s arms, and her resolve strengthened. A new Haitian. A new hope for his people. Kaylan only hoped they could coax his little body to health quickly.

  Chapter Fourteen

  SHOTS WHIZZED PAST Nick’s head, and the ground rumbled. He ducked into a shop and scanned the darkened interior for hidden insurgents. This op was not going as planned.